Codex Ravianus and 5 lost manuscripts, now found

Christian Ravis (Christianus Ravius)

after Unknown artist,

line engraving, 1645

NPG D29240

© National Portrait Gallery, CC

In addition to the manuscripts I described here, a lot of (especially older or KJV-preferred) works will refer to another manuscript with the Comma Johanneum: one Codex Ravianus (named for it's former owner, Christian Ravis). E.F. Hills is honest enough to qualify his mention of Codex Ravianus: "The Johannine comma is also found in Codex Ravianus, in the margin of 88, and in 629. The evidence of these three manuscripts, however, is not regarded as very weighty, since the first two are thought to have taken this disputed reading from early printed Greek texts and the latter (like 61) from the Vulgate" (The King James Version Defended [1973 ed.]), pp. 204–205).

Still, it's worth looking into. Given how little Greek manuscript support there is for the Comma Johanneum, we might as well try to track down what we can.

A quick Google of Codex Ravianus reveals that it was once numbered 110 by Wettstein (not to be confused with GA 110), but it was later excluded from the list of Greek NT manuscripts because it is considered to be a copy of the Complutensian Polyglot. A part of me wants to poke at that a bit more, but on this, Tregelles writes:

The Codex Ravianus at Berlin certainly contains this passage; but the MS. itself is nothing whatever but a modern transcript taken almost entirely from the Complutensian Polyglott with a few readings introduced from the text of Erasmus. The very handwriting is an imitation of the Complutensian Greek types. The real character of this MS., which some in the last century were so incautious as to quote as though it possessed authority, was very fully shown by Griesbach and Pappelbaum. This MS. is now preserved at Berlin simply as a literary forgery, and not as the precious monument of the sacred text which it was once described as being. It is uncertain who formed this MS., and whether Rav[is] himself took a part in the fraud, or whether he was himself the dupe of others. A learned man who had not made MSS. his study might be thus misled. 

(Horne, Introduction to the Critical Study and Knowledge of the Holy Scriptures [10th ed.], vol. 4: Introduction to the Textual Criticism of the New Testament; "the critical part re-written and the remainder revised and edited" by Tregelles, p. 218)

That last sentence is relevant for more than just Codex Ravianus; let the reader understand. Still, Codex Ravianus doesn't turn up easily in a quick search. What can we know about it?

As Wikipedia can be a decent place to start (if never a good place to finish), I checked the Wikipedia page for Codex Ravianus.  According to it, the manuscript is (was!) in Berlin (Berlin, Staatsbibliothek Gr. fol. 1, 2). It is a 2-volume manuscript.

New Book: Stunt on Tregelles

Timothy C.F. Stunt, The Life and Times of Samuel Prideaux Tregelles: A Forgotten Scholar (Christianities in the Trans-Atlantic World; Palgrave Macmillan, 2020). ISBN: 978-3-030-32265-6

With this biography of Samuel Prideaux Tregelles, a great evangelical textual critic of the nineteenth century, Timothy C.F. Stunt has completed a work for which he has collected information for some sixty years. We are all in his debt for the clarity and well-documented supply of information about the life and times of Tregelles which I enjoyed reading earlier this week. I especially learnt a lot about Tregelles’ early life, his work in the Iron Foundry, and his contributions to various Concordances and lexical tools in his early years. Although Tregelles’ work on the text of the Greek New Testament has an ongoing and important role in the story, we are also introduced to his early life, his relationship with the early Plymouth Brethren, and his views on and relationships with others, his theology – with chapters on his views of Roman Catholicism and his doctrine of Scripture. Some of these relationships were tense and strained, for example his relationship with Tischendorf, strained by a spirit of competition, or his relationship with Samuel Davidson, strained by divergent theological convictions – both of these are well described here (although not exhaustively in either case). Other relationships were a constant support, especially that of his wife, Sarah Anna, but also his patron B.W. Newton, and scholarly friends in Cambridge (especially Hort, but also Westcott and others). We get a feel for the range of Stunt’s interests in Tregelles in the blurb on the back:

This book sheds light on the career of Samuel Prideaux Tregelles, and in doing so touches on numerous aspects of nineteenth-century British and European religious history. Several recent scholars have celebrated the 200th anniversary of the German textual critic Tischendorf but Tregelles, his contemporary English rival, has been neglected, despite his achievements being comparable. In addition to his decisive contribution to Biblical textual scholarship, this study of Tregelles’ career sheds light on developments among Quakers in the period, and Tregelles’s enthusiastic involvement with the early nineteenth-century Welsh literary renaissance usefully supplements recent studies on Iolo Morganwg. The early career of Tregelles also gives valuable fresh detail to the origins of the Plymouth Brethren, (in both England and Italy) the study of whose early history has become more extensive over the last twenty years. The whole of Tregelles’s career therefore illuminates neglected aspects of Victorian religious life. [Publisher website]

The picture which emerges is one of a pious and careful scholar, more-or-less a self-educated man excluded from the intellectual life of the English Universities of Oxford and Cambridge because of his religious convictions (and his family’s financial situation), and determined to do his own careful academic work despite disdain from some of his Christian brethren who didn’t see the need for such careful work with manuscripts of the Greek New Testament. As Stunt writes in the preface ‘the principle concern in Tregelles’ life was the original Greek text of the New Testament (p. x). Stunt’s own strengths are in the history of the brethren, and the primary sources for the life and letters of Tregelles, not, as he himself is clear, in the textual transmission of the Greek New Testament. So occasionally I was craving a bit more in the way of the intellectual history of Tregelles’ edition (composition, distribution, subscriptions, reception, etc.) – there is more work which could profitably build on this framework. I also was a bit surprised not to hear anything about Tregelles as a hymn writer (see here). We are also introduced to some of the features of his eschatological views, but the overall shape and distinctiveness is not made clear.

The Tyndale House Greek New Testament gets a brief look in as built upon the starting point of Tregelles’ text (cf. also Dirk’s contribution here), as does one of our current writer’s contributions to this blog on some discoveries in the Wren Library. Something has gone a little awry in the type-setting of the final chapter, the Epilogue.

The book concludes with the publication of a good number of unpublished letters, a list of archival material consulted, a bibliography (including 48 books and articles authored by S.P. Tregelles), and a full index to chase up particular points.

Tregelles’s Mustard Seed

In his delightful book American Greek Testaments: A Critical Bibliography of the Greek New Testament as Published in America, Isaac Hall has this to say about the importance of S. P. Tregelles:

The University Presses of Oxford and Cambridge have issued many a work of which the English nation is justly proud, and for which the Christian world is grateful; but since the noble edition of Mill, no work of either press has done more to bring back from Germany to England her former pre-eminence in New Testament critical study [than WH’s]. In the greatest contribution to that end hitherto, not to say the greatest work of this nature in England for a century and a half, the University Presses had scarcely any share. That was the work of Dr. Samuel Prideaux Tregelles, accomplished in the face of the wealth and power that mostly clung to blind tradition; in toil almost single-handed, in privation, and later with the disadvantage of failing eyes, under far too much misappreciation, perverse opposition, and even obloquy — until his mustard seed had grown to a great herb in which the fowls of the air might build their nests. But had Tregelles lived to see the present day, no man would more heartily have rejoiced than he, to see this cap-stone put by Westcott and Hort upon his building. The present state of things in England bears testimony, indeed, to Tregelles’s labors, but it bears equal testimony to the numbers that, conspicuously or humbly, have entered into those labors. It belongs to all human progress that “one soweth and another reapeth;” and in this instance, surely, there is abundant cause that “ he that soweth and he that reapeth may rejoice together.” (p. 58)

Tregelles and Tyndale House contra mundum: Reconsidering the Text of Rev 5:9

It is common knowledge that, at at several places in the book of Revelation, the main text of our standard Handausgabe (i.e. Nestle-Aland, 28th ed.) follows a singular reading of Codex Alexandrinus (GA 02; LDAB 3481). In principle, this is not inadmissible: a reading that is singular now needn’t have been so 1,500 years ago. Generally, though, some might find singular readings prima facie suspect, especially if they can be adequately accounted for on internal grounds.

Now, for quite some time I’ve been fascinated about ways in which various facets of the copying process affect the rise of variant readings. At one level, copying seems like a simple and rather straightforward procedure: dip, look back (at the exemplar), write (a unit of text, whatever its length), look back, complete a line and start a new one, write, look back, write, look back, start a new column, write, look back, dip ... you get the idea. Seemingly uneventful. Or is it? All one need do is to browse through a few pages of Louis Havet’s Manuel de critique verbale appliquée aux textes latins (Paris: Hachette, 1911) to see that, in between these few rudimentary processes, all manner of things may occur which can make it to our apparatus critici as variant readings.

One such reading occurs at Rev 5:9. The main text of NA28 reads as follows:

καὶ ᾄδουσιν ᾠδὴν καινὴν λέγοντες· ἄξιος εἶ λαβεῖν τὸ βιβλίον καὶ ἀνοῖξαι τὰς σφραγῖδας αὐτοῦ, ὅτι ἐσφάγης καὶ ἠγόρασας  τῷ θεῷ ἐν τῷ αἵματί σου ἐκ πάσης φυλῆς καὶ γλώσσης καὶ λαοῦ καὶ ἔθνους.

The only one variation-unit recorded for this verse concerns the addition/omission and the placement of ἡμᾶς. All the Greek witnesses but 02 contain ἡμᾶς before or after τῷ θεῷ. On the one hand, I could see why the editors would prefer the omission here, as the first-person pronoun makes for a somewhat awkward transition to v. 10 (καὶ ἐποίησας αὐτοὺς κτλ.). Personally, however, I find this explanation unimpressive. To begin with, the scribe of 02 may have followed the same logic and so drop the pronoun under the influence of the ensuing context (a very common scribal tendency). Another possible scenario has to do with the aforementioned mechanics of the scribal process. Given that the last line of a column 1 on the given page 02 ends with τω θ̅ω̅, it seems quite likely (to my mind at least) that the pronoun may have been dropped accidentally as the scribe was traversing to another column (again, a well-documented tendency).

In short, I think we’d better print here what is a better-attested and more difficult reading whose origin is not easily accounted for by a scribal error. If you’re interested to read about this in greater detail, see my recent note: ‘“And You Purchased [Whom?]”: Reconsidering the Text of Rev 5,9’, ZNW 108 (2017) 306–12.

P.S. If you don’t have access to the article and/or don’t read footnotes, you’ll miss that, amongst NT editions, there are two that do not favour the singular reading of 02 at this point, namely Tregelles and the forthcoming Tyndale House Edition of the Greek New Testament (THEGNT).

The Greek New Testament Produced at Tyndale House: First Steps

Where do you start when preparing a Greek New Testament? Of course you can start absolutely from scratch, by typing in each and every letter and accent manually, with all the associated risks, but somehow this did not appeal very much. So we needed an existing text that we could adjust towards the desired wording of our edition.

What we did was to settle on the text as prepared by Samuel Prideaux Tregelles as our point of departure. The actual procedure was that we started with an electronic edition of the Nestle-Aland 26 / UBS3 text and adapted every paragraph, word, punctuation, and accent to match the print edition of Tregelles. We even asked permission to start out with the Nestle-Aland / UBS text as we wanted to avoid any shade of doubt as to existing copyright arrangements, yet in reply we were told that no permission was needed to create a new text in this way.

Interestingly, when Tregelles prepared his text, he started off with a Textus Receptus and adapted this text so that it matched his own. Especially in cases where Tregelles did not make an explicit decision or weighed the evidence, his text still reflects the TR. I assume that changing the TR to Tregelles included more changes than the NA26 / UBS3 to Tregelles.

It is surprisingly difficult, though, to get everything right. Even though two people worked independently on creating the digital Tregelles, and every difference between the two versions was resolved by reference to the printed Tregelles, a considerable number of errors remained. The whole exercise was a valuable lesson in the psychology of textual work. When starting from the same base text two transcribers of a second text may make at times the same error.

It is our digital Tregelles that functioned as a point of comparison for the SBL Greek New Testament project, and its editor, Mike Holmes, notified us of a good few errors in our transcription that came up in comparing Tregelles with a number of other editions. It is often impossible to see if you have typed a Greek ‘ο’ or a Latin script ‘o’.

There are a number of reasons why Tregelles was chosen as our starting text. One is that by starting from Tregelles we go back beyond Westcott-Hort and their influential and lucid textual theories, but not as far back as the Textus Receptus. We could have opted for the text of Lachmann too, but I think that Tregelles is more explicit, and certainly more accessible, in justifying his methodology and theoretical approach. Another reason is that Tregelles is the most recent critical text that was not included in the triad of texts used to create Nestle’s first edition (Westcott-Hort; Tischendorf 8th; Weymouth [in itself the result of a comparison of editions]) or fourth (Weymouth replaced with Weiss).

Whilst working on the digital Tregelles, we were hoping / expecting that this would lead to a full-scale, fresh edition of the GNT, and this is reflected this in the abbreviations used for the Tregelles New Testament: TNT1 for the text that reflects the print as accurately as possible, TNT2 for the text in which obvious print errors are corrected. The next edition could then be TNT3 (Tyndale New Testament), which gives an instant ‘editional’ pedigree, but it turned out this name was never going to work. Regardless, there is some history behind our text.

For Tregelles see:

S.P. Tregelles, An Account of the Printed Text of the Greek New Testament: with Remarks on its Revision upon Critical Principles. Together with a Collation of the Critical Texts of Griesbach, Scholz, Lachmann, and Tischendorf, with that in Common Use (London: S. Bagster and Sons, 1854).

———. The Greek New Testament, edited from ancient authorities, with their various readings in full, and the Latin version of Jerome (London: S. Bagster & Sons, 1857-79).

———. Introduction to the Textual Criticism of the New Testament. Vol. 4 of An Introduction to the Critical Study and Knowledge of the Holy Scriptures, edited by Thomas Hartwell Horne and John Ayre, 12th ed. (Longmans, Green, and Co., 1856 [1869]).

Tischendorf’s ‘Wounded Vanity’?

In 1858, Hort reviewed the latest editions of both Tischendorf and Tregelles. He was much more positive about the latter than the former. In closing, he says this about Tischendorf:

Both editors in fact deserve the praise of conscientiousness in their actual work. But Tischendorf is becoming less careful than he used to be. We must add that the merits of his labours would be at least equally appreciated by duly qualified judges, if he were less given to proclaiming them himself. Even his title-page deserves reprobation: what he calls his seventh is to all intents and purposes his third edition: he has presumed far on his readers’ ignorance in reckoning his two Paris editions, which we should have thought he would have been only too glad to have forgotten. His old ungenerousness to every other editor is worse than ever: such an absurd effusion of wounded vanity and spite against his friend Dr Tregelles as he has prefixed to his third number will do him no good in the eyes of candid men.*

Now, in my experience, the British have a noticeable distaste for anything much beyond self-effacement. But this still seems a bit harsh from Hort. I’d like to hear from readers who have read more of Tischendorf than me: Is there some truth to what Hort says here or is he being unfair?

----
*F. J. A. Hort, “Notices of New Books,” The Journal of Classical and Sacred Philology, 4 (1858): 201–211 (211).

Fun Fact Friday

Tregelles’s 1549 Stephanus GNT

Dallas Theological Seminary’s Turpin Library owns a copy of Robert Stephanus’s 1549 Greek New Testament that was once own by Samuel P. Tregelles and was then given, by his wife, to B. F. Westcott. Stephanus, of course, is best known for adding versification to the NT in his 1551 edition.

The book was owned by DTS professor J. Dwight Pentecost who donated it to the library. Pentencost was still teaching classes when I graduated in 2012. He was then 93! We used to eat dinner with him fairly regularly because he lived in student housing. He was slowing down by then, but his mind was still sharp.

One night I got to talking to him about my text critical interests and I learned that he regularly used a form of the textus receptus for his own study. Apparently Tregelles and Westcott had not worn off on him.

If you’re in Dallas, stop by the Turpin Library and check out their nice collection of rare Bibles.

Is the Longer Ending of Mark Inspired? (with Poll)

Not a picture of the ending of Mark.

For some, the question of whether Mark 16.9–20 belongs to the original text of Mark’s Gospel settles the matter of whether it should be read, preached, and taught as Scripture. For others it’s not so simple. These 12 verses may have been added, but this does not mean they aren’t inspired by God.

I count myself among that small group that thinks Mark 16.9–20 is not Mark’s original ending but is still Scripture. These verses are attested early and widely and there is nothing in them that I can see that would discredit them theologically. The fact that they have been received by so many Christians as Scripture seems to me to weigh heavily in their favor.

But I admit I am probably in a minority in holding this position. So I was glad to find an ally this week in Samuel P. Tregelles who held the same view. I might still be wrong, but at least I’m in good company!

Here is how Tregelles explained his view:

As, then, the facts of the case, and the early reception and transmission of this section, uphold its authenticity, and as it has been placed from the second century, at least, at the close of our second canonical Gospel;­—and as, likewise, its transmission has been accompanied by a continuous testimony that it was not a part of the book as originally written by St. Mark;—and as both these points are confirmed by internal considerations—

The following corollaries flow from the propositions already established:—

I. That the book of Mark himself extends no farther than ἐφοβοῦντο γάρ, xvi. 8.

II. That the remaining twelve verses, by whomsoever written, have a full claim to be received as an authentic part of the second Gospel, and that the full reception of early testimony on this question does not in the least involve their rejection as not being a part of Canonical Scripture.

Reading in the Wren Library

I spent three wonderfully quiet hours this morning in the Wren Library, under the gaze of Richard Bentley (and other luminaries) checking out some leads for my research on Hort’s relationship with Tregelles.

During his life Tregelles had very cordial relations with Hort and supplied Hort with lots of information and early proof sheets of his NT edition (indeed one reason why Westcott and Hort’s edition was so delayed was their dependence on Tregelles’ edition). After Tregelles’ death in 1875 his wife corresponded with Hort since Hort had agreed to edit Tregelles’ Prolegomena (from his published work). After Mrs Tregelles death in 1882 her sister Augusta Prideaux wrote to Hort saying that both Dr and Mrs Tregelles had expressed their wish that all of Tregelles’ notes and collations should be given to Hort. Anyway, today  I found the letter from Augusta Prideaux to Hort along with Hort’s list of all the items she sent. Some of these I already knew about (and may even have blogged about), but others I didn’t. So with only a couple of exceptions I think we can locate almost all of Tregelles primary working transcriptions and collations (not his general papers and correspondence though).

Along the way it was fascinating to read letters from Lightfoot, Westcott, Mrs Tregelles and others. Two letters struck me. The first was from Mrs Tregelles writing to A.A. Vansittart in 1870 - a Fellow at Trinity College who was helping get the text of the Apocalypse ready for publication after Tregelles’ health had broken down:

S.A.T. to AAV (14 Nov 1870): “Dear Mr. Vansittart, Dr Tregelles wishes me to tell you how very satisfactory to him is your most kind letter received yesterday, and he also requests me to say that he does not believe that you will find anything queried that it will puzzle you to answer. They are merely questions which if he was well enough to use the books in his study, he could get through in a couple of hours. It has not been without some struggles of feeling that he has relinquished the hope of finishing the work himself, but he knows that all that is withheld as well as granted is ordered for him by a wise and loving Heavenly Father. With his kind regards, believe me, yours very truly, S.A. Tregelles.”

[Augustus Arthur Vansittart, by the way, was very interested in the text of the Greek New Testament, and his notes are full of mostly blank note books containing careful transcriptions of NT mss that do not seem to have been finished. He created a fascinating textual presentation of some books (notably Hebrews and 1 Corinthians) with the main text at the top and all the readings of the different manuscripts below (a kind of pre-Swanson type of presentation). But he published practically nothing. Except for his famous and clever Latin translation of Jabberwocky.]

A very similar tone is evident in a letter from Ezra Abbott to Mrs Tregelles after he had heard news of S.P. Tregelles’ death (July 22 1875):

“Rather would we thank God for all that he was to those who knew him best, and for all that he was permitted to do, as a faithful disciple of Christ for the good of his fellowman; and say, in humble resignation and trust, “The Lord gave; the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord!”

Tregelles GNT for Bibleworks

Some two weeks ago, Dirk Jongkind announced the release of a digital transcription with images of the Greek New Testament by Tregelles on a new website here.

Dirk said: "The transcription should be relatively easy to incorporate into most Bible programs, and the smarter than average geek may be able to link directly to the relevant image of the print page (this would mean access to Tregelles's critical apparatus)."

One such "smarter than average geek" is Michael Hanel at The BibleWorks Blog who has now re-compiled the transcription for use in BibleWorks. Michael says:

Thanks to his [Dirk Jongkind's] contributions, as well as the other people who worked on this project, the team was able to produce a digital edition of Tregelles’ text as well as a secondary text which consists of corrections to Tregelles’ text.

Because they produced the text under the attribution, non-commercial, share-alike license, I was able to re-compile their texts for use in BibleWorks. If you want to know more about the Tregelles text itself or the Tregelles project, check out the official website and the Introductory PDF. The PDF is especially valuable because it documents the 469 changes they made to the original Tregelles text.

Moreover, Thomas Keene at Nerdlets has plans to produce an eBook.

Tregelles's Greek New Testament Released!

I am ever so pleased that we are finally able to issue our transcription and the images of the Greek New Testament by Tregelles. The project was made possible within the Tyndale House, Text and Canon Project. We put some sort of introduction together on a dedicated website (all found here), including the images of the original, printed version. The transcription should be relatively easy to incorporate into most Bible programs, and the smarter than average geek may be able to link directly to the relevant image of the print page (this would mean access to Tregelles's critical apparatus). For this reason we encoded the page numbers. For reasons of citation, we even included a title page on the site.

There are two versions, distinguished by the edition number after the acronym (and yes, I couldn't resist the temptation: Tregelles's [Greek] New Testament). TNT is the transcription as is, TNT2 contains a large number of corrections of printing errors in the actual text and normalisation of accents (in total around 450).

There are no problems with copyright connected to the two texts. We used for a substantial part NA27 as our base text for the initial adaptation, and the Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft kindly informed us that they had no issue with this. From our part we release the text under the attribution, non-commercial, share-alike licence as formulated under the Creative Commons 3.0 protocol.

Later we may even publish some pictures of the rousing party we are about to embark on here at Tyndale House!