14th Birmingham Colloquium on the Textual Criticism

Hugh Houghton sends word that the call for papers it out for the next Birmingham Colloquium. I wish I could say I have been to one of these but I’ve never been able to make it. I’ve heard they’re wonderful and I have certainly benefitted from many of the published papers over the years. 

Details

The call for papers for the 14th Birmingham Colloquium on the Textual Criticism of the New Testament is now open.

The colloquium will be held in Birmingham from 9th to 11th April 2025. It is in conjunction with the AHRC-DFG GALaCSy project, currently investigating the earliest translations of the Pauline Epistles.

The topic of the Colloquium will therefore be The Pauline Epistles, with particular focus on the ancient translations. Proposals are invited for papers of around 25 minutes on this topic. A title and brief abstract should be sent to colloquium@contacts.bham.ac.uk by Wednesday 18th December 2024. It is expected that presenters will be there in person, although we hope to broadcast papers on Zoom as in 2023.

The selection will be announced and booking will open early in 2025. For more information, please see the news page at: https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/news/2024/birmingham-colloquium-2025-call-for-papers

Book Notices

Following Tommy’s post about an older book newly released as an ebook, I thought I would share some of the books that have recently come to my attention that might be of interest to our readers. 

I’ve only read one of them (Gordon’s) and can recommend it as really excellent. But, since I’ll have a review coming out soon, I’ll save my comments for that. Allen’s book just arrived and I’ve only dipped in, but it will be of special interest to ETC readers. Though Vallejo’s book has been out for a while, I’ve just got a copy and started it. So far, it’s a lot of fun and the chapters are super short, making it an easy side read. Mugridge’s is the only one I haven’t seen in person and haven’t read any of. So, I can’t say anything personal about it except that it follows his Copying Early Christian Texts (2016). 

The descriptions below are from the publishers.

Words Are Not Enough: Paratexts, Manuscripts, and the Real New Testament
by Garrick V. Allen

An innovative study of the manuscript history of the New Testament, encompassing its paratexts—titles, cross-references, prefaces, marginalia, and more. How did the Christian scriptures come to be? In Words Are Not Enough, Garrick V. Allen  argues that our exploration of the New Testament’s origins must take account of more than just the text on the page. Where did the titles, verses, and chapters come from? Why do these extras, the paratexts, matter? Allen traces the manuscript history of scripture from our earliest extant texts through the Middle Ages to illuminate the origins of the printed Bibles we have today. Allen’s research encompasses formatting, titles, prefaces, subscriptions, cross-references, marginalia, and illustrations. Along the way, he explains how anonymous scribes and scholars contributed to our framing—and thereby our understanding—of the New Testament. But Allen does not narrate this history to try to unearth a pristine authorial text. Instead, he argues that this process of change is itself sacred. On the handwritten page, scripture and tradition meet. Students, scholars, and any curious reader will learn how the messy, human transmission of the sacred text can enrich our biblical interpretation.

The Bible: A Global History 
by Bruce Gordon

For Christians, the Bible is a book inspired by God. Its eternal words are transmitted across the world by fallible human hands. Following Jesus’s departing instruction to go out into the world, the Bible has been a book in motion from its very beginnings, and every community it has encountered has read, heard, and seen the Bible through its own language and culture. In The Bible, Bruce Gordon tells the astounding story of the Bible’s journey around the globe and across more than two thousand years, showing how it has shaped and been shaped by changing beliefs and believers’ radically different needs. The Bible has been a tool for violence and oppression, and it has expressed hopes for liberation. God speaks with one voice, but the people who receive it are scattered and divided—found in desert monasteries and Chinese house churches, in Byzantine cathedrals and Guatemalan villages. Breathtakingly global in scope, The Bible tells the story of this sacred book through the stories of its many and diverse human encounters, revealing not a static text but a living, dynamic cultural force.

Scribes, Motives, and Manuscripts: Evaluating Trends in New Testament Textual Criticism
by Alan Mugridge

In this volume Alan Mugridge reviews claims that scribes of New Testament manuscripts altered the text of their copies to further their own beliefs, to stop people using them to support opposing beliefs, or for some other purpose. He discusses the New Testament passages about which these claims are made in detail, noting their context, exegesis, and supporting manuscripts. He concludes that while a small number of such claims are valid, most are doubtful because, unless a scribe’s habits are clear in one manuscript, we cannot know how the changes came about, why they were made, who made them, and when they were made. He argues that the bulk of the erroneous readings in New Testament manuscripts reviewed were made by scribal slips during the copying process, and not in order to further anyone’s personal agenda, adding strength to the reliability of the Greek New Testament text available today, despite the need to refine current editions to be as close as possible to the original text.

Papyrus: The Invention of Books in the Ancient World 
by Irene Vallejo, trans. by Charlotte Whittle

Papyrus is the story of the book’s journey from oral tradition to scrolls to codices, and how that transition laid the very foundation of Western culture. Award-winning author Irene Vallejo evokes the great mosaic of literature in the ancient world from Greece’s itinerant bards to Rome’s multimillionaire philosophers, from opportunistic forgers to cruel teachers, erudite librarians to defiant women, all the while illuminating how ancient ideas about education, censorship, authority, and identity still resonate today. Crucially, Vallejo also draws connections to our own time, from the library in war-torn Sarajevo to Oxford’s underground labyrinth, underscoring how words have persisted as our most valuable creations.

The Epistle of Jude: Its Text and Transmission as E-book

My monograph The Epistle of Jude: Its Text and Transmission is now available as an e-book for the first time through Amazon (Kindle).

Since the publisher went out of business and the dsitributor Eisenbrauns became an imprint of PSU Press many years ago it has been difficult to get the paperback but now it is possible to order the book in three different formats through Amazon:

E-book (Kindle) $9.99

Paperback $19.99 

Hardback $29.99

    The study treats the textual tradition of the Epistle of Jude. The nucleus of the study is an exhaustive critical apparatus presenting the evidence of 560 Greek MSS, including dozens of lectionaries. The major part of these textual witnesses have not received the attention they deserve. Now, for the first time, all these MSS have been collated in a complete book of the NT. The complete collation has brought many new readings to light, some of which were only known through ancient versions, and previously known and important readings have gained additional support.

As a comparison, the Editio Critica Maior of Jude present the evidence of ca 140 manuscripts and Metzger's textual commentary covers Jude in four pages whereas my textual commentary encompasses 105 pages.

 

Extracts from some reviews:

 

”Very few doctoral studies can claim to be magisterial, however, Wasserman’s study rightly deserves such a title. He presents an exhaustive study of the manuscript tradition of the Epistle of Jude. What this means in practice is assembling and collating the readings from 560 Greek manuscripts of this letter. The evidence is drawn from familiar papyrus and uncial texts, but the ground-breaking aspect is the integration of evidence from hundreds of minuscule manuscripts and lectionaries."—Paul Foster, School of Divinity, University of Edinburgh in Expository Times, 118, 2007


"This is obviously essential reading for those engaged in textual criticism of the NT, and particularly of Jude. It is also very important for anyone with a more general interest in Jude and, to a lesser extent, 2 Peter. Finally, it provides a helpful update on the current state of textual criticism for all scholars of the NT who may (like the author of this review) attend to the subject less than they should."—Terrance Callan, The Athenaeum of Ohio, in Catholic Biblical Quarterly, 69, 2007

 
"Wasserman's thesis is unsurpassed in accuracy and completeness. . . .  W. gives the reader the information necessary for checking the reliability of his text-critical presentation of Jude. In fact, he gives accurate and compete information about most text-critical problems. . . . I can only congratulate the young doctor on a good piece of scholarship."—René Kieffer, Uppsala University, in Journal of Theological Studies, 68, 2007


"Wasserman has made available to the text critic a massive amount of manuscript evidence for the book of Jude. The manuscript evidence is exhaustive and the textual commentary thoughtful. Commentators and text critics must deal with Wasserman’s evidence and textual conclusions in any future work on this little epistle. One may apply the same criteria and arrive at different conclusions, but no scholar can afford to dismiss Wasserman’s thoughtful and measured text decisions. "—Stephen D. Patton, North Greenville University in Review of Biblical Literature, April 2008

 
"It cannot be said of many doctoral theses that they have made a major and permanent contribution to human knowledge, but it can be said of this one. what has been achieved in the course of this published version of a doctoral dissertation at Lund University is quite incredible. The author has examined and collated the text of Jude in 560 different manuscripts, that is, in virtually all the continuous-text manuscripts of the epistle. Thus a work has been done that has considerably advanced our knowledge of the text of the New testament and will not need to be repeated. such full collations previously had existed only for the Apocalypse.”— P.J. Williams, Tyndale House in Themelios, 33: 1, 2008


"Wasserman’s presentation of evidence as completely as possible is really laudable, and the caution and reason of the author’s argument and the aim to encourage the readers to decide independently point in a direction in which textual criticism may get out of its ‘esoteric’ corner, and textual history can also become an important aid for exegesis." — Jörg Frey, University of Zurich in TC: A Journal of Biblical Literature 15, 2010 

Solving a Puzzle in P136

The following is a blog post I first wrote while on sabbatical in 2022 in Wake Forest. While there, I spent a nice afternoon with Libbie Schrader Polczer at the wonderful David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library examining their Greek NT manuscripts. One of those is P136.

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This last week I had the good fortune of getting to spend some time with Duke University’s sole NT papyrus, P. Duke Inv. 1377 (P136). The GA number is your tipoff that this is a recently published papyrus. Andrew and Valerie Smith published the editio princeps only in 2018. It’s so recent that it didn’t make it into the ECM Acts. (As an aside, one of the great things about textual criticism is that we regularly get new material to work with like this.)

It’s a sixth century fragment of Acts and it has some surprising features. The script is the first surprise. This is not your typical six-century majuscule. The Smiths identify it as chancery style and it does fit Kenyon’s description of 6th/7th century non-literary style for Byzantine papyri (Paleography of Greek Papyri, pp. 49-51). 

The more surprising feature is that P136 has text on both sides but is not a codex. The writing is upside down on the recto relative to the verso. The Smiths suggest it is most likely a scroll, written in rotulus format (meaning the text flows vertically rather than horizontally). This format apparently saw a resurgence of use in the sixth century. If this is the right format, the Smiths’ reconstruction would allow for Acts 1:1-13:43 in the original scroll. That’s a little less than half the book (based roughly on the pages in my NA27). 

One last feature that surprised me: it’s big. Bigger than I expected, at least. It would have been a good-size scroll. Here is Libbie holding it up to show the size.

All that is by way of introduction. My real interest here is in a curious reading in P136. I was tipped off by the Duke website which says, 

Text varies from Nestle-Aland 28th edition Novum Testamentum Graecum in 3 locations, most significantly at 3v (Acts 4:28), which reads η χειρ σου και η δουλη instead of η χειρ σου και η βουλη σου.

That lack of σου is not surprising. It’s missing in over a dozen witnesses according to the ECM, including 02* and 03. What is odd is δουλη for βουλη. It’s only a difference of one letter, and the word δουλοι does occur in the next line. But the result has Peter and John claiming that those who conspired to kill Jesus did “whatever your [God’s] hand and your (female) servant had predestined to take place.” That’s definitely odd. 

The letter in question on line 3 of the ↑ side

To be sure, the letter certainly did look to me like a delta not a beta. Then again, I had no prior experience with this script. I do, however, have enough general experience reading Greek manuscripts to know that two letters that look the same at first may well turn out to be different entirely. To add to my suspicion, I checked the NT.VMR transcription and it has βουλη instead of δουλη. (I do not know the source of this transcription.)

So, is this a delta or a beta? Unfortunately, there are no other betas in P136, but there are multiple deltas. And what we can see is that in each case, the final stroke ends down and does not connect with the next letter. This distinction may seem slight, but it is typical of how letters are distinguished in cursive scripts like minuscule. I’m not too surprised to see it here. It’s a subtle difference to us, but they must have recognized it easily enough.

Deltas (orange dot) vs. beta (blue dot).

We can confirm our suspicion by looking at comparanda. The Smiths point to P. Geneva 210 as “remarkably similar” to P136 and we can see why. The hand is very similar. Lucky for us, it has plenty of both betas and deltas and, sure enough, we find the same distinction between them.

P. Geneva 210 showing deltas (orange dot) and betas (blue dot). Image source

Again, the distinguishing mark is that deltas end on a down stroke whereas betas don’t. Instead, they connect in some way with the next letter.

One more example. P. Berol. 7027 is written in a decidedly more elaborate hand than our previous examples. It’s much harder to read to my eyes and so I haven’t highlighted all the examples I could. Here, the beta is not quite the same as P136 or P. Geneva 210. Instead, it looks much more like the form of we find in later minuscule (it looks like a u to me). The key distinction is still the same, however. The delta ends on a down stroke and the beta does not.

P. Berol. 7027 showing deltas (orange dot) and betas (blue dot). Image source

From these examples—both within P136 and without—I think we can confidently say that P136 reads βουλη not δουλη in Acts 4:28 and is a witness to the text otherwise known in all other manuscripts at this point. Kudos to whoever did the transcription for the VMR (anyone know?) for catching this before me. It certainly does look like a delta, but a closer inspection confirms we have a beta. There is still plenty to puzzle us about P136, but I hope to have shown that this one letter is not one of them.

Notable Textual Changes in the NRSVue NT

Produced by the National Council of Churches, the NRSV has long been the Bible of mainline Protestant denominations, those in the ecumenical movement, and the wider academy. It has never really been popular among evangelicals to my knowledge. That unpopularity goes all the way back to the controversy over its predecessor, the RSV. But that history is for another day. What we can say is that the NRSV’s reach is still in the top ten of English translations according to data from NPD Bookscan and published by the ECPA: the NRSV was the tenth bestselling English translation last month. 

Be that as it may, readers may not remember that six years ago I shared news about a planned update to the NRSV. You may also not remember that textual criticism was front and center as a justification for the need to revise, going so far as to name the CBGM itself. So, text-critical changes have been prominent in the justification for the NRSVue since the start. Besides that, the NRSVue is also noteworthy for text-critics because the general NT editor was none other than our own ETC blog member, Michael W. Holmes. (For the full list of contributors, see here.) 

So, what were the results? According to the preface, “The NRSVue presents approximately 12,000 substantive edits and 20,000 total changes, which include alterations in grammar and punctuation.” Obviously, most of these cannot be text-critical and many are in the OT. The new preface does have a pretty detailed section on textual criticism, at least as far as translation prefaces go. It says:

For the New Testament, the team based its work on three recent editions of the Greek New Testament: (1) The Greek New Testament, 5th revised edition (United Bible Societies, 2014); (2) The Greek New Testament: SBL Edition (Society of Biblical Literature and Logos Bible Software, 2010); and, (3) for Acts and the Catholic Letters, Novum Testamentum Graecum: Editio Critica Maior (Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 2013, 2017). Occasionally these editions differ in regard to text or punctuation; in such cases the team followed the reading best supported by a combination of both traditional and more recent approaches and considerations. As in the original NRSV, double brackets are used to enclose a few passages that are generally regarded to be later additions to the text but that have been retained because of their antiquity and importance in the textual tradition. Here and there in the notes the phrase “Other ancient authorities read” identifies alternative readings preserved by Greek manuscripts and early versions. In both Testaments, other possible translations of the text are indicated by the word “Or.” 

Textual criticism continues to evolve. Not only have additional manuscripts become available, but some of the goals and methodology have changed over the last several decades. This is more the case for reconstructing the books of the Old Testament and Apocrypha, but it is generally true for the entire enterprise. In the NRSVue, care was taken not to push too far ahead of the existing critical editions or to turn the translation itself and its notes into a critical edition. Nevertheless, a careful reader will notice in general a more generous use of the notes for alternative readings. The editors hope that this work will serve translators in the future.

In light of the emphasis on textual criticism, I wondered what changes I could find. This is just from my spot-checking, mind you. I haven’t found a list of changes anywhere yet.

• Matt. 19.9: “And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another commits adultery, and he who marries a divorced woman commits adultery.” The longer reading was in the footnote before along with the reading of B and some others. I’m guessing this change is due to Holmes’s influence given his 1990 JBL article on the subject which you should all read and heed.
• Mark 1.1: “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ.” To which I can only say, booooo! (The right reading is in the footnote and at least they got Mark 1.41 right.)
• Luke 10:41-42: “But the Lord answered her, ‘Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things, but few things are needed—indeed only one.[a] Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.’ ” Note a gives the shorter reading that was the main text in the NRSV: “Other ancient authorities read but only one thing is needed.”
• John 1.18: “No one has ever seen God. It is the only Son, himself God, who[f] is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.” Note f reads “Other ancient authorities read is the only Son who.” The former edition read “It is God the only Son, who...” with a slightly different note.
• Acts 3.13: “The God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob,[c] the God of our ancestors, has glorified his servant Jesus, whom you handed over and rejected in the presence of Pilate, though he had decided to release him.” Footnote c says, “Other ancient authorities read and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob,” which is what the NRSV read before.
• Eph. 5.22: the paragraph break is now after 5.21 instead of before with a new footnote that says there is no verb in 5.22. That’s an interesting combination of judgments, but at least can claim the support of Vaticanus.
• 1 Pet 4.16: footnote now says, “Other ancient authorities read in this respect” (for “in this name”).
• 2 Pet 3.10: footnote now says, “Other ancient authorities read will not be found or will be burned up.” The first part of that refers to the conjecture in NA28 which has support only of a few Coptic and Syriac witnesses.
• Jude 5: “Now I desire to remind you, though you are fully informed, once and for all, that Jesus, who saved a people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who did not believe.” The NRSV had “the Lord.”

For more on the process behind the NRSVue, see https://www.christiancentury.org/article/interview/even-better-bible

The Women Behind Your Critical Editions

Today, in cooperation with the INTF in Münster, we co-publish an important post written by Greg Paulson and Katie Leggett in order to highlight some of the women behind the critical editions in wide use today. Paulson and Legett have interviewed five women currently working on the editions, talking about their background, qualifications, and unique contributions to the editions. (Dora Panella in the picture is not currently working on the editions but might get something in later on.)

The staff at the INTF is half female and has more female NT text critics than any other institution in the field. Therefore we are happy to highlight these amazing women here!

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By Greg Paulson with Katie Leggett

From left to right: Katrin Landefeld, Megan Burnett, Marie-Luise Lakmann, Annette Hüffmeier, Dora Panella, Katharina Sandmeier

It's well known that the critical editions produced at the INTF in Münster—the Nestle-Aland, the UBS Greek New Testament, and the Editio Critica Maior (ECM)—are renowned worldwide and provide the basis for almost all modern New Testament translations around the globe. Most will also know that Barbara Aland was the first female director of the INTF, serving from 1983-2004, and leaving an indelible legacy on the institute and the wider field of New Testament textual criticism. A lesser-known fact, however, and one that we are also very proud of, is that half of the INTF's current staff working on these acclaimed critical editions is female.

In this blogpost we would like to introduce you to some of the highly qualified women behind your critical editions. Through these short interviews we hope you get to know them better and see how each of their contributions has a direct impact on the most widely used Greek New Testaments in the world.

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Dr. Marie-Luise Lakmann

Tell us about your academic background and what brought you to the INTF:

After studying Classical Philology (Greek, Latin, Pedagogy) at the University of Münster, I began a project called Platonism in Antiquity in 1985 led by Matthias Baltes, which was a comprehensive study of the history of Plato's philosophy in texts and commentaries. As part of this project, I wrote my doctoral thesis called "Der Platoniker Tauros in der Darstellung des Aulus Gellius" (Leiden 1993). In 2002, the INTF advertised a position to collaborate in developing a digital edition with the most important manuscripts of the New Testament, called "Digitale Edition der überlieferungsgeschichtlich wichtigsten Handschriften des Neuen Testaments mit kritischem Apparat auf einer Website," better known as NT Transcripts (http://nttranscripts.uni-muenster.de/). 

Text-Types Conference

Yesterday afternoon we wrapped up our first overseas Text & Canon Institute Colloquium which was on the topic of text-types in NT textual criticism. We had a very good time over two days discussing the origin of text-types, the current problems with them, and their possible future. You can see the list of topics here. We hope to publish the proceedings in due course. In the meantime, you can read this summary from Nelson Hsieh who was there.

Putting on an event like this is no small affair. So, let me offer some thanks to those who made it possible. Thanks to all who participated both presenters and attendees for making it such a collegial time; to our hosts at Lanier Theological Library at Yarnton Manor who could not have taken better care of us; to our supporters who made this financially possible for the TCI; and to Colin O’Bier, our operations manager, for keeping all the logistics humming not just his week but over the last year he’s worked on this.

Here are some pictures.