The Most Common Misconception about the CBGM

The CBGM, invented by Gerd Mink, is not the easiest method to understand. I think we would all agree on that. Various attempts have been made to explain it including mine and Tommy's. Given the learning curve it takes to understand it, misunderstandings are inevitable. I addressed some of these in my PhD thesis. But what is the most common one? And what does the inventor think is the most common misunderstanding of his own method? Here is Mink's answer from the recent Festschrift for Holger Strutwolf:

The most common misconception when using the CBGM is that the role of potential ancestors in constructing stemmata is not understood, and the connections in textual flow diagrams are read like connections in a stemma. However, one must resist the suggestiveness of these graphs. The textual flow diagram is not a stemma. (p. 579)

I would agree with Mink on this as I argued in my dissertation. Here is what I say there in my chapter on the Harklean text:

textual flow diagrams should not be used for the purpose of studying the text’s overall development. Their simplicity can have a mesmerizing effect. But their clarity can become a hindrance to their proper use when it tempts one to make more of the distinct relationships than is appropriate. Most importantly, they should not be treated as stemmata. (p. 88)

In our intro to the CBGM, Tommy and I have a subsection in ch. 4 devoted just to this point. There we say this:

The fact that there is always far more genealogical data than is shown in the textual flow diagrams brings us to our second caution: a textual flow diagram is not a stemma. Textual flow diagrams reduce and simplify the total genealogical picture, somewhat like a map of the London Underground. They are very good for studying coherence at a point of variation, but they are not good for studying the history of the text on a larger scale. Because a textual flow diagram usually connects each witness with one potential ancestor and does so by agreement whenever possible, we need to resist the temptation to interpret it as a traditional stemma, giving us a map of the text’s historical development. (p. 92)

And, back in 2019, I gave an example of the problem of confusing textual flow and stemma on this very blog.

So, heed the warning: Do not use textual flow diagrams as if they were stemmas. They are neither designed nor intended for use in making simple historical judgments about manuscript relationships. Along with that, do not use them to try to critique the CBGM as being non-historical. In short, do not use them for historical judgments in a box with a fox or in a house with a mouse, do not use them Sam I am!

Recent Unsubstantiated Critiques of the CBGM (Pastorelli and Alexanderson)

At the SNTS in Leuven last summer, David Pastorelli came up to me during a break and handed over an off-print of an article, "La mise en oeuvre de la cohérence prégénéalogique dans le cadre de la Coherence-Based Genealogical Method: évaluation critique," BABELAO 10-11 (2022): 169-188, in which he criticizes the Coherence-Based Genealogical Method making ample references to my and Peter Gurry's introduction to the method. When I read the article I just felt that it was so full of misunderstandings that I did not know where to begin. Unfortunately, Pastorelli has never participated in our text-critical seminar at SNTS, where we could have had a dialogue about his concerns.

In any case, Klaus Wachtel has now actually taken the time to offer a response to Pastorelli under the heading, "Selective Reading and Unsubstiantiated Criticism" on the INTF Blog, for which I am grateful. In the blogpost, Wachtel refers to one of the many unsubstantiated statements that Pastorelli cites in his article, namely a statement that he has drawn from Bengt Alexanderson's 2014 critique of the CBGM: "This is all arbitrary, a 'place of variation', a reading, a variant, a passage can be anything" (Pastorelli, 179).  

Many years ago I was asked by a Swedish journal to review Alexanderson's study. I wrote the review in Swedish (Swedish version here), but  I have now translated it below for our blog readers – it is another example of criticism against the CBGM which is totally off the mark. (The critique of the CBGM are in his chapters 3–4.)

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Review of Bengt Alexanderson, Problems in the New Testament: Old Manuscripts and Papyri, the New Genealogical Method (CBGM) and the Editio Critica Maior (ECM) (Acta Regiae Societatis Scientiarum et Litterarum Gothoburgensis. Humaniora 48). 146 pages. Kungl. Vetenskaps- och Vitterhets-Samhället i Göteborg 2014.

Bengt Alexanderson’s short study is divided into four chapters: (1) An analysis of textual variants in four of the oldest textual witnesses to the Gospel of John (P66, P75, Codices Sinaiticus and Vaticanus); (2) A survey of how Barbara Aland has analyzed early NT papyri in three studies; (3) A critical treatment of the Coherence-Based Genealogical Method (CBGM), developed by Gerd Mink of the Institut für neutestamentliche Textforschung in Münster and applied for the Editio Critica Maior (ECM) and, in extension, also Nestle-Aland Novum Testamentum Graece (from the 28^th edition and onwards); (4) An evaluation of the second edition of the Editio Critica Maior IV. Catholic Letters (“ECM2”).

Comparing New Testament Manuscripts

Recently I had some reason to compare a number of manuscripts in Acts and was happy to be able to use the CBGM tools for this, in particular the ‘Comparison of Witnesses’. The reason for this post is to point out some issues that are perhaps at first sight less intuitive. This is not criticism of the way the data set is constructed, as the actual manuscripts are always messier than what can be captured in a database.

1. Beware of comparing manuscripts to ‘A’, the reconstructed initial text. Why? Because at every place where ‘A’ has a ‘split reading’ it does not show up in the actual comparison; ‘A’ is treated as if it presents no reading here. Since the number of split readings equals around 2% of the total variant readings, there are some potential issues.

For example in Acts 1:6, we have ‘A’ and ‘01’ compared with ‘Show Agreements’ activated, and we see that the split reading at Acts 1:6/10 is simply not there.

2.    Equal does not always mean that things are the same. This caught me out when I was comparing P50 – arguably a difficult manuscript to encode – and 01. At three places differences between these two are given as ‘equal’ (‘=’) in the list (see below) despite a difference between the two: at Acts 10:28/22 (P50: ανδρι ιουδαιου; 01 ανδρι ιουδαιω), Acts 10:29/17 (P50: ουν; 01: -), and Acts 10:30/50 (P50: μου; 01: εμου).

In the actual apparatus of the ECM it becomes clear why these three differences are treated as being the same. At the first two places the original hand of P50 is deemed to have made an obvious scribal error which was corrected by the original hand, at the third place 01 is deemed to give a mere orthographic variant. This is all perfectly justifiable, but it is good to be aware of this when relying on the ‘Comparison of Witnesses’ to give you all differences. You would not get this extra information from simply relying on the list of Agreements/Differences.

3.    Not equal does not always mean that you will see the difference. The example to illustrate this comes actually from the ECM apparatus, which gives here more detailed information than the comparison of witnesses does. Nothing comes up in the comparison at Acts 10:30/10, yet the ECM tells us that P50 has a scribal error in the word απο (recorded as P50f) namely οπο. Again, I can see the rationale why such difference does not show up in the Comparison of Witnesses. However, there is some inconsistency in recording corrections by the original hand on itself in P50 (as the first two examples in 2. above). At Acts 10:30/18 the first hand corrects τη to ταυτη, which – in analogy to 10:28/20 and 10:29/17 – should probably be recorded or show up somewhere. But this time it is not found as a 'difference that is equal' or as a remark in the apparatus of the ECM.

4. Despite best intentions, the apparatus at ECM can still beat me. Again this has to do P50, and in particular how P50 is treated at the place of the split reading at Acts 10:28/34-38 in the ECM. The top line of the split reading has the support of P50C*V (so the probable reading of the original hand correcting itself). But then for the complete absence of this passage (absence, so not an omission) we find P50(C)*, and what this might mean beats me, though I trust there is a perfectly logical explanation.

As so often in scholarship, it is only by using a tool that we learn about its strengths and limitations. I am still impressed how much the data gathering and sharing by the INTF has enabled progress and deeper understanding of the textual tradition of the New Testament, yet data are never as hard as we want them to be. 

ECM Mark and More on the Way

Here’s some happy news out of Muenster: “The ECM of Mark is currently being printed and will be available soon.” I think there is an SBL session on the Mark data. (That reminds me I need to register for SBL.) You can see the initial book listing here which gives July 26 as the release date. More from Muenster:

After the ECM of the Gospel of Mark appears in print, we’ll upload a list of textual changes and split guiding lines online. Like Acts, there will be an online textual commentary, a digital version on the NTVMR, the CBGM (with downloadable docker container), and the Patristic citations database.

We hope these resources will guide readers to better understand the data behind the editions and can provide a solid starting place for further research to take place. Now that a Docker container is available for Acts, anyone can now experiment with the CBGM, which may be the best way to learn how the method works firsthand.

Don’t miss that last sentence. The CBGM has a version you can edit yourself (albeit with some tech know-how). The “black box” is open for anyone with enough motivation to explore it.

The CBGM of Acts for Download

Greg Paulson of the INTF in Münster has notified me that the CBGM for Acts can now be downloaded here. 

Greg has also made a tutorial how to install it and a brief introduction to how the CBGM works (very nice red circle in the image, just like the ones I use in my powerpoints, but no speech bubbles though).

 

In this connection, I would also like to mention Joey McCollum's crash course on the CBGM here and his own “Open CBGM” resource page here. 

 

Finally, my and Peter Gurry’s fuller introduction to the CBGM is now available with a 30% discount (code AM2020 at checkout, good to 31 Dec), in paperback ($15.40) or hardback ($25.90).

Optimal Substemmata Now Available for Acts

Just today I noticed that the CBGM for Acts has added substemmata to its repertoire. This is really exciting. When I produced the portion of the global stemma for the Catholic Letters in my thesis, Klaus Wachtel had to personally provide me substemmata using software on a very old Mac. And the data were not publicly available. The ability to do this online means that, using my faster approach explained here (pp. 167–168) and here (p. 102), one could probably put together a global stemma for Acts without too much trouble. I should say that I can’t find any documentation on the CBGM site for this new feature. If anyone has more details about it, please let me know.

Joey McCollum: Introducing the open-cbgm library

The following is a guest post from Joey McCollum. Joey is a research associate at Virginia Tech, a co-editor of the Solid Rock Greek New Testament (with Stephen Brown), and one of the translators behind Max and Moritz in Biblical Greek (with Brent Niedergall, Dave Massa, and Steve Young). I’m very happy to share with you his independent work to produce an editable version of the CBGM. The changes he introduces are worth discussing and I hope that conversation can begin here on the ETC blog.

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1. Introduction & Goals

The open-cbgm library is an open-source software implementation of the Coherence-Based Genealogical Method (CBGM).  In this guest post, I’d like to highlight how the open-cbgm library has accomplished the following objectives.

When I began the project back in October 2019, I had a few goals in mind. First, I wanted it to be open source, so that others could use the CBGM from end-to-end independently, study the code to understand what’s going on “under the hood,” or copy and modify the code to suit their own needs. Second, I wanted the library to fit into existing workflows with other text-critical tools. Third, I wanted to implement features that other textual critics have expressed an interest in seeing in the CBGM. And finally, I wanted the library to be fast—specifically, fast enough to handle the daunting task of constructing a complete global stemma for a book of the New Testament.

2. How It Works

Regarding the first goal, I’m pleased to say that the software is now freely accessible on GitHub at https://github.com/jjmccollum/open-cbgm. It works on Linux, Mac, and Windows computers. Platform-specific instructions on installing and using it are available on the GitHub page.

Towards the second goal, the open-cbgm library works with inputs in the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) XML format, a digital humanities standard used by transcription and collation tools developed by the Institute of Textual Scholarship and Electronic Editing (ITSEE) and supported in the INTF’s Virtual Manuscript Room (VMR) workspace. The TEI guidelines offer natural ways to encode lists of witnesses, variation units, and collation data, and the TEI graph-related elements lend themselves well to representing local stemmata of variant readings (see Fig. 1).

Figure 1. Representation of a local stemma in TEI XML. The “directed” graph type indicates that specified edges are one-directional. The “node” elements correspond to readings, and the “arc” elements to proposed genealogical relationships between prior and posterior readings. Note the inclusion of subvariants (the defective reading cf) and ambiguous readings (zw-b/d).

The idea is that with minimal modification (the addition of local stemmata to variation units), the output of existing tools could serve as the input to the open-cbgm library. To my knowledge, no one else has encoded local stemmata using TEI XML, so my hope is that the practice will catch on. It seems more convenient, consistent, and compliant with known standards to have all of the input data in one place.

Edmondson Thesis on CBGM Now Available Free Online

A recent email from Gerd Mink reminded me that Andrew Edmondson’s Birmingham doctoral thesis is now online here. Andrew and I exchanged some emails in the first year of my own PhD and I’ve been looking forward to the completion of his work ever since. I’m especially interested because he takes a different approach to the question and a different corpus than me. So, we now have the benefit of two (my own bias admitted) thorough examinations of the CBGM. I hope to read this soon. Congrats to Andrew!

An analysis of the coherence-based genealogical method using phylogenetics

The Novum Testamentum Graecum: Editio Critica Maior is the first major critical edition of the New Testament for a century, aiming to document the New Testament’s textual history through its first millennium. To date, two of the six volumes have been published. As part of this project the Institut für neutestamentliche Textforschung in Münster has developed the Coherence-Based Genealogical Method (CBGM), a computer-aided method designed to handle complete sets of textual evidence and to identify their initial text and textual history. The CBGM is widely held to be difficult to understand and its results are treated with scepticism.

Phylogenetics is the study of relationships between groups of organisms and their evolutionary history. Phylogenetics and the CBGM (and wider textual criticism) have many commonalities. This thesis provides a thorough examination of the CBGM using phylogenetics.

Part One documents the literature surrounding the CBGM and includes a worked example of the process. Part Two explores the ECM data for John’s Gospel and identifies appropriate methods for applying phylogenetics to it. Part Three compares the results of phylogenetics and the CBGM. It concludes that the CBGM is producing valid results from the data, but could be improved in a number of ways.

Review Article of A Critical Examination of the CBGM

The latest issue of TC is chock full of good-looking articles—none of which I’ve been able to read yet. This issue also has a lengthy review article from Andrew Smith dealing with my published dissertation on the CBGM. Andrew was very kind to send me a pre-pub copy. It’s a real honor to have something you worked so long and hard on taken seriously in a venue like this. So, my thanks to TC for publishing it and especially to Andrew for his detailed and careful interaction. Once I emerge from end-of-semester-and-new-baby fog, I might offer some response. In the meantime, let me again thank Andrew and commend the article to you. Here’s the conclusion.

In conclusion, the CBGM deserves the serious scrutiny of the scholarly community outside the INTF, and Gurry’s examination of the method is the first major published work to start the conversation. The strengths of this book include the introduction to the history and reception of the method, the descriptions of the method’s process, and the straightforward examples of using the method found in the first two-thirds of the book. Additionally, Gurry’s clarifications regarding the referent of Ausgangstext in the process of editing the ECM serve as a good reminder that the text-critical community needs to clearly state presuppositions when producing a critical text of the Greek New Testament. The testing of the method’s parameters in chapter four begins a welcome exploration that could have had a more meaningful impact if supported by statistical analysis; this is a general weakness in the humanities when analyzing data such as these. The final third of the book raises some good questions about the use and future of the method, though Gurry’s answers are not always satisfying. His analysis of the method draws attention to the differing opinions of scholars regarding the CBGM and history, especially what is meant by history in each context. Finally, looking to the future, Gurry provides some helpful recommendations for moving forward with the CBGM. Some of his suggestions are fundamentally at odds with the method itself but discussing these in detail will also move the discussion forward.

Update: the book can be purchased here in time for your white elephant parties. 

Robinson and Bordalejo on the CBGM and 1 Peter 4.16

A recently posted article on Academia by Barbara Bordalejo and Peter Robinson spends some time on the interesting change in the NA28 at 1 Peter 4.16. There, the ECM and NA28 read ἐν τῷ μέρει τούτῳ instead of ἐν τῷ ὀνόματι τούτῳ. The change is noteworthy because μέρει is somewhat awkward but much more so because it’s only attested in the 9th century and later. All the early evidence—Greek and versional—is on the side of ὀνόματι. Hence the many editions and commentators that prefer ὀνόματι.

Bordalejo and Robinson are interested in this change because they see it as a case where

the effect of the CBGM is to act as a kind of sleight of hand, with the textual flow diagram suggesting that all the older manuscripts and versions amount to a single line of descent, and so (indeed) having no more stemmatic weight than the single line of descent represented by the Byzantine text (p. 22).

The problem they have is in the textual flow diagram which shows 01, 1739, and P72 deriving ὀνόματι  from 03.

As they explain,

the change appears first in Vaticanus (03) and thence descends to Sinaiticus Alexandrinus (01 02) [sic; they seem to think the “/2” after 01 means 02 but it doesn’t]
 P72 and 1739. This is in accord with the way in which the CBGM shows textual flow working. Because Sinaiticus has more variants from the Ausgangstext (350) than has Vaticanus (280), the textual flow shows the text of Sinaiticus as descended from Vaticanus. But this is simply not true. Sinaiticus is comprehensively not a copy of Vaticanus or descended from it. It is here that the exclusion of sub-ancestors from the textual flow diagrams becomes a problem. [Andrew C.] Edmondson’s representation of the textual flow appears to show all of 01 02 [sic] P72 and 1739 descending from 03. But this is not the case. Not one of these four [sic] manuscripts is a descendant of 03.

The problem here is that they read the textual flow diagram exactly the way it should not be read, namely, as if it were a traditional stemma. A textual flow diagram is not and should not be read as if it is telling us what the actual, historical ancestors were. Instead, it shows us the most closely related witness that has more ancestral readings (i.e., the closest potential ancestor in CBGM terms).

Because of this, they are exactly right to note that “It is possible that there might have been an exemplar below the archetype from which all of the uncials, P72 1739, and all the versions, might have descended.” This is indeed a possibility, especially given the loss of NT manuscripts. But what the coherence shows is that no matter which reading we set as initial (ὀνόματι or μέρει), the coherence suggests that the text probably did changed from μέρει to ὀνόματι in the course of transmission. As Tommy and I have written

This suggests that, if reading b was the original source of reading a, reading a must have nevertheless developed from b a number of times as the text was subsequently copied. The simpler explanation, in light of the transcriptional evidence already discussed, is that it also developed in this way in the first place. (New Approach, p. 73)

To be sure, anyone is welcome to set aside the evidence of coherence at this point in favor of what they might consider weightier, alternate evidence. The CBGM never forces our decision, it only provides additional evidence, evidence that must be interpreted. But it is to misread the evidence from the textual flow diagram to think that they suggest that 03 was the historical exemplar of P72, 01, and 1739. This is precisely what Tommy and I warn against in our book (see p. 92).

Bordalejo and Robinson also seem to think there is some difficulty with the reading ὀνόματι but I don’t see it and their appeal to the CEB and Good News Bible is a bit odd—as is their citation of the ETC blog as an example of “groups of fundamentalist Baptists with the motto ‘King James Only’, and a group of well-qualified scholars who assert the value of the Byzantine text under various labels: as ‘textus receptus’ or the ‘majority text’” (p. 18)!

Robinson and Bordalejo have long been at the forefront of so much in the field of digital stemmatics and I have profited from reading so much of their work. In this one case, however, I think a misunderstanding has led to wrong conclusion about the CBGM.

Coherence at 1 John 4.19

To follow up from yesterday’s post, here is the textual flow diagram and local stemma for 1 John 4.19/5 in INTF’s CBGM. Reading a = omit; b = αυτον; c = τον θεον; d = τον κυριον. 

In this diagram, none of the readings have perfect coherence as all show at least one witness needing a source outside its own attestation. In particular, reading a leads to b once and vice versa. But still, not bad coherence as a whole. Reading c has quite bad coherence, developing from b multiple times and maybe from a a few times as well. Reading d develops from b which is no surprise. Witness 6 is noteworthy in that it has close ancestors with reading b and c, suggesting that either could lead to the shorter reading as I said before. But 617 with reading b is closer and so more likely as a whole.

If we keep the same CBGM dataset but set the initial text (A) at this point to reading b instead of a, the coherence gets worse for a and becomes perfect for b. In short, more support for b and less for a.

To make things more interesting, here is the same attestation and local stemma but now from my custom version of the CBGM where the initial text (A) is defined as the Byzantine text across the entire Catholic Letters. Here we get perfect coherence for reading b and see it leading to the other three.

As with other types of evidence, the evidence from coherence is a balance of probabilities, but here it does give more support to reading b as the initial text than I expected it to. That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s enough to overturn other evidence for reading a, but it’s at least enough to make me reconsider it. It would be most ironic if this were a place where the CBGM supports Maurice Robinson’s Byzantine Priority position!

The CBGM Applied to the Old Testament

I often get asked if the CBGM could be used on the text of the Old Testament. The short answer is yes, it could be. There is nothing in principle that excludes any tradition from being used with the CBGM. The better question, of course, is should it be and I have had mixed thoughts about that. Well, my mixed thoughts aside, now it has been.

I have just come across an MDiv thesis completed at Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary earlier this year by a fellow named Dean G. Ellis. I’m traveling and have only had a chance to skim it, but I thought I would alert our readers to it.

The title is “Applying the Coherence-Based Genealogical Method (CBGM) to the Text of the Old Testament: An Evaluation.”

Here is the abstract:

The goal of this research is to apply the Coherence Based Genealogical Method (CBGM) to the Old Testament. Deuteronomy 5 was chosen to evaluate this method. This method is being used to evaluate General Epistles in the New Testament and will result in changes to the Editio Critica Maior of the New Testament. To date, this method has not been applied to the Old Testament. This study relied on the development of new software algorithms to align the Hebrew text and perform the CBGM analysis. Initial results indicate that this method is applicable to Old Testament texts and is able to propose a model for the transmission of the text. Textual relationships were identified, and a proposed route of textual transmission was determined. This method has many promising applications within Old Testament textual studies. It also has several strengths and weaknesses that are addressed.

An ‘Unanticipated Discussion of CBGM and P45’

Some of my students brought this video to my attention yesterday. It is James White, a well-known apologist and debater in the States, discussing the CBGM on his show The Dividing Line. Starting at about the 19:19 mark (video below), he mentions the Text und Textwert volumes, the difficulty of grasping the CBGM, the new THGNT as a kind of methodological push back against the CBGM, the correct (longer) reading at Mark 1.1, James Royse and singular readings, his own dissertation on P45, and some of the apologetic value of the CBGM and its data. He covers quite a bit.

Along the way, he says that the primary problem of the CBGM for most people is still the basic one of understanding it. I think he’s right about this and I have obviously been working to remedy that problem in my writing. But there is more work to be done, especially in explaining the method to pastors and laypeople. I will keep trying and, in the meantime, I say kudos to White for his efforts to understand the CBGM and explain it to his audience. For an “unanticipated” discussion of the method, he does a pretty good job describing it. May his tribe increase.

A New Approach to Textual Criticism – A Book that Will Keep You Awake

It is now possible to order my and Peter Gurry’s introduction to the CBGM from the SBL website or from Amazon.

Authors: Tommy Wasserman and Peter J. Gurry
ISBN: 9781628371994
Price: $19.95
Binding: Paperback (hardcover $34.95 here)
Publication Date: November October 2017
Pages: 164

Below is information from the publisher. Note in particular Peter Head’s endorsement, “It kept me awake almost the whole way through.”

Description

An essential introduction for scholars and students of New Testament Greek
With the publication of the widely used twenty-eighth edition of Nestle-Aland’s Novum Testamentum Graece and the fifth edition of the United Bible Society Greek New Testament, a computer-assisted method known as the Coherence-Based Genealogical Method (CBGM) was used for the first time to determine the most valuable witnesses and establish the initial text. This book offers the first full-length, student-friendly introduction to this important new method. After setting out the method’s history, separate chapters clarify its key concepts such as genealogical coherence, textual flow diagrams, and the global stemma. Examples from across the New Testament are used to show how the method works in practice. The result is an essential introduction that will be of interest to students, translators, commentators, and anyone else who studies the Greek New Testament.

Features

• A clear explanation of how and why the text of the Greek New Testament is changing
• Step-by-step guidance on how to use the CBGM in textual criticism
• Diagrams, illustrations, and glossary of key terms

Authors

Tommy Wasserman is Professor of Biblical Studies at Ansgar Teologiske Høgskole, Kristiansand, Norway. He is secretary of the International Greek New Testament Project, serves on the board of the Centre for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts, and has started projects on manuscript transcription and manuscript forgeries for the Museum of the Bible. He is Associate Editor of TC: A Journal of Biblical Textual Criticism. Wasserman has authored and edited several books including The Epistle of Jude: Its Text and Transmission (2006) and Studies in Isaiah: History, Theology and Reception (2017).

Peter J. Gurry is Assistant Professor of New Testament at Phoenix Seminary. He has worked with the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts and the Museum of the Bible to both preserve and publish New Testament manuscripts.
This is Resources for Biblical Study 80. Download a printable standing order sheet to see other available volumes in the series and to give to your librarian to set up a standing order.

View the hardcover edition of this title.

Praise for A New Approach to Textual Criticism

“This book is essential reading for everyone who wants to understand how contemporary research is changing our understanding of the text of the New Testament or the significance of this new method for all textual scholarship. It is a clear and perceptive explanation of the methodology behind the new editions of the Nestle-Aland and the United Bible Societies Greek New Testaments, as well as the major edition on which they are based. With a historical overview and suggestions for further reading, it contains a step-by-step guide and examples that shed new light on such difficult passages as the first verse of Mark’s Gospel. The authors, who have practiced the methodology and studied it in detail, are ideally placed to offer this simple but thought-provoking guide.”
David Parker
Professor of Digital Philology and Director of the Institute for the Textual Scholarship and Electronic Editing (ITSEE)
University of Birmingham

“Wasserman and Gurry have together written an extremely useful book. They introduce and explain in detail the history and inner workings of the Coherence-Based Genealogical Method, a method that has become extremely important to the textual criticism of the Greek New Testament through its foundational role in determining the Initial text for the Editio Critica Maior and, in consequence, the printed text in the current (28th) and future (projected) editions of the Nestle-Aland Novum Testamentum Graece. All students of the Greek New Testament … are in their debt for writing such a helpful and informed account. It kept me awake almost the whole way through.”
Peter M. Head
New Testament Tutor
Wycliffe Hall, University of Oxford

“A New Approach to Textual Criticism is a clear introduction to a complex method, the Coherence-Based Genealogical Method. It reflects the transition of textual criticism into the digital age, by showing a new path to deal with the multiplicity of the New Testament manuscripts, leaving behind the categorization of text-types.”
Claire Clivaz
Head of Digital Enhanced Learning
SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics, Lausanne

“For anybody who cares about the text of the New Testament, there will be few books published in biblical studies over the next decade that will be more important than this one. Tommy Wasserman and Peter Gurry describe some of the tectonic shifts that are currently occurring in the way that New Testament text critics are reconstructing the earliest recoverable form of the Greek text of the New Testament. With great care and clarity, the authors explain the intricacies of the Coherence-Based Genealogical Method in ways that both scholars and nonspecialists can readily understand. For anybody who wishes to know how the text of latest printed scholarly editions of the Greek New Testament has been determined and why it differs from earlier editions, this is the book to read.”
Paul Foster
Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity
School of Divinity, University of Edinburgh

“This book will be of great service in helping scholars and serious students of the New Testament to grasp what the CBGM is. To this point it has largely been a “black box” for many.The explanations are clear, and the examples will be particularly helpful in showing what the CBGM offers and how to make use of the online access to it.”
Larry W. Hurtado, PhD, FRSE
Emeritus Professor of New Testament Language, Literature and Theology
University of Edinburgh

In addition to the endorsements so far published on the SBL website, we have received this one from Dan Wallace:

“Writing an introduction to the Coherence-Based Genealogical Method for the uninitiated must be akin to trying to teach the Amish how to drive a Ferrari. CBGM is a complex method that Wasserman and Gurry have simplified with a rather humane writing style, but this does not mean that those who have minimal exposure to this method will jump at the chance to understand it. They should, and Wasserman and Gurry are the right guides to gently bring them into the realm of 21st century NT textual criticism. This book is a welcome addition to the library of anyone (not just the neophyte) who wants to understand this arcane, yet foundational, discipline that has grown in intricacies and subtleties in recent years.”
Daniel B. Wallace
Executive Director
Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts

ECM and CBGM for Acts Now Available

Back in May, Pete Head noted that the ECM Acts would be out soon and I am happy to report that it has now been released. This marks another major milestone for the team in Münster. Along with the ECM, of course, there is the CBGM and I am happy to say that the new Genealogical Queries for Acts are now online. For Acts, we have data from all four phases of the team’s work. This gives unprecedented access to the development of the data over the last 4+ years. As the guide says, the data for phase four is still being checked and may be corrected still. So be aware of that.

Perhaps most importantly, the fourth phase now comes with a completely refreshed interface, one which I have found to be a significant improvement over the previous one which is now almost a decade old. Besides the responsiveness, one thing I really like about the new interface is that you can use the CBGM queries without having the print ECM in hand. Just pick a chapter and verse and then you will get a list of the variants in that verse. Once you pick one, you now get a full apparatus right on the same page. This is extremely useful and roughly gives us a digital version of the ECM at least for the Greek evidence.

Well done to Marcello Perathoner who did the programming for the new interface. And a big congratulations to the whole team in Münster. I hope you all get a nice rest before starting the next phase of the project!

The new interface for the Acts CBGM

Poll: Pick your favorite book cover

Tommy and I are finishing up our introduction to the CBGM right now. It will be jointly published by SBL and the German Bible Society and they are hoping to have it out at the SBL meeting in November. There are some details for the book over on Amazon. But you’ll notice that there’s no book cover, which brings us to the point of this post. One of the fun things about this project is that SBL is letting us design the cover ourselves and we need some feedback on our final two. Which do you like better?

A.	B.

Which is better?

(Both manuscript images were taken on an expedition with CSNTM at the National Library of Greece and will be used by permission.)

Missing Witnesses in Textual Flow Diagrams

After about 3½ years of studying the CBGM, I continue to learn new things about it. Sometimes I discover answers to question I was not even asking. This happened this week while reproducing the textual flow diagrams in my thesis. Because these diagrams connect each witness with their closest potential ancestor (within the constraints set by the user), someone smarter than me might  wonder what happens when a witness’s closest potential ancestor is not extant at the point of variation being studied.

Well, I found the answer. When this happens, any descendants are simply left out of the diagram, even if they are extant at this point.

Let’s give an example. If we look at the textual flow diagrm for the whole Catholic Epistles, we see that 104 is the closest potential ancestor for 1838 and 459. 459, in turn, is the closest ancestor for 1842.

104 and its descendants in the predominant textual flow for the Catholic Epistles

So, what happens when 104 is not extant? Its three descendants will disappear whenever the diagram is set to connect each witness with its closest potential ancestor (a connectivity of 1). In such cases 1838, 459, and 1842 are not displayed. For example, here is 2 John 1.2/2-6 with a connectivity of 1: You will not find the four witnesses I just mentioned.

At 2 John 1.2/2-6 with connectivity set to 1, 104 and its descendants are missing

But if you change the connectivity to absolute, they all reappear because they can be connected to other potential ancestors which, unlike 104, are extant at this point of variation.

At 2 John 1.2/2-6 with connectivity set to absolute, the descendants of 104 reappear

I think there are probably better ways to handle these situations, such as making the non-extant ancestors gray or circling them with a dashed border. Alternately, the descendants that have no ancestor available could just free float in the diagram.

I suspect this was something that was just overlooked in the original programming. Perhaps the situation will be treated differently in Acts. In any case, it’s worth knowing in case you’re using a connectivity of one and wondering where some of your witnesses have gone.

The CBGM in One (!) Sentence

The discussion from the post last week on Greg Lanier’s thoughts on the CBGM was helpful I thought. In particular, it made me think again about how best to present the CBGM to those who find themselves mystified and or even frustrated by its complexity.

In my experience, the most common reaction to the method is still mistrust and a kind of anxiety. Some of that is not surprising. We don’t like people messing with our New Testament text in ways we don’t understand. I get that. I get it because it was a major motivation for my own research. I wanted to know why my Greek New Testament was changing and whether the changes were any good. At its most basic, that was the reason for my dissertation.

In light of that, and in light of some of the feedback I’ve received from my JETS article, I wanted to follow up with a new attempt to explain the method. In particular, I want to take a stab at defining it in a way that is not only accurate and clear, but also somewhat less intimidating.

So here is my one-sentence description: the CBGM is a new set of computer-based tools for studying a new set of text-critical evidence based on a new principle for relating texts. (Notice that I have not used any of the words in the name “Coherence-Based Genealogical Method” to define it. My English teachers would be proud.)

I think that does a good job of covering all the bases. But it is still a mouthful, so let me try to explain each part in turn. I’ll start at the end and work my way back.

Thinking about the Implications of the CBGM with Greg Lanier

Greg Lanier, a former compatriot at Cambridge, has two recent essays in the journal Reformed Faith & Practice (part 1 and part 2)  doing one of the things he does best: explaining what’s happening in NT scholarship to students and pastors. Here his focus is mostly on Greek grammar and lexicography, but he also touches on textual criticism in part two.

What I want to highlight here are Greg’s closing comments on the CBGM. (I’ve added the numbering and clipped these slightly.) I’m especially interested in helping to address Greg’s fourth point in future work because seminarians are going to need a lot of help using the CBGM. I hope we can give it to them. But he asks other questions about method and theology which seminary teachers will want to think about as they teach their students about the CBGM.

I’d like to hear what blog readers think of these. I’ve given some of my own thoughts in brackets.

1. There are a lot of positives with the CBGM. The data set alone is a substantial improvement over what we had previously. The project has made great strides towards the previously unicorn-like dream of having thousands of manuscripts digitized, collated, and analyzable.... Moreover, the results for the Catholic Epistles indicate just how high-quality prior editions of the GNT (going back to Westcott and Hort and their contemporaries) have been. I would argue that our confidence in the text has, in the end, gone up with the ECM’s findings. [Generally agreed. I would just say that there is greater uncertainty overall in the results, judging by a comparison of brackets to diamonds in NA27 and NA28. But uncertainty can be better than unwarranted confidence.]
2. The ECM project began with the Catholic Epistles in part due to their relatively more stable textual tradition. [Not actually true from what I’ve read, but many seem to think so. See the essay mentioned here from Aland.] Additionally, one could argue that the implications of modifying the critical text (which had been unchanged for nearly forty years) in this section of the GNT poses the least risk of ruffling feathers. One wonders, however, just how substantial the revisions may be in the ECM for Acts, the Gospels, and Paul — which, for most in the evangelical world, tend to harbor more emotional/theological investment. We can only wait to find out. [True, the Catholics don’t get much attention. Klaus Wachtel said at SBL that there are about 40 changes in Acts so far. Just remember, textual changes may be the easiest way to measure progress in TC, but they are not the only way.]
3. Most contemporary English translations (outside the KJV-tradition) have used NA-26 or NA-27 as their base text. Presumably at some point the English translation committees will update their volumes, and when they do so, how will they approach the changes made to NA-28 (or NA-29 and beyond)? Will they embrace them? How will they signal the ◆ readings in the English text and footnotes, if at all? [This remains to be seen. Hopefully, they will find that their responsibility includes weighing the NA28’s decisions and rejecting them where appropriate. As for diamonds, we should note how few of them are even given space in the UBS5 apparatus. Clearly the UBS is showing their opinion that most are not relevant to translators.]
4. How will (or should) students learn to do textual criticism in the future? This issue is particularly challenging. As outlined above, for decades students have been taught a fairly straightforward method for weighing major manuscripts and internal evidence to determine whether they agree with the NA/UBS critical text. However, the CGBM producing the critical text that future Greek students will purchase is operating according to an entirely different method. This method is, as all readily admit, rather complex to understand, let alone teach. More importantly, one would need to have access to significant analytical tools — and abandon a manuscript-focused mentality (and text-types) in favor of the more abstract text-focused mentality — in order to reproduce the thought process behind a given judgment on a textual variant in the ECM/NA-28/UBS-5. Take the 2 Pet 3:10 example shown above. The old-school approach would look at the various options, weight א, B, papyri, minuscules, and Byzantine witnesses (most of which disagree) and come to some conclusion. However, this conclusion is quite unlikely to be that the lone attested witness for +οὐκ (sa in NA-27; the Syriac is not even mentioned) offers the best reading. Yet that is precisely what NA-28/UBS-5 print in the main text! The student is at a loss, then, for explaining why that reading is preferred when, on the traditional approach, it seems to be the least preferred! .... In short, we are facing a situation in which the method currently being taught to students (and taught to scholars/pastors in the past) will no longer correspond to the method underlying the new editions of the critical GNT they are/will be working with! It is encouraging that the total number of changes to the text itself, at least for the Catholic Epistles, was fairly small; however, the underlying method is, nevertheless, changing substantially. [I agree completely that the use of the CBGM will change how we as scholars and students interact with and critique the NA text. No longer can we engage that text on its own methodological terms with just the print edition. You now need a laptop. Pete Head and I discussed this a number of times during our supervisions. As for helping students, see my recent JETS article for a starting point and stay tuned for more.]
5. Related to the prior point, one wonders what use Metzger’s justly famous Textual Commentary will have in the future. It constitutes, in essence, the editorial committee’s notes from how they decided among variations in the 1970s and 1980s; its A-B-C ratings (in the UBS volumes only) have also been a helpful data point for years. However, as Elliott rightly notes, for those portions of the NA/UBS editions that incorporate the outcome of the CBGM/ECM project, “the tried and trusted vade mecum of old, Metzger’s Commentary … is only partially useful.” It may have helpful things to say about the internal evidence that might have impacted the ECM team’s decision for a given local stemma, but any appeal it makes to specific manuscripts is, now, almost entirely outdated. [For my part, I don’t see this as a bad thing. Metzger is great but he too easily becomes a crutch and an excuse to avoid TC rather than engage in it. But it would be nice to have a commentary on the new changes.]
6. Finally, how will the shift in goal, from “original” text to “initial” text impact the way Reformed/evangelical folks who hold to biblical inspiration approach the critical GNT? Majority-text/KJV-only debates aside, most inerrantists who make use of the NA/UBS volumes have functionally equated the eclectic text found therein with, for all intents and purposes, the inspired autographs. Yes, we know that the critical edition is not itself inerrant or infallible — thus necessitating the need to make one’s own text-critical judgments — but we have embraced it as the next-best-thing we have (much like our approach to the Masoretic Text). The philosophical shift underlying the ECM project, however, is meaningful. The goal is no longer positioned as “getting back to what Mark wrote” but, rather, “getting back as early as possible, given the extant data, to what the early church received as coming from Mark.” Much effort needs to be devoted to thinking through the epistemological and doctrine-of-Scripture implications of such a change with respect to the GNT text coming out of the project. [I have some thoughts on this but will save them for another time. I would only add that this is a concern that has emerged among some American Lutherans. See the recent debate on TC between Jeff Kloha and John Warwick Montgomery.]

Read the rest here. 

TC Journal Vol. 20 Packed with Articles and Reviews

The journal TC: A Journal of Biblical Textual Criticism was founded by James Adair in 1996 as one of the first electronic journals devoted to Biblical Studies.

 In 2010 the journal was relaunched after some time of inactivity, when Jan Krans, Tim Finney, Thomas Kraus, Heike Hötzinger and I formed a new editorial board. Subsequently, Juha Pakkala joined the board. Since then, we have been able to publish six complete volumes, and, the latest one, vol. 20, marks the 20-year anniversary of the journal (and the 5-year anniversary of its relaunch).

Volume 20 is packed with articles and reviews (see contents below). Several new articles from a panel on the Coherence-Based Genealogical Method (CBGM) were published just before New Year.

The editors would like to welcome new submissions from readers of this blog! 

Volume 20 (2015)

Articles

Rebekka Schirner, Augustine’s Explicit References to Variant Readings of the New Testament Text: A Case Study

Abstract: This article analyzes a sample of passages where Augustine explicitly refers to different Latin versions of the New Testament text, and intends to expand Amy Donaldson’s list of patristic references to New Testament variants. It also takes into consideration the evidence available to us today (manuscripts and quotations of Latin church fathers). In doing so, it offers insights into Augustine’s way of dealing with variants and also provides a comparison between the material available to Augustine and the data extant today.

Charles Quarles, ΜΕΤΑ ΤΗΝ ΕΓΕΡΣΙΝ ΑΥΤΟΥ: A Scribal Interpolation in Matthew 27:53?

Abstract: Since the seminal work of Adalbert Merx, Willoughby C. Allen, and Erich Klostermann, a growing number of scholars have asserted that the prepositional phrase μετὰ τὴν ἔγερσιν αὐτοῦ in Matt 27:53 is an early scribal interpolation and an example of the orthodox corruption of Scripture. However, this claim is based on a misunderstanding of the internal evidence and exaggerated claims regarding the external evidence. This article provides a careful and detailed analysis of the internal and external evidence and concludes that the prepositional phrase was contained in the earliest text of Matthew that can be reconstructed from the currently available data.

Peter Malik, The Earliest Corrections in Codex Sinaiticus: Further Evidence from the Apocalypse

Abstract: Previous research into the scribal corrections of Codex Sinaiticus—also labelled as “S1”—has yielded fruitful results, especially regarding distribution of the scribal correcting activity and the textual affinities of corrections. The present article extends our knowledge of this aspect of Sinaiticus by examining scribal corrections in the book of Revelation, especially with regard to their nature, authorship, and textual affinities. It is argued that the palaeographical and textual evidence suggests that, unlike other previously studied portions of Sinaiticus, the text of Revelation was most likely never subjected to a secondary review in the scriptorium.

John Granger Cook, Julian’s Contra Galilaeos and Cyril’s Contra Iulianum: Two Witnesses to the Short Ending of Mark

Abstract: A Syriac MS (British Museum Add. 17214, fol. 65a–65b) preserves an excerpt from Julian’s Contra Galilaeos and Cyril’s response (the Contra Iulianum), which indicates that both authors either did not know the longer ending of Mark (16:9–20) or regarded it as spurious. The evidence has apparently been overlooked in studies of the longer ending of Mark. If the argument is sound, then Julian should be added to the apparatus criticus of Mark as a witness to the short ending (16:8). Cyril should be reevaluated as a patristic father who probably knew MSS that omitted the longer ending, but, unlike Jerome and Eusebius, did not assert that fact about the MSS in the surviving text.

Special Feature: The Coherence Based Genealogical Method

The following introduction and four articles are based on papers delivered in the panel session “The Genealogical Method” of the New Testament Textual Criticism section of at the Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature, San Diego, 22 November 2014.

TC Editors, Editorial Introduction

Abstract: An introduction to the articles in the special feature including a short summary of Dirk Jongkind's contribution to the original panel discussion, which is not included here.

Klaus Wachtel, The Coherence Method and History

Abstract: The categorical distinction between manuscripts as artifacts and the texts they carry is a cornerstone in the theoretical framework of the Coherence­Based Genealogical Method (CBGM). As a consequence a textflow diagram shows a structure that integrates states of text and must not be confused with an outline of actual historical procedures or a stemma of manuscripts. The structure reflects the degrees of agreement between texts (pre­genealogical coherence) and philological assessment of the relationship between the variants found in them (genealogical coherence). Abstracting from the relationship between actual manuscripts has been criticized as unhistorical. However, the ability of the CBGM to cope with contamination hinges on this abstraction.

Georg Gäbel, Annette Hüffmeier, Gerd Mink, Holger Strutwolf, Klaus Wachtel, The CBGM Applied to Variants from Acts: Methodological Background

Abstract: The reconstruction of the initial text by means of the Coherence-Based Genealogical Method is carried out on the basis of assessments of the genealogy of variants at each variant passage. The resulting relationships between variants of the same passage are graphically represented by so-called local stemmata. The construction of these is done in phases proceeding from secure cases which hardly need any discussion to those whose analysis requires genealogical data.

Klaus Wachtel, Constructing Local Stemmata for the ECM of Acts: Examples

Abstract: A series of examples relating to the guidelines set out in The CBGM Applied to Variants from Acts: Methodological Background. These examples are also referenced in Annette Hüffmeier's The CBGM Applied to Variants from Acts.

Annette Hüffmeier, The CBGM Applied to Variants from Acts

Abstract: This contribution illustrates use of the Coherence-Based Genealogical Method (CBGM) to develop and weigh external evidence in a new way. The CBGM tries to control the subjective element of applying external criteria (e.g. “best quality witnesses”) by taking into account how all included witnesses relate to one another in terms of coherence. Each variant is assessed impartially regardless of its appearance in a certain group of manuscripts or its apparent importance. As a rule, this approach assumes a scribe did his best to produce a fair copy of an exemplar. He did not distinguish between more or less interesting variants, and often we can only speculate about the reason why a variant arose. Illustrative examples from editorial work with Acts reveal important insights that are generated when the results of coherence analyses are balanced with everything else known about the textual transmission of the New Testament, especially on the basis of the internal criteria of Transcriptional Probability.

Tommy Wasserman, Historical and Philological Correlations and the CBGM as Applied to Mark 1:1

Abstract: This article demonstrates how the traditionally accepted philological principles of textual criticism and the editors’ view of the textual history of the NT exert considerable control in the application of the Coherence-Based Genealogical Method (CBGM). The article focuses on the textual variation in Mark 1:1 (involving the words υἱοῦ θεοῦ, “Son of God”) as a test case in order to probe the initial stages of the method, that is, the evaluation of so-called pre-genealogical coherence, followed by preliminary genealogical assessments (based on the particular editors’ view of the textual history), and the construction of local stemmata. The method allows variants to be both counted and weighed in terms of their genealogical significance, depending on the overall textual relationship between the witnesses that attest them, as well as their philological nature. In regard to Mark 1:1, it is easy to explain by palaeographical consideration how the nomen sacrum (ΥΥ ΘΥ) could have been omitted, but some scholars have expressed doubt that this would happen in a book's opening lines. The present evaluation of pre-genealogical coherence shows that the shorter reading without υἱοῦ θεοῦ (“Son of God”) has imperfect coherence—the variant is attested by a number of unrelated witnesses, and the variant has clearly emerged several times in the history of transmission, probably by accident (and several witnesses have been corrected). This evaluation and a preliminary genealogical assessment supports the longer reading in Mark 1:1.

Stephen Carlson, Comments on the Coherence-Based Genealogical Method

Abstract: Despite the term “genealogical” in the name Coherence-Based Genealogical Method, researchers should not expect the CBGM to provide a proposed history of the text through its manuscripts. This puts a premium on the use of internal evidence to establish the initial text.

Reviews

Lincoln H. Blumell, Lettered Christians: Christians, Letters, and Late Antique Oxyrhynchus (Malcolm Choat, reviewer)

P. Doble and J. Kloha (eds.), Texts and Traditions: Essays in Honour of J. Keith Elliott (Tobias Nicklas, reviewer)

Robert Hanhart (ed.), Septuaginta (Marcus Sigismund, reviewer)

James M. Leonard, Codex Schøyen: A Middle Egyptian Coptic Witness to the Early Greek Text of Matthew’s Gospel: A Study in Translation Theory, Indigenous Coptic, and New Testament Textual Criticism (Thomas J. Kraus, reviewer)

AnneMarie Luijendijk, Forbidden Oracles? The Gospel of the Lots of Mary (Brice C. Jones, reviewer)

Eric F. Mason and Troy W. Martin (eds.) Reading 1-2 Peter and Jude: A Resource for Students (Thomas J. Kraus, reviewer)

Joseph E. Sanzo, Scriptural Incipits on Amulets from Late Antique Egypt (Thomas J. Kraus, reviewer)

W. Andrew Smith, A Study of the Gospels in Codex Alexandrinus: Codicology, Palaeography, and Scribal Habits (Thomas J. Kraus, reviewer)

Markus Vinzent, Marcion and the Dating of the Synoptic Gospels (Paul A. Himes, reviewer)