E. C. Colwell and Kenneth Clark Lecture Audio

Juan Hernandez has recently made a great find in the course of some internet sleuthing. But I’ll let Juan tell you about it:

In addition to discovering audio of E. C. Colwell’s lecture on poetry, I also uncovered this 1963 lecture (at PTS) titled, “The Next Steps in the Textual Criticism of the NT.” A fascinating lecture that echoed all of the classic ideas we have come to expect from Colwell (e.g., about quantitative analysis, scribal habits, text types, etc.). The lecture was clear, cogent, and forceful. Interestingly, he did not call the Western text a text-type but talked about loose affiliations and used the language of “cluster,” which is fascinating since I thought Epp was the first to suggest this. You will LOVE it. I was rapt in attention (partly in disbelief that I was hearing his actual voice after so many years of just reading him). Colwell’s lecture is followed by another by K. W. Clark on his examination of Greek manuscripts in libraries in Greece. These are true gems. At any rate, I’m sharing it with you in case you think folks on the ETC blog might like to hear a lecture from one of the twentieth century’s leading textual critics.

You can find the audio at PTS’s website. These two papers were presented at the Bible Studies Conference, 1963. Thanks, Juan! Great find.

Hernández: 2020 Alexander Thompson Memorial Lecture

Before the coronavirus madness, Juan Hernández Jr. delivered this year’s Rev. Alexander Thompson Memorial Lecture at Princeton Theological Seminary. The lecture is titled “Recovering Revelation’s Forgotten Textual History: Josef Schmid’s Magnum Opus for the Twenty-First Century.” If you’ve already finished Tiger King, you now have something to watch.

Juan also sent this photo and says, “Also, with B.B. Warfield above my left shoulder and a sneering Josef Schmid directly to my right, I had to walk a fine line in talking about the value of historical perspective in the textual criticism of the book of Revelation!”

SNTS Athens Response

Recenty I blogged about the three sessions in the text-critical seminar at the SNTS meeting in Athens which I chaired with Claire Clivaz. On the last day I responded to Juan Hernandez, who has subsequently urged me to post my Powerpoint. I have now uploaded a PDF of my powerpoint for download here if anyone is interested.

The Text-Critical Seminar at SNTS in Athens 2018

Today I am flying home from Athens where I have participated in the 73rd SNTS meeting including three sessions in the text-critical seminar. This was the fifth and final year of the seminar, chaired by me, Claire Clivaz and Ulrich Schmid, and the theme of this year was NTTC in exegesis.

We had three wonderful presentations followed by responses and fruitful discussions by the sixteen or so participants and I think the presenters got some very useful feedback. 

Jennifer Knust kicked off on Wednesday with a brilliant paper on textual criticism as exegesis discussing Lachmann’s idea of recensere sine interpretatione, Origen on John 1:28 (Bethany/Bethabara) among other things followed by a stimulating response by Claire Clivaz, wherein she coined the term “Lachmannian utopia,” among other things.

Next on Thursday, Klaus Wachtel gave an instructive presentation on the interactive commentary on ECM of Acts in the NT.VMR with an example in Acts 3:13, followed by a response by Mike Holmes, who also brought up the conjecture in Acts 13:33.

On the last day of the SNTS meeting in Athens (Fri), we had Juan Hernandez Jr. present on ”The Apocalypse in Light of Recent Advances: A Return to J. Schmid’s Studien to Contextualize Current Text-Critical Trends.” The paper presented and evaluated Josef Schmid’s work on Revelation which has now been translated into English by Juan, Garrick Allen and Darius Müller (Juan is holding the book in the picture), and concluded by briefly looking to the future.

This was followed by a response by myself where I posed several questions to the presenter about Schmid’s work in particular in light of recent advances in research on Revelation through Text und Textwert, monographs and articles by Juan himself, Darius Müller, Peter Malik, and many others.

A highlight was when Juan stood up and read out loud for us a paragraph from the new translation which answered one of the questions.

This session as the two others went great and I have had good feedback from many participants in the seminar who thought we had great sessions. The best thing with the meeting though is to meet wonderful colleagues (here I am with Jennifer Knust and Claire Clivaz).

And, now I can announce that our seminar was accepted for renewal for another five years with me, Claire Clivaz and Hugh Houghton as chairs.

These are the themes for the coming period:

1)    Significant manuscripts and scribal habits (2019) – joint session(s) with papyrology
We will begin with a focus on the physical manuscripts and their scribes. We have agreed with the papyrology seminar to arrange a joint seminar (or sessions) on significant New Testament MSS at the meeting in Marburg.

2)    The Latin Bible (2020)
This will coincide with the publication of the Oxford Handbook to the Latin Bible, and enable us to invite distinguished guests as well as contributions from existing members.

3)    New Testament editions (2021)
This topic is evolving so fast that there is no doubt that we will have new topics and novelties to discuss in 2021.

4)     Digital developments and challenges (2022)
The same remark can be made here, based on the successful seminar on this topic in 2017, which has led to new standards being adopted for digital data in this field. Moreover, we expect to see several new digital projects developed in NTTC in the next years.

5)    NTTC and Reception History (2023)
This topic acts as a link between the study of the text and its significance for those working in other areas of New Testament scholarship.

So, I hope I will see some of you colleagues out there in Marburg next year!

"The Relevance of Andrew of Caesarea for New Testament Textual Criticism"

Juan Hernandez' article on The Relevance of Andrew of Caesarea for New Testament Textual Criticism" has just been published in JBL 130.1 (2011): 183–196. Juan tells me that the first two paragraphs captures well the essence of the whole piece. I cite them here without the accompanying footnotes:

Contemporary textual critics attend to a variety of pressing questions. No longer restricted to the quest for the “original” text of the NT, current practitioners pursue a number of interrelated issues. Topics like scribal activity, theological variation, the nature and scope of the NT canon, and the sociohistorical worlds of scribes and their manuscripts are now commonplace in text-critical discussions. The definition of what a textual critic is (and does) has been broadened to include the pursuit of questions once considered peripheral to the discipline.

These questions are not new. Writing at the threshold of the early Byzantine era, Andrew of Caesarea displays an awareness of competing variants, comments on their theological significance, and condemns scribes who atticize the Greek manuscripts of the Bible. Andrew’s Commentary on the Apocalypse appears to reflect the same integration of issues that characterizes contemporary text-critical research, albeit from the perspective of the seventh century. Andrew’s handful of text-critical exempla speaks directly to a discipline that probes the relevance of scribal activity and challenges contemporary assumptions about its significance. In particular, Andrew’s assessment of textual variation confounds modern sensibilities. Andrew embraces textual variants that produce a semantic difference in the reading of the Apocalypse and excoriates scribes who make stylistic changes. Andrew’s Commentary on the Apocalypse offers a distinctively Byzantine appraisal of variants that enriches our understanding of textual variation and contributes to current discussions about its significance for textual criticism.

This article was originally presented as a paper in the New Testament Textual Criticism Section at the annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature in Boston, Massachusetts, November 21, 2008. I gave a thorough report of that presentation with a nice image of the presenter, a summary of the paper along with my comments.

"A Scribal Solution to a Problematic Measurement in the Apocalypse"

In the recent issue of New Testament Studies Juan Hernandez of Bethel University offers “A Scribal Solution to a Problematic Measurement in the Apocalypse” [Rev 21:17].

Abstract:

Orthographic variation within the manuscripts of the Greek NT is seldom a cause célèbre beyond the ranks of diehard textual critics. Even among these most will concede that orthographic irregularities amount to little more than evidence of scribal incompetency or inconsistency in their spelling practices. To find the same word both spelled correctly and misspelled within a single manuscript by the same scribe is not uncommon. It approaches the norm. The critical editions of our Greek NTs have therefore opted, on good grounds, to exclude textual variants displaying non-standardized spelling. To include them would make it impossible for anyone to use the critical apparatuses in a meaningful way. The deluge of senseless errors would drown out variants of demonstrable textual significance.

This “abstract” that appears online is in reality, however, only the introduction to this short study, and to give you a sense of what Hernandez’ contribution is about, I must cite the next paragraph:

On occasion orthographic variations are more than spelling errors. They are meaningful textual variants. Their appearance in the guise of misspelled words, however, causes them to be overlooked. Their exclusion from the critical apparatus of the Greek NT leads to their exclusion from text-critical discussions and from contributing to the advance of scholarship. The singular reading χιλος, appearing in codex Sinaiticus’ text of Rev 21.17, is one such variant.

Juan is one of our habitual readers – he tells me checking the blog is one of his morning rituals. Last month we featured an interview with him, “How Can You Be a Textual Critic and Not Lose Your Faith?”

How Can You Be a Textual Critic and Not Lose Your Faith?

At the 2009 SBL meeting Juan Hernandez, Assistant Professor of Biblical and Theological Studies at Bethel University, was interviewed by Dr. Eugenia Constantinou for Ancient Faith Radio, a podcast that serves the Greek and Russian Orthodox communities.

Incidentally, Dr. Constantinou is the translator of Andrew of Caesarea’s commentary on the Apocalypse that has been mentioned here on the blog. (Unfortunately, the commentary/dissertation is not found through that link anymore - perhaps someone can give us an updated link.) More about Constantinou here.

The interview revolves around the question of faith and the Bible’s ancient manuscripts; in particular, how Hernandez can be a textual critic and not lose his faith “like Bart Ehrman” (her words). The interviewer is also interested in knowing how Hernandez ended up in a discipline that is not typically peopled with Hispanic-Americans of Pentecostal background.

The interview begins about 20 minutes into the program and is largely biographic. If you want to begin listening at that point, you can download the podcast and open it in iTunes (or equivalent) and skip forward:

Listen to the interview here.

Andrew of Caesarea and the Apocalypse in the Ancient Church of the East: Studies and Translation

There is a new study and translation of Andrew of Caesarea's commentary of Revelation (via Roger Pearse) and it is available on-line!:

Andrew of Caesarea and the Apocalypse in the Ancient Church of the East: Studies and Translation

In this connection I should mention Juan Hernandez' recent work on Andrew of Caesarea as a text-critic. Hernandez spoke at the SBL in Boston on this subject).

Finally, I should say that Andrew of Caesarea's commentary often accompanies the text of Revelation in Greek New Testament MSS. Since the Book of Revelation has had a quite distinct history of transmission, there are many MSS containing only Revelation out there, and I suspect that many such codices are still unknown to the scholars of textual criticism.

Sinaiticus as a Commentary on John's Apocalyse?

Sinaiticus as a Commentary on John's Apocalyse?

That's the issue raised at the Sinaiticus conference by Juan Hernández Jr. (Bethel University, St. Paul). Juan has been educating us about the text of John's Revelation for 3 or 4 years now. In this paper, he writes, "[The Apocalypse in Codex Sinaiticus] exhibits dozens of differences at key points, reflecting the concerns...of its earliest copyists and readers. Taken as a whole, Sinaiticus' text of Revelation may constitute one of our earliest Christian commentaries on the book..., anticipating the later concerns of Oecumenius and Andrew of Caesarea." He qualifies this claim to an extent, but reinforces it by concluding "[W]e can discern a concerted effort to elucidate the Apocalypse's message by scores of changes throughout."

Juan states that Sinaiticus differs substantially from modern critical editions. It is difficult to evaluate this claim without seeing the differences relative to other manuscripts. Could we say the same about any witness to Revelation? Which mss come closer to NA27? Compared with NA27, Juan cites Sinaiticus as having 182 additions and 389 omissions, with 207 word losses. Juxtaposing this data with the same data of other mss would help ascertain how substantially different Sinaiticus is from NA27, and whether the scribe of Sinaiticus really did make a concerted effort to alter the text.

As part of his thesis that the scribe of Sinaiticus deliberately altered the text, Juan argues that there is a number of theologically motivated variants: Jesus is the beginning of the church, not the beginning of creation (Rev 3:14); Jesus does not vomit (avoidance of base bodily functions, 3:16); both God and the Lamb are ascribed the blessings, honor and "glory of the Almighty" (instead of "and the power," 5:13); Jesus summons Jezebel, rather than throwing her (2:22); Jesus himself opens the door rather than any man (3:20).

Someone remarked that it might be significant that the corrector fixed all these variants (except the last one, involving the mere change of an eta to an omega.). If the corrector corrected these before it left the scriptorium or some time while the Christological issues were raging, then perhaps the charge that scribes deliberately altered texts for theological reasons is somewhat mitigated.

One also must ask if theological motivation really is the cause of alteration; perhaps, as might be the case with 3:20, the change was accidental, rather than arising from "intelligent design" (P.J. Williams' terminology). Moreover, as Tommy Wasserman argued in his SBL Rome paper in regard to theologically motivated alteration, one should ask if a given scribe was consistent in altering texts before ascribing motivation; Tommy demonstrated that this was not the case with many of Bart Ehrman's passages, and one wonders the same for Sinaiticus in Revelation.

Less spectactorily, Juan gave a helpful list of orthographical variations, nonsense readings, grammatical and contextual alterations, dittographic and haplographic reeadings, singular readings, etc. There was also an interesting list of alterations, possibly from liturgical interference.

Lacking expertise in many of these issues, I withhold judgment, except to say that it is a rather spectacular claim that the text of Sinaiticus reflects a "concerted effort" in its transmission history to improve "the Apocalypse's message" by incorporating "scores of changes throughout."