Reading Religion’s Review of The Biblical Canon Lists

James E. Walters tweeted at me that his review of The Biblical Canon Lists from Early Christianity: Texts and Analysis (OUP, 2018) has been posted at Reading Religion. You can read his review here. He thinks the book is generally good and useful:

This volume provides an accessible collection of “lists” of biblical books from early Christian and Jewish sources. The lists are provided in original texts (primarily Greek and Latin, though also one Syriac and one Rabbinic Aramaic) and also translation. Each list is also accompanied by a brief introduction as well as thorough notes on issues of translation and interpretation. As such, the editors have compiled a very useful collection of texts that will be of intrinsic interest and value to anyone who works on questions of canon formation in early Christianity (and to a lesser extent in early Judaism).

His concluding paragraph is also positive, though he notes some concerns:

With these concerns in mind, this book is a valuable compendium of sources and summaries of scholarship pertaining to the history of the formation of the biblical canons. In addition to texts and translations (most of which are taken from previous publications), the entries include convenient references to previous studies of each canon list included, so this book can serve as a valuable reference to students and researchers at all levels.

Walters expressed concern over how Ed Gallagher and I (1) treated the dating of the Muratorian Fragment in ch. 1 (“the careful reader will note that in the first chapter the Muratorian Fragment is generally supplied as evidence for ‘early’ canonical status for various books”), even though he said our treatment of the problem of date in the section on MF in ch. 4 of the book was “even-handed and diplomatic”; (2) our definition of “canon list” (but more precisely, “The editors then immediately claim that this definition fits ‘most of the lists’ in the volume, an admission that already clues the reader into the fact that some of the included lists may not necessarily meet these criteria.”); (3) our inclusion of Josephus’s statement on the 22 books in his Against Apion; (4) the inclusion of chapter six on whole bible MSS left Walters puzzled, “Thus, it remains unclear exactly how this chapter contributes to the volume.”

Walters’s review was generally positive, and there is no need to respond to each of his concerns here, except only to note that in the book we did mention many of them ourselves. For example, regarding Josephus on p. xiii, we said:

Our description of a canon list as the list of books that an author or council considered canonical should be nuanced when considering certain lists. We have included a passage from Josephus often labelled the first Jewish canon list, but anyone reading the passage will be disappointed to find that Josephus fails to list the books, and his account—while it affords us a great deal of certainty on the majority of writings that made up his collection of twenty-two sacred books—is not so precise that we can have complete assurance that we know the contents of his canon.

And on p. 63, we said:

Since Josephus does not list the exact contents of the books in his canon list, we only list his headings and brief descriptions of the types of works within the twenty-two books. Scholars have attempted to reconstruct Josephus’s list, and these conjectures are presented below...

Apparently, our cautions won’t satisfy everyone, but thank you, James, for writing a thoughtful and fair review of our book!

New Article: Quantifying Variants in the Apostolos

In the latest issue of NTS, Greg Lanier has an article expanding on my work estimating the number of variants. He takes a deep dive into the data from the ECM of the Catholic Letters and now Acts to try a way of quantifying the variants in the most important witnesses.

Here is the abstract:

This article interacts with Peter J. Gurry’s recent estimate of the total textual variants in the Greek New Testament (NTS 62 (2016)) by (i) employing a different (and complementary) method using data from the Editio Critica Maior and (ii) producing an estimate that is narrowly confined to the ‘key’ manuscript witnesses for Acts and the Catholic Letters (a mix of majuscules and minuscules, both Byzantine and non-Byzantine). The results prove more useful for framing the development and distribution of textual variants in this group of key witnesses.

I wrote before, “There is more that can be done with these data and hopefully I and others will explore some of those in the future.” While I stumbled over some of the things done with the data here, this is the kind of additional work I had in mind. In particular, I want to highlight the three points that stood out to me.

First, he uses places where there is no variation in the ECM volumes to help calculate manuscript agreement. This is important because the CBGM only uses places where there is some disagreement to calculate the overall agreement. From this, he can say that about 15% of the 12,356 “textual units” in the Apostolos (Acts + Catholic Letters) have no variation in the ECM. With a larger collation set (like Tommy’s work on Jude), this diminishes, of course, but this is valuable especially because CBGM comparisons only compare “textual units” where there is some variation (i.e., variant units). In other words, they leave out all the places where there is no variation in the collated witnesses. (There is a good reason for this in the CBGM, by the way, but that’s another subject.)

Second, Lanier tabulated how many variants are actually found in each variant unit. This is important because it offers one good metric for how much work editors have to do. The reason is that deciding between ten different readings is usually a lot more work than deciding between two. Lanier found that in the Apostolos, about 64% of all variant units have just two readings. Another 27% have three and the remaining 9% have four or more. In other words, the vast majority of decisions in the ECM are between three or fewer variants. Gerd Mink had run the same numbers for James in 2004 with similar results, but now we have them for the rest of the Apostolos. I think this may be one of the most helpful stats in the article

Finally, Lanier plotted the rate of variation per word across the 28 chapters of Acts and found that, among his 16 key witnesses, the rate increases slightly toward the end (see figure). He says, “The data, of course, cannot tell us why this is the case, but it is nevertheless helpful empirical confirmation in the aggregate (for sixteen witnesses) of what textual critics have hypothesised for Acts within individual witnesses” (p. 568). I would suggest that scribal fatigue is the most obvious explanation. As scribes got further into Acts, fatigue set in and they copied a little worse than they did at the start of the book. (This, of course, does not mean that they made no mistakes at the start of books as in, oh, I don’t know, say Mark 1.1 for example.)

Variation rate across Acts

Update: See Lanier’s blog post for a bit on how he crunched the data.

Rahlfs 967 of the Kölner Papyri of the Institute of Ancient History at the University of Cologne

Ra 967, p. 197

I am researching the reception history of Esther in early Jewish and Christian sources and have come to Rahlfs 967 (2nd/3rd), a papyrus MS containing (with lacunae) Ezekiel (pp. 10–61), Daniel (pp. 62–93r), Bel et Draco (pp. 93v–95), Susanna (pp. 96–98), and Esther (pp. 99–109).

What I didn’t know previously is that the pages of this MS are divided between five different collections. The Verzeichnis (2004; pp. 98–103) lists the following (hyperlinks are to the images online of which I’m aware):

1. Chester Beatty IX + X: pp. 10–17 (upper half); 71–83 (upper half); 102–109 (upper half) (images of the pages from Dublin can be viewed at the CSNTM).
2. Princeton, Univ. Libr., P. Scheide 3: pp. 20 + 22, 23–28, 30–32, 34–37, 40–45 (upper half).
3. Kӧln, IfA, P. Colon. theol. 3–40: pp. 10–17, 20, 22, 71–77, 79–83 (lower half); 90, 92–101 (upper half); pp. 18–19, 21, 29, 53–70, 84–89 (whole) (see images at Kölner Papyri of the Institute of Ancient History at the University of Cologne).
4. Madrid, CSIC (Fonds Photiaded), P. Matr. bibl. 1: pp. 10, 33, 38–39, 46–52.
5. Montserrat, SBO, P.Monts./II Inv. 42. 43: p. 78 (lower half), p. 91 (upper half)

For my purpose, I wanted to see how Esther began and ended in this MS; that is, I was interested to learn about its paratextual features. Unfortunately, there are no visible paratextual features (e.g. title or inscription) except the page number (p. 197) at the beginning, and the end of Esther is not extant in the MS.

Ra 967, p. 196

Of some interest is the placement of Esther after Susanna (p. 196), which contains a subscription: Daniel: [pe]ace to the one who wro[te] and to those who re[ad] amen. In other MSS, the order is Sus–Dan–Bel et Draco, but in this MS, Sus is placed at the end of the book and may have been intended to be joined to Esther, another virtuous woman. Who knows? No other Greek MS has this order. The order Sus–Esth is attested in Syriac MSS.

Both of these images are from the Kölner Papyri collection, and I’m grateful to curator Prof. Dr. Charikleia Armoni for answering my query and directing me to the digitized images and also being willing to send me higher resolution images upon request.

Postdoc in Lausanne on Mark 16

A 4 year postdoctoral position is being advertised in Lausanne to work on the new project there on Mark 16 led by Claire Clivaz. Further details are here. It is a digital humanities post and is located in the Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics (which obviously interprets its remit broadly!).

Tragedy at the Brazil National Museum

Sunday night, the 200 year old Brazil National Museum in Rio de Janeiro caught fire and burned down. The Guardian reports

Brazil’s oldest and most important historical and scientific museum has been consumed by fire, and much of its archive of 20 million items is believed to have been destroyed.

The fire at Rio de Janeiro’s 200-year-old National Museum began after it closed to the public on Sunday and raged into the night. There were no reports of injuries, but the loss to Brazilian science, history and culture was incalculable, two of its vice-directors said.

Photo of the fire from the BBC

Compounding the tragedy are reports that the museum had recently finished a deal with the government for funds that included a fire prevention project. Most of the accounts coming in are that only a tiny portion of the on-site collection survived. It seems that in recent years, the museum has been starved for financial resources and in bad need of upkeep.

I don’t know much about what the collection housed by way of Bible-related artifacts, but Pete Williams shares this on Twitter:

Hebrew material presumably lost in the fire of the National Museum in Rio. #museunacional #hebrew https://t.co/sKuz7AeCSK

— Dr Peter John Williams (@PeterJWilliams9) September 3, 2018

I remember my dear old friend #KennethAKitchen showing me the catalogue he made of the Egyptian Collection of the National Museum in Rio, which tragically burnt last night. Ken has done a lot to promote this collection. #museunacional #MuseuNacionaldoRio #kenkitchen #egyptology

— Dr Peter John Williams (@PeterJWilliams9) September 3, 2018

The Twitter user known as Incunabula also shares that the museum’s library, containing nearly half a million volumes, was also engulfed.

Also it appears entirely destroyed in the Rio fire last night was the Biblioteca do Museu Nacional, arguably the most important science and natural history library in Brazil, with 470 000 volumes including irreplaceable treasures such as the 1572 first edition of “Os Lusíadas”. pic.twitter.com/S8VMFJ94xS

— Incunabula (@incunabula) September 3, 2018

If anyone knows of any particular Christian or Bible-related artifacts in the collection, let us know in the comments.

Craig Evans on Mark Fragment

Craig Evans was recently interviewed by the Veracity Hill program and in it he tells his side of the story about P.Oxy. 5345 (formerly “First-century Mark”). In terms of new info (at least I think it’s new), he says that his info on it came by way of Dan Wallace [update: he misspoke] and he doesn’t know what all the “hubub” is about. It’s just a case of a papyrologist changing his mind and anyway a 2nd/3rd-century fragment of Mark is still the earliest for Mark and that’s great.

He also responds to “two or three smart alecks” in the blogosphere who have critiqued his view of autograph survival and mentions in passing that he’s working on a book on Jesus and the manuscripts. The discussion of manuscripts starts after the 46 minute mark with the pericope adulterae and the ending of Mark.