More NT Textual Criticism Guest Lecture Videos

I’m teaching NTTC again at the seminary and that means having guest lecturers visit to share their work. The first two videos are now up at the TCI YouTube channel. If you subscribe there, you’ll get new videos when they’re posted. Thanks to Mike and Edgar for letting me share these.

Ebojo on P46 and the Pastoral Epistles

 

Holmes on Editing and Translating the NT for Church and Academy

Elliott’s Doctoral Thesis on the Text of the Pastoral Epistles

At some point in college, I remember looking through J. K. Elliott’s The Greek text of the epistles to Timothy and Titus, a detailed textual commentary on those books from a thoroughgoing eclectic perspective.

Recently, while putting a bibliography together I discovered that the two-volume Oxford DPhil that lies behind this book is freely available online from Oxford. As I don’t have a copy of the published version, I don’t know if there are any significant differences. But, if it’s like most published British dissertations, it is probably very similar. If someone can check, let me know. [Update: Elliott emails to say, “Very few changes were made.”]

Here’s the first part of the abstract:

To my knowledge there has been no thoroughgoing eclectic study of the text of any New Testament book, although the principles of eclectic textual criticism have been applied to individual readings. This thesis attempts to provide a study of all the known variant readings in the Greek text of the Pastoral Epistles. To this end, a full critical apparatus has been compiled and a discussion on each variant reading is provided with the object of establishing the original text and of explaining how variants arose.

The theory, on which these discussions are based is found in an introductory chapter. This introduction begins by arguing that previous methods of textual criticism based largely on the “cult of the best manuscript” are untenable and unreliable nowadays due partly to the growing realisation that no one manuscript or group of manuscripts contains the original text. Many scholars realise that the original reading may be found in any given manuscript. The implication of this is of course that the peculiar readings of every manuscript must (ultimately) be examined. 

The Pastoral Epistles in the Apostolic Fathers

The first major reception of the texts of the New Testament is of course from the Apostolic Fathers. Rick Brannan has done an interesting job of putting together a list of Potential Quotes, Allusions, or References of the Pastoral Epistles in the Apostolic Fathers (see the links therein). The Apostolic Fathers are significant as they are among our first major witnesses to textual traditions of the New Testament and give evidence of how the New Testament writings were being interpreted within a generation of their composition.

Otherwise, more generally, note the following volumes on the New Testament and the Apostlic Fathers by Andrew Gregory and Christopher Tuckett:

Trajectories through the New Testament and the Apostolic Fathers

The New Testament and the Apostolic Fathers 2 volume set

The Reception of the New Testament in the Apostolic Fathers