‘Conjecture Magnets’ Ranked

In his chapter on emendation in the book Pen, Print, and Pixels, Jan Krans gives some very interesting data from the Amsterdam Database. It’s the kind of data that makes you want to ask follow up questions, which is what this post does. 

On pages 175–177, Jan gives a list of places that he calls “conjecture magnets.” These are the most conjectured about problems in the NT and show, as Jan points out, that those conjecturing agree there’s a problem but obviously can’t agree on the solution! 

A passage is a “magnet” if it has five or more conjectures for it. Jan lists 46 such places. What he doesn’t do in the article is tell us the number of conjectures for each one or rank them accordingly. Thankfully, that’s the perfect kind of thing you can do easily with the Amsterdam Database. So, listed below are Jan’s 46 conjecture magnets ranked by the number of conjectures in the database as of today.

You’ll have to go to Jan’s chapter or to the database itself to see what the issue is in each case. But, as one initial observation, it’s interesting that Matthew and especially Revelation do not make the list at all.

Rank	Passage	Total Conj.
1	1 Cor 11.10	36
2	Acts 2.9	27
3	Rom 16.16-23	22
4	Rom 7.25-8.2	21
	Heb 11.37	21
	2 Pet 3.10	21
5	Eph 1.1	20
6	John 18.13-24	19
	Jas 3.6	19
7	Col 2.18	17
8	Luke 2.2	14
	Acts 5.12-16	14
	1 Cor 4.6	14
9	2 Cor 11.30-12.1	13
	Gal 4.25	13
	Heb 2.9	13
10	John 3.25	12
	John 19.29	12
	1 Cor 15.2	12
11	Mark 9.23	11
	Acts 4.25	11
	1 Cor 15.29	11
	1 Thess 3.3	11
12	Acts 13.33	10
13	1 Cor 2.4	9
	2 Cor 1.13	9
	Jas 4.5	9
14	Mark 14.41	8
	Luke 18.7	8
	John 19.39	8
	Acts 1.18	8
	Acts 16.12	8
	Rom 4.12	8
	Col 2.14	8
15	Mark 14.3	7
	Acts 10.30	7
	Eph 5.26	7
	2 Pet 1.20	7
16	Acts 18.5	6
	Acts 27.9	6
	1 Tim 4.3	6
	Heb 12.18	6
	Jas 3.1	6
17	Acts 20.4	5
	Acts 27.7	5
	1 Cor 6.5	5

J. Gresham Machen on Conjecture

J. Gresham Machen is known for many things: starting Westminster Seminary, starting the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, writing a widely used introductory Greek grammar (one still used when I was in high school!), battling theological modernism, etc. Among his books, the most famous is Christianity and Liberalism, which is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year. It is a classic. If you’ve never read it, you should. 

One thing Machen is not known for is textual criticism. Nevertheless, one will find in his major study of the virgin birth a chapter devoted especially to the textual problem of Matt 1:16. It’s a nice treatment overall. But what caught my attention was his response to the conjecture proposed by A. Merx (and others, see here) that the text initially read “Joseph begat Jesus” and this was only later emended in various ways to include Mary and her virginity. Here is Machen:

In reply, it may be said, in the first place, that the method of conjectural emendation, which is here followed, can be applied only with the greatest caution to a work which has so extraordinarily rich a documentary attestation as has the Gospel according to Matthew. In the case of many classical authors, where we have only one or two late and obviously very imperfect manuscripts, an editor is often justified in rejecting the transmitted text of a passage and in substituting for it a reading which shall best account for the obviously incorrect wording of those manuscripts that happen to be extant. But in the case of the Gospels, the extant documentary attestation is so very abundant, and the various lines of transmission began to diverge at such an early time, that one has difficulty in understanding how the original text could have been so completely obliterated as to leave no trace. There may indeed be such instances, where all of our extant witnesses to the text have been corrupted; but surely they are very few. Thus although conjectural emendation cannot be excluded in principle from the textual criticism of the New Testament, it should certainly be employed there in the most sparing possible way. The employment of it in any passage should be regarded as a counsel of desperation, to be resorted to only when all ordinary methods fail. If it is possible to regard any one of the extant variants as original, that alternative should be chosen; and the critic should not undertake to reproduce by conjecture a text which has actually left no trace. 

In the case of Mt. 1:16, if there is any truth in what has been said above, we are by no means reduced to such desperate expedients. It is perfectly possible to understand the reading attested by our earliest Greek manuscripts as belonging to the original text of the Gospel, and both the variants as having been produced from that reading in the course of the transmission by well-known causes of textual corruption. But if such a solution of the problem is possible, it is surely—in view of the wealth of documentary attestation— decidedly preferable. What need is there of going so far afield to solve a problem for which a satisfactory solution lies near at hand? (pp. 183-184)

I’ll just note two points of interest to me. The first is that, despite his famously staunch defense of the Westminster Confession, Machen is willing to entertain that conjecture might be needed in the rarest cases in the Gospels: “There may indeed be such instances, where all of our extant witnesses to the text have been corrupted; but surely they are very few.” 

The second is that Machen’s hesitation about conjecture is based on two points not one. It is not only the “abundance” of manuscript evidence for the Gospels but also that the lines of transmission diverged so early. If this is true, then any convincing conjecture must not only explain why the original text was lost in so many manuscripts, but, more importantly, how it was lost in all the lines of transmission so early. Even still, Machen is not opposed to conjecture tout court.

P.S. It’s pronounced gress-um.

Calvin’s Conjectures

Warning: This is a long post in which I trace out my research method and show the steps I try to take to find answers.

Introduction

John Calvin, probably.

Several months ago, I was reading F.F. Bruce’s chapter “Textual Problems in the Epistle to the Hebrews,” published in David Alan Black, ed., “Scribes and Scripture: New Testament Essays in Honor of J. Harold Greenlee.” In Bruce’s discussion of Heb. 11:37, Bruce opts for the P46 reading, which does have some scant attestation from minuscule witnesses, and Bruce calls in Zuntz (Text of the Epistles, p. 47) for support.  Not making any judgments on Bruce’s arguments, what intrigued me was Bruce’s next sentence: “So already Erasmus and Calvin.”

Those 5 short words sent me down a long rabbit trail.

What seemed to be implied here was that Calvin followed Erasmus in adopting a reading that was—as far as either of them were concerned—completely without known manuscript support. I checked the notes in the Amsterdam Database of New Testament Conjectural Emendation and there is a note on this conjecture that “…Erasmus could have known some Greek attestation, but his opinion seems independent from it.”

Of course, that doesn't necessarily prove that Erasmus had no manuscripts, but Jan Krans and co. know their stuff, and I am happy to defer to their judgment on Erasmus. That still leaves Calvin, however. On p. 184 of Johnson’s 1963 translation of Calvin’s commentary on Hebrews and 1–2 Peter (which Calvin published in 1549, according to T.H.L. Parker’s Calvin’s New Testament Commentaries), Calvin says:

Regardless of what we may say about Erasmus, it seems here that Calvin understood that the text was corrupted at some point in the transmission process, and that Erasmus’ explanation for what happened was correct.

From there, I was interested to see if there were any other times Calvin accepted or proposed a conjectural emendation: the notion that the text he has in his day was corrupt and that he suggested a correct reading even if there was no manuscript support for it.

When we search the Amsterdam Database, we find 13 hits for John Calvin, though two of them are sort of the same one (see below). Admittedly, that’s not much. [[At this point it’s good to give a brief explanation of the Amsterdam Database: When you search for an author, you’ll see a list of every time that author is included. This list is not a list of every time they have been the first to propose an emendation, nor is it a list of emendations they adopt—the “Author” in the list is the first to propose, and then clicking on the conjecture itself will show all the subsequent authors who commented on it, and whether they accept it, reject it or simply discuss it.]] Calvin is only the first to propose 5 of these 13 conjectures, but since 13 is not a huge number, I might as well list and discuss them all here.

Calvin’s conjectures

The date in parentheses is the publication date for Calvin’s discussion as I understand it, but it’s a little tricky. The translations I used (the series edited by D.W. and T.F. Torrance) were made from Tholuck’s edition (1834), which seems to be something of a re-print of the Amsterdam edition (1667), which is presumably made from the final editions of Calvin’s commentaries. I admit that’s a presumption on my part, and the date does matter because Calvin does seem to have shifted around 1548 from using Colinaeus’ 1534 edition as his working text to an Erasmus or Stephanus edition, as I discuss a bit more at the end of the post. In some cases I give an image of the text as additional proof that I’m not making stuff up. I haven’t been exhaustive with it though. My main purpose is to provide enough information for someone to be able to confirm what I’m saying, and at the most basic level, the Scriptural reference alone should be enough to do that.

Fact-checking Versional Support for the ECM and the textus receptus

It’s no secret that sometimes patristic citations and versions are used to make claims they don’t really support. I came across this issue the other day when I was looking at 2 Peter 3:10.

Coptic and the ECM at 2 Peter 3:10

The ECM (and the NA28 following) famously has a conjecture at 2 Peter 3:10, οὐχ εὑρεθήσεται. This reading is not found in any Greek manuscript, but the ECM claims some versional support: manuscripts of the Philoxenian Syriac, and among Coptic witnesses, the Sahidic and “Dialect V” (but V is cited videtur, so there is some potential uncertainty there). “Dialect V” is not one of the more well-attested Coptic dialects, so this citation seemed like the kind of thing I should look at more closely before citing it as supporting the conjecture. Just how many manuscripts were we talking about here?

Only one, it turns out (for this passage). P. Mich. 3520. And it’s damaged precisely at this part of 2 Peter 3:10.

The editio princeps gives the following transcription:

Source: Schenke, Hans-Martin, ed. (with Rodolphe Kasser) Papyrus Michigan 3520 und 6868(a), Ecclesiastes, Erster Johannesbrief und Zweiter Petrusbrief im fayumischen Dialekt. TUGAL 151. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2003.

And in German translation:

Source: same as above

P. Mich. inv. 3520, the bottom of p. 71r. (source)

Unless my Coptic is too rusty to be useful anymore, it looks to me like the ‘support’ for the οὐχ is coming from a reconstructed Ν in the lacuna on the last line, and my guess is that it’s a conjecture based on the Sahidic. It’s a bit speculative, but it doesn’t take much to imagine that the editors of P.Mich. 3520 thought “well since the Sahidic supports an underlying Greek οὐχ here, it’s probably the case that this lone manuscript of 2 Peter 3:10 in a different Coptic dialect does to.” Can we be this sure about a single-letter difference in a lacuna like this?

Maybe the reconstruction is correct, but maybe it isn’t. It’s not completely clear to me on the basis of P. Mich. 3520 that Dialect V should be cited as evidence of the ECM conjecture, οὐχ εὑρεθήσεται. It’s simply not extant for that part of the text.

[After I wrote all of that above, I noticed that Bart L.F. Kamphuis also addressed Dialect V’s ‘support’ for οὐχ εὑρεθήσεται in his recent monograph on conjectural emendation. Kamphuis makes the same point I make above and mentions that Christian Blumenthal makes the same point as well in his monograph on 2 Peter 3:10. I guess the moral of the story is to look things up before wasting time writing blogs about them?]

Ethiopic and the textus receptus at Rev. 16:5

The need to fact-check things like this brings to mind Rev. 16:5 in the textus receptus. Some editions of the textus receptus have ὁ ἐσόμενος there, and the KJV follows this reading, though not a single Greek manuscript (that isn’t itself a copy of a printed textus receptus) has it. This TR reading is a conjecture by Theodore Beza, plain and simple. The Amsterdam Database of New Testament Conjectural Emendation mentions that there is Ethiopic support, and I’ve seen Ethiopic support pop up in defenses of the KJV and Beza’s text as well.

That being said, the Ethiopic citation here just seems suspicious, for lack of a better word. It’s like Coptic Dialect V—the more obscure the reference, the fewer people there are who have (or even could have) looked at it more closely to verify it. How many text critics know Ethiopic and could check this? A few, I’m sure, but I certainly don’t. The Ethiopic ‘support’ at Rev. 16:5 seems to me to be exactly the sort of thing that needs to be verified by someone who knows Ethiopic before anybody puts any weight on the Ethiopic here.

I find two sources for the reference, and admittedly, I haven’t searched too hard. Hoskier cites it, but Hoskier seems to be dependent on Brian Walton’s London Polyglot, and his use of Ethiopic has not been immune from criticism. In an appendix to his dissertation that was not published in his monograph on scribal habits, James Royse wrote,

The cause of some of Hoskier’s errors is that Hoskier could not, as it appears, control the Ethiopic itself. For, as far as can be judged from his comments on P46 and his remarks in his work on Revelation, he depends on the Latin rendering of [the edition printed in Walton’s London Polyglot] and on Horner’s notes (and translation into English) in his edition of [the Sahidic]. (Royse’s dissertation, p. 718, n. 15)

Curt Niccum also has some severe criticism for Hoskier’s use of Ethiopic in his chapter, “Hoskier and his (Per)Version of the Ethiopic” in The Future of Textual Scholarship, writing that it “offers a case study for how not to mine the Ge’ez version for evidence of Greek readings” (p. 279).

If Hoskier was not the best for Ethiopic and was dependent on Walton, then that shifts everything back to Walton. Thankfully, here at Tyndale House, we have a copy of Walton’s London Polyglot in amazing condition.

The Latin translation of the Ethiopic does clearly translate the reading as et eris, which, if correct, certainly supports ὁ ἐσόμενος against ὁ ὅσιος:

Image credit: I took it myself at Tyndale House.

The Latin translation seems to have been made by Dudley Loftus. But how accurate is this translation? When I look it up, it doesn’t seem like Loftus’ translation was acclaimed for its accuracy. In 1934, James A. Montgomery wrote,

This Ethiopic text of the New Testament was republished by Brian Walton in the London Polyglot, the New Testament volume in 1657, and it is this form of the Ethiopic Testament that is generally known to scholars. The text was accompanied with a Latin translation, the first for that part of the Bible. Walton had as editors of this text Dudley Loftus of Dublin (1619-1695) and the distinguished Orientalist Edmund Castell, the latter revising the former’s work and seeing it through the press. But the new print was a degradation of the first one, and its Latin translation has been excoriated by scholars since Ludolf.

Earlier, F.H.A. Scrivener (the guy who put together the edition of the textus receptus that the Trinitarian Bible Society sells) said this about the reliability of the Ethiopic in the London Polyglot:

Source: Scrivener’s Plain Introduction, 3rd ed., p. 410 (thanks to Royse’s dissertation for pointing me to it).

Can any Ethiopic scholars shed some light on this? Does the Ethiopic in Walton’s Polyglot really support ὁ ἐσόμενος at Rev. 16:5, or is this one of those examples of “an unusually bad Latin translation” that should not be followed?

Here is the Ethiopic, according to Walton:

Image credit: Definitely not CSNTM. I mean, look at how skewed the photo is. Terrible. Still, I did the best I could do with my phone, the lighting that I had, and my desire not to damage a book that’s older than the country that issued my passport.

I should add that due to the holiday closures of libraries, I don’t currently have access to Josef Hofmann’s edition of Revelation in Ethiopic (and even if I did, I don’t know that it would help. I don’t know Ethiopic myself, or I wouldn’t be writing this post asking for help!).

In conclusion, here are my questions, if we have any readers who are competent in Ethiopic:

1. Does the Ethiopic text printed in Walton’s London Polyglot support ὁ ἐσόμενος at Rev. 16:5 or not?
2. Is the accompanying Latin translation correct, or is it not?
3. Is there anything in Hofmann’s edition that could indicate that the Ethiopic could be cited in support of ὁ ἐσόμενος at Rev. 16:5?

UPDATE:

Now that the CUL is open again, I was able to check out Hofmann's edition. Below is his entry for Rev. 16:5. I'm very sorry it's awkwardly huge, but I wanted to make sure the resolution would be sufficient.

Source: Josef Hofmann, ed. Die Äthiopische Übersetzung der Johannes-Apokalypse. CSCO 281; Scriptores Aethiopici 55, pp. 116–117.

(Not) a new conjecture

A.H. Cadwallader, ‘Tertius in the Margins: A Critical Appraisal of the Secretary Hypothesis’, New Testament Studies 64 (2018), 378–396.

There are lots of things of interest in this article about the role of Tertius in Romans 16.22. One of the claims of the article is that Tertius’ greeting was originally a marginal note, incorporated into the text by an early copyist. Although this is claimed as an original contribution of the author, in actual fact it repeats in practically every element the theory advanced by Hugo Grotius in 1646, and discussed in ten different scholarly works on the text of Romans between 1835 and 1898 (and on this blog last year). It seems like The Amsterdam Database of New Testament Conjectural Emendation (online at http://ntvmr.uni-muenster.de/nt-conjectures) should be more widely known among NT scholars (and editors).

List of Conjectures Accepted in Nestle Editions

Nestle 13th edition (1927)

Reading through a recently acquired Nestle 13th ed. I was surprised to find that the NA28 is not the first in this venerable edition’s line to use the diamond symbol. The current edition uses them, of course, to mark places where the editors couldn’t decide on the initial text.

In the 13th edition (and for some time beyond) it marks places where Erwin Nestle (son of Eberhard) thought that the majority principle used by his father had not led to the original text. In those cases, he marked his preferred reading with a diamond, explaining its use thus: “Some of these [places of textual difficulty], which must be considered original, are distinguished with the prefixed symbol ◆ in the apparatus, as Rom 5.1” (p. 12*).

A number of these diamond readings also happen to be conjectures and thanks to help from Jan Krans, I can present here a list of all the conjectures accepted by various Nestle editions. You can click on the link in parentheses to see more detail at the Amsterdam Database.

1. Matt 2:6 (link)
2. Matt 6:16 (link)
3. Matt 12:33 (link); according to us not a true conjecture
4. Matt 15:5 (link); actually only the omission of a iota subscript; 
5. Mark 7:11 (link; = cj15781)
6. Acts 7:38 (link)
7. Acts 16:12 (link)
8. Rom 13:3 (link; actually attested)
9. 1 Cor 2:4 (link)
10. 1 Cor 6:5 (link)
11. 1 Cor 14:38 (link)
12. 1 Cor 16:22 (link; just an editorial alternative)
13. 2 Cor 3:3 (link; actually attested)
14. 2 Cor 7:8 (link; also attested)
15. 2 Cor 8:12 (link; just an editorial alternative)
16. 1 Tim 4:3 (link)
17. 1 Tim 5:13 (link)
18. Rev 2:13 (link)

One of the reasons for noting this is because its easy to think that the conjectures printed at Acts 16.12 in NA27/28, 2 Pet 3.10 in NA28, and now Acts 13.33 in the ECM show a trend toward greater willingness to print a conjecture. But actually, these changes should be seen as a return to an earlier Nestle tendency and not an innovation or move away from it. In fact, based on the list here, the Nestle(-Aland) editions have grown more reticent to print conjectures since 1927 not less.

Tertius, Romans 16.22 and Grotius’ Conjecture

Hugo Grotius

I’ve been doing some work in the last couple of days on my SBL paper (‘Epistolary Secretarial Greetings in the Documentary Papyri and the Greeting from Tertius in Romans 16.22’*) so that I can submit it for print publication. Most of the paper is papyrological and epistolographical, but there is some textual criticism here and there in the footnotes. One of those footnotes concerns Hugo Grotius and a conjecture he made about Romans 16 verse 22: Ἀσπάζομαι ὑμᾶς ἐγὼ Τέρτιος ὁ γράψας τὴν ἐπιστολὴν ἐν κυρίῳ.

I first came across Grotius’ conjecture in the ET of Meyer’s late 19th century commentary on Romans. Then I checked The Amsterdam Database of New Testament Conjectural Emendation (Jan Krans, Bert Jan Lietaert Peerbolte, et al. (eds.), http://ntvmr.uni-muenster.de/nt-conjectures. I don’t think I had previously realised what a useful and comprehensive tool this is (also responsive: I left a comment that I’d found a mention of the conjecture in Meyer, Romans ET, and the next thing I knew Jan Krans had added the details from the German edition). [NB. If you use online tools and find them useful, it is generally worth a tiny bit of effort to make a suggestion for further improvement.]

Anyway, if you go to NTVMR and then enter NT Conjectures you can enter Romans 16.22 and get a load of results (six in total: four involving transpositions of different amounts of text of which v. 22 is a part). The one I’m interested in is cj10315 (here is a link that will take you straight there). You can tell at a glance that Grotius conjectured a text lacking Rom 16.22 in 1645 and that this idea was taken up and discussed between 1866 and 1898 (the golden age of conjectures?), and has not been much discussed since then. This you can tell at a glance, but if you start clicking on the little blue i symbols [like this: 🔁, but with a little white i inside], you can get access to complete bibliographical details and citations of the original points.

From all that information we can discover that Hugo Grotius suggested that Tertius’ greeting to the Roman believers was a marginal comment to the original letter incorporated into the archetype of Romans by a copyist (reference: Hugo Grotius, Annotationum in Novum Testamentum, tomus secundus (Annotationes in Acta Apostolorum et epistolas apostolicas) (Paris: Pelé, ¹1646), 336–337).

This is interesting, because this is not so much a conjectural omission (as it is labelled), but a conjecture about the format of the original letter (Grotius plainly thinks that Tertius’ greeting is part of the original communication by letter). Once we see this is a conjecture about formatting we can see that in its favour we could note:

1. that documentary letters quite often show margins used for additional greetings (see e.g. my discussion in ‘The Letters of Claudius Terentianus and the New Testament: Insights and Observations on Epistolary Themes’ Tyndale Bulletin 65 (2014), 219–245 available here);
2. that it is simpler to think of Paul dictating all the greetings from those with him together (rather than a switching from Paul to Tertius and then back to Paul again); and 
3. that it would be natural for a scribe to copy such a marginal greeting into his text of Romans; and
4. that even if we adopted Grotius’ conjecture we would still think of Tertius’ greeting as a part of the original communication between Paul and the believers in Rome.

So this is interesting to think about from an exegetical and historical point of view. Against Grotius’ idea I would suggest that the natural place for a scribe to copy such a marginal greeting would be after the other greetings. That direct papyrological parallels to Tertius’ greeting (discussed in my SBL paper) occur in normal continuity with third person reported greetings. And that the current location for Tertius’ greeting is a difficult reading. (Here we come back to a basic problem with conjectures—they are designed to solve difficulties in the text, but it seems more methodologically sensible to prefer more difficult readings.)

Trovato on why we need to face the ‘awkward problem’ of conjectural emendation

The following post is from Paolo Trovato who has been a welcome contributor to the comments the last few months. It can be good to have an outside perspective sometimes and that is what Paolo gives us. For those who need an introduction to his work, see my interview here and here.

---

Dear all,

Even though I don’t belong to your community, I am really interested in your posts and comments. One of the aspects that strikes me is the following position, which seems to be a very popular position in Greek NT studies: We have so many MSS that at least one of them must preserve the original reading of any passage of NT.

I only quote two different but clear examples of similar statements

PG: “it is assumed that manuscripts to which we don’t have access contained original readings. But if we don’t have access to them, how do we know they had original readings? From the argument as stated, we don’t. We need other evidence.”

MAR: “there is a reason to postulate a greater likelihood of the original reading being present in our existing MSS, and that indeed is the quantity of extant data that has been preserved — particularly in contrast to the extremely limited number of works of Latin antiquity (or even Greek classical antiquity) that virtually force conjecture by their paucity.

To put it statistically: even assuming, say, that 60% of all Greek NT MSS that ever existed have been lost, the odds remain extremely favorable that the remaining MSS would preserve in relative proportion the same readings that might have appeared in those now-lost documents; if so, then there is no good reason to postulate much if any supposed “loss” of original readings as matters now stand.”

(Both quotations are drawn from a very interesting post of last January.)

I have probably already bored some of you with my partial attempts of applying to the textual criticism of Greek NT some standard approaches of genealogical textual scholars of Classical and Romance literature. For those who are still interested in a comparison with different textual schools and methodologies I will try, very briefly, to explain why, in my opinion, these positions don’t seem very likely.

1. The message of the Gospels was so new, moving and fascinating that it created very soon a strong interest (i.e. a strong demand of copies), but also persecution, theological opposition among the faithful, different degrees of standardization etc.
2. There is a gap of centuries between the lost original(s) and the lost first copies of the Gospels and the few oldest extant witnesses
3. Every act of copying produces fresh innovations., mostly but not always insignificant. No witness is a Xerox copy of its exemplar. In the domain of classic and Romance transmissions, four or five major, significant innovations every 10 pages seem a realistic rate for the progressive entropy of the textual transmission of any not too short text. So, a copy of 4th rank should feature 4 or 5 × 4 (= 20 or 25) significant innovations every 10 pages.
4. In the first decades of printed books (1470–1530), every time we happen to know the runs of a book and we look for its extant copies, we find a loss rate of about 85% or 90%. I suspect that, the value T(ime) being higher for Greek NT MSS, their loss rate must be higher than that of the printed books of the Renaissance.
5. Let’s suppose that after the original(s) of NT, there existed 3 copies of 1st rank, 9 copies of 2nd rank, 27 copies of 3rd rank, 81 copies of 4th, 243 copies of 5th rank, 729 copies of 6th rank, that is, a complete tree of 1,092 copies. (I will stop here for the sake of simplicity, even if I imagine that the complete tree, that is, ALL the MSS of Greek NT that ever existed were probably no less than 20,000). If we assume an optimistic random loss rate of 90%, the extant MSS should be 98 out of 1,092. 

Even without introducing other factors (the obsolescence of materials, the old fashion layout etc.), mere math suggests that most of the extant MSS must belong to ranks 5 and 6 (972 out of 1,092 MSS). It is probable that only one or no MS of ranks 1 and 2 (12 MSS) could survive to a rate loss of 90%. But even if a couple from these ranks was preserved nowadays, they should present 4 to 10 major innovations every 10 pages. No need to say that most of the surviving MSS must belong to rank 6 and that, as a rule, they should be marred by a good number of innovations.

Therefore, I would say that, at least in a few passages, not even my colleagues devoted to textual criticism of the Greek NT, can feel completely freed from the awkward problem of conjectural emendation.

(By the way, Dante’s Commedia, which I have been studying for 15 years, is transmitted by 600 extant MSS plus 200 fragments. Notwithstanding the fact that the oldest extant witnesses are only 15 years later than the completion of the work, a few passages do exist in which emendation is really necessary).

Kirsopp Lake on the need for conjectural emendation

Here is a quote I came across today in Kirsopp Lake’s inaugural lecture at the University of Leiden. Note very carefully how Lake argues for the need for conjecture. In the context, he is explaining why he thinks Westcott and Hort failed “spectacularly” in their preference for 01 and 03.

It has become more and more probable that Greek MSS. as a whole only represent one type of text and its corruptions, that the Latin Versions and Fathers represent another type, and the Syriac versions a third, while perhaps Clement of Alexandria may provide us with a fourth.

 It is between these texts, and not between individual MSS., that we shall have in the last resort to judge, so that the situation which we must face is that we have to deal with a number of local texts, that no two localities used quite the same text, that no locality has yet been shown to have used a text which is demonstrably better than its rivals, and that no one of these local texts is represented in an uncorrupt form by any single MS.

The effect on the method of the textual critic is enormous. He has no longer the right to suggest that he can immediately edit the original text. He must go back and edit first the local texts. In the case of each locality he has the evidence of the versions used in the local church and of the writers who used them, but it is not very large, and in no case is without traces of corruption. Therefore, the student of these local texts is reduced to the level of the critic of classical texts. In the face of suspected corruption he has the right to use conjectural emendation. It used to be said that the classical student often needed to make use of conjectural emendation, because he had so few and so poor authorities for the text of his authors, but that the biblical student had no such need, because the MSS. of the New Testament were so numerous and so good that primitive corruption was almost unknown. The argument was reasonable, but when we recognize that in reality the text of the Gospels has not much better attestation than have some classical texts, the whole case is altered and the textual critic must be conceded the right of as free emendation in the Gospels as in the Classics. Granted this freedom it will perhaps be possible some day to reconstruct the texts which were in use at the close of the second century in Africa, in Alexandria, in the East, and perhaps elsewhere. None of these have been yet reconstructed : all that we can say is that each as compared with any of the others presents a definite series of interpolations and a definite series of omissions.

From The Influence of Textual Criticism on the Exegesis of the New Testament (1904), pp. 5-7 

Inerrancy and Textual Criticism

I have been reminded that some time ago I promised to open a discussion on the relationship between inerrancy and textual criticism. This is it. I’ll start with my thoughts and hope that others will contribute theirs as well as explore specific applications of the principles explored.

Prolegomena

Luke in Cod. Bodmer 25 (credit)

The first thing I should say is about the relationship between inerrancy and this blog. As the blog’s founder I am very, very happy to sign inerrancy statements in almost whatever shape or form they take. However, the term I preferred when establishing this blog was simply to say that the scriptures were ‘true’. Although this might seem a weaker term, I do not mean it in a weaker sense. Moreover, it has the advantage of being self-evidently in continuation with all historic mainstream views of scripture that have been articulated down church history. Using the term ‘true’ also means that I am not forced into instant qualifications of the term I use because I am not using a technical term.

The second belief that I see as fundamental to this blog is the belief that God may be said to be the author of specific sequences of words which constitute scripture (i.e. belief in verbal inspiration). Though this belief is not without its problems, it is less problematic than alternative accounts of inspiration (e.g. that God inspired thoughts in scripture, but may not be said to be the author of specific words—the question ‘which thoughts?’ is even harder to answer than the question ‘which words?’).

That said, for the sake of discussion I want to use the term ‘inerrancy’, since, in this context, I believe it will optimise the point I am trying to make.

Basic thesis

My basic thesis is that inerrancy may only be used as a secondary criterion for the original reading. It cannot be used to overturn strong external support or to support conjecture.

The Amsterdam Database of New Testament Conjectural Emendation is online

Over on τον βιβλιον του προσοπου, Jan Krans announces the public arrival of the Amsterdam Database of New Testament Conjectural Emendation. It has now been added to the NT.VMR. This is a fantastic resource many years in the making. Huge congrats to Jan and crew for getting to this stage. Go check it out.

You can learn lots of fascinating things. For example, Alexandros Pallis once proposed removing all of Rom 3.21-26! They should have heeded Bengel’s words: “No conjecture is ever to be regarded. It is far safer to bracket any portion of the text, which may seem inexplicable.”

Conjecturing the Initial Text Where the Original Text Is Extant

While pondering the relationship of the initial text and the original text (as one does), a thought experiment occurred to me. I shared it with a friend who was asking about the difference between the initial text and the original text. This caused my friend to groan—whether at my scenario or the distinction itself I’m not sure. See what you think.

First, definitions: (1) the “initial text” is that text which is the starting point for the extant textual tradition; and (2) the “original text” is that text which was written by the author. Given these definitions, it is possible that the initial text may need conjectural emendation at a point where the original text itself is extant.*

Let’s give a concrete example. It is possible that at 2 Peter 3.10, the conjecture† οὐχ εὑρεθήσεται is the best candidate for explaining the witnesses of the extant readings and that εὑρεθήσεται is the original text. This would require something like the following scenario, where O = the original text and A = the initial text:

Filled circles = extant witnesses; hollow circles = non-extant witnesses.

Now I readily admit that I can’t imagine how to convincingly argue for such a scenario. But I also can’t imagine any way to argue against it. And this makes me wonder whether there is any sense in distinguishing the initial text from the original text, at least in places where the initial text is conjectured.

-----
*Perhaps one caveat is necessary here. The thought experiment may only work in the context of a method like the CBGM where the relationships of entire witnesses are used to help judge the relationships of particular readings in those same witnesses.

†For the sake of argument we’ll define a “conjecture” as a reading with no Greek support.

Thomas Kraus on Luke 14.5 and What We Need in Our Critical Editions

The March issue of Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses has an article from Thomas Kraus exploring what text critics need in their critical editions with an interesting example from Luke 14.5. The article is “Kritische Ausgaben des Neuen Testaments und Textkritik: Anmerkungen anhand von Lk 14,5 als Testfall?” ETL 91.1 (2015): 111-130.

In the first part of the article, Kraus raises the following four questions which are then explored by way of Luke 14.5.

1. What kind of data and how much do we need in our critical editions? Here he mentions the Internet Greek NT Project which “intends to collate and transcribe all extant manuscripts of the New Testament”—an ambitious goal to be sure!
2. Must someone working on the text have all available variant readings? What about nonsense readings and how should such be determined?
3. What role does the plausibility of the origin and development of a reading play in relation to the quantity and quality of witnesses that attest it? 
4. Will the many possibilities of the internet make these first three questions obsolete? (I’m not sure I grasped how this relates to #3.)

Luke 14.5 is a good choice because Kraus discusses the possibility, suggested by Martin and Kasser in the editio princeps of P75, that the majority reading υἱὸς ἢ βοῦς (“a son or an ox”) was originally ὗς ἢ βοῦς (“a pig or an ox”). Martin and Kasser suggested that the original reading could have been corrupted by way of the supralinear line such that υϲ became the nomen sacrum υ̅ϲ̅. The problem with the reading, as Kraus acknowledges, is that none of our witnesses attest υϲ without the supralinear line.

Luke 14.5 in P75

Note on a Conjecture (Philemon 23)

From a footnote in something I am writing about letter-carriers:

In 1909 Amling proposed a single-letter emendation to read  0Ihsouj rather than  0Ihsou= at Phile 23, and thus allow complete agreement in those sending greetings in Col 4.10-14 and Phile 23f (‘Eine Konjectkur in Philemonbrief’). The passage would thus read as follows: ‘Epaphras, my fellow-prisoner in Christ greets you; (as do) Jesus, Mark, Aristarchus, Demas and Luke, my co-workers’. In support Amling observed that in Philemon the normal expression is simply ‘in Christ’ (cf. v8, 20), and that Paul is not consistent in always adding ‘Jesus’ in such expressions concerning terms like ‘prisoner’, ‘slave’, or ‘fellow-prisoner’ (Rom 1.1; Phile 1; cf. 1 Cor 7.22; Gal 1.10; Eph 6.6; Rom 16.7). This conjecture was supported by Lohse (Colossians and Philemon, 207: ‘highly probable’, and note 16); Ollrog (Mitarbeiter, 49: ‘höchstwahrscheinlich’); Knox (Philemon, 13: ‘plausibly argued’), and most recently Campbell, Framing Paul, 280f: ‘seems highly plausible’, although Campbell does not refer to the earlier discussions). However, despite the advantages which result from this reading, and the simplicity of the proposal (concerning only a single letter); against it stands not only the general caution against adopting conjectural readings (especially those which smooth an obvious interpretive difficulty) – hence the description of the proposal as ‘arbitrary’ (Fitzmyer, Philemon, 124) or ‘Willkür’ (Gnilka), or as standing against the whole textual tradition (Stuhlmacher, Philemon, 55; confirmed recently by Solomon, The Textual History of Philemon, 562); but also the specific problem that in Pauline circles, and especially in a greeting, it is most unlikely that an undisambiguated ‘Jesus’ would stand for the personal name ‘Jesus Justus’, so Dunn, Colossians and Philemon, 343 note 2 and Gnilka, Philemon, 92 note 8 (cf. the broader issues canvassed in Bauckham, Jesus, 67-84).

Conjectural Emendation: Yea or Nay?

I am testing the polling function on the new design and thought I would start with something that came up last night at the ETC blog dinner: conjectural emendation (discussed before on this blog).

Do you approve of conjectural emendation for the New Testament?

Thoughts on Defending a Thesis

This is a guest-post in which Ryan Wettlaufer shares his personal thoughts about his recent thesis defence at the University of St. Michael’s College, University of Toronto, as described more formally in a previous post. Be sure to read related posts with advices for PhD students, "Where to do a PhD" and "Theses in Textual Criticism", and other thesis defences here and here.


Thoughts on Defending a Thesis

In December I successfully defended my doctoral thesis "Conjectural Emendation in New Testament Textual Criticism with the Epistle of James as a Case Study" at the University of St. Michael’s College, University of Toronto, and Tommy has very kindly invited me to guest blog about the experience.

The set-up of the defence was interesting. As a young student you get all these wild images in your head of what the defence will look like, and most of them look something like the imposing set-up of a supreme court hearing or perhaps something out of a Masonic temple. In reality, it consisted of a very normal looking boardroom with a long table, water glasses, and an overly optimistic number of copies of my abstract for any guests. There were six professors in total, including John Kloppenborg – my supervisor – and Michael Holmes – my external examiner (who participated by speaker phone). It was interesting that the examiners, while all New Testament scholars, each had different areas of focus, such as patristics, philosophy, etc.

They began by asking me to leave the room while they discussed the agenda. Once I returned, they began the formal questioning, with each examiner being allotted 15 minutes. For the second round, each examiner was given another 5 minutes. When that was done, they again asked me to leave while, I assume, they discussed their thoughts and voted on the outcome. Or possibly they just flipped a coin. Either way, as my supervisor invited me back in he smiled and said “Congratulations.” When the committee chair complained that he had tipped their hand, I wanted to joke that he was referring to me finally getting a hair cut, but alas, the wit is never quick enough.

So what were my reactions? The first was actually disappointment. I was disappointed because it really felt like I had done a very poor job. In my memory, I had been a babbling fool, stuttering away, barely able to make a sentence. Sometimes after accomplishing something people try to downplay it with false humility, but this was not that: I really believed I had done poorly! It wasn’t till I talked with a colleague whose own defence had been just a month prior that I discovered this is a relatively common reaction. “I felt the exact same way” he explained, “I was sure I had sounded like some imbecile who could barely talk!” Fortunately, some of his colleagues had attended his defence and were able to verify that, contrary to whatever feelings he had, he had actually done a very good job. Since then, I’ve heard of many doctoral students who had this same reaction. There must be some interesting psychological phenomenon at work there, but I’ll let someone else tackle that.

My second reaction was surprise. Before the defence I had prepared by drawing up a list of all the points I thought were most important about my thesis, and made notes of all the facts that I thought needed to be discussed. Looking over that list afterwards, I was surprised that we had ended up discussing not a single one of them! Similarly, I had collected from various doctoral advice websites all over the internet several pages of common defence questions. As I looked over that list – you guessed it – not a single one of them had been asked. The questions that were asked were very surprising. A lot of them had to do with how my thesis related to their own area of focus. Some other questions poked at points that I thought were rather minor or unimportant. Other questions pointed out to me areas of the thesis that really could be improved, and I was thankful for that.

The most surprising questions, however, were the ones that demonstrated how equivocal this language really is. More than once an examiner asked a question that left me shaking my head in confusion, wondering whose thesis they could be talking about. Each time it would turn out that they had interpreted something I had written in a way completely different than I had intended. As I would review the section of my thesis in question, however, I would realise that the problem wasn’t that I had written it incorrectly, but it also wasn’t that they had read it incorrectly: the problem was that the language in question could legitimately support more than one meaning. It makes me wonder how we can ever hope to communicate here online, where our writing is usually less thought out and certainly less supported by body language or voice tone. It also made me realise how important it is to give people – especially people we disagree with – a sympathetic reading.

Finally, I was (eventually) happy! Not right away, mind you. Right away it was rather anti-climactic. I walked out of the defence and instead of feeling like I’d just accomplished something, it really felt like I had just finished a meeting. You imagine going out and having some crazy celebration, whooping and hollering with all your friends, but all I actually did was drive home, pour a cup of tea, read the ETC blog, and go to bed. Not much whooping there (some on that ETC blog, but only when they’re re-launching a journal!). After a good number of days though you suddenly realise what has happened. I think that realisation comes the first time your long-honed instinct nags you to go finish editing that draft of chapter 1, and then it dawns on you: you never have to revise chapter 1 again!

In closing, what advice do I have for those preparing for their defence? First, don’t be nervous. Really, don’t be: there’s just no need for it. For the rest of your life, at dinner parties or receptions, people will ask you what you studied and when you begin excitedly telling them about your dissertation you’ll only get to about the 30 second mark when you’ll see their eyes glaze over and you’ll realise that they were only asking to be polite! Your defence, on the other hand, will be the first and last time in your life that you will have a room full of people who both know what you’re talking about and want to hear you talk about it – for several hours at that! Enjoy this chance while you have it! Second, don’t be afraid to direct the conversation. This will be one of your best chances to get really thoughtful and in-depth critique, especially if, like me, you have the benefit of a high calibre external examiner. Unfortunately, the structure of the defence – rules about who can speak when or for how long – can really limit that critical discussion. If there’s something you really want to bring up or draw attention to, therefore, don’t be afraid to speak up and direct the discussion that way. Finally, no matter how many people you’ve had edit your dissertation, you will still get a page long list of typos and corrections from the committee. I got 5 pages! (Most of them were just errors in accenting though, so that doesn’t matter, right? [Little joke for P.J. Williams there!]). Start getting ready to accept that now, and then it won’t seem so bad when it happens.

That’s my thoughts! And much thanks again to Tommy Wasserman for this invitation, and this venue.

Ryan Wettlaufer

"Conjectural Emendation in New Testament Textual Criticism with the Epistle of James as a Case Study"

In the end of December Ryan D. Wettlaufer successfully defended his thesis "Conjectural Emendation in New Testament Textual Criticism with the Epistle of James as a Case Study," submitted at the University of St.Michael’s College, University of Toronto. Six professors were present at the examination including supervisor John Kloppenborg and the external examiner Michael W. Holmes (via speaker phone). Below is the abstract. I have invited Ryan to share his thoughts about the occasion in a separate post which will follow tomorrow.

Congratulations Dr. Wettlaufer!

Abstract
This dissertation is a study of conjectural emendation as it relates to the text of the New Testament. Unlike many other ancient documents upon which textual criticism must be practiced, the New Testament has a rich and full textual history. Over the last two millennia it has inspired thousands of generations of copies, through which an astonishing amount of corruption has accumulated. Many counts suppose the total number of variants to be over 350,000. At most points it appears that the correct reading can be found in one of the close to 6000 manuscript copies that survive to this day. At a not-insignificant number of other points, however, none of the extant readings appears to be authentic. Such cases therefore call for resolution by conjecture, but in the history of New Testament scholarship the method has often been rejected, and modern printings of the text usually settle for the least inferior of the surviving readings. Why has this situation developed, and what should be done about it?

This dissertation will answer these questions by looking more closely at a number of different subjects. In chapter one it will engage in a more theoretical study of conjectural emendation. It will describe the nature and practice of the method in more detail, survey the history of its use and abuse within New Testament studies, and discuss its use by textual critics in other classical fields. It will then delve into three common reasons why New Testament critics have often rejected the method: 1) the hypothesis that the large number of surviving manuscript copies ensures that the correct reading necessarily survives somewhere among them; 2) the theological belief that God has providentially preserved the original text in one or more of the surviving manuscripts; 3) the philosophical position that textual critics should not privilege any one “original text,” by conjecture or otherwise, but should value instead the narrative revealed in the history of variation. It will then conclude with more practical instructions on when and how to make conjectures. The remaining chapters will move the discussion into concrete terms by engaging in several case studies from the epistle of James. In chapter two it will look at Jas 3:1 with its curious command that μὴ πολλοὶ διδάσκαλοι γίνεσθε. and subsequently argue that the text should be emended to read μὴ πολύλαλοι διδάσκαλοι γίνεσθε. Chapter three will turn to the famous conjecture of Erasmus, who proposed that the text of 4:2 be emended to read φθονεῖτε instead of φονεύετε. Chapter four explores how a long lost scriptural quotation can be rediscovered by emending πρὸς φθόνον to πρὸς τὸν θεόν. Finally, chapter five will look at what not to do by examining a farreaching conjectural proposal that would omit as interpolations the references to Christ in 1:1 and 2:1. Through these case studies, many of the ideas and truths that were explained in chapter one only in abstract will be seen to flow naturally from the texts themselves. In the end, all of this should work to restore in New Testament studies the place of conjectural emendation, and in so doing work to restore the text of the New Testament itself.

SBL Tartu, Working With Biblical Manuscripts (TC) 2

On Wednesday it was time for the second session in the Working With Biblical Manuscripts (Textual Criticism) unit. The focus was on NTTC and the room was really crowded (which means just over 20 people attended the session). Although I am clearly biassed, the quality of the papers was high in my opinion.

David Trobisch, whom I had not previously seen at the conference (though he had been there) presented the first paper "'From Dresden to Timbuktu' Working with Electronic Editions of Manuscripts.” In fact I was a bit worried that David would not show up, but on the other hand I would not be surprised if he had arrived in a helicopter from Timbuktu (he is a real globetrotter). David's paper described experiences and insights from the several projects to digitize MSS, in which he has been directly or indirectly involved; Codices Boernerianus, Boreelianus and Sinaiticus, and, finally, the effort to digitize ancient MSS from the University of Timbuktu. This university is older than most European universities (Africa has a long history!), and the MSS dealing with astronomy, medicine, music, theology, etc, I think ranged from the 9th century and onwards. More about this collection here.

The next paper was by Klaas Spronk, ”A New Catalogue of Byzantine Manuscripts."

Abstract
In textcritical research Byzantine manuscripts are usually regarded as being of less importance, because they are relatively late and often contain only parts of the Biblical texts. To do justice to the this material it is important to take into account the own context and purpose of these manuscripts as part of a very old and still ongoing liturgical tradition. One should also realize that this liturgical embedding of the Biblical texts is more authentic than the view of modern scholars on the Bible as something on itself. At the Protestant University of Kampen an ambitious project has started to describe the field from a codico-liturgical perspective. An important source for researchers is the Byzantine liturgy of the Eastern Orthodox Churches, in which one can still find these same codex forms in use today; the forms of the printed editions closely resemble the manuscript forms. From here one can trace the tradition of those factors that contributed to forming the codices. The corpus of Byzantine manuscripts is characterized by diversity, but within this, standard codicological forms can be distinguished; those containing text items from the Greek NT or OT corpora, or both, and those containing biblical texts combined with other specific liturgical and patristic books and texts, that comment on the biblical monuments in an extremely rich and varied way. The codico-liturgical approach can redirect the study of the Byzantine manuscripts to a system of cataloguing that allows for a far more complete and inclusive picture of the state of affairs of the codex forms in which the biblical and other ecclesiastical texts were handed down to us.

My loose notes from this presentation:

Scope: A catalogue of all Byzantine MSS (not necessarily Biblical). Codexbased. Integrate and co-operate with scholars from the East.

The total of extant Byz. MSS from 4th to end of 19th cent. is estimated to be 60.000 codices. For example, Athos alone holds 16.000 codices.

Good to use existing catalogues. In the early work of Gregory (Textkritik) he took the liturgical content more seriously than later (also Aland, and Rahlfs). Subsequently they became more ”practical”. The liturgical components were left out.

The Bible as a liturgical text: where East and West can meet. Their codicological forms were closely related to the liturgical function of these texts.

In how far can/should we see biblical texts themselvelse as liturgical texts? Cf. Neh 8:5-8.; 2 Tim 3:14-17; Luke 24:27-32. A text to be read aloud, explained and applied.

Then it was time for my presentation on "The 'Son of God' Was in the Beginning (Mark 1:1)"


Abstract
The text-critical problem in the very beginning of the Gospel of Mark is much debated. The main question is whether the phrase “Son of God” was accidently omitted from an original or added by some scribes in order to expand the divine name or the title of the book? The disputed words are enclosed in square brackets in UBS4 and NA27. Most modern translations and commentators include the words. Several scholars, however, have argued for the shorter version of Mark 1:1. In consideration of external evidence, including items that are not acknowledged as New Testament manuscripts, as well as internal evidence, this paper will defend the longer version including the words "Son of God."

After a much needed coffee break, it was time for Stephen Carlson to present his paper, ”’For Sinai is a Mountain in Arabia’: A Note on the Text of Galatians 4:25.”

Abstract
Ever since Richard Bentley, textual critics and exegetes have been perplexed by the note in Galatians 4:25a that Sinai was a mountain in Arabia. Early and important witnesses are divided as to its reading, and this clause is problematic not only in terms of its grammar but also in its relation to Paul’s argumentative discourse. This paper revisits this textual problem and comes to the following conclusions. The external, transcriptional, and intrinsic considerations all suggest that v.25a should read "to gar Sina oros estin en têi Arabiai" (“for Sinai is a mountain in Arabia”), so this reading ought to be adopted in the critical text. Moreover, other evidence suggests that v.25a was originally a marginal note in the archetype of Galatians, so this clause ought to be enclosed in double brackets to indicate that it was not originally part of the autograph of Paul’s letter.

My loose notes:

A crux interpretum. Syntax error – word order, neuter article.
Many theories try to explain one obsurity with another (e.g., Hagar, Arabic for Iraq).

Bentley suggested a conjecture, but then abandoned it [did he explain why?]

My questions in the time for questions: Has Stephen constructed a stemma of the different readings? This stemma should take into consideration that even if the two subvariations: γαρ / δε and Σινα / omit are related, it is nonetheless more likely that the interchange between γαρ / δε would occur independently in the tradition (lower ”connectivity” to use the vocabulary of the CBGM), whereas the second variation is not as likely to have happened independently.

Stephen agreed on my point that he should construct a stemma, and that the change of γαρ / δε more likely could happen by chance. I suggested that with this in mind I assumed that the text attested to by A B D et al (note all traditional text-types) would end up at the top of the stemma, and that it is the lectio difficilior (but is it impossible?).

Interestingly, Stephen also told us, in this connection, that he had in fact noted that most likely the exemplar of D (06) had had a γαρ, an inference that had to do with the sense line divisions – an insight gained by examining the manuscript itself. The related MSS F and G both have the γαρ. So we see in practice how this interchange of conjunctions could easily happen.

Two additional observations: note the very nice Japanese podium that Stephen used. What you cannot see in this picture is that Stephen's wife was present – she got to hear a lot of papers these days. She apparently has her roots in Estonia, and it was very nice to make her acquaintance.

Then it was time for the last paper, delivered by my co-chair Jan Krans, ”Conjectural Emendations in New Testament Textual Criticism.”

Abstract:
As in previous centuries, many scholars today use conjectural emendation as a tool within the textual criticism of the New Testament. Yet many others neglect or even reject conjectural criticism altogether. This paper will take stock of these conflicting tendencies, and explore the current developments in the field. In the end, the paper will defend the legitimate and natural place conjectural emendation has in New Testament textual criticism.

My notes:
The several citations, some of which we have included in our ”Conjectural Emendation Quiz” shows the varying attitude to conjectural emendations in New Testament textual criticism during different eras. It is often been viewed as the last resort. Jan suggested that this reluctance could be ”theological” or ”text-critical” (or both). Classical scholars have a different attitutde.

Then Jan demonstrated how the recording of conjectures in a succession of Nestle-Aland editions is often problematic. The apparatus may record only a part of conjecture, or a conjecture under wrong name, or some scholarly suggestion which is not a conjecture but rather reflects source criticism. With these inconsistencies in mind Jan asked ”Whose conjecture is it?”

Further, Jan presented his new project to create a computer database of conjectures, a project in co-operation with the work done by INTF/ITSEE (the latter under the auspices of the IGNTP) on the Editio Critica Maior. This included special PhD projects focused, e.g., on the Dutch school.

In the time for questions I pointed out that, in my opinion, conjectures should remain the last resort, not because of ”theology” but mainly because of a general methodological consideration – Occam’s razor: If we have manuscript evidence and a valid textcritical principle that says we should prefer the difficult reading (lectio difficilior), then we should be very hesitant to look for other ”smoother” solutions. On the other hand, I agree that there is a thin line between what is a lectio difficilior and a nonsense reading. (I particularly remember a variation in Luke 2:14 with a construction, ἀνθρώποις εὐδοκίας, that seemed impossible, before some Hebrew manuscript showed that the underlying ”impossible” Greek construction reflects a Hebraism.)

Someone else pointed out that classical scholars of course have access to very different material (sometimes perhaps merely one inferior MS, and conjectures become necessary). Jan wanted to compare the NT textual tradition with Homer [although that tradition, I think, consist of 90% less MSS].

Further, I pointed out that the conjectures, although most will remain unnecessary, can nevertheless be significant, not least in order to highlight difficulties in the text. They can surely help us in the exegetical process (just as can the existing secondary variant readings).

Finally I posed another question to Jan which is just interesting to think about: ”Whose error is it?” If we assume hypothetically that the archetype of the tradition is equal to the autograph, does this archetype have to be inerrant? Can, for example, Paul or his amanuensis have made a grammatical mistake? (that could result in a nonsense reading.) Would the conjecture in that case be what the author intended to write ... it is an interesting question. (From a theological perspective, one can of course postulate that the autographs are inerrant, but this cannot be proven with scientific means.)

The gentlemen on this picture all enjoyed this year's sessions. Thanks to Ronald van Bergh (to the left) who presided the second session. I had the opportunity afterwards to discuss with Ronald some ideas for his PhD project on OT quotations in Codex Bezae.