Hebrew Poetic and Prophetic Discourse Conference in Dallas

On October 18, 2023, Dallas International University is hosting an in-person and virtual conference on Macro Analysis of Hebrew Poetic and Prophetic Discourse. Registration opens in the Spring and submissions are open until April 28, 2023. You can learn more at hebrewdiscourse.com.

Pluritext Conference Proceedings (and a Little Backstory)

Some of you may remember times when people actually attended conferences in person. I hear that some living humans, in fact, met at SBL last November, an achievement I highly applaud (and, as a Central European, observe with a sense of remote envy).

Anyway, perhaps some of our readers might be familiar with the Project Pluritext, which, sadly, went through some bleak times owing to the criminal conviction of Jan Joosten. (In fact, I’m not sure the Project still exists at this point, as its website appears to be down.)  In Novemeber 2018, the Project organised a lovely conference entitled ‘Scribal Activity and Textual Plurality’, bringing together a rather diverse battery of scholars working on scribal matters in various traditions. I was rather surprised to have received an invitation (I guess strange things begin to happen once you’re old enough), which I readily accepted. As one might expect, I was asked to present on scribal activity and textual plurality in the New Testament. My paper mainly dealt with general matters such as what sort of textual pluriformity one might encounter in the NT and how it normally came about. It was kind of the organisers to allocate generous time slots for the Q&A, hence I was able to receive helpful feedback from some of my fellow presenters.

Oddly enough, this presentation proved to be something of a prophetic enactment of the age to come: due to the family circumstances (my daughter was to be born soon), I had to opt out from presenting in the beautiful Parisian surroundings and present from via Skype instead (yes, Skype was a thing back then). As of now, this mode of presentation seems to be something of a new normal, and one wonders whether the tide will ever swing back once the pandemic subsides.

With a bit of an understandable delay, the proceedings were finally published last year. And, as it turns out, this blog announcement, too, is rather late, but who cares – we’re in the midst of a global pandemic and the notion of time has taken on a whole new semantic layer.

The proceedings were published as a special issue of the Henoch journal, including a revised version of my paper, cheekily entitled ‘The More the Merrier? Scribal Activity and Textual Plurality in the New Testament Tradition’. 

I hope you enjoy perusing this publication. As always, any critical comments welcome.

Call for Papers: The Pastoral Implications for Pseudepigraphy and Anonymity in the New Testament

At SBL this year, Randy Richards let me know about an upcoming conference from the The Ellis Foundation for Biblical Research and they have now given a call for papers. Note that their are awards, travel stipends, and graduate student scholarships. Here is the info from their website.

Does It Matter Who Wrote the Bible? The Pastoral Implications for Pseudepigraphy and Anonymity in the New Testament

May 19–21, 2022

Lanier Library chapel

It is a pleasure to invite you to the conference and to invite your participation in presenting a paper focused on our very specific conference topic: “Does It Matter Who Wrote the Bible? The Pastoral Implications for Pseudepigraphy and Anonymity in the New Testament.” The conference is sponsored by the Ellis Foundation for Biblical Research (EFBR). The Ellis Foundation for Biblical Research was established in 2005 to promote biblical scholarship and has hosted several conferences focused on the relevance of biblical scholarship to the laity. The conference will take place at the Lanier Theological Library in Houston, TX, from May 19-21, 2022. We begin at 4:00 pm on May 19 and conclude at 11.30 am on May 21, 2022.

This conference will consider the implications for practical ministry if certain New Testament books are considered pseudonymous. Over the past two centuries various scholars have questioned whether the named writers of some New Testament letters were in fact responsible for their content and composition, offering various theories of pseudepigraphical authorship. Often these discussions never leave the halls of the academy to consider how such views might impact parish or congregational life.

This conference will explore the pastoral and ecclesial implications of claims of pseudepigraphy and anonymity related to the New Testament.

When submitting your paper proposal, be sure you are addressing one of the subjects below. Papers that address merely an argument or the evidence for or against pseudepigraphy in the New Testament will not be considered. Again, the focus is on the effect on local church ministry if a particular New Testament book or letter is consider pseudonymous.

Topics

• Pseudepigraphy, anonymity, and the authority of Scripture
• Ethical considerations of pseudepigrapha
• The impact of pseudepigraphy and anonymity on pulpit preaching and local church teaching
• The relevance of pseudepigraphy and anonymity to church governance, beliefs and practices
• The implications for training seminary students and university religion faculty

Unfortunately, this is the same weekend as CSNTM’s conference so I won’t be able to attend. But would if I could.

CSNTM 2022 Text & Manuscript Conference

Readers may have heard that CSNTM is hosting its inaugural Text & Manuscript Conference May 19-20, 2022. The theme is Pen, Print, & Pixels and will feature plenary presentations throughout each day with optional breakout sessions. Full schedule and registration are at conference.csntm.org.

Plenary Speakers

• Hugh Houghton, “The Importance of Catena Manuscripts of the Greek New Testament”
• Dirk Jongkind, “On Singular Readings and Knowing When the Time Has Come for Better Tools”
• Jan Krans, “New Testament Conjectural Emendation: Folly or Duty?”
• Holger Strutwolf, “The ECM of Mark: Philology in the Digital Era”
• Kathleen Maxwell, “From the Coronis to the Blütenblattstil: The Decoration of the Greek Gospel Book”

Breakouts

• Juan Hernández, “The Significance of the Corrections of the Apocalypse in Codex Sinaiticus”
• Timothy Mitchell, “Exposing Textual Corruption in the Wider Circulation of the New Testament Writings During the Greco-Roman Era”
• Peter Montoro, “Two Way Traffic on the Transmissional Highway? Considering Chrysostom’s Exegesis as an Explanation for the Reading of GA 104 in Romans 2:26”
• Ryan Giffin, “Philippians in P46: Interesting Departures from the Standard Critical Text”
• Craig Evans, “How Long did the NT Autographs Survive? A Review of the Evidence”
• Christian Askeland, “Digital Images, Ancient Manuscripts, and Intellectual Property”
• Jeremiah Coogan, “Marginal Matthew: τὸ ἰουδαϊκόν in Medieval Manuscripts and Modern Editions”
• Edgar Ebojo, “‘Now the end is near’: Pen and Phenomena at the Line-ends of P46”
• Keith Elliott, “The Editio Critica Maior of Mark: Translation from German into English”
• William Warren, “From Ink to Exegesis: The Importance of Non-original Variant Readings”
• Grant Edwards, “Between Codex and Colophon: Ancient Book Format and the Limitations of Paleography”
• James Prothro, “A Theology of Textual Criticism? Searching for a Framework”
• Georgi Parpulov, “Levels of Style in Byzantine Calligraphy”
• Peter Gurry, “Textual Criticism in Early Protestant Bibles”

‘The Ends of Manuscripts’ Workshop in Ole Rocky Top

News of a manuscript workshop in Tennessee next year. It looks like a good subject. And note that presenters will receive a $500 honorarium. I assume that can be spent on Chick-fil-A and sweet tea.

15th Annual Marco Manuscript Workshop: “The Ends of Manuscripts”

January 31 and February 1, 2020

The fifteenth annual Marco Manuscript Workshop will take place Friday, January 31, and Saturday, February 1, 2020, at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. The workshop is organized by Professors Maura K. Lafferty (Classics) and Roy M. Liuzza (English), and is hosted by the Marco Institute for Medieval and Renaissance Studies.

For this year’s workshop, as a tribute to the 2020 McClung Museum exhibition “Visions of the End 1000-1600” (opening January 23), we propose the theme “The Ends of Manuscripts.” We encourage everyone to take this theme in the broadest possible sense; we invite submissions that consider the “ends” of manuscripts – whether their physical boundaries (colophons and explicits, incomplete texts, extrapolated texts, lost or added leaves, booklets and bindings), their purposes (texts written for particular patrons or communities, texts written for devotional or polemical ends, texts written as responses to other texts, texts prepared for or directed at someone or something), their fates (where texts have ended up, in libraries or private collections, in bindings or trash bins, framed on walls or preserved in digital repositories), or their early coexistence with and gradual replacement by printed books. Like detectives at a crime scene, we often must work backward from the “ends” of a manuscript to its life and origins; in these origins there may even lie some intimations of the manuscript’s future demise. We welcome presentations on any aspect of this topic, broadly imagined.

The workshop is open to scholars and graduate students in any field who are engaged in textual editing, manuscript studies, or epigraphy. Individual 75-minute sessions will be devoted to each project; participants will be asked to introduce their text and its context, discuss their approach to working with their material, and exchange ideas and information with other participants. As in previous years, the workshop is intended to be more like a class than a conference; participants are encouraged to share new discoveries and unfinished work, to discuss both their successes and frustrations, to offer both practical advice and theoretical insights, and to work together towards developing better professional skills for textual and codicological work. We particularly invite the presentation of works in progress, unusual manuscript problems, practical difficulties, and new or experimental models for studying or representing manuscript texts. Presenters will receive a $500 honorarium for their participation.

The deadline for applications is November 2, 2019. Applicants are asked to submit a current CV and a two-page letter describing their project to Roy M. Liuzza, preferably via email to rliuzza@utk.edu, or by mail to the Department of English, University of Tennessee, 301 McClung Tower, Knoxville, TN 37996-0430.

More info here. HT: Jeremiah Coogan

The Material Gospel Conference at Notre Dame

Jeremiah Coogan and David Lincicum are continuing their good work at Notre Dame on first millennium books with a conference schedule for May 31, 2019.

This conference brings together leading scholars of Gospel literature and material texts to discuss the history and significance of the material Gospel in the first five centuries CE.

Session I

David Lincicum (Notre Dame): Welcome
Clare Rothschild (Lewis University): “Galen’s De indolentia and the Early Christian Codex”
Jeremiah Coogan (Notre Dame): “Navigating the Gospel: Nonlinear Access and Practical Use”
Respondent: Nathan Eubank (Notre Dame)

Session II

Chris Keith (St Mary’s University Twickenham): “The Gospel Read, Sliced, and Burned: The Material Gospel and the Construction of Christian Identity”
Angela Zautcke (Notre Dame): “Erasing the Gospels: Insights from the Sinai Syriac Gospel Palimpsest”
Respondent: Paul Wheatley (Notre Dame)

Session III

Sofía Torallas Tovar (University of Chicago): “Resisting the Codex: Christian Rolls in Late Antiquity”
Matthew Larsen (Princeton): “Codex Bobiensis: A Real-and-Imagined Biography of One Gospel Manuscript”
Respondent: Robin Jensen (Notre Dame)

Website is here. Wish I could go.

Princeton: Scribal Habits in Middle Eastern Manuscripts Workshop

Scribal Habits in Middle Eastern Manuscripts Workshop

Venue

Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton

Date

May 9–11, 2019

Conveners

Sabine Schmidtke and George A. Kiraz 

(Institute for Advanced Study)

Most scholars who employ manuscripts in their research tend to focus on the literary content itself. But what about the role of the scribe who typically remains at the periphery of research? How can we, in the words of the NT textual critic James Royse, “virtually look over the scribe’s shoulder” to understand the process by which our manuscripts were produced. The aim of this workshop is to bring together scholars from various disciplines to study the individuals who produced our manuscripts and how they shaped the transmission of literary texts they copied. Topics may include:The qualities, habits and skills of the scribe.

• Typology of changes made by scribes .
• The visual features of the MSS as produced by scribes.
• How can scribal habits help us reconstruct texts?
• Why do scribes deviate from their exemplars?
• How are peculiar readings produced?
• What does the scribe do when (s)he spots an error?
• What is the right spelling of a word and how are orthographic variants produced?
• Is it time for a new paragraph?
• Second-hand scribes (e.g. vocalizers, dotters, and commentators).
• Extra-textual elements in manuscripts

This workshop will focus on Middle Eastern manuscripts written in Hebrew, Syriac, Arabic, Persian, Armenian, Coptic and other languages. Scholars interested in participating may send via email a proposal between 750 and 1,000 words. Proposals are to focus on the scribe and scribal habits (i.e. not a study of the literary text itself). Comparative analyses across traditions is encouraged but not required.

Submission deadline is January 15, 2019. Submissions are to be sent via email directly to George A. Kiraz at gkiraz@ias.edu.

Scholars are expected to fund their travel to/from and accommodation in Princeton. The Institute will provide meals and a conference celebratory dinner. Speakers will be invited to contribute to a collected volume on an agreed-upon theme.

Conference: Herman Hoskier and the Future of Textual Scholarship on the Bible

I meant to post about this when it was announced but forgot in the mix of other responsibilities. This looks like an outstanding lineup of speakers and I understand that a conference volume is expected. Paper proposals are open until 15 April. More info and registration here.

28-30 August 2017
Dublin City University
School of Theology, Philosophy, and Music

Herman Charles Hoskier (1864-1938) was a textual scholar of the New Testament whose work remains influential in the field today. As part of the Irish Research Council’s Decade of Centenaries, this conference explores the present state and future prospects of textual scholarship on the Bible in the digital age, using Hoskier’s work as a starting point for the discussion. Short papers are invited that address the following topics: the intellectual context of twentieth century textual scholarship, manuscript collections in Ireland, the future of the critical edition, the digital humanities and the Bible, Hoskier’s text critical work and current developments in the field, the versions in textual scholarship, the Editio Critica Maior, manuscripts as objects and material culture, trends and prospects in textual criticism, text critical method, the future of textual scholarship, early printed editions, studies on manuscripts, and related topics.

Keynote Speakers:

• David Parker (University of Birmingham)
• Stanley Porter (McMaster Divinity College)
• Jennifer Knust (Boston University)
• J. K. Elliott (University of Leeds)
• Martin Karrer (KiHo Wuppertal)
• Juan Hernández Jr. (Bethel University)
• Claire Clivaz (Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics)
• Thomas J. Kraus (Universität Zurich)
• Tommy Wasserman (Ansgar Teologiske Høgskole)
• Christina Kreinecker (Universität Salzburg)
• Klaus Wachtel (INTF Münster)
• Catherine Smith (University of Birmingham)
• Hugh Houghton (University of Birmingham)
• Martin Wallraff (LMU München)
• Jan Krans (VU Amsterdam)
• Annette Hüffmeier (INTF Münster)
• Jill Unkel (Chester Beatty Library)
• Dirk Jongkind (University of Cambridge)

Tyndale House Workshop in Greek Prepositions

From Will Ross and Steve Runge, a conference modeled after the well-done Greek verb conference from a few years back:

Students and scholars of Greek have long wrestled with understanding the meaning of prepositions. This challenge is partly the result of the centuries-old tradition in Greek lexicography of providing glosses (or translation equivalents) in the target language that fail to capture the meaning of a lexical item. 

Moreover, the semantics of Greek and English prepositions do not isometrically overlap, giving the misleading appearance of polysemy. In an effort to address these challenges, this Workshop aims to approach semantic description of Koine prepositions from the perspective of cognitive linguistics and prototype theory.  

Following the work of Silvia Luraghi (2003) and Pietro Bortone (2010) on Greek prepositions, there is growing consensus among scholars of Greek that the cognitive linguistic approach to meaning is the most promising way forward.  

Yet to date no concerted effort has been made towards applying this cognitive approach in a form that is accessible to non-specialists, which provides the occasion and motivation for our Workshop.  

This Workshop will be cross-disciplinary, bringing together classicists, biblical scholars, linguists, and theologians.

Speakers include

• Dirk Geeraerts, University of Leuven
• Richard A. Rhodes, U.C. Berkeley
• Jonathan A. Pennington, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary
• Patrick James, University of Cambridge
• Steven Runge, Logos Bible Software
• Randall Buth, Biblical Language Center

June 30-July 1, 2017. Registration opens March 1. No call for papers is forthcoming. More info at greekprepositionworkshop.org. Background on the conference at Will’s blog. It sounds fun. I wish I could be there for it.

2017 HBU Theology Conference

This year’s Houston Baptist University Theology Conference is March 2–4 on the topic “How the Bible Came into Being.”

From the website:

The Department of Theology at HBU, in conjunction with Lanier Theological Library, is please to host the conference How the Bible Came into Being. The conference will consider the formation of the biblical canon, the literature included and excluded, and its theological significance. Our keynote speakers are James Charlesworth (Princeton Theological Seminary) and Lee McDonald (formerly of Acadia Divinity College). The plenary talks are free and open to the public.

The plenaries are:

James Charlesworth
“New Ways of Looking at Sacred Texts Regarded as ‘Apocryphal’ or ‘Pseudepigraphical’”
“The Theological Value of the ‘Rejected Texts’ and Dead Sea Scrolls for Understanding Jesus”

Lee M. McDonald 
“Why and When Was Scripture Written? Looking at the Old Testament Writings”
“Why and When Was Scripture Written? Looking at the New Testament Writings”

The ETC blog’s own John Meade will be presenting on “‘Canon’ Terminology of Epiphanius of Salamis” on Mar 3.

Call for Papers: Horizons in Textual Criticism

Pete Williams sends word of the following:

Call for Papers: HORIZONS IN TEXTUAL CRITICISM

Conveners: Jan Joosten and John Screnock

On 10-11 May, 2017, the University of Oxford will host a colloquium devoted to methodologically new and unique work in textual criticism of the Hebrew Bible and related texts.

We invite papers from scholars whose work goes beyond conventional approaches; early-career scholars and recent PhDs are especially encouraged to submit. Proposals of 1,000-2,000 words, based on projects that are well under way, should be sent to John Screnock (john.screnock@orinst.ox.ac.uk).

The deadline for paper proposals has been extended to 22 January, 2017.

More detail: http://www.ochjs.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/horizons_call_for_papers.pdf

Le Nouveau Testament en syriaque Conference

Obviously this is too late for anyone wanting to attend, but the Society for the Study of Syriac organizes a “round table” every year and today they are meeting on the topic of the Syriac New Testament. The papers should be published in the accompanying series by Geuthner next year which I look forward to. I should note that ETC contributor, Jean-Louis Simonet, is giving a paper. Here is the full program:

• David Phillips (Université catholique de Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve)
  « Les canons des Nouveaux Testaments en syriaque »
• David Taylor (University of Oxford)
  « L’Apocalypse de Jean en syriaque : des origines à Diamper » 
• Jan Joosten (University of Oxford)
  « Le Diatessaron syriaque » 
• Jean-Claude Haelewyck (FNRS et Université catholique de Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve)
  « Les vieilles versions syriaques des évangiles (sinaïtique et curetonienne) » 
• Andreas Juckel (Institut für Neutestamentliche Textforschung, Münster)
  « The New Testament Peshitta (Corpus Paulinum) : History of the Text and History of the Transmission » 
• Jonathan Loopstra (University of Northwestern, St. Paul, MN)
  « Le Nouveau Testament dans les manuscrits syriaques massorétiques : Où en sommes-nous ? » 
• Gerard Rouwhorst (Tilburg University)
  « La lecture liturgique du Nouveau Testament dans les Églises syriaques » 
• Dominique Gonnet (HiSoMa – Sources Chrétiennes, Lyon)
  « Les citations patristiques syriaques » 
• Jean-Louis Simonet (Université catholique de Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve)
  « Vetus Syra – arménien : les citations des Actes » 
• Eva Balicka-Witakowska (Uppsala University)
  « Artistic Means in the Syriac New Testament Manuscripts » 
• Robert Wilkinson (Valley House, Temple Cloud, Somerset)
  « Printed Editions of the Peshitta New Testament »

Conference: Act of the Scribe: Interfaces between scribal work and language use

Act of the Scribe: Interfaces between scribal work and language use. A Workshop

Date: April 6–8, 2017 (+ excursion on Sunday, April 9, to be informed later)
Venue: The Finnish Institute at Athens (Zitrou 16, GR-117 42 Athens)

Finnish Institute

The project Act of the Scribe (Academy of Finland) organises a workshop for scholars discussing various aspects of scribal work and how these relate to language use and language change in Graeco-Roman Antiquity. Currently, we see a growing interest on scribal practices and their role in language change, and an on-going tradition of (socio)linguistic studies has been established in the field of Classical languages. However, some fields of study are still under-represented and hinder the ability to form a comprehensive general picture of the linguistic situation at hand; for example, studying the multilingual situation in especially Egypt from the Ptolemaic to the Byzantine times continues to be challenging due to a gap between the disciplines of Greek and Latin on the one hand, and Demotic and Coptic research on the other. One of the aims of this workshop is to promote dialogue between the various written languages in Antiquity to be able to enhance the picture of ancient scribal practices. The general focus of the workshop lies in studying the interface between scribal work, including its technical properties, and language use.
Confirmed speakers with provisional titles include

• Rodney Ast (Heidelberg): Professional Literacy in Late Antiquity
• Klaas Bentein (Ghent): Documentary papyri as “multimodal” texts: Some observations on the interrelationship between language choice, linguistic register and handwriting in the Nepheros archive (III – IV AD)
• Jenny Cromwell (Copenhagen): Terminological and palaeographic innovations among scribes in the administration of early Islamic Egypt
• Katherine McDonald (Cambridge): The goddess Reitia and learning to write in the Veneto
• Timo Korkiakangas (Oslo): Relationship between spelling correctness and morphosyntactic conservativeness – a corpus study of early medieval Italian charters
• Tonio Sebastian Richter: TBA
• MariaChiara Scappaticcio (Naples): A Babrius’ Latin translation (P.Amh. 26): authors, scribes, and ‘mistakes of mistakes’
• Joanne Stolk (Oslo/Ghent): Scribal corrections in Greek papyri from Egypt
• Nicholas Zair (Cambridge): Old-fashioned spelling and sub-elite education in the Roman Empire

We invite interested scholars to submit abstracts (max. one page) by October 31, 2016 at the latest (actofscribe-athens2017 [at] helsinki.fi). Topics that are of interest to the workshop include, but are not limited to, e.g.

• scribal education in Graeco-Roman Antiquity
• writing and copying methods affecting linguistic output
• written standards, substandard and register
• cross-cultural effect on second language use: transfer of linguistic elements, scribal practices and orthographic conventions
• the role of the scribe in language change and development
• the varying treatment of loanwords in contact situations

Organizing committee : Martti Leiwo – Sonja Dahlgren – Hilla Halla-aho – Marja Vierros

Report on the International Conference for the NT Textual Criticism in Athens

Over at the Volos Acadamy for Theological Studies website there is a report on a recent conference in Athens on NTTC.

On February, 22 2016, an International Conference was successfully held at the central building of Athens University (“Al. Argyriadis” Amphitheater), on the general theme: New Testament Textual Criticism: Its Significance for Scholarship, Culture and Church. The conference was co-organized by the Dean’s office of Theological School of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens and the Department for the study of the manuscript tradition of the New Testament of the Volos Academy for Theological Studies, and attended by a vast number of academics and special researchers who are members and contributors to the Editorial Board of the critical editions of the New Testament “Novum Testamentum Graece” (known as Nestle-Aland) and “UBS Greek New Testament”, which internationally constitute the basis for the scholarly study and the translation of the text of the New Testament.

Speakers included Klaus Wachtel, Holger Strutwolf, Florian Voss, David Trobisch, Greg Paulson, Stephen Pisano, Simon Crisp, Christos Karakolis.

Apparently this was in some way the first scholarly conference being held in Greece on the subject of New Testament Textual Criticism. I’m not sure exactly what that means. But it’s good to see more TC happening in Greece where so many GNT manuscripts are kept. It looks like there was a pretty good crowd too. Full report here.

Update

A blog reader has pointed out that this conference also saw the first a meeting of the new Editorial Committee of the NA/UBS. That is historic. I confess that I still don’t understand what the new committee’s role actually is. Also I thought David Parker was a member. Still, exciting stuff.

Left (from rear to front) David Trobisch, Klaus Wachtel, Holger Strutwolf, Stephen Pisano; right (from rear to front) Christos Karakolis, Simon Crisp, Florian Voss. (Photo: Greg Paulson)

The Flourishing Field of New Testament Textual Criticism

In 1973, Eldon J. Epp held a lecture on what he regarded as the “Twentieth Century Interlude in New Testament Textual Criticism” (published in JBL 93 [1974]: 386–414). He suggested that there had been an interlude ever since the golden era of the 19th century, which had peaked with the work of Westcott and Hort. A few years, Epp published an article in JBL 98 (1979): 94-98, entitled “New Testament Textual Criticism in America: Requiem for a Discipline,” in which he lamented the contemporary situation of the discipline. The term “interlude,” is of course much more optimistic than “requiem.” The latter suggests the death of the discipline, whereas “interlude” gives hope of resurrection and new life.

Two decades later, it was Larrys Hurtado's turn to describe the field of New Testament textual criticism in an essay, “Beyond the Interlude? Developments and Directions in New Testament Textual Criticism,” in Studies in the Early Text of the Gospels and Acts (ed. D. G. K. Taylor; Birmingham: University of Birmingham Press, 1999), 26-48. Taking his Doktorvater Epp’s pessimistic survey as the point of departure, Hurtado stated at the outset that Epp’s analysis of the situation was essentially correct, but now he could cite various signs of vigor in the discipline and conclude that things were not as bad any longer. Interestingly, when Epp’s collected essays were published by Brill in 2005, one can read in the notes he had added to his “Twentieth Century Interlude” essay that although he stands by his views in broad terms, he does agree with his PhD student, referring to Hurtado’s essay, that “the ‘interlude’ in recent decades has been undercut by increased interest in the field, significantly larger numbers of participants, numerous text-critical projects and publications, and brighter prospects for the future.”

In this blogpost I would like to mention another important sign that the discipline of New Testament textual criticism is currently beginning to flourish, and that the 21th century might become a new golden era: the representation of textual criticism at international conferences. There are now a number of established units and seminars at various meetings:


1. SBL Annual Meeting

A. New Testament Textual Criticism (chair: Jennifer Knust)

Description: The New Testament Textual Criticism Section seeks to foster the study and criticism of the text of the New Testament—including examination of manuscripts and other sources, restoration of the text, and especially the investigation of the history of its transmission—in its Late Antique cultural context. SBL has had a group dedicated to this topic as far back as 1946.

Call for papers (2016): The NTTC Section is sponsoring two open sessions in 2016: (1) A panel designed to reconsider the periodization of controlled versus fixed New Testament texts. Questions to be considered include: Is it accurate to assume that NT texts, which could be quite fluid early on, became more stable in the post-Constantinian period? Did the identification of particular texts as sacred scriptures impact the transmission of these texts? How? (2) An open panel that welcomes papers on all aspects of the textual transmission of the New Testament. Papers addressing second-century textual traditions, scribal habits, comparative book typology, and the impact of author attribution are especially welcome this year. The Section is also co-sponsoring an invited panel with the International Quranic Studies Association that will compare New Testament and Quranic textual criticism. 

B. Novum Testamentum Graecum: Editio Critica Maior (chairs: Holger Strutwolf and Tommy Wasserman)

Description: The unit presents the on-going work on the Editio Critica Maior (ECM), a comprehensive text-critical edition of the Greek New Testament that exhibits the history of the Greek text through its first millennium as documented in manuscripts from the second century until the invention of letterpress printing. It provides scholars engaged in the tasks of exegesis and textual criticism with all the relevant materials found in Greek manuscripts, patristic citations, and early translations. The selection of Greek manuscripts rests on an evaluation of all known primary witnesses, and each of the manuscripts selected is cited completely with all its variants. This opens the way for a new understanding of the history of the text, the more so because all relevant evidence is stored on databases. The primary line of the ECM presents a text based on a careful application of internal and external criteria, streamlined by the Coherence-Based Genealogical Method.

Call for papers (2016): The unit presents the work on a comprehensive edition of the Greek New Testament in the making. New Testament scholars are invited to discuss achievements and goals.


2. SBL International Meeting

Working with Biblical Manuscripts (chairs: Timothy B. Sailors and Ronald van der Bergh)

Description: This program unit is devoted to the text of “biblical” writings, as understood in the broad sense of the term: This includes the Jewish Bible, early Jewish literature, and the Old Testament (in Hebrew and Aramaic, Greek, and other ancient languages), as well as early Christian literature and the New Testament (in Greek, Latin, and other ancient languages). We offer a forum for the investigation of all types of material witnesses related to the text of this literature—tablets, manuscripts, ostraca, inscriptions—and for the consideration of the textual form of this literature reflected in its citation and use by ancient authors and in writings from antiquity through the Middle Ages. This consists not only of contributions that deal with the Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, and Latin textual witnesses, but also those that engage evidence in Ugaritic, Arabic, Syriac, Ethiopic, Coptic, Armenian, and other linguistic traditions. A wide variety of additional issues related to textual criticism are also addressed, including epigraphy, manuscript studies, papyrology, codicology, paleography, scribal habits and the production of texts, the history of transmission (and its cultural, social, and religious settings), the practice of textual criticism from antiquity to modern times, restoration and conservation, the use of modern technology in studying this material, the production of critical editions, and discussions of particular passages.

Call for papers (2016): Papers concentrating on any aspect of textual criticism are welcome, particularly those that deal directly with manuscripts, i.e., papers that work with material witnesses to the text—tablets, ostraca, inscriptions, papyri, majuscules, minuscules, lectionaries.


3. European Association of Biblical Studies

Textual Criticism of the New Testament, the Old Testament and the Qur’an (chairs: Alba Fedeli and Theodora Panella)

Description: This research group focuses on the textual study and criticism of sacred texts from the ancient Eastern Mediterranean world that later had a global influence; the Old Testament, the New Testament and the Qur’anic text. All three have similarities and differences. They have influenced other writings and at the same time have themselves undergone external influence bearing on questions of interrelationship, orality, textuality and language. Not only the aforementioned characteristics, but also their preservation and the copying as well as the proliferation of manuscripts are of particular interest to textual scholars.

The sine qua non of this research unit for Textual Criticism is the study of the major witnesses to the text of the Old Testament – the Hebrew Bible, the texts from Qumran, the Septuagint, the Masoretic Text – as well as the Aramaic Targumim, the Syriac translations, the Vulgate, Commentaries and others. Of course, also the study of the Critical and the Majority Text, of the versions of the New Testament, as well as the Patristic citations and commentaries, but also Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha and others. And finally, the research unit includes the textual criticism of the Qur’an, standard text or authoritative text, and the qira’at tradition (that corresponds to different readings); the cultural milieu and context in which the Qur’anic text has been transmitted and used and the tradition of the commentaries.

Call for papers (2016): Two sessions are scheduled for the meeting in Leuven:

• an open session where papers on any topic within the range of the interests of the research group are welcome.
• a thematic session “Do margins matter?” focused on the structure and content of comments, notes, diagrams at the margins of the manuscripts, with the possibility of finding common elements and interactions between the traditions.

The “Textual Criticism of the New Testament, the Old Testament and the Qur’an” research group cordially invites the submission of proposals for papers for the forthcoming EABS meeting in Leuven. Generally the duration of papers to be read should not exceed 20 minutes. Abstracts (no more than 300 words) have to be enrolled through the EABS meeting website until 31st March 2016.  More details on dates and abstract submissions please check here.


4. Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas (SNTS)

New Testament Textual Criticism Seminar (chairs: Claire Clivaz, Ulrich Schmid and Tommy Wasserman)


Rationale: The establishment of the New Testament text is a prerequisite for New Testament studies, and the subsequent history of the text (the textual variants) offers windows into the social history of Christianity and the reception of the text by ancient readers and interpreters. There can never be a strict border between the exegesis of the text and the «Wirkunsgeschichte» as reflected in the history of readings and the study of the NT manuscripts. . . .

New Testament textual criticism has experienced a strong development in recent years and is currently a thriving field of New Testament studies, as evident from the number of publications, including editions (Editio Critica Maior, Nestle-Aland 28, SBLGNT) and electronic tools, as well as a significant increase in activity at scholarly conferences.

The strong development in the digitization of NT manuscripts as undertaken by institutions worldwide, and the perspective of future digital tools and editions such as the forthcoming digital Nestle-Aland 28 strongly points to the necessity to open a new New Testament textual criticism seminar at the SNTS.

Programme (five years):

•     Development and diversity of critical editions (2014)
•     The history of readings (2015)
•     The use of patristic evidence in New Testament textual criticism (2016)
•     Digital challenges (2017)
•     New Testament textual criticism in exegesis (2018) 

5. Birmingham Colloquium on the Textual Criticism of the New Testament (organizers David Parker and Hugh Houghton)

Description: The Birmingham Colloquium on the Textual Criticism of the New Testament is usually held every two years in Birmingham, UK. Since the first meeting in 1997, an ever-increasing number of established scholars as well as doctoral students have participated in the 2-3 day programme. The themes have included scribal practice (2007), patristic citations (2011) and commentaries (2015), as well as broader topics. The colloquium traditionally includes an excursion to examine manuscripts in a local cathedral library and a closing dinner with a presentation. Several sets of proceedings have been published in the ‘Texts and Studies’ series (http://www.gorgiaspress.com/bookshop/c-44-texts-and-studies-1935-6927.aspx).

Monastic Economies in Egypt and Palestine

Sorry for the late notice, but some readers may well be interested in this conference:

Please find below the programme for the Monastic Economies in Egypt and Palestine conference, which will take place in Oxford 16th-17th March, 2016. Attendance at the event is free, but registration is essential. To register, please email monastic.economies@gmail.com. Further updates, including abstracts, will be posted at: monkscamelsandwine.wordpress.com

With best wishes,
Jenny Cromwell
Department of Cross-cultural and Regional Studies, University of Copenhagen

Monastic Economies in Egypt and Palestine, 5th–10th centuries CE
16th–17th March, Ertegun House, Oxford

Organisers: Louise Blanke, Jennifer Cromwell and Bryan Ward Perkins.

Wednesday 16th March

8.45 – 9.10 Registration
9.10 – 9.30 Introduction by Louise Blanke, Jennifer Cromwell and Bryan Ward Perkins.

Session I: Monastic food production and consumption
Session chair: Jennifer Cromwell

9.30 – 10.05 Alain Delattre: Agricultural management and food production at the monastery of Bawit
10.05 – 10.40 Dorota Dzierzbicka: Monastic vintages. The social and economic role of wine in Egyptian monasteries during the 5th–7th centuries.

Tea and coffee break

11.10 – 11.45 Darlene Brooks Hedstrom: Cooking, Baking and Serving: A Window into the kitchen of Egyptian Monastic Households and the Archaeology of Cooking.
11.45 – 12.20 Gábor Kalla: The refectory and the kitchen in the early Byzantine cloister of Tall Bi’a (Syria). The Egyptian and Palestinian connections.

Lunch

Session II: The monastic estate (built environments and landholdings)
Session chair: Elisabeth O’Connell

13.30 – 14.05 Tomasz Derda and Joanna Wegner: The Naqlun fathers and their business affairs
14.05 – 14.40 Karel Innemée: St Macarius’s Monastery in Sketis: Questions raised by recent surveys
14.40 – 15.15 Jacob Ashkenazi and Mordechai Aviam: Economic growth and monastic built environment in Christian Galilee in Late Antiquity

Tea and coffee break

15.45 – 16.20 Isabelle Marthot-Santaniello: Monasteries as landowners: Evidence from the Egyptian village of Aphrodito (6th-8th centuries CE)
16.20 – 16.55 Arietta Papaconstantinou: Loans, land, and the Lord: Was credit important for monastic estates?
16.55 – 17.30 Davide Bianchi: A great monastic estate between Palaestina and Arabia

Thursday 17th March

Session III: Travel and pilgrimage
Session chair: Bryan Ward Perkins

9.00 – 9.35 Gesa Schenke: Egyptian Hagiotopography: documentary and literary evidence for the martyr veneration at monastic shrines
9.35 – 10.10 Tonio Sebastian Richter: The making of memory: visitors’ inscriptions in the Upper Egyptian monastery Deir Anba Hadra

Tea and coffee break

10.30 – 11.05 Orit Shamir: Garments and Shrouds of Egyptian and Nubian Pilgrims from Qasr al-Yahud, ninth century CE
11.05 – 11.40 Daniel Reynolds: Deconstructing the pilgrim economy
11.40 – 12.15 Paula Tutty: Monastic travels in fourth and fifth century Egypt

Lunch

Session IV: Trade and the production and consumption of material goods
Session chair: Louise Blanke

13.30 – 14.05 Mennat Allah el Dorry: It’s a dung job: Exploring fuel disc production in Egyptian monasteries
14.05 – 14.40 Andrea Myers Achi: Illuminating the Scriptorium: Monastic economy and book production from the medieval monastery of St Michael in Egypt

Tea and coffee break

15.10 – 15.45 Daniel Caner: P.Colt 79 as evidence for the distinction between offerings (Prosphorai) and blessings (Eulogiai) in Byzantine Monasticism
15.45 -16.20 Sebastian Olschok: The economic complex of Deir Anba Hadra, Egypt

Break

16.50- 17.30 Summary discussion led by Louise Blanke and Jennifer Cromwell

Text Critical Papers at HBU’s 2016 Theology Conference

Mentioned earlier on the blog, HBU’s annual theology conference is happening next weekend. There are lots of text critical papers given this year’s theme of “Erasmus’ Bible and the Impact of Scripture.” If you’re in the area, don’t miss it. What could be better than textual criticism and Texas BBQ?

Here are some of the papers on offer:

• Timothy George “Erasmus and the Search for the Christian Life”
• Craig A. Evans “Erasmus and the Beginnings of Textual Fundamentalism”
• Gregory Barnhill and Natalie Webb – “Tolle Lege: Reader’s Aids and Nomina Sacra in Early Christian Manuscripts”
• Stanley Helton – “Origen and the Endings of Mark’s Gospel”
• Jeff Cate – “Martin Luther and the Reliability of the NT Manuscript Tradition”
• Jeffrey T. Riddle – “John Calvin and Text Criticism”
• Michael Whiting – “‘A Boy that Driveth the plough Shall Know More of the Scriptures than Thou’: The Perspicuity of Scripture and the Role of Prologues and Marginal Glosses in the Translations of Martin Luther and William Tyndale”
• Laura Manzo – “The Septuagint’s Function in the Formation of Biblical Canons”
• John O. Soden – “In Defense of Biblical Humanism for Bible Translation: Erasmus and the Greek”
• Daniel J. Pfeiffer – “Narrative in the Textual Tradition: An Assessment of Scribal Changes”
• Stratton L. Ladewig – “New Images Bring Greater Clarity: Examples of Improved Textual Identity CSNTM’s P45 images”
• Daniel B. Wallace “Erasmus and the Publication of the First Greek New Testament”
• Herman Selderhuis “The Impact of Erasmus’ Biblical Work on the Reformation”
• David S. Ritsema – “The Purpose of the Fourth Gospel (John 20:30-31): A Fresh Look at the Implications for Grammatical, Syntactical, and Textual Critical Problems”
• Robert D. Marcello – “Significant Contributions to the Text of the New Testament and Early Church from the National Library of Greece”

Full schedule here. (HT: DBW)

Ad Fontes, Ad Futura: Erasmus’ Bible and the Impact of Scripture

The weather probably isn’t too bad in February.

Another conference ETC readers might be interested in.

February 25-27, 2016
Houston Baptist University

In celebration of upcoming 500th anniversary of Erasmus’ Greek text and the Reformation, the Department of Theology at HBU, in conjunction with the Dunham Bible Museum, is pleased to host the conference Ad Fontes, Ad Futura: Erasmus’ Bible and the Impact of Scripture. The conference will consider the textual and historical issues surrounding the development of the Bible, the Bible’s impact on human society across the centuries, and the future of Biblical translation and interpretation in the future. Our keynote speakers include Craig Evans (Houston Baptist University), Timothy George (Beeson Divinity School, Samford University), Herman Selderhuis (Theological University Apeldoorn) and Daniel Wallace (Dallas Theological Seminary). The plenary talks are free and open to the public.

We also invite proposals for short papers from scholars and graduate students from a wide array of disciplines and topics, including:

• The historical context, and textual tradition, of the Biblical canon;
• The history of the Greek text of the Bible;
• The social and/or cultural impact of the Bible in any historical period or location;
• The Bible and the history of the book;
• Modern Bible translations and translation practice;
• Textual and cultural issues concerning the Bible in the Digital Age.

Anyone who is interested should submit a 300 word abstract on any relevant topic. Papers should be 20 minutes long, and decisions will be announced before January 8, 2016. Send proposals to Jason Maston at jmaston@hbu.edu. [I can’t find a submission deadline. Submissions are due by Dec. 9.]

HT: Jason Maston