The following is a guest post from Peter Montoro who is currently a doctoral student at the University of Birmingham. It gives a sample of his important paper at the Birmingham Colloquium on the Textual Criticism of the New Testament earlier this year, which was, in turn, based on his BD dissertation for the University of London. An expanded version of this material will be published in the proceedings of the Colloquium. —Peter G.
The particular value of patristic citations, as opposed to versions and continuous text manuscripts of the New Testament, is, as Gordon Fee put it, “[W]hen properly evaluated...the Church Fathers have the potential of offering datable and geographically certain evidence.”1
As has now been well established, recovering usable citations from patristic witnesses poses a number of methodological challenges. Yet while much progress has been made on many fronts, it seems sometimes to be forgotten that the task of “proper evaluation” is incomplete without a careful investigation of the manuscript transmission of the work in which a given patristic citation is located.
It needs to be more clearly recognized, in practice as well as in theory, that the usability of patristic citations is directly dependent upon their stability within the manuscript tradition of the work from which they derive.
Though a father may have used two different forms of a text at two different times, even in the same work, it is rather difficult to use two different forms at the same time. When a single citation in a single location is itself an instance of variation, that citation is not “stable,” in the sense that I am using the term, and this therefore precludes it—until and unless the priority of one of these textual forms has been clearly and decisively demonstrated—from being utilized as the “datable and geographically certain evidence” that patristic citations are intended to provide.
For this study, I examined those portions of Chrysostom’s Romans Homilies that contain his exegesis of Romans 8 (found in homilies 13–15 using Migne’s numbering), in seven of the eight extant and catalogued manuscripts of the work that date to the tenth century or earlier, as well as two additional eleventh century manuscripts and six editions of the printed Greek text. (The published version of my work will include full data from all extant manuscripts dating to the fifteenth century and earlier.)
Chrysostom’s citation of Rom 8:33–35 provides a clear and striking illustration of the results of the analysis of this dataset as a whole and is what I want to focus on in this post. A PDF containing brief info on each of the manuscripts and editions used, as well as a full collation of the initial citations of 8:33–35 in these manuscripts and editions is available here.
Within the eight manuscripts examined, there are no less than five significant variation units in which two or more manuscripts differ from the others. All five of these non-singular variants are also found in the manuscript tradition of the book of Romans itself. In other words, the variants in the manuscript tradition of the Romans Homilies largely offer a selection of the very same variants that are present in the manuscript tradition of Romans itself. This is the case, not only for individual variants, but also for the particular combination of variants found in each of the two manuscript clusters found in the early manuscripts of the Romans Homilies.
The fifth of these variants, found in 8:35, is particularly interesting. After ἀπὸ τῆς ἀγάπης τοῦ, one cluster of manuscripts reads θεοῦ, while the other cluster reads χριστοῦ, followed by the significant comment, Καὶ οὐκ εἶπε· τοῦ θεοῦ· οὕτως ἀδιάφορον αὐτῷ, καὶ χριστὸν καὶ θεὸν ὀνομάζειν (“And he does not say ‘of God,’ so indifferent is it to him whether he mentions the Name of Christ or of God”).2 Phrases such as the Καὶ οὐκ εἶπε(ν)... found in all printed editions at this point, have traditionally been considered the “gold standard” for textual stability in patristic citation. Indeed, Tischendorf thought this phrase so significant that he included the entirety of it in his textual apparatus for this verse.
Yet upon examination of the manuscript tradition of the Romans Homilies, not only is this phrase absent in a significant number of early manuscripts, but also the reading which it is clearly intended to support is itself a point of variation, rendering this traditional “gold standard” for textual stability a rather shaky foundation on which to build one’s text-critical house.
In order to properly evaluate patristic citations, it is not enough to determine from a printed edition that a citation is actually a citation—one must also go behind the edition to consider the stability of the manuscript tradition that underlies it. In the case of Chrysostom’s Romans Homilies, an initial survey of the manuscript tradition demonstrates significant textual instability, raising serious questions about the usability of any of the currently available printed editions of this work as a basis for citations of the form of the text used by Chrysostom in the late fourth century. Given that Chrysostom’s Homilies on Acts—for which similar textual instability has been demonstrated—served as the source for more than a quarter of the entire apparatus of patristic citations in the recent ECM of Acts, the answers that we give to these questions will have a significant impact on the shape of future critical editions of the New Testament.
It is important to note that I am not by any means asserting that these printed editions never give us access to the text of Chrysostom—indeed, in most cases they probably do. Yet this is to say very little indeed. The text of Romans is itself sufficiently stable that the same claim could be made, with equal validity, for almost any purely Greek (excluding the bilinguals, which present special challenges) manuscript or edition of the text of Romans, however far removed from Chrysostom.
As a point of comparison, the Textus Receptus and the NA28, normally considered to be at opposite ends of the textual spectrum, differ from each other only eighteen times in the entirety of Romans 8, four of which variations are merely orthographical. In this same chapter, there are no less than twenty-two differences between the Romans text found in the two textual clusters of Chrysostom’s Romans Homilies, a number that only includes those instances where all three manuscripts identified as belonging to the one manuscript cluster differ from all five of the manuscripts that belong to the other.
In other words, there is actually more variation between the various manuscript clusters of Chrysostom’s Romans Homilies than there is between the Textus Receptus and the NA28. Until and unless the priority and originality of one of these clusters has been decisively established, no citation from this work, no matter how apparently secure in the printed text, ought to be considered as providing “datable and geographically certain evidence.”
Notes
The particular value of patristic citations, as opposed to versions and continuous text manuscripts of the New Testament, is, as Gordon Fee put it, “[W]hen properly evaluated...the Church Fathers have the potential of offering datable and geographically certain evidence.”1
As has now been well established, recovering usable citations from patristic witnesses poses a number of methodological challenges. Yet while much progress has been made on many fronts, it seems sometimes to be forgotten that the task of “proper evaluation” is incomplete without a careful investigation of the manuscript transmission of the work in which a given patristic citation is located.
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| Saba 20, Folio 145r |
Though a father may have used two different forms of a text at two different times, even in the same work, it is rather difficult to use two different forms at the same time. When a single citation in a single location is itself an instance of variation, that citation is not “stable,” in the sense that I am using the term, and this therefore precludes it—until and unless the priority of one of these textual forms has been clearly and decisively demonstrated—from being utilized as the “datable and geographically certain evidence” that patristic citations are intended to provide.
For this study, I examined those portions of Chrysostom’s Romans Homilies that contain his exegesis of Romans 8 (found in homilies 13–15 using Migne’s numbering), in seven of the eight extant and catalogued manuscripts of the work that date to the tenth century or earlier, as well as two additional eleventh century manuscripts and six editions of the printed Greek text. (The published version of my work will include full data from all extant manuscripts dating to the fifteenth century and earlier.)
Chrysostom’s citation of Rom 8:33–35 provides a clear and striking illustration of the results of the analysis of this dataset as a whole and is what I want to focus on in this post. A PDF containing brief info on each of the manuscripts and editions used, as well as a full collation of the initial citations of 8:33–35 in these manuscripts and editions is available here.
Within the eight manuscripts examined, there are no less than five significant variation units in which two or more manuscripts differ from the others. All five of these non-singular variants are also found in the manuscript tradition of the book of Romans itself. In other words, the variants in the manuscript tradition of the Romans Homilies largely offer a selection of the very same variants that are present in the manuscript tradition of Romans itself. This is the case, not only for individual variants, but also for the particular combination of variants found in each of the two manuscript clusters found in the early manuscripts of the Romans Homilies.
The fifth of these variants, found in 8:35, is particularly interesting. After ἀπὸ τῆς ἀγάπης τοῦ, one cluster of manuscripts reads θεοῦ, while the other cluster reads χριστοῦ, followed by the significant comment, Καὶ οὐκ εἶπε· τοῦ θεοῦ· οὕτως ἀδιάφορον αὐτῷ, καὶ χριστὸν καὶ θεὸν ὀνομάζειν (“And he does not say ‘of God,’ so indifferent is it to him whether he mentions the Name of Christ or of God”).2 Phrases such as the Καὶ οὐκ εἶπε(ν)... found in all printed editions at this point, have traditionally been considered the “gold standard” for textual stability in patristic citation. Indeed, Tischendorf thought this phrase so significant that he included the entirety of it in his textual apparatus for this verse.
Yet upon examination of the manuscript tradition of the Romans Homilies, not only is this phrase absent in a significant number of early manuscripts, but also the reading which it is clearly intended to support is itself a point of variation, rendering this traditional “gold standard” for textual stability a rather shaky foundation on which to build one’s text-critical house.
In order to properly evaluate patristic citations, it is not enough to determine from a printed edition that a citation is actually a citation—one must also go behind the edition to consider the stability of the manuscript tradition that underlies it. In the case of Chrysostom’s Romans Homilies, an initial survey of the manuscript tradition demonstrates significant textual instability, raising serious questions about the usability of any of the currently available printed editions of this work as a basis for citations of the form of the text used by Chrysostom in the late fourth century. Given that Chrysostom’s Homilies on Acts—for which similar textual instability has been demonstrated—served as the source for more than a quarter of the entire apparatus of patristic citations in the recent ECM of Acts, the answers that we give to these questions will have a significant impact on the shape of future critical editions of the New Testament.
It is important to note that I am not by any means asserting that these printed editions never give us access to the text of Chrysostom—indeed, in most cases they probably do. Yet this is to say very little indeed. The text of Romans is itself sufficiently stable that the same claim could be made, with equal validity, for almost any purely Greek (excluding the bilinguals, which present special challenges) manuscript or edition of the text of Romans, however far removed from Chrysostom.
As a point of comparison, the Textus Receptus and the NA28, normally considered to be at opposite ends of the textual spectrum, differ from each other only eighteen times in the entirety of Romans 8, four of which variations are merely orthographical. In this same chapter, there are no less than twenty-two differences between the Romans text found in the two textual clusters of Chrysostom’s Romans Homilies, a number that only includes those instances where all three manuscripts identified as belonging to the one manuscript cluster differ from all five of the manuscripts that belong to the other.
In other words, there is actually more variation between the various manuscript clusters of Chrysostom’s Romans Homilies than there is between the Textus Receptus and the NA28. Until and unless the priority and originality of one of these clusters has been decisively established, no citation from this work, no matter how apparently secure in the printed text, ought to be considered as providing “datable and geographically certain evidence.”
Notes
- Gordon D. Fee and Roderic L. Mullen, “The Use of the Greek Fathers for New Testament Textual Criticism,” in The Text of the New Testament in Contemporary Research: Essays on the Status Quaestionis, ed. by Bart D. Ehrman and Michael W. Holmes (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 351–352. ↩
- The translation is taken from the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers edition of the Romans Homilies. ↩
