More NT Textual Criticism Guest Lecture Videos

I’m teaching NTTC again at the seminary and that means having guest lecturers visit to share their work. The first two videos are now up at the TCI YouTube channel. If you subscribe there, you’ll get new videos when they’re posted. Thanks to Mike and Edgar for letting me share these.

Ebojo on P46 and the Pastoral Epistles

 

Holmes on Editing and Translating the NT for Church and Academy

Panel Review of SBLGNT Published

A new article has just been published in the current issue if the TC Journal:

 

Michael Holmes, David Parker, Harold Attridge, and Klaus Wachtel, The SBL Greek New Testament: Papers from the 2011 SBL Panel Review Session with a comparison of SBLGNT vs. NA²⁷/UBSGNT⁴ by Klaus Wachtel.

Abstract: The 2011 SBL meeting in San Francisco included a panel review session on The Greek New Testament: SBL Edition (ed. Michael W. Holmes; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2010). The reviews are presented here along with Holmes’ introductory comments and response. The papers retain their nature as oral presentations and are as originally delivered apart from minor corrections.

 

There is more to come very soon in this issue of TC . . .

Free SBLGNT for Kindle

Illya Antonenko (OSNOVA) has made available the SBL Greek New Testament as an e-book for Amazon's Kindle:

SBL GNT for Kindle

Mike Holmes Makes History

BETHEL UNIVERSITY NEWS (Dana Morrison):

“Everything I’ve done for 35 years has led up to this,” said Bethel Professor Mike Holmes, reflecting on the online and print release of the new edition of the Greek New Testament that he recently completed. Holmes, professor of biblical studies and early Christianity, spent his yearlong sabbatical leave working as sole editor on the new edition.

The project began on April 1, 2009, Holmes received an email from the editorial director of the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL) asking if he would be interested in editing a new edition of the Greek New Testament. After reading the email for the unusual opportunity, Holmes said, “I half thought it was an April Fool’s joke.”

Read the whole story here.

Mike Bird in Commercial for SBLGNT

Don't miss Mike Bird's commercial for Mike Holmes' SBLGNT.

HT: Brice Jones, who also reports from SBL Atlanta, where he heard some really good papers ;-) and tells us that he has received an acceptance letter to the PhD program at McMaster Divinity College. Congratulations Brice!

Michael Holmes SBLGNT Page

Co-blogger Mike Holmes has started a new webpage! The primary focus of activity, as Mike says, is the SBL Greek New Testament page. We have added links to the SBLGNT webpages (Holmes/SBL-Logos) in the right sidebar.

See earlier posts about SBLGNT here, here, and the initial announcement here.

SBL GNT: Three Questions and Replies

Earlier this week I hosted a chat session on Facebook (here) about the SBL GNT (occasionally an old dog can learn a new trick or two). A few of the questions raised and answered may be of wider interest, so I am taking the liberty of posting them here as well.
Question: one person wondered why the selected critical editions where chosen, and why others (such as the earlier editions of the GNT by Eberhard Nestle) were not.
Reply: The selection of four editions to serve as primary resources for establishing the new SBL edition—WH, Tregelles, Robinson-Pierpont, and the Greek text behind the NIV translation—is based on a combination of reasons. Westcott-Hort—the starting point for both the early Nestle and the UBS editions—is a classic, and an obvious choice (and it was available in e-format). Re the Byzantine tradition: unlike WH, I’m convinced that at points, only the Byzantine tradition preserves the original reading, and so it had to be represented in the mix. Also, it is the textual tradition of choice for the Orthodox tradition, and so deserved to be represented. The Robinson-Pierpont edition (available in e-format) is an excellent representative of the Byzantine tradition, and thus was an easy choice in this regard. As for Tregelles, I’ve long been impressed by his independent and insightful judgment, an impression confirmed by David Parker’s analysis of the text of James in the Editio Critica Maior in comparison to earlier editions, which validated a high percentage of Tregelles’ choices. With Tyndale House having recently made it available in e-form, it commended itself as a good counterpoint to WH.
The choice of a modern critical edition was more complicated. First, there aren’t many to choose from. Second, the publishers were rightly concerned that the new edition have a clear and uncontestable copyright—both for the sake of the new edition, and out of respect for existing editions. Thus in light of their concerns it seemed best not to use NA26-7/UBS3-4 in the initial stages of creating the SBL edition. Once this decision was made, then the reconstructed Greek text behind the NIV translation commended itself as an alternative: it records, where it differs from UBS/NA, the independent textual choices of the original NIV translation committee (an international group of respected scholars), yet (because the NIV translation committee used the UBS/NA text as its starting point) it reflected, indirectly, the NA/UBS textual tradition as well. In effect, using the Greek text behind the NIV allowed the project to maintain a clear copyright, to acknowledge (indirectly) the well-earned excellence and stature of the NA/UBS editions, and to include (where the NIV differs from the NA/UBS text) a contemporary alternative perspective to the textual decisions of the committee responsible for the NA/UBS editions.
In short, the choice of these four editions to serve as initial resources (but certainly not the only resources) for building the new SBL text reflects a combination of historical considerations, text-critical theory, publishers’ concerns, and pragmatic considerations.
What about other editions? Each has benefits, but also drawbacks. For example, Tischendorf relied too heavily on Sinaiticus. Von Soden (still valuable as a source of information) built his text on flawed theoretical assumptions; and Vogels, Merk, and Bover are heavily influenced by von Soden. The original Nestle tradition was built on the editions of WH, Tischendorf, and (after Weymouth) B. Weiss, who like WH was heavily influenced by Vaticanus, so the Nestle text (up through the 25th edition) is very similar to WH. Either one would provide a good starting point, but both together add little to what one gains from either one alone. Similar considerations apply to other potential candidates (such as the Greek text, edited by R. V. G. Tasker, putatively behind the New English Bible).

Question #2: “Why is the NIV considered more standard than the NA in the Apparatus?”
Reply: I don’t consider the Greek text behind the NIV translation “more standard” than the NA text. The fact that “NIV” is visually more present in the apparatus than “NA” is largely a matter of pragmatism. Let me explain in two steps. First, once the Greek text behind the NIV was selected as one of the four primary resources for the new SBL edition (see the answer to the first question above for the reasons behind this choice), it had to be included in the apparatus alongside the other three editions. Second, from the start I wanted the apparatus to include the evidence of the NA/UBS text, from which the Greek text behind the NIV differs at about 235 or so places. So now the question was a practical one: how best to incorporate the NA testimony into an apparatus that already includes the NIV testimony? Option 1: insert the NA evidence at every one of the 6928 variants, or option 2: insert it explicitly only at those 235 or so places where it reads differently than the NIV, and for the other nearly 6700 places let the NIV stand for both NA and NIV. With either option, the full testimony of NA is present in the apparatus. However, option 2 results in a more compact apparatus, and reduces the chances for error in constructing the apparatus, so the choice was made to adopt option 2 rather than option 1. Note that the choice is entirely a pragmatic one, and does not imply any claim that the “NIV” is somehow “more standard” than NA. Given the sequence in which the apparatus was built, it was simply a pragmatic choice to cite NA only where it differs from NIV. In any case, the full testimony of NA is presented, either explicitly or implicitly, in the SBL GNT apparatus for every one of its 6928 variation units.

Question #3: Would the end product be different if I had started with the manuscripts rather than editions? That is, did the use of existing editions rather than the manuscripts as the starting point for the SBL edition bias the outcome?
Reply: I don’t think that the end result would have been any different if I had started with the manuscripts rather than existing editions. To explain why, let me quote a section from the Introduction to the edition:

Where all four editions agreed, the text was tentatively accepted as the text of the SBL edition; points of disagreement were marked for further consideration. The editor then worked systematically through the entire text, giving particular attention to the points of disagreement but examining as well the text where all four editions were in agreement. Where there was disagreement among the four editions, the editor determined which variant to print as the text; occasionally a reading not found in any of the four editions commended itself as the most probable representative of the text and therefore was adopted. Similarly, where all four texts were in agreement, the editor determined whether to accept that reading or to adopt an alternative variant as the text.

That is, once the four editions were compared, I then systematically went through the entire text of the NT in light of the manuscript evidence, not only where one or more of the four differed, but also where all four were in agreement (and at several places, I did adopt a reading not found in any one of the four). In short, the entire SBL text was decided on in light of the manuscript evidence (not on the basis of the editions); in addition, in view of the fact that there are places throughout where I either agree with each one of the four against the other three (SBL/WH vs. Treg NIV RP: 98x; SBL/RP vs. WH Treg NIV: 66x; SBL/NIV vs. WH Treg RP: 59x; SBL/Treg vs. WH NIV RP: 28x) or reject all four, I don’t think the use of existing critical editions biased the outcome.

Holmes' SBLGNT on Facebook!

Logos Bible Software has just started a Facebook comment thread here to invite questions about the new SBL Greek New Testament edition that Michael Holmes announced on the ETC blog recently (don't forget to read the comments). A few days later, Stephen Carlson shared his initial impression of the edition here. And of course Rick Brannan working for Logos shared his thoughts.

Now you have the chance of discussing it again with Mike. He will be watching the Facebook thread for questions all week and post detailed replies on Tuesday the 16th at 10 a.m. PT. So go ahead and post your questions, to make sure that there is room and time for Mike to give thorough replies (I hope Mike has done all his SBL preparations...)

Initial Review of SBLGNT - Stephen Carlson

Duke Ph.D student Stephen Carlson offers some initial thoughts on the SBLGNT, primarily re: the text of Galatians in which he is currently studying.

SBL and Logos Bible Software announce a new Greek NT

Logos Bible Software and the Society of Biblical Literature have announced the publication of a new, critically edited Greek NT: The Greek New Testament: SBL edition, edited by yours truly. It will be available very soon as a free download, and will also be available in print form by the time of the SBL meeting in Atlanta.

More detailed information (including the Preface and the Introduction) and a “download” link will soon be available at the website: http://www.sblgnt.com/

Some background regarding the edition: the starting point for the editorial work on this new edition was an electronic comparison of four editions: Westcott & Hort, Tregelles (using the excellent electronic version prepared by Dirk Jongkind and Tyndale House), Robinson & Pierpont 2005, and the Greek text behind the NIV (as printed in Goodrich and Lukaszewski, A Reader’s Greek New Testament [Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2003]). Obviously, where there was disagreement among the four editions, I had to determine which variant to print as the text; occasionally I concluded that a reading not found in any of the four editions was the most probable reading and adopted it. But even where all four editions agreed, I worked through the text and determined whether to accept that reading or to adopt an alternative reading as the text (In all, there are fifty-six variation units in the SBLGNT where I preferred a reading not found in the text of any of the four primary editions).

With regard to orthography, the edition follows BDAG; with regard to elision, crasis, movable ν, etc., it follows WH; verse divisions follow NA²⁷/UBS⁴; paragraphing generally follows NRSV, and punctuation generally follows WH (and where paragraphing and punctuation conflict, matters were resolved on a case by case basis).

The new text is accompanied by an apparatus that (reminiscent of the original Nestle text) records not differences between manuscripts but the differences between five editions of the NT: WH, Treg, RP, NIV, and NA²⁷ (which is cited in the apparatus only where it differs from the NIV text). In all, there are 6,928 places where the SBLGNT differs from one or more of these five editions. (Thus there are many interesting places of variation in the manuscript tradition that are not noticed in this limited apparatus.)

The following list indicates agreements/disagreements between editions at the 6,928 instances of variation:

SBLGNT—WH: 6,049 agreements, 879 disagreements

SBLGNT—Treg: 5,701 agreements, 1,227 disagreements

SBLGNT—NIV: 6,312 agreements 616 disagreements

SBLGNT—RP: 969 agreements 5,959 disagreements

Also, the SBLGNT differs from NA²⁷/UBS⁴ at 542 places, and thus the two will agree at 6386 places.

As will be clear from the nature and scope of the apparatus, this text may be considered a “reading edition,” with the apparatus serving to alert the reader to the more important places where there are differences between editions of the Greek NT and to indicate how other editions have handled matters.

As mentioned earlier, additional information is available at the website: http://sblgnt.com/