I use the Editio Critica Maior frequently and I continue to be impressed by how well it combines clarity with great detail. Yes, it takes a bit of getting used to its format (as with any large apparatus), but once you’ve got the basics, it’s great.
But occasionally, I do find that it has mistakes. 1 John 3.24 is a case in point. The ECM records the first hand of 180 and both Syriac versions as attesting a dittography of the first ἐν αὐτῷ in καὶ ὁ τηρῶν τὰς ἐντολὰς αὐτοῦ
ἐν αὐτῷ μένει καὶ αὐτὸς ἐν αὐτῷ. But, in fact, a check of Aland’s edition of the Syriac shows that there is no such dittography. Both versions have the equivalent of each occurrence of ἐν αὐτῷ (ܒܗ) just once. I suspect this was a simple case of the Syriac sigla being put with the wrong variant address. But there’s more.
Since I was checking, I tried looking at the images for GA 180 in the VMR but quickly realized that what I was looking at was a manuscript of only the Gospels. This led me to Elliott’s
Bibliography where I learned that part of GA 180 has a new number:
GA 2918. As best I can tell, GA 2918 is in the same codex as 180 (Borg. gr. 18) but, since the Gospels are in a different hand of a different date, they now have a different GA number. Apparently the change happened after the ECM was printed, so it still reflects the old number.
Checking the images for 2918, then, I found a third problem. Ιt looks to me like the scribe of 2918 has not written the first ἐν αὐτῷ twice, but rather ἐν αὐτοῦ, his eye jumping to the wrong αυτ-. The ECM is right about the correction though; it’s just the original error that’s incorrect.
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| 1 John 3.24a in GA 2918 (formerly GA 180) showing the deletion marks around εν αυτου |
All this means that if you were only reading the ECM apparatus, you would be led astray in three ways: (1) you would have the wrong reading for 180*; (2) you wouldn’t know that GA 180 has been split numerically in two (and so wouldn’t find it in the VMR); and (3) you would wrongly think that the Syriac tradition agreed with it in error. Thankfully, with just a little digging, all three problems can be spotted. Maybe in another printing it can be fixed.
I suppose the lesson from this is that producing a good critical apparatus is complicated work with numerous points at which the process can break down. A second lesson follows from this: check your sources!
Stanley Porter and Andrew Pitts’s new introduction to New Testament textual criticism is out now (according to Amazon) and should be available at ETS/SBL (according to Eerdmans).
