Two Funded PhDs in NTTC with Garrick Allen

This looks like a great opportunity for someone qualified. Titles are ripe for study. See Tommy’s work on this in the Pastorals. I expect the Gospels will yield the most interesting results with Hebrews a close second. Update 1/8/21: Garrick has one more spot open for this project. See here.

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The Titles of the New Testament: A New Approach to Manuscripts and the History of Interpretation (TiNT) project is funded by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement n° 847428).

1. The project seeks to digitally edit every form of every title in every non-lectionary Greek manuscript that preserves part of the New Testament, using this data to contribute to new research related to six research questions:
2. the diachronic development of paratextual traditions (especially titles in all their forms);
3. the provenance of New Testament works in historical imagination;
4. the relationship between bibliography and canon;
5. the design, codicology, and artistic features of manuscripts;
6. scribal identities and the sociology of textual transmission; and
7. traditions of textual segmentation.

The data produced by the project will also raise new research questions and be publicly available. The objectives of the project are to rethink the critical value of manuscripts beyond the purely textual concerns of traditional textual criticism and to explore titular traditions as expressive modes of communication and as aspects of reception history.

The Principle Investigator (PI) and team members will work together to produce titular profiles for each manuscript, using this information to inform innovative research on specific research topics.

We invite applications from PhD level researchers who propose to carry out work that addresses one of the the project’s six critical questions and which focuses on manuscripts and paratextuality.

Please submit a CV, as 1–2 page PhD project proposal, a writing sample (no more than 20 pages), and 2 references as your application. Please address informal enquiries to Dr Garrick Allen (Garrick.allen [at] glasgow.ac.uk).

Funding Notes

UK students: Tuition fees and annual stipend at UKRI rate
International/EU students: Tuition fees and bursary

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The scenery in Glasgow doesn’t hurt either.

The ‘beginning’ of the gospel and minuscule 1241

The opening line of Mark’s Gospel is of interest for several reasons. One is, of course, the famous variant at the end of 1.1 involving “son of God.” But another is its use of εὐαγγελιον to refer to the narrative of Jesus that follows. Mark opens with “the beginning (ἀρχή) of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, Son of God.”

It is from this opening line that many think the use of εὐαγγελιον to refer to a written narrative of Jesus developed. Hence we find εὐαγγέλιον κτλ. as the title for each of our canonical Gospels. I wonder if Mark’s opening might also explain why we find κατά in the titles. The use of  κατά to delineate authorship is, after all, somewhat unusual given that the simple genitive would do just fine. But, given Mark’s opening line, perhaps κατά was needed to distinguish the author of the narrative (e.g., εὐαγγέλιον κατὰ μαρκον) from its main subject (εὐαγγέλιον Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ; cf. Hengel, Johannine Question, 193 n. 3). In any case, if we assume Mark wrote first, his opening effectively serves as the “beginning” of the gospel in multiple senses.

What is interesting is that minuscule 1241 adopts Mark’s language for the actual τιτλοι for both Matt and Luke. Both are titled ἀρχὴ (σῦν θεῷ) τοῦ κατὰ ... εὐαγγελιοῦ. Mark and John, on the other hand, are not so titled in this manuscript, I assume because both already have ἀρχή in their opening sentence. Interestingly, Acts also is titled “the beginning (ἀρχή ) of...” such that Mark’s influence is felt on all five of the canonical New Testament narratives in this manuscript. (The other books in 1241 do not have ἀρχή in the titles.) This is just one of the many ways that actually looking at manuscripts can get us thinking more about the text—both its original meaning and its later influence.

Both NA27 and the Aland Synopsis list pc or al with these Gospel titles, but I have not been able to track these others down yet.

Here are some images (more at CSNTM or the VMR):

Matt 1.1 in 1241

Luke 1.1 in 1241

Acts 1.1 in 1241