Video Interviews with Text Critics

Dwayne Green is a pastor up in Canada who’s been putting out a steady stream of video interviews on textual criticism and Bible translation lately. As a pastor, he’s especially interested in theology and methodology and likes the KJV himself but isn’t KJV-only. He seems genuinely open to views he doesn’t hold and has a lighthearted style about his videos. He’s been nothing but a nice chap in all my interactions with him. So far he’s interviewed Hixson and myself, Dirk Jongkind, Maurice Robinson, Mark Ward, Timothy Berg, Jeff Riddle, James Snapp, and several others. Go check out his YouTube channel. I especially recommend the most recent one with Maurice Robinson if you’ve ever wondered who the Pierpont in Robinson-Pierpont was.

Dirk’s New Book on Textual Criticism

Since Dirk probably has better things to do than publicize his own book, I’ll take the liberty here to alert our readers of his book coming out next month from Crossway.

An Introduction to the Greek New Testament, Produced at Tyndale House, Cambridge

By Dirk Jongkind

Is the New Testament text reliable?
What do we do with textual variants?
How do I use the Greek New Testament?

This short book, written as a companion to The Greek New Testament, Produced at Tyndale House, Cambridge, provides crucial information about the Tyndale House edition in particular and the Greek New Testament in general.

Dirk Jongkind, one of the principal scholars behind this groundbreaking project, answers critical questions for understanding the biblical text so that you can have clarity and confidence as you engage with the New Testament in the original Greek.

Table of Contents:

1. Your Greek New Testament and the Manuscripts
2. Practicalities
3. Manuscripts
4. How Decisions Are Made
5. Why Not the Textus Receptus?
6. Why Not the Byzantine Text?
7. Biblical Theology and the Transmission of the Text
8. Where to Go from Here?

I really like that Dirk has a chapter on theology. Many of the great text critics of the past included theology in discussions of their method and approach and its nice to see that happening here. You can see the endorsements here. I just pre-ordered mine today. Looking forward to it.

Dirk at Southern Seminary on Tyndale Edition

We interrupt your regularly scheduled updates on the Mark fragment for this message from Rob Plummer:

I would like to invite you to a free lecture on the Tyndale House Edition of the Greek New Testament by the lead editor of this recent publication, Dr. Dirk Jongkind. Wednesday, June 20th, 1pm (Eastern Standard Time), in the basement of the Southern Seminary library.

After Dr. Jongkind’s presentation and following discussion, I will be giving a private tour of the seminary archives. Some of the Greek treasures there include a 1522 Erasmus 3rd edition Greek New Testament and the original handwritten manuscripts of A.T. Robertson’s magisterial grammar. I hope you can join us!

Title and description of the lecture:

Treasuring Detail in Untraditional Ways: The Tyndale House Edition of the Greek New Testament 
Since the early 18th century the approach to the textual criticism of the GNT has been dominated by a received set of ‘canons of textual criticism’. This set of guidelines determines the categories with which individual textual variants are discussed. A lot has happened over the last 300 years. One of the most important developments for textual criticism has been a growing appreciation of the actual way in which scribes copy a text. This notion, together with the wealth of manuscript material that is easily available, led scholars at Tyndale House to produce a new critical edition of the Greek New Testament. Regardless of how one thinks about the employed method, the project has provided a new impetus to be attentive to the detail of the Scriptures of the New Testament.

Sound like fun. May I recommend Skyline Chili for lunch, Dirk?

Review of Scribal Habits in Codex Sinaiticus

On the blog Reviews of Biblical and Early Christian Studies maintained by some doctoral students including "core contributors" Dan Batovici (St Andrews), David J. Larsen (St Andrews), Justin A. Mihoc (Durham), and Samuli Siikavirta (Cambridge), you can read reviews and reports on presented papers. To my knowledge, at least two of the contributors have worked in the field of textual criticism, and there are several reviews in the category "textual criticism", the most recent being Batovici's review of our co-blogger Dirk Jongkind's, Scribal Habits of Codex Sinaiticus (Texts and Studies 5; Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias, 2007), here. Batovici, by the way, did his MPhil in Cambridge under Peter Head on the text of the Shepherd in Codex Sinaiticus.

You can also follow this band on facebook.