Win Myths and Mistakes in New Testament Textual Criticism!

Myths and Mistakes in New Testament Textual Criticism has been out for about two months now and is already in a second printing. To celebrate, we’re giving away 3 copies here on the blog! You can enter in any of the ways below. Entries will close at midnight on Wednesday (Arizona time).

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About the book

Since the unexpected popularity of Bart Ehrman’s bestselling Misquoting Jesus, textual criticism has become a staple of Christian apologetics.

Ehrman’s skepticism about recovering the original text of the New Testament does deserve a response. However, this renewed apologetic interest in textual criticism has created fresh problems for evangelicals. An unfortunate proliferation of myths, mistakes, and misinformation has arisen about this technical area of biblical studies.

In this volume Elijah Hixson and Peter Gurry, along with a team of New Testament textual critics, offer up-to-date, accurate information on the history and current state of the New Testament text that will serve apologists and Christian students even as it offers a self-corrective to evangelical excesses.

Reactions

• Sean McDowell: “Elijah Hixson and Peter J. Gurry have provided the church with an indispensable resource with the release of their recent book Myths and Mistakes in New Testament Textual Criticism. In my opinion, every pastor, Bible teacher, speaker, and apologist needs to read this book.”
• Justin Taylor (with excerpts from the book): “a remarkably careful and learned book that will step on some toes but serve the church and the cause of truth ... We all have a lot to learn from these rising stars of textual criticism who care about the truth and the witness of our apologetics.”
• Andy Naselli: “Myths and Mistakes in New Testament Textual Criticism is kind of like Carson’s Exegetical Fallacies for text crit. (I’m sure I’m not the only NT prof who was relieved to not get quoted and refuted!) Impressive book. The authors know their stuff.”
• Peter Head: “Peter Gurry is my favorite American.”*

*This quote may have been inferred.

Giveaway: Three Copies of To Cast the First Stone

Princeton University Press has just released Tommy Wasserman and Jennifer Knust’s major new book on the Pericope Adulterae: To Cast the First Stone: The Transmission of a Gospel Story. I currently have three copies sitting in my house ready to be given away. You know the drill: you have until Friday morning (Arizona time) to enter to win in any of the ways listed. We’ll pick the winners next week.

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Publisher details

The story of the woman taken in adultery features a dramatic confrontation between Jesus and the Pharisees over whether the adulteress should be stoned as the law commands. In response, Jesus famously states, “Let him who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” To Cast the First Stone traces the history of this provocative story from its first appearance to its enduring presence today.

Likely added to the Gospel of John in the third century, the passage is often held up by modern critics as an example of textual corruption by early Christian scribes and editors, yet a judgment of corruption obscures the warm embrace the story actually received. Jennifer Knust and Tommy Wasserman trace the story’s incorporation into Gospel books, liturgical practices, storytelling, and art, overturning the mistaken perception that it was either peripheral or suppressed, even in the Greek East. The authors also explore the story’s many different meanings. Taken as an illustration of the expansiveness of Christ’s mercy, the purported superiority of Christians over Jews, the necessity of penance, and more, this vivid episode has invited any number of creative receptions. This history reveals as much about the changing priorities of audiences, scribes, editors, and scholars as it does about an “original” text of John.

To Cast the First Stone calls attention to significant shifts in Christian book cultures and the enduring impact of oral tradition on the preservation—and destabilization—of scripture.

Jennifer Knust is associate professor of New Testament and Christian origins at Boston University. Her books include Unprotected Texts: The Bible’s Surprising Contradictions about Sex and Desire. Tommy Wasserman is professor of Biblical studies at Ansgar Teologiske Høgskole in Norway. His books include The Epistle of Jude: Its Text and Transmission.

You can read the introduction here.

Endorsements

“This valuable and delightful book leaves no stone unturned in tracing the fascinating reception history of the biblical story of Jesus’s encounter with the adulterous woman. Deeply scholarly and wonderfully accessible, To Cast the First Stone will prove relevant for many discussions on the early church.” —AnneMarie Luijendijk, Princeton University

“Brilliantly conceived, massively researched, and convincingly argued, Knust and Wasserman’s wide-ranging analysis of the pericope adulterae is a milestone in the field of textual studies, destined to be the definitive account for a generation.” —Bart D. Ehrman, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

“Knust and Wasserman use the story of the adulteress to illustrate the fascinating transmission history of gospel literature and the various personalities and forces that contributed to the process. To Cast the First Stone will undoubtedly become the standard book on this story.” —Chris Keith, author of The Pericope Adulterae, the Gospel of John, and the Literacy of Jesus

Giveaway of the New Septuaginta: A Reader’s Edition

Will Ross and Greg Lanier are giving away two copies of their newly published Septuaginta: A Reader’s Edition. Enter the giveaway here. The publisher describes the new edition as follows:

Septuaginta: A Reader’s Edition offers the complete text of the Greek Old Testament as it appears in the Rahlfs-Hanhart revised Septuaginta, laid out in a clear and readable format. All deuterocanonical books are included, as well as all double-texts, which are presented on facing pages for easy textual comparison. In order to facilitate natural and seamless reading of the text, every word occurring 100 times or fewer in the Rahlfs-Hanhart text (excluding proper names)—as well as every word that occurs more than 100 times in the Rahlfs-Hanhart text but fewer than 30 times in the Greek New Testament—is accompanied by a footnote that provides a contextual gloss for the word and (for verbs only) full parsing. Additionally, an appendix provides a complete alphabetized list of common vocabulary (namely, all the words that are not accompanied by a footnote), with glosses and (as applicable) comparison of a word’s usage in the Septuagint to its usage in the New Testament. 

All of these combined features will make Septuaginta: A Reader’s Edition an indispensable resource for biblical scholars and an excellent tool for improving one’s comprehension of the Greek language. 

In addition to the attractive and high-quality binding, each volume will include two ribbon markers.

Giveaway: Liturgy and the Living Text of the New Testament

Gorgias Press has just released the latest volume of papers from the Birmingham Colloquium on the Textual Criticism of the New Testament with the title Liturgy and the Living Text of the New Testament. To help get the word out, Gorgias has offered to give away a free copy to one of our lucky blog readers. Enter to win by any of the means listed at the bottom of this post.

Description: The textual history of the New Testament is a dynamic tradition, reflecting differing readings, interpretations and uses of its canonical writings. Twenty years after the publication of D.C. Parker’s celebrated volume The Living Text of the Gospels, the papers in this collection provide further insight into the lives of the New Testament text. One especially important focus for the New Testament as “living text” is its use in Christian worship: individual chapters examine the importance of liturgical manuscripts in Coptic and Greek traditions, alongside consideration of broader themes related to the lectionary text. Several famous biblical passages are the subject of extended treatment, including the Pericope Adulterae, Jesus’ teaching on the Temple in Mark, and the Lukan genealogy. The contributions represent original research by an international range of scholars, first presented at the Tenth Birmingham Colloquium on the Textual Criticism of the New Testament.

Book webpage

Update: Congrats to Jeff C. for winning!

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We have a winner!

Congrats to Miguel M. who won our latest ETC blog giveaway. His copy of A New Approach to Textual Criticism is in the mail. For those that didn’t win, Amazon now has the paperback for just $13.28 $15.94 which is 33% 20% off. With free shipping, that’s cheaper than Tommy and I can get it with our author discount! Very good used copies can be had for even less.

Win a Free Copy of A New Approach to Textual Criticism

It’s time for another ETC blog giveaway! This time we’re giving away mine and Tommy’s recent book on the CBGM. Enter to win below.

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Update: Congrats to Miguel M!

About the book

An essential introduction for scholars and students of New Testament Greek
With the publication of the widely used twenty-eighth edition of Nestle-Aland’s Novum Testamentum Graece and the fifth edition of the United Bible Society Greek New Testament, a computer-assisted method known as the Coherence-Based Genealogical Method (CBGM) was used for the first time to determine the most valuable witnesses and establish the initial text. This book offers the first full-length, student-friendly introduction to this important new method. After setting out the method’s history, separate chapters clarify its key concepts such as genealogical coherence, textual flow diagrams, and the global stemma. Examples from across the New Testament are used to show how the method works in practice. The result is an essential introduction that will be of interest to students, translators, commentators, and anyone else who studies the Greek New Testament.

Features

• A clear explanation of how and why the text of the Greek New Testament is changing
• Step-by-step guidance on how to use the CBGM in textual criticism
• Diagrams, illustrations, and glossary of key terms

“For anybody who cares about the text of the New Testament, there will be few books published in biblical studies over the next decade that will be more important than this one. Tommy Wasserman and Peter Gurry describe some of the tectonic shifts that are currently occurring in the way that New Testament text critics are reconstructing the earliest recoverable form of the Greek text of the New Testament. With great care and clarity, the authors explain the intricacies of the Coherence-Based Genealogical Method in ways that both scholars and nonspecialists can readily understand. For anybody who wishes to know how the text of latest printed scholarly editions of the Greek New Testament has been determined and why it differs from earlier editions, this is the book to read.”

Paul Foster
Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity
School of Divinity, University of Edinburgh

More info here.

We have a winner!

Our latest blog giveaway has now ended and Christopher Atkins at Houston Baptist University has won himself a free copy of John Meade and Ed Gallagher’s Biblical Canon Lists. Congrats, Chris!

Thanks to all who entered. For those who didn’t win, you can still get the book for 30% off right now at OUP.com with the code RELIGION18. And watch for more giveaways here on the blog soon.

Win a free copy of The Biblical Canon Lists

It’s time for another ETC blog giveaway! In this edition, we’re giving away a brand new copy of John Meade and Edmon Gallagher’s The Biblical Canon Lists from Early Christianity: Texts and Analysis (Oxford). To enter, do any or all of the things listed below. Entries will be received up to 12am EST on March 3 and a winner will be chosen at random.

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About the book

The Bible took shape over the course of centuries, and today Christian groups continue to disagree over details of its contents. The differences among these groups typically involve the Old Testament, as they mostly accept the same 27-book New Testament. An essential avenue for understanding the development of the Bible are the many early lists of canonical books drawn up by Christians and, occasionally, Jews. Despite the importance of these early lists of books, they have remained relatively inaccessible. This comprehensive volume redresses this unfortunate situation by presenting the early Christian canon lists all together in a single volume. The canon lists, in most cases, unambiguously report what the compilers of the lists considered to belong to the biblical canon. For this reason they bear an undeniable importance in the history of the Bible.

The Biblical Canon Lists from Early Christianity provides an accessible presentation of these early canon lists. With a focus on the first four centuries, the volume supplies the full text of the canon lists in English translation alongside the original text, usually Greek or Latin, occasionally Hebrew or Syriac. Edmon L. Gallagher and John D. Meade orient readers to each list with brief introductions and helpful notes, and they point readers to the most significant scholarly discussions. The book begins with a substantial overview of the history of the biblical canon, and an entire chapter is devoted to the evidence of biblical manuscripts from the first millennium. This authoritative work is an indispensable guide for students and scholars of biblical studies and church history.

Win a Copy of Hugh Houghton's The Latin New Testament (OUP)

To celebrate the release of his book next week, Oxford University Press has kindly agreed to give away a copy of Hugh Houghton’s The Latin New Testament: A Guide to its Early History, Texts, and Manuscripts.

You can enter to win in any of the ways listed below. The contest closes at midnight (EST) on February 24th. We’ll announce the randomly-chosen winner in part 2 of our interview with Hugh.

Update: congrats to Drew Longacre who was the randomly-chosen winner!

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