Marcion Smackdown in Atlanta (SBL)

At the last annual SBL meeting in San Diego, my Swedish colleague Mikael Winninge, who chairs the Formation of Luke and Acts program unit, mentioned the idea to have a joint session with New Testament textual criticism to discuss Marcion’s Evangelion, the “Western Non-Interpolations,” and the transmission of Luke. I thought this was a very good idea, and so put him in contact with the chairs of the NTTC session, and proposed a few potential contributors to such a session, not least Dieter Roth who has just published his monograph on Marcion’s text of the Gospels.

Consider what Judith Lieu says in her review mentioned in the last post:

In the cautious conservatism of its conclusions it is also unlikely to attract the popular attention through publicity and . . . gained by other more assertively daring reconstructions, whose conclusions may be swiftly adopted and used to rewrite the history of the past with as much confidence as have been applied to the more conventional hypotheses of New Testament origins.

So, some of the “other” scholars who are not mentioned by name in Lieu’s review, but have made “more assertively daring reconstructions” of Marcion’s text than Roth (right photo) will be present at the session, e.g., Markus Vinzent (left photo) as will Lieu herself. I expect an interesting and fruitful debate. Followers of this blog who are attending the meeting would not want to miss it. 

Personally I changed my travel plan so that I do not need to head to the airport in panic after Tuesday breakfast. I will stay an extra day and enjoy the best wine saved for the last.

Formation of Luke and Acts; New Testament Textual Criticism
Joint Session With: New Testament Textual Criticism, Formation of Luke and Acts
11/24/2015
9:00 AM to 11:30 AM
 
Room: Courtland (Atlanta Conference Level) - Hyatt
This session with the Formation of Luke and Acts Section addresses Marcion’s Evangelion, the “Western Non-Interpolations,” and the transmission of Luke. Patricia Walters, Rockford University, Presiding

• Dieter Roth, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz
  Marcion’s Gospel: Reconstructions and Their Implications (30 min)
• Jason BeDuhn, Northern Arizona University
  Marcion’s Evangelion and the Two Source Hypothesis (30 min)
• Ronald van der Bergh, University of Pretoria
  Marcion’s Legacy and the Old Testament Quotations in Codex Bezae’s Luke (30 min)
• Judith Lieu, University of Cambridge
  Marcion’s Gospel and the Question of Theological Tendency (30 min)
• Markus Vinzent, King’s College - London, Respondent (20 min)
• Discussion (10 min)

SBL Int. Meeting 2015: Call for Papers

The SBL International Meeting will be held in Bueonos Aires, Argentina on July 20-24. The call for papers closes this week, on 12 February. This is a reminder to log in on the SBL website and submit your proposal to the Working with Biblical Manuscripts (Textual Criticism) program unit.


The current chairs, Timothy B. Sailors and Ronald van der Bergh have issued the following description of the unit and call for papers:

Description: This program unit is devoted to the text of “biblical” writings, as understood in the broad sense of the term: This includes the Jewish Bible, early Jewish literature, and the Old Testament (in Hebrew and Aramaic, Greek, and other ancient languages), as well as early Christian literature and the New Testament (in Greek, Latin, and other ancient languages). We offer a forum for the investigation of all types of material witnesses related to the text of this literature—tablets, manuscripts, ostraca, inscriptions—and for the consideration of the textual form of this literature reflected in its citation and use by ancient authors and in writings from antiquity through the Middle Ages. This consists not only of contributions that deal with the Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, and Latin textual witnesses, but also those that engage evidence in Ugaritic, Arabic, Syriac, Ethiopic, Coptic, Armenian, and other linguistic traditions. A wide variety of additional issues related to textual criticism are also addressed, including epigraphy, manuscript studies, papyrology, codicology, paleography, scribal habits and the production of texts, the history of transmission (and its cultural, social, and religious settings), the practice of textual criticism from antiquity to modern times, restoration and conservation, the use of modern technology in studying this material, the production of critical editions, and discussions of particular passages. Call for papers: Papers concentrating on any aspect of textual criticism are welcome, particularly those that deal directly with manuscripts, i.e., papers that work with material witnesses to the text—tablets, ostraca, inscriptions, papyri, majuscules, minuscules, lectionaries. For the 2015 meeting in Buenos Aires, a joint session with the program unit “Bible and Syriac Studies in Context” is planned. We therefore especially invite papers discussing the evidence of Syriac manuscripts for the textual criticism of the Bible and/or other early Jewish or Christian writings.