Thursday, December 03, 2009

Congratulations to Amy Donaldson

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Congratulations to Amy Donaldson, who today (Dec. 3) successfully defended her dissertation on “Explicit References to New Testament Variant Readings Among Greek and Latin Church Fathers,” in partial fulfillment of requirements for the Ph.D. degree at the University of Notre Dame (her dissertation committee included Brian Daley (chair), Robin Darling Young, David Aune, and Michael Holmes). In addition to a discussion of many individual passages and variant readings that are mentioned by one or more of the Greek and Latin fathers, the dissertation includes a very comprehensive catalog of explicit references by fathers up through the time of Augustine in the early fifth century (although later works are sometimes included when they contribute significantly to the discussion). In short, the desideratum wished for by Nestle and Metzger has now been accomplished. It is to be hoped that the dissertation (the catalog, in particular) will be published sooner than later (though university requirements and other circumstances may delay matters somewhat).

Hearty congrats and best wishes to Amy for this accomplishment.

10 comments

  1. This represents a much-needed tool, and should be eminently useful. Congratulations once more.

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  2. I'm interested in the thesis' definition of "explicit."

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  3. Congreatulations to Amy Donaldson. . . . That is, to Dr. Amy Donaldson!

    Does the dissertation actually include an exhaustive list of explicit references to textual variants in all patristic writings up to the era of John of Damascus?

    Also . . . we still need another candidate to do this sort of thing for such references in Syriac patristic writings.

    Yours in Christ,

    James Snapp, Jr.

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  4. Waitaminute; upon settling down and reading the post more carefully (these library computers have timers so I sometimes am in a hurry), I see that this was only a /partial/ fulfillment of the requirements, and that the catalog only extends to the time of Augustine with selected later works.

    Well it will still be helpful, and congratulations are still very much in order.

    Yours in Christ,

    James Snapp, Jr.

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  5. Congratulations to Amy! It seems that dissertations in textual criticism are raining down on us these days!

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  6. Thank you to Mike Holmes for putting the word out, and for serving on my dissertation committee. To address a couple of the questions here:

    "Explicit" means where a father actually mentions there is more than one reading in a text, and often cites some kind of manuscript evidence. The term "explicit" is taken from Metzger and is used here intentionally to connect my work with previous work by Metzger on this subject.

    The catalogue of texts is as comprehensive as I could make it for Greek and Latin fathers, reaching as late as the 12th century, but the discussion of the texts focuses only on the early centuries, roughly through the time of Augustine.

    I fully agree that the same thing needs to be done for Syriac. I had to draw the line somewhere for the sake of being able to complete the dissertation, and the Syriac materials were consequently excluded.

    "Partial fulfillment" is just technical language to say that I still have one more hoop to jump through, which is submitting the final copy of the dissertation to the graduate school. Otherwise, the work, and the degree, are completed (thanks be to God!).

    Thank you everyone for the congratulations.

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  7. Thanks for the comment Amy and congratulations. Let us know any publication news!

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  8. Congratulations to Amy!

    It seems we have these congratz every week, like Tommy noted. It is a good sign. TC is alive and well :)

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  9. Congratulations Dr. Amy Donaldson! Might some of your work be online or soon forthcoming?

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  10. Congratulations, Amy! We don't know each other, but I am a first year student in the Early Christian Studies program. I had "Introduction to Early Christianity" with Fr. Daley this semester and he mentioned your dissertation to me because I am interested in textual studies. Hopefully it will be available for check-out in the library soon.

    Are you familiar with the Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum project in Vienna, and Corpus Christianorum in Brepols? I was wondering to what extent the current state of the patristic texts influenced your project. Did you use Migne? Will the work that is being done on establishing better critical editions of the fathers allow the findings of your project to be honed?

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