6 New Funded PhDs at Southeastern Baptist Seminary

I’ve been on sabbatical this Fall at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, NC. We head back tomorrow. While here, I’ve spent some nice time getting to know Chuck Quarles. Recently, he told me about plans for a new Center he was working on to study the text and translation of the Bible. I’m happy to share that, yesterday, the seminary made the formal announcement. From the press release:

The CBTT is designed to undertake three major initiatives: (1) to improve the quality of major English Bible translations, (2) to provide resources for Bible translators and translator consultants worldwide, and (3) to improve the quality of the critical editions of the Hebrew Old Testament and Greek New Testament. 

The center’s research associates will conduct research on various text-critical issues, indexing and transcribing ancient manuscripts of Scripture, writing textual commentary, investigating paratextual features, and developing tools to assist others in their research. An important function of the center will be resourcing and educating translators worldwide by making the center’s research and resources available for free online.

I particularly want to highlight the fact that the new Center has 6 fully-funded PhDs across the testaments. 

The center’s operational staff will include six research associates — one of whom will also serve as the center’s assistant director. Three of these research associates will be Old Testament and Hebrew specialists and three will be New Testament and Greek specialists. Research associates will receive full funding for their PhD studies at Southeastern; a stipend with benefits, including insurance; and free campus housing. Applications are open for fall 2023. To learn more or to apply, visit the Caskey Center for Biblical Text and Translation page.

If you are an aspiring evangelical textual critic, this looks like a great opportunity. The seminary has a beautiful campus, is in a great part of the country to live in, the student center here has Cheerwine on tap, and I can confirm that the library is well-stocked with NT text-critical resources (made a little better thanks to some book requests from yours truly!). And it’s a short drive over to Duke to look at their NT manuscript collection. Congrats to Chuck and good luck to the applicants!

Present Trends in Textual Criticism … from 1962

Harry Oliver

Having just written a very short article on developments in New Testament textual criticism, I was curious to come across an article on the same subject by Harold Oliver from 1962. He organizes his material under five headings: new materials, a new perspective (no, not on Paul), new emphases, new methods, and new editions. The timing of this article is especially interesting because Kurt Aland had already announced his plan to move the Nestle away from its majority principle but had not yet published the results. Likewise, the UBS edition had been announced but was still four years from publication.

What is most interesting to me is some of the trends that Oliver points out are ones we think of as being definitive of our era and yet, Oliver sees them as trends in his. So, for example, under his second heading, he says that “there is a new perspective in textual criticism concerning the text critic’s goal.” That shift is one from seeing the goal as merely negative (removing errors) to one that is also positive (appreciating variants in their own right).

In support, he cites an article from Donald M. Riddle from 1936: “The legitimate task of textual criticism is not limited to the recovery of approximately the original form of the documents, to the establishment of the ‘best’ text, nor to the ‘elimination of spurious readings.’ It must be recognized that every significant variant records a religious experience which brought it into being. This means that there are no ‘spurious readings’; the various forms of the text are sources for the study of the history of Christianity.” This is some 30 years before Epp’s work on Acts and 60 years before Ehrman’s Orthodox Corruption.

The whole article is worth reading for the perspective it provides on the current discipline. It’s also interesting that Oliver’s author bio says, “Mr. Oliver’s Th.M. thesis, ‘Helps for Readers’ in Greek New Testament Manuscripts, won the 1955 prize of the Christian Research Foundation. His doctoral dissertation was entitled, The Text of the Four Gospels as Quoted in the ‘Moralia’ of Basil the Great.” He was also part of the IGNTP and was dismissed from Southeastern as a result of his “Bultmann phase.”

 Let me end with Oliver’s closing paragraph:

The appearance on the scene of other disciplines such as Form- and source-criticism, as well as biblical theology, has served to remind textual critics that while theirs is potentially a truth-speaking discipline, it cannot speak the whole truth, nor can the whole truth be spoken apart from its witness. The modern textual critic realizes that the recovery of the original text and the reconstruction of the history of its transmission are important goals, but they do not eclipse the greater search for the original meaning and the demand which ancient Christian texts make upon modern folk. In the total perspective textual criticism is “lower criticism,” not because it is inferior, but because it is the foundation upon which all genuine and productive “higher criticism” must be built.

The article is Harold H. Oliver, “Present Trends in the Textual Criticism of the New Testament,” Journal of Bible and Religion 30.4 (1962): 308–20. 

Linguistics and New Testament Greek at Southeastern

Well, mark April 26–27, 2019 on your calendar because Southeastern Seminary is hosting a conference on Linguistics and New Testament Greek. Here is the description:

This two-day conference is designed to bring students of the Greek New Testament up-to-date regarding current issues related to linguistics and the interpretation of the New Testament. It features several top scholars in the field including Stan Porter, Constantine Campbell, Stephen Levinsohn, Steve Runge, and Robert Plummer. The session topics include verbal aspect, the perfect tense, discourse analysis, and word order. The cost of the conference includes dinner on Friday night, breakfast on Saturday morning, and a light snack late morning on Saturday.

Panel on the Christian Biblical Canon at Southeastern

Southeastern Seminary has a series of Library Talks, which apparently take different forms. For this ‘Library Talk’, they asked me to be part of a panel with two of their faculty members, Steve McKinion and Scott Kellum, to discuss the formation of the Christian Canon. The event is free and open to the public. I’m told seating is limited, so register today. If you can't attend the event, it will be recorded, and the video will be posted about two weeks after the event.

Coffee and Origen’s Hexapla at Southeastern

Please, excuse this blatant, self-promoting announcement. I felt compelled to post this one because presentations on Origen’s magnum opus rarely, if ever, occur outside the confines of the academic guild. And I’m sure these venues, if they exist at all, never provide coffee and take place in such a beautiful setting as Southeastern’s library and campus. I plan to talk on what the Hexapla was and why it matters to us today and to hang around afterwards for coffee and conversation. If you are in North Carolina’s Triangle area on March 22 at 2:00pm, make your way over to Southeastern’s library. The event is free, and I’m told that seating is limited, so you will need to register here.