On Using Majuscule Numbers instead of Letters

Along with my principled resistance to using Gothic letters in textual criticism, I have for a while also been personally opposed to using letters for the majuscules. Instead, I have tried to restrict myself to the Gregory-Aland numbers. The reason for this is that the numbers are never duplicated and so avoid the confusion my students regularly experience between D in the Gospels and D in Paul, for example. My preference is, no doubt, influenced by my frequent use of the ECM, which only uses the numerical designations in the text volumes. Once I got used to the numbers, the letter designations began to fade.

However, this week, I have realized one (and only one?) benefit of using letters. What’s lost in restricting myself to the numbers alone is the connection between the Greek and Latin diglots. D F G often agree and are thought to have a shared ancestor. But, if the apparatus only lists them as 06 010 012 then it’s easy to miss the evidence of their Latin counterparts designated as the lower case d f g.

The easiest solution is to use both the numerical and letter designations (e.g., D/06). But that still gets a bit cumbersome.

Rob Turnbull on Arabic Manuscripts and New Testament Textual Criticism

Rob talking about something important

Over at Biblia Arabica, Rob Turnbull has written a post about Arabic manuscripts, titled “Do Arabic Gospel manuscripts matter for Textual Criticism?” The article is an abridged version of a longer paper Rob presented at the 11th Birmingham Colloquium last year, and the full version is forthcoming in a volume of the papers from the Colloquium. I’ve always found Rob to be an engaging speaker and an even better person. I have vivid memories of looking around the room a couple of SBLs ago to see other people’s minds blown as much as mine was when Rob presented on some of the amazing software he had developed.

Arabic manuscripts can be classified into families, and Rob’s post is about the text-critical value of one of them, Family B. This family is composed of three manuscripts from the New Finds of St. Catherine’s Monastery: Sinai ar. Parch. N.F. 24, Sinai ar. Parch. N.F. 44, and Sinai ar. Parch. N.F. 8+28 (which are two parts of the same codex). Sinai ar. Parch. N.F. 8+28 has been written about here (but unfortunately, the downloadable pdf does not at present match what the content should be; it looks like this article was skipped in the digitisation of this issue of NovT).

Rob begins by mentioning that Arabic manuscripts are often overlooked because they are assumed to be more or less Byzantine. However, as he demonstrates, Family B is surprisingly non-Byzantine. Rob worked with the Text und Textwert volumes and took into consideration the way Greek was translated into Arabic and arrived at some nice graphs that show how Family B compares to Greek witnesses to the New Testament. One in particular is this chart of agreement with the majority text over time, where Family B is represented by the big red star in the middle:

[Caption quoted from the article:] Fig. 2. The similarity of manuscripts with the Majority Text over time. Data are combined across all the test locations used in the Four Gospels. Manuscripts are labeled with the category assigned to them by the Alands. [link removed] The approximate dates of Greek manuscripts are taken from the Kurzgefasste Liste.[link removed] For clarity, the only credible interval (expressing the uncertainty of the calculation) shown is for ar^b. This graph combines data from all four Gospels. The equivalent graphs broken down for all four Gospels are found on my Github page.

With Rob’s permission, I quote his conclusion here in full:

In conclusion, probing the character of Family B of the Arabic Gospels using Text und Textwert gives similar results to Kashouh’s earlier study from Luke. Family B is consistently non-Byzantine throughout the four Gospels and with high credibility would rank together the top 25 manuscripts of the Greek tradition in terms of dissimilarity with the Majority Text. The text of ar^b in Luke and the latter half of Matthew shows a high proportion of similarity with the ‘Ancient’ (UBS) Text though more test passages are necessary to demonstrate this with greater certainty. In particular, there are a very high number of ‘special’ readings which disagree with both the Majority and Ancient texts. This potentially makes ar^b of great value in explaining poorly understood branches of the transmission of the Gospels. This Arabic version is of high significance and it would be appropriate for it to be cited in the apparatus of future critical editions of the Gospels. It is hoped that through further study of this version, it can be precisely related to other manuscripts in the Greek tradition to illuminate the history of transmission of the Gospels.

Do be sure to check out the article here for a fuller argument and more charts and data: “Do Arabic Gospel manuscripts matter for Textual Criticism?”

Mount Athos Repository On-line

The wonderful news has just reached me that over 3,000 digitised manuscripts at Mount Athos have been made available online (at this point only 177 are on parchment) in the Mount Athos Repository.

This is Karakoulis’s announcement (HT Hugh Houghton):

Thanks to the financial support of the European Union, a big part of the cultural heritage of the Holy Mountain of Athos has been digitised. The material includes manuscripts (Byzantine and post-Byzantine), early prints, documents and letters, material culture, photos etc. One should, however, be cautious about the “catalogue” entries: they are often not based on reliable catalogues. Some of the monasteries have undertaken the task of creating new catalogues (often with great success, such as the catalogue of Vatopedi manuscripts by Lamberz).

I hope new digitised manuscripts will be added successively to the repository including the hundreds of Greek New Testament manuscripts which are kept in the libraries of Athos.

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Links around the Web

Meade and I have been up to our necks in final prep for the Sacred Words conference this weekend which has meant I haven’t had time for blogging. Instead, here are some TC-related links and news from the past few weeks.

Events

Speaking of conferences, Pete, Dirk, and Kim Philips will be speaking in Frisco, TX April 2–4, 2020. Don’t miss it if you’re in the area. Details at bibleconference.legacyca.com. Also in April, Dan Wallace will be giving two lectures at TEDS on textual criticism. See here.

“Hebrew Manuscripts: Journeys of the Written Word” exhibition at the BL March 19–August 2, 2020. Watch the promo video and get more at bl.uk/events/hebrew-manuscripts.

News and Publications

Geoffrey Khan has just published a new two-volume book on The Tiberian Pronunciation Tradition of Biblical Hebrew. Both are open access. Ben Outhwaite says, “These volumes represent the highest level of scholarship on what is arguably the most important tradition of Biblical Hebrew.”

John Meade has completed his 10-years-in-the-making edition of the Hexeplaric fragments! Here’s an interview with the seminary about it.

PS: Do the hexaplaric readings of Job affect our English Bibles? JM: In short, yes. The hexaplaric readings usually agree with the Hebrew text upon which our English translations are based. But in some cases, they differ and preserve an older text. I’ll limit myself to two examples where the ESV has based its translation of Job on Hexaplaric versions, but you may not have known it...

Hixson on the ending of Mark – Hixson has written a nice, accessible article on the ending of Mark’s Gospel for the Gospel Coalition.

Uncertainty here makes us uncomfortable, but we lose nothing of our faith if Mark ends at 16:8, and God often calls us to trust him in the face of uncertainty. Without faith it’s impossible to please him, after all. Since faith is the assurance of things hoped for (Heb. 11:1), and seen hope is not real hope (Rom. 8:24), it wouldn’t be walking by faith if God answered all of our questions. That would be walking by sight. With or without Mark 16:9–20, the tomb is empty, Jesus has purchased our pardon, and we can be certain of that.

Jongkind on how Greek improves understanding of the text at the Crossway blog

In conclusion, do we need Greek in order to appreciate the examples discussed above? It certainly helps. It puts us in a position where we can “Come and see,” where we listen directly. Reading Greek (and likewise the Hebrew of the Old Testament) helps us to develop a sensitivity to the beauty of the language that is difficult to appreciate otherwise. And it is not just about beauty; it is also about meaning. Thankfully, we can explain all this in modern English. But for those who can, the blessing of approaching Scripture in the original is a great privilege.

Myths and Mistakes is the runner-up in NT for the Biblical Foundations Book Award. I’m not entirely clear on what the criteria were, but Tom Schreiner nicely says, “Myths and Mistakes in New Testament Textual Criticism breaks new ground, and although it eschews simplistic solutions, gives us new confidence that the Bible is the word of God.” 

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