Houghton: GA 239 & 304 Do Not Attest the Short Ending of Mark

In the latest issue of NTS, Hugh Houghton has a brief article looking at two catena manuscripts (GA 239 and 304) that both break off after Mark 16:8. The latter is even cited as evidence for the short ending in the ECM. But Houghton makes the case that neither provide evidence for the short ending since there are good reasons to conclude that both manuscripts originally had the longer ending. The evidence for this comes both from the catena and from the fact that neither manuscript has typical ending marks after 16:8, suggesting the text originally continued. Here’s the conclusion:

In sum, there are no known Greek minuscule manuscripts which only preserve the Short Ending of Mark. While the tenacity of the early textual variation at this point continues to be visible in such documents in the form of marginal asterisks, other scribal annotations, and comments from early Christian authors in catenae, claims that this ancient reading is attested by a Byzantine manuscript cannot be sustained unless they are supported by detailed investigation of the witness’s codicology, scribal practice, and textual tradition. The present study does not challenge the scholarly consensus on the earliest attainable form of the ending of Mark, but it does demonstrate the imperative to take full account of the context and nature of documents in which an unexpected reading appears before adducing them as evidence for an early form of text.

There are other interesting features about both manuscripts, but the case against citing these two minuscules to support the short ending is convincing to my mind. The article is open access and you can read it here. 

Mark 16:8 in GA 239

Gorgias Open Repository, Including Codex Zacynthius

Gorgias Press has just posted about their Open Repository. It looks to be a collection of all their open access books. There are a number of books of interest to text critics, a few of which have been known about for some time. But I wanted especially to highlight the inclusion of Kiraz’s great book on the Syriac dot and the two new volumes in the Text and Studies series on Codex Zacynthius edited by Hugh Houghton et al. Here are the descriptions of the latter two:

This book consists of a series of studies of Codex Zacynthius (Cambridge, University Library MS Add. 10062), the earliest surviving New Testament commentary manuscript in catena format. A research project funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council has produced new multispectral images of the palimpsest undertext in order to enable a thorough investigation of the manuscript and the creation of a complete electronic edition. This volume, co-authored by the members of the project, will provide a full account of the research undertaken by the project. Many advances have resulted from this research, which will be presented here for the first time in print.

This book is the first-ever edition of the complete palimpsest undertext of Codex Zacynthius (Cambridge, University Library MS Add. 10062), the earliest surviving New Testament commentary manuscript in catena format. It relies on new multispectral images produced by a research project funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council in 2018.

Free Brill Book: The Principal Pauline Epistles: A Collation of Old Latin Evidence

A new publication in the esteemed series New Testament Tools, Studies and Documents (Brill) has been published:  The Principal Pauline Epistles: A Collation of Old Latin Evidence, edited by H.A.G. Houghton, C.M. Kreinecker, R.M. MacLachlan, and C.J. Smith. 

The book is a verse-by-verse collation of Old Latin manuscripts, the lemmata of early Latin commentaries and testimonia extracts in Romans, 1–2 Corinthians and Galatians.
 
This is the final output from the ERC-funded COMPAUL project and therefore an open access title which may be downloaded for free here. 
The transcriptions underlying the collation are publically available at www.epistulae.org.

Here is a short extract from the Preface to give you the background and scope of the volume:

In 2011, a European Research Council Starting Grant enabled Hugh Houghton to assemble a team at the Institute for Textual Scholarship and Electronic Editing (ITSEE) in the University of Birmingham to investigate the earliest commentaries on Paul as sources for the biblical text (the COMPAUL project). In order to assist with analysis of the numerous early Latin expositions, full electronic transcriptions were produced of the four principal Pauline Epistles in three types of material:

1. Manuscripts identified as having an Old Latin affiliation;
2. Existing scholarly reconstructions of the Pauline text of individual early Latin commentators;
3. Early collections of biblical testimonia.

These were then automatically collated to provide a representative sample of early Latin readings which might be reflected in commentaries and their textual tradition. Although the publication of this data was not part of the original plan for the COMPAUL project, it soon became evident that—until the appearance of the corresponding volumes of the Vetus Latina edition—making this material more widely available would be of service to scholars in a variety of fields.

The earliest Latin commentary on the Gospels published

Exciting news out of Birmingham (UK) today. De Gruyter has just published the long-lost fourth century commentary on the Gospels by Fortunatianus of Aquileia. Hugh Houghton explains:

The earliest Latin commentary on the Gospels, lost for more than 1,500 years, has been rediscovered and made available in English for the first time. The extraordinary find, a work written by a bishop in northern Italy, Fortunatianus of Aquileia, dates back to the middle of the fourth century.

The biblical text of the manuscript is of particular significance, as it predates the standard Latin version known as the Vulgate and provides new evidence about the earliest form of the Gospels in Latin.

Despite references to this commentary in other ancient works, no copy was known to survive until Dr Lukas Dorfbauer, a researcher from the University of Salzburg, identified Fortunatianus’ text in an anonymous manuscript copied around the year 800 and held in Cologne Cathedral Library. The manuscripts of Cologne Cathedral Library were made available online in 2002.

Scholars had previously been interested in this ninth-century manuscript as the sole witness to a short letter which claimed to be from the Jewish high priest Annas to the Roman philosopher Seneca. They had dismissed the 100-page anonymous Gospel commentary as one of numerous similar works composed in the court of Charlemagne. But when he visited the library in 2012, Dorfbauer, a specialist in such writings, could see that the commentary was much older than the manuscript itself.

In fact, it was none other than the earliest Latin commentary on the Gospels.

Dr. Houghton has published the (free) English translation of the Latin text edited by Lukas J. Dorfbauer. I do wish these had been published as a diglot rather than separate volumes. But well done to all involved! These kind of discoveries are what make textual criticism and the study of manuscripts so exciting. There is always the chance of new finds.

ETC Interview with Hugh Houghton: Part 2

Congratulations to Drew Longacre for winning our book giveaway! Thanks to all who participated. I have taken note of your many suggestions for future interviewees. Now here is part 2 of our interview with Hugh Houghton in which we learn of his secret life as a Disney star! Part 1 is here.

You work at the Institute for Textual Scholarship and Electronic Editing (ITSEE) where “computer methods are now fundamental to every stage of the editorial process.” The emergence of digital texts has been hailed as “revolutionary,” something that frees “writing from the frozen structure of the page” (source). From your vantage, how important are electronic texts to how we conceive of texts, how we use them, and how we edit them?

It has become something of a truism, but I do agree with those who say that the advent of digital media is likely to have an even greater impact on our approach to texts than the invention of printing. Of course, in textual criticism, one of the principal benefits of digitisation has been the imaging of primary sources, meaning that we can read the pages of manuscripts from across the world without even travelling to the nearest library.

But electronic text itself offers an even more powerful research tool in terms of the questions we can ask, from examining a particular copyist’s spelling habits or use of abbreviations to reconstructing phylogenetic relationships for an entire textual tradition. First of all, though, we have to encode texts in such a way that we can use them to answer these questions, and no doubt others which we haven’t yet thought of.

The adoption of editing software such as Peter Robinson’s COLLATE has completely changed the way we approach the task of editing the New Testament: no longer is the focus on the painstaking assembly of a critical apparatus, summarising as much information as economically as possible. Instead, the software allows us to generate a collation automatically from transcription files, and the emphasis is now on preparing an accurate full-text electronic transcription of each witness which can then be explored and re-used in the ways I mentioned.

ETC Interview with Hugh Houghton: Part 1

It is a real pleasure to continue our ETC Blog interview series with someone who is no stranger to our regular readers. Dr. Hugh Houghton is Reader in New Testament Textual Scholarship at the University of Birmingham (UK) and Deputy Director of the Institute for Textual Scholarship and Electronic Editing (ITSEE) there. He is currently working on the volume of John as part of the IGNTP/ECM collaboration as well as the letters of Paul. This month he has a new book out on the Latin NT which we’re giving away thanks to OUP. Without further ado, here’s Hugh.

PG: First things first. Can you tell us how to pronounce your name? Is it HOW-ton or HOE-ton?

HH: Thank you for asking. It’s HOW-ton, although HOR-ton is a very common pronunciation too in the UK, and I sometimes also hear HUFF-ton. As this is a blog on textual criticism, we could explore the relationship of the different pronunciations to textual variation: when my surname is misspelt – which is fairly common – is that because the copyist voiced it in their head and substituted a different spelling for the text of their exemplar? Is it just replacement by a simpler or more common form? Were they copying to dictation? And then what about the visual or orthographic influence of my first name, with the potential for interference, haplography...? You’d better ask the next question or we’ll never finish this interview!

Can you tell us about what led to your current interests in the text of the New Testament and specifically the Latin and Patristic evidence for it?

I’ve always enjoyed languages, particularly the historical relationship between them. I was fortunate to study both Latin and Ancient Greek at school, and then read Classics at university. In my final year, my courses included Medieval Latin, when I first visited the university library to see a manuscript (the Cambridge Songs), and the history of the Greek language up to the fall of Byzantium. I wrote an undergraduate dissertation on the Acts of the Christian Martyrs as linguistic documents.

My Master’s degree, although still in Classical Linguistics, involved studies of Tertullian’s language and the Greek Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles. A few years later, I took a second undergraduate degree in Theology as part of my ministerial training, which included a module on the Gospel according to Mark with Keith Elliott. So when Philip Burton (who had taught me as an undergraduate, while he was completing his doctorate) and David Parker contacted me to see if I would be interested in joining them to work on the Vetus Latina Iohannes (an edition of the Old Latin versions of John’s Gospel), I jumped at the opportunity.

Win a Copy of Hugh Houghton's The Latin New Testament (OUP)

To celebrate the release of his book next week, Oxford University Press has kindly agreed to give away a copy of Hugh Houghton’s The Latin New Testament: A Guide to its Early History, Texts, and Manuscripts.

You can enter to win in any of the ways listed below. The contest closes at midnight (EST) on February 24th. We’ll announce the randomly-chosen winner in part 2 of our interview with Hugh.

Update: congrats to Drew Longacre who was the randomly-chosen winner!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Accessing Elliott’s Bibliography (3rd ed.) Online

In a comment that, for some inexplicable reason, did not appear in the sidebar, Hugh Houghton has given details about how to access Elliott’s bibliography of GNT manuscripts online. Unfortunately the process is laborious, but it will save you a lot of cash (or quid).

Here are Hugh’s instructions (I’ve added the numbers):

1. Go to https://bibil.unil.ch
2. Select the Recherche thésaurus tab [NB: there is an English option in the top right of the page]
3. Click on the ‘+’ symbol next to Thésaurus BiBIL
4. Click on the ‘+’ symbol next to Nouveau Testament (Problèmes d’Introduction)
5. Click on the ‘+’ symbol next to Critique textuelle du Nouveau Testament
6. Click on the ‘+’ symbol next to Textes grecs
7. Click on the ‘+’ symbol next to Manuscrits
8. Click on the ‘+’ symbol next to the category of manuscript (Papyrus, Majuscule, Minuscules, Lectionaries)
9. Click on the ‘+’ symbol next to the range of Gregory-Aland numbers
10. Click on the Gregory-Aland number of the manuscript itself, so that it is highlighted.
11. Scroll to the bottom of the page and click on ‘Rechercher’
12. Below this will now appear a list of publications corresponding to those in the third edition of Elliott’s bibliography.
13. Clicking on the title of any of these will open up the full entry, which sometimes includes links to online versions of these publications.

Hugh also adds:

Now, if a programmer could devise an interface which enables users simply to enter a Gregory-Aland number and be taken directly to the bibliography of that manuscript, they will spare textual critics from wearing out the mouse on their computers through constant clicking! I imagine it would also increase traffic to the site: at the minute, the bibliography on the online Kurzgefasste Liste is far easier to access.

I also found that searching from higher levels up the category tree gives you results as well. So you can select ‘Manuscrits’ and then click search and it will give you what I assume is everything in Elliott’s Bibliography. The system says there are 1,100 results when I do that. If you were really enterprising, you could then check all the boxes and download these into your bibliography software.

Speaking of Elliott, Hugh has alerted me to the pre-pub version of his NovT review of the book which you can download here. I’ll take the liberty of clipping the conclusion for you:

As it stands, this third edition serves as a reminder, if any is needed, that the transition from print to digital (and back again) is rarely smooth. Nevertheless, all involved should be congratulated on the accomplishment of this major change in format: with a few adjustments and regular updating, this Bibliography will continue to guide students and scholars through the ever-growing literature on Greek New Testament manuscripts.

Many thanks, Hugh!

Update

Troy Griffitts sends good news that he has added links to Elliott’s bibliography in the NTVMR. You should find them in the bibliography section for each manuscript. Thanks, Troy!

PhD Opportunity at ITSEE (Birmingham)

Hugh Houghton of the Institute for Textual Scholarship and Electronic Editing (ITSEE), University of Birmingham, is principal investigator of the COMPAUL project on "The Earliest Commentaries on Paul as Sources for the Biblical Text." Houghton announces the following opportunity for a student doing a PhD. in the project he is leading:

There is an opportunity for a student to undertake doctoral research at the Institute for Textual Scholarship and Electronic Editing in the University of Birmingham. As part of the COMPAUL project on "The Earliest Commentaries on Paul as Sources for the Biblical Text", a bursary is available for a student to work on the Greek catenae tradition of the Pauline epistles. Candidates should have excellent language skills in biblical Greek: experience of working with manuscripts would be beneficial, as would prior research experience and a Master's degree in a related area.Potential applicants should contact Dr Hugh Houghton, the project's principal investigator, by 2nd February 2013. Please give details of linguistic ability and research experience and attach a brief CV.

Additional information on the project; on ITSEE, and on the PhD advertisement.

For a general introduction by Houghton to the work at the ITSEE you can look at the following videoclip (NB: that it is from April 2012, and does not reflect the latest developments):

 

Reviews of Houghton's Augustine’s Text of John and Author's Response

Recently the RBECS (Reviews of Biblical and Early Christian Studies) blog published two reviews of H. A. G. Houghton Augustine’s Text of John. Patristic Citations and Latin Gospel Manuscripts (Oxford: OUP, 2008) written by Dan Batovici, Peterhouse, University of Cambridge (here), and J. Cornelia Linde, Department of History, University College London (here). RBECS has also published Houghton's response (here).



The reviews and the author's response were first presented in a review-session dedicated to Houghton’s monograph at the International Medieval Congress, Leeds, July 2010,(session 1630).

Update: Hugh Houghton's monograph is also featured on the new Biblindex blog, which also refers to the bookreview by Craig R. Koester in Review of Biblical Literature.