ETC blog lunch at ETS and a list of ETS TC sessions

For a few years, we've been having an informal lunch at ETS to get together and talk about manuscripts with a group of people who might not be staying for SBL. The ETS lunch is much less formal than the ETC Blog Dinner at SBL. We usually gather around lunch time, walk over to somewhere that has fast food and get something cheap and easy.

Lunch!

Peter Gurry is usually the one who organizes an ETC lunch, but because he won't be there this year it has (unfortunately) fallen to me. One problem is that I didn't go to ETS/SBL when they were in San Diego a few years ago, and Google Maps isn't being particularly helpful to me for finding a good place for a group to eat quickly and cheaply. Since I have no idea what would be a good solution there, here is what I propose:

1. Please don't suggest places in the comments—save recommendations for when we're there. If you suggest things in the comments, then I have to look them up on the map and see if they work, and without being there and being able to see the layout of everything, it just isn't good for how my brain works. Thank you for understanding.

2. We meet outside the room: Third Floor – Mission Beach BC at 11:50 AM on Thursday, 21 Nov. after this paper, which is in that room: John J. H. Lee (McMaster Divinity College) The Earth and Its Works Will be Disclosed, or Not? – A Text-Critical Analysis of 2 Pet 3:10. I figure many of us will be there at that time already.

3. We can quickly decide where to go from there.

Let us know in the comments if you plan to be there so we can look out for you.
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I tried to find the sessions relevant to textual criticism and canon formation and list them here. Please do mention any that I missed in the comments. Locations are as given in the ETS online program book.

Wednesday, 20 Nov.
9:00 AM-12:10 PM New Testament Synoptic Gospels I Lobby Level – Marina Room
9:50 AM—10:30 AM Sarah Harris (Carey Baptist College) The Lukan Major Textual Variants included in the THGNT

Wednesday, 20 Nov.
2:00 PM-5:10 PM Septuagint Studies Second Floor – Gaslamp D
2:00 PM—2:40 PM Aaron W. White (First Presbyterian Church, South Charleston, Ohio) More Than A Counselor: A Possible Origin of the Longer Reading in Codex Alexadrinus Is. 9:5b
2:50 PM—3:30 PM Darlene M. Seal (McMaster Divinity College) Prophetic Dialogue: Shepherd Allusions in Old Greek Zech 9–14 and Their Role in the Discourse
3:40 PM—4:20 PM August H Konkel (McMaster Divinity College) Septuagint Text Criticism to Show Theological Development and New Testament Interpretation

Thursday, 21 Nov.
8:30 AM-11:40 AM New Testament Canon, Textual Criticism, & Apocryphal Literature Third Floor – Mission Beach BC
8:30 AM—9:10 AM Chris S. Stevens (McMaster Divinity College) Paul as Publisher of His Corpus and What That Means for Canon Formation
9:20 AM—10:00 AM Sylvie Raquel (Trinity International University) To Forgive or Not To Forgive? A reevaluation of Luke 23:34a.
10:10 AM—10:50 AM Benjamin Laird (Liberty University) The Early Canonical Reception of Hebrews in Western Christianity
11:00 AM—11:40 AM John J. H. Lee (McMaster Divinity College) The Earth and Its Works Will be Disclosed, or Not? – A Text-Critical Analysis of 2 Pet 3:10

[ETC blog lunch lunch here.]

Thursday, 21 Nov.
3:00 PM-6:10 PM New Testament Canon, Textual Criticism, & Apocryphal Literature Para-textual Features of Early Christian Manuscripts Third Floor – Mission Beach BC
3:00 PM—3:40 PM Dirk Jongkind (Tyndale House, Cambridge) Marking Scripture in New Testament Manuscripts
3:50 PM—4:30 PM Stanley E. Porter (McMaster Divinity College) The New Philology and Its Implications for Contemporary Manuscript Study
4:40 PM—5:20 PM Elijah Hixson (Tyndale House, Cambridge) Scribal Awareness of Textual Variants
5:30 PM—6:10 PM Charles E. Hill (Reformed Theological Seminary) The Capitulatio Vaticana The First Numbered Chapter System for the Bible

Thursday, 21 Nov.
8:00 PM–9:00 PM ETS Presidential Address Second Floor – Seaport ABCDE
Michael J. Kruger (Reformed Theological Seminary) 2 Peter 3:2, the Apostolate, and a Bi-Covenantal Canon

Friday, 22 Nov.
1:00 PM-4:10 PM New Testament Backgrounds, Canon, and Textual Criticism Third Floor – Hillcrest A
2:40 PM—3:20 PM Daniel L. McConaughy (California State University Northridge) Syriac Witnesses to Acts Fifteen from Patristic Citations and Biblical and Lectionary MSS
3:30 PM—4:10 PM Jonathan C. Borland (New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary) In the Presence of Two or Three (Greek) Witnesses: A Look at Par. Nat. Gr. 194/Gregory-Aland 304

ETC Blog Dinner SBL 2019

Dark days in San Diego for the ETC blog!!! The Hard Rock Café in San Diego has closed somehow in relation to the opening of the Hard Rock Hotel. I, however, am pleased to announce that our blog will host a dinner at BASIC Bar/Pizza.  We will have our own room, a pizza buffet, salad, copious pitchers of soda and of course the normal ruckus of festivities—all for the bargain price of $21 (inclusive of tip and tax). It’s important that as many people as possible pay in advance, since we have to arrange the buffet in anticipation of our guests. We need a significant number to reserve the space, so please RSVP now!

PURCHASE YOUR $21 TICKET NOW

Buy Tickets

Monday, 25 November 2019 at 7:30pm

Basic Pizza | 410 10th Ave | San Diego, CA 92101

Myths and Mistakes Now Available

A new book on textual criticism is now available!

 

The New Testament is important, and defending it is important, but what we’ve noticed is that occasionally well-meaning defenders rely on other well-meaning defenders. If left unchecked, this can lead to a chain of citations that go back to resources now-outdated with plenty of opportunity to make mistakes along the way.

One problem is that it’s really hard for any one person to be up-to-date on everything. There’s no way around it—that’s difficult. That’s why this book is a co-edited multi-author volume and not a monograph. We thought that this sort of project is better done by a team of people, each of whom can do one thing well, than by one person trying to do all the things well.

So what is the book? It’s a self-corrective written by people who value the New Testament and think it should be defended, written for people who value the New Testament and want to defend it. We’ve taken some common mistakes about manuscripts and textual criticism that show up in “Why Trust the New Testament” talks, explained why these common mistakes are mistakes or otherwise poor arguments and tried to show what a better way might be.

Over at The Gospel Coalition, Justin Taylor has blogged some of our “Key Takeaways,” which we put at the end of each chapter. Of course, the chapters explain why we assert what we assert here, but Taylor’s post is a great example of what kinds of things the book aims to explain.

Dead Sea Scroll Detectives Airs Tonight (U.S.)

With apologies to Pete Head for the double post today, I thought U.S. readers may like to know about the following episode of NOVA airing tonight on PBS.

Since the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in 1947, these fragile parchment relics have intrigued scholars, religious leaders, and profiteers alike. The 2,000-year-old scrolls include the oldest-known versions of the Hebrew Bible and hold vital clues about the birth of Christianity. While certain scrolls have survived intact, others have been ravaged by time—burnt, decayed, or torn to pieces—and remain an enigma. Now, scientists are using new technologies to read the unreadable, solve mysteries that have endured for millennia, and even discover million-dollar fakes. (Premiering November 6, 2019 at 9 pm on PBS)

More info here

Codex Zacynthius Study Day

Yesterday ITSEE organised a Study Day at Oriel College in Oxford to report on their research project on Codex Zacynthius (Cambridge, UL, MS Additional 10062) (for a previous contribution from this blog see here). It was a great day with very informative presentations and far too much to summarise here. Basically the project involves:

• Complete transcription of overtext
• MSI images (July 2018 EMEL): 51 images of each page (will be made available)
• Base transcription by combining Greenlee & Tregelles – check against images
• Identify sources of scholia (TLG etc.)
• Transcription of scholia and ET (adjusted from NRSV)
• Online and Printed Edition (Gorgias Press)

So some highlights:

The project is proposing three corrections to the text of Luke in 040 as currently understood (via Tregelles and Greenlee): Luke 1.6: read ἐναντίον τοῦ θεοῦ (with NA28 txt); Luke 7.21: read ἐν ἐκείνῃ (with NA28 txt); 8.46: read ἐξεληλυθυῖαν (with NA28 txt).

The text of Luke is not completely continuous, since the text ahs to keep in line with the commentary, so, for example, on 17 occasions a verse is repeated on the next page because comments continue; and twice a verse appears on three pages, e.g. Luke 9.1 has 3 pages of commentary)

The scholia are connected with the text through a numerical system: 328 passages have associated scholia (in the extreme three verses have five scholia: Luke 1.2; 1.43; 9.29). The scholiast is careful to identify sources (sometimes, esp with Severus of Antioch, to particular books or letters). Ten different authors named: Cyril of Alexandria (145); Origen (68), Titus of Bostra (49), Severus of Antioch (29) [latest author, he died in 538; condemned as heretic in 536] ...

34 scholia: ‘from the unattributed collection’
Most can be identified (TLG), but 44 (14%) have no parallel in TLG
NB online checklist of NT catena MSS: http://epapers.bham.ac.uk/3086
Quite a close parallel in GA 747 (Paris): similar catena in content and structure

The scribe of the lectionary (lect 299) was named Nilos who made many little comments about his own failings; the same scribe also wrote Vat. Gr. 788 in AD 1170 (palimpsest, said by Devresse that the underwriting is illegible).

Here is a facsimile from Tregelles (1861) and the same page in a recent photo from the UL:

Here is a video on the Mult-Spectral Imaging:



For more on the project see here.
For more from the UL see here.
For forthcoming publication see here and here.

Congrats to Klaus Wachtel

Congratulations to Klaus Wachtel on his retirement!

Source of un-doctored image: Hugh Houghton's Twitter

Yesterday, the INTF posted the following:

Klaus has been a constant presence in textual criticism for many years now. I've personally benefitted much from his writings on the Byzantine text, and more recently, his textual commentary of Acts in the ECM Acts: Studies volume. May he have a happy retirement!

Congrats also to Greg Paulson as he steps into his new position within the INTF!