Why? Because, if you take the time to read or at least peruse their 330 page Introduction to their NT (amazon.com) (published in a second volume with an appendix), you see that they fill in most if not all of the details of the how & why of their edition.

What sort of stuff? Well ... who'd've thunk that two pages on casing of κυριος, Χριστος and υψιστος would be appropriate? Sometimes on reading an upper-cased Κυριος or a lower-cased χριστος (In NA27, not WH) I've often wondered "why is that one upper-cased/lower-cased?"

WH show their work and tell you why, at least in their edition — and why, in four instances in Luke (Lu 1.32; Lu 1.35; Lu 1.75; Lu 6.35) they also upper-cased Υψιστος. They take two pages (pp. 316-318; §§414-416) to tell you. Here's §416, explaining their capitalization of Υψιστος:

416. An initial capital has likewise been used for Υψιστος in the four places, all in St Luke's Gospel, in which it stands in the singular without an article. In this shape it exactly represents the anarthrous Elion, a very ancient name not confined to the Jews, and is virtually itself a proper name. In the LXX the article is usually inserted: but in Ecclesiasticus, doubtless a better authority for Palestinian custom, Υψιστος occurs frequently, and has the article but once, except in combination with another title.

More than you ever wanted to know, but helpful nonetheless. If you're looking for a copy of WH's Intro/Appendix, then you want the 1896 edition which has corrections/updates.

Why do I like this so? Whether I agree or not, I can at least know what in the world they were thinking. You can't do that with any other print edition; none are nearly as transparent as WH were. We'd all do well to re-learn this lesson.

Wipf & Stock have done a recent photo-reprint, available in paperback (amazon.com).

Hendrickson did a reprint in the late 1980's, in hardcover (amazon.com). Some used copies of this are available via Amazon.

Which do I recommend? I don't know, I've not used any of the reprint editions. Years ago, I found a copy of the 1896 edition via abebooks from a seller in Australia and snapped it up quickly.

If you work with the Greek New Testament and do anything remotely pertaining to textual criticism (the appendix "Notes on Select Readings" is a mini-Metzger for WH's edition and their "Notes on Orthography" will tell you more than you wanted to know about spelling in their edition); or if you have interest in orthography, punctuation, and other particulars of producing and fully utilizing a printed edition of the Greek NT, then you need this book; whether the Hendrickson hardcover (amazon.com) or the Wipf & Stock softcover (amazon.com).

Update (2008-05-14): Thanks to Mark from the Bible and Tech blog for pointing out that WH's Intro/Appendix volume is available via Google Books. So grab it and absorb!

Here's a nugget from the intro in the back of W&H's printed volume (so, not the Intro/Appendix volume, but the actual text volume):

A few hours spent in studying a series of the countless corrections which no one would think of accepting will shew the variety of instinct to be found among scribes, the frequent disagreement between their instincts and our own, and, above all, the conflicting effects of different instincts in the same passage. (W&H, 542)

So often we (or I should say "I", instead of transferring my guilt to others) study only the juicy variants, discounting variants that seem obviously wrong or misguided according to common text-critical guidelines. This is exceedingly easy to do with the NA27 apparatus as guide, which (rightly for a handbook edition) focuses on listing variants but doesn't really get you any further in associating variants with particular MSS or even with particular scribes. In other words, studying variants with NA27, you will get a very good sense of the variation units but you won't get any sense of the underlying MSS and variant types to which each are prone.

W&H's advice above runs counter to the presentation in NA27. They say study all of the variants, not just the juicy ones. They say to get a sense of "the variety of instinct among scribes", not just items meaningful to translation. Reuben Swanson's NT Manuscripts volumes are much more amenable to this approach; they let you study each MS as a whole so you can actually get a sense of the peculiarities of each MS and, to some degree, scribes.

Why is that important? Coming to such an understanding by working through several of the seemingly "little" issues clues you in to how to process the big, juicy, more "meaningful" variation units. Otherwise one will likely just think things like "the shorter reading is the best reading" or "the more difficult reading is more likely the correct reading" or even "the older witness/higher quality MS has the best reading". Balancing those sort of seemingly objective criteria might be good guidelines overall, but they're hardly 100% applicable rules; particularly when these guidelines conflict, as they often do. What about when the shortest reading is the easiest reading, but it's in the earlier/more reliable witness? Or when the longest reading is the hardest reading, but it is in an 8th-9th century MS that doesn't agree with the major uncials? In these sorts of cases, a "majority rules" approach has as much chance at being right as it does at being wrong.

So take W&H's advice sometime. Work through all the variants you can find for your passage, keeping track of source (which MS they come from) and nature of variant. Use that information when considering overall which readings you consider proper. Have fun!

From the What's New in Papyrology blog comes mention of a splendid sounding title, Greetings in the Lord: Early Christians in the Oxyrhynchus Papyri (amazon.com). The author is AnneMarie Luijendijk, the publisher is Harvard Divinity School. And the price for the 235 page book is $25. (Brill, Mohr-Siebeck, et. al., please take note of the price-per-page ratio).

It is apparently slated for release in August of 2008. I can't wait to read it once I scrape up the $25.

Here's the blurb from the publisher (text taken from Amazon's page):

This is the first book-length study on Christians in the ancient Egyptian city of Oxyrhynchus, the site where some of the most important and oldest fragments of early Christian books were unearthed.

Bringing the people in dry papyrus letters and documents back to life, the book reveals how Christians lived in this city in different contexts and situations. In the first part, the image of the city's marketplace functions to address questions of Christian identity in the public sphere. The second part features a man called Sotas, bishop of Oxyrhynchus in the third century, as he is busy networking with other Christian communities, involved in teaching, book production, and fund-raising. The third part, focusing on evidence of the persecution of Christians, reveals the far-reaching power and pervasiveness of Roman bureaucracy. We learn that Christians negotiated their identity through small acts of resistance against the imperial decrees.

The papyrus letters and documents discussed in this book offer sometimes surprising insights into the everyday lives of Christians in the third and early fourth century and nuance our understanding of Christianity in this period. It is the mundane aspects of everyday life that make these papyrus documents so fascinating.

A friend just pointed this out to me, sitting on an FTP server at National Geographic.

It's hi-res images of what appear to be all of the pages of Codex Tchacos, which contains the Coptic of the Gospel of Judas. My guess is that these images match the plates in the Critical Edition of the Gospel of Judas, but if anyone is doing serious work with the Coptic of Judas (or any of the other documents in Codex Tchacos) then you probably want these images instead.

And, while we're on manuscript stuff, have y'all seen the online edition of Codex Gigas? (hat tip: Mark @ Biblical Studies and Technological Tools blog) If not, you should. It is way cool! Have fun playing with the "Browse the Manuscript" feature. Also: I didn't know that Gigas had editions of Antiquities of the Jews and Wars of the Jews in Latin, amongst other stuff. How cool is that? Here all along I'd just thought it was a Latin Bible.

... I'm still amazed at the differences between Greek editions of the NT in the areas of:

• paragraphing
• punctuation
• orthography (e.g. νγ vs γγ, moveable nu)

and that there is no standard tome on these items, apart from Westcott & Hort's Introduction [mentioned here], as far as I can tell. And you have to dig to find W&H's intro. Are they the only ones to even try to tackle this?

I mean, even if you just compare Westcott & Hort to NA27 — where the text is almost exactly the same — check to see where one uses emdashes and the other uses colons, or where one punctuates a list with commas and the other doesn't, or where sentence and paragraph breaks are entirely different.

Am I making a bigger deal of this than is necessary? Do folks just think this aspect of an edition is interpretive, so editors do what they do and we just gloss over it?

Maybe. But my guess is that most users of the Greek NT are just using it to zero in on a particular word for a study of a particular verse. Like: "Oh, [english word] is a translation of [greek word]; so I'll look that one up in BDAG." Does anyone who actually reads the Greek NT pay attention to paragraphing, punctuation, flow of argumentation? Or are we layering our own translation over things when we examine the Greek (OK, I admit I'm guilty of this).

And I'm also guessing that much of the paragraphing and punctuation in Greek NTs has to do with how the editors would translate the text themselves, thus I'm guessing it is influenced largely by the punctuation practices of their native language* — and not necessarily based on what the Greek is communicating.**

Of course, I know, the written Greek MSS don't have punctuation like modern languages (though there are some indicators). But it still seems like there should at least be some attempts at this area of study primarily because it is so important to understanding the text as a whole.

Is this area doomed to languish?

Update (2007-10-25): Tommy Wasserman over at the Evangelical Textual Criticism blog links back here, noting what I said earlier about subparagraphs in the NA27. Thanks! I posted a comment on his post about subparagraphs in Westcott & Hort:

I subsequently 'discovered' that Westcott & Hort has subparagraph breaks too; but at least they tell you what they are in §419 of their introduction: "In the subdivision of sections we have found great convenience in adopting the French plan of breaking up the paragraphs into subparagraphs by means of a space of some length."

The same section goes on with some more information about W&H's edition that I didn't know either: "We have been glad at the same time to retain another grade of division in the familiar difference between capitals and small letters following a full stop. Groups of sentences introduced by a capital thus bear the same relation to subparagraphs as subparagraphs to paragraphs."

I'm beginning to wonder how much of this sort of stuff NA27 just carries over without disclosing.

* Pure speculation and likely irrelevant and misguided, but I'm wondering how the punctuation in NA27 compares with how one would punctuate a somewhat literal German translation — and how punctuation in UBS4 compares with how one would punctuate a somewhat literal English translation.

** You can really see this in Hodges & Farstad's The Greek New Testament According to the Majority Text where they go so far as to use “quote marks” to denote spoken text and, as I recall, OT quotations. It's pretty irritating to see quotation marks in the midst of diacritics and some text-critical note indicators.

Yesterday I stumbled across PJ Hillery's The Georgian Language: An Outline Grammatical Summary. No, this page isn't about how y'all talk down there in Atlanta; it is about the language of the country of Georgia. Vööbus describes Georgia as "that rough mountain-district between the Black and Caspian Seas — known to the ancient world as Iberia" (Vööbus 173).

I'm always at least superficially interested in the languages of the early versions of the New Testament (Latin, Coptic, Syriac, Ethiopic, Armenian, Georgian, Gothic, etc.). This gave me a chance to re-read sections of Vööbus and Metzger on the Georgian Versions (see citations below). You could also check the wikipedia entry on Georgian Language for general background on the language.

What do we know (or at least, what do we think we know) about the Georgian version?

• Christianity probably came to the region in the middle of the fourth century — that's like 350, y'all! (Metzger 184; see also Vööbus 176). For comparative purposes, that's around the same date that many ascribe to the copying of Codex Sinaiticus.
• The Georgian version was probably in currency " ... in the second part of the fifth century. Its origin, then, seems to belong to the decades before the middle of the fifth century" (Vööbus 178; see also Metzger 184). For comparison, many date Codex Bezae in the fifth century.
• Vööbus concludes the Georgian was likely originally translated from the Armenian and later subjected to editing against Greek exemplars (Vööbus 187-192). Metzger makes no conclusions, he just reports conclusions others have made (Metzger 190-196).

A quick search of the NA27 apparatus shows that it is only cited twice, in Mt 27.64 (supporting the omission of a pronoun) and Mk 10.25 (supporting the reading of a phonetically-similar word, καμηλον [NA27] vs. καμιλον). This makes sense because the Georgian is at least a translation of a translation (or perhaps a translation of a translation of a translation, depending on your view of the origin of the Armenian text). But Metzger, in his Textual Commentary, cites 'geo' almost 100 times. So it is of some value in the realm of NT textual criticism.

Wikipedia has some images from the Adysh Gospels (a canon table and an illumination) and also the Vani Gospels (an illumination), two early (10th century) Georgian codices. Here's the canon table from the Adysh Gospels, copied in 897 AD:

Works Cited

Metzger, Bruce M. The Early Versions of the New Testament. London: Oxford University Press, 1977, pp. 182-214.

Vööbus, Arthur. Early Versions of the New Testament: Manuscript Studies. Stockholm: Estonian Theological Society in Exile, 1954, pp. 173-209.

This week RBL reviews New Testament Manuscripts: Their Texts and Their World (amazon.com), an unpurchasably-priced collection of essays from Brill ($181.00!). The review is here. It all sounds interesting, but why is it so blasted expensive?! I realize Brill's primary market for these sorts of things are libraries, but why not have some sort of option whereby regular joes can purchase such things as well?

Anyway, from what I can tell from the review, I'd guess that if it sounds interesting to you then you'd also enjoy looking at Larry Hurtado's recent and much more reasonably priced book, The Earliest Christian Artifacts: Manuscripts and Christian Origins (amazon.com). One of the essays in the mondo expensivo Brill book is by Hurtado on the Staurogram. Hurtado revises and updates that work in his book on The Earliest Christian Artifacts (amazon.com) (cf. p. 135, footnote 1 where Hurtado notes that he "draws heavily upon" the essay in the Brill book).

Tony Chartrand-Burke, on his Apocryphicity blog, posts a 10-page how-to for manuscript collating called Collating for Dummies. It even takes on the page layout of that well-known series. (h/t Jim Davila). It's a good read, though I'd hoped he'd give a little more info on the physical process of collation and comparison. But it's only 10 pages, and the bibliography looks to have some promising sources to follow up on.

Tony gives some props to Bruce Metzger as a resource for decoding ligatures and abbreviations in Greek. Metzger's book on paleography, Manuscripts of the Greek Bible: An Introduction to Paleography (amazon.com) is good and the recommended introduction. But you may require more information on abbreviations and ligatures in Greek MSS. If so, I'd recommend Abbreviations in Greek: Inscriptions, Papyri, Manuscripts and Early Printed Books (amazon.com). I've blogged about this book previously (here and here). It contains four monographs (some short, some long, some with extensive catalogues and other such material) having to do with abbreviations in Greek. These monographs are:

• "Abbreviations in Greek Inscriptions" by M. Avi-Yonah
• "Abbreviations and Symbols in Greek Papyri" by F. G. Kenyon
• "Abbreviations in Greek Manuscripts" by T. W. Allen
• "Abbreviations in Early Greek Printed Books" by G. F. Ostermann and A. E. Giegengack.

If you're only interested in ligatures/abbreviations, skip Metzger (amazon.com) and get Oikonomides (amazon.com). You'll save $40 overall (based on Amazon prices current as of original composition of this article) and get more information specific to your interest.

At the start of his discussion of "Similarly Spelled but Identically Pronounced Variants":

The contribution of commentaries on the following text-critical discussion is minimal, since commentators as a rule follow the text of the GNT [UBS4] or NA [NA27] without further ado. Where they do take up a variation unit for discussion, they normally accept the verdict of the editors and the explanation supplied by Metzger's commentary, which they express in their own words. (Caragounis, Development of Greek and the New Testament (amazon.com), 518)

And he's right, but his comparison is wrong. In the setting of a commentary, unless it is focused on being a textual commentary, it would be questionable to devote pages and pages to each text-critical complication. It is right to mention them, but one need not work them out in painstaking detail unless that is the raison d'etre for the commentary. In the setting of an article on a variant, however (which is what Caragounis has done) one would be irresponsible to not work things out in significant detail, as Caragounis does in the next section of his book (the one dealing with variants at 1Co 13.3, pp. 547-564). And even in the current section (pp. 517-546) Caragounis usually only presents enough information to show that the variants are spelled the same, they sound the same, and the evidence is split.

But overall, he's right. When *most* commentators bring up a variant, they typically defer to Metzger and move on.

Roger Pearse (who is always dabbling in very interesting things) reported on Thoughts on Antiquity his inability to find a reasonably priced general introduction to Armenian in English, and the inability to find an Armenian-English dictionary. I responded in the comments with a lead on a dictionary (Bedrossian's, which is mentioned in Thomson's intro as the Armenian-English dictionary to start with). I haven't looked for it in awhile, but I had never been able to find a decently-priced edition of Bedrossian's dictionary (maybe Wipf & Stock will do it someday?)

For some reason I'm fascinated by things Armenian though I have yet to do any serious reading or study on the language (outside of sections in Metzger's Early Versions and Vööbus' Early Versions). It's one of those things on my mental "stuff to study someday" list.

So imagine my surprise when Roger posted a follow-up to his original post pointing us all to the Leiden Armenian Lexical Database. This site has dictionaries (including Bedrossian) and, more importantly, some lexically analyzed texts, including Jonah and the Gospels of Luke and John (from Zohrab's edition) along with Cox's edition of Deuteronomy! Zounds! With a lemmatized John and a dictionary, and Thomson in print at my side, it makes working through the text to familiarize myself with the language that much more approachable!

Now, I just need about four more hours in each day ...

I'll discuss Atticism in more detail later (likely in part 4 of my Thorough-going Eclecticism series) but I wanted to mention this now.

Just last night I was reviewing some areas that J.K. Elliott chalks up to atticism and was thinking, "so how do we know what an atticism is?" I mean, my one year of Greek at a formal learning institution was Attic (my autodidact efforts have focused largely on Koine/Hellenistic). I remember the biggies (e.g. Attic ττ shifts to Koine σσ, πραττω to πρασσω) but not much more.

Later in the evening I was reading Caragounis' The Development of Greek and the New Testament (amazon.com). Imagine my surprise when I ran across his section on Atticism, pp. 120-140 where he reproduces lists from Phrynichos (424 words!) and Moiris (less than 50 words) that could be helpful when reviewing variants for possible atticism.

[This is part of a series of posts looking at "thorough-going eclecticism" as practiced by J.K. Elliott in his book The Greek Text of the Epistles to Timothy and Titus. See the introductory post for more information. --RWB]

As a part of Elliott's first principle, line omission is pretty much the same as homoiteleuton (though not necessarily with the same start/same end type thing) only on a grander scale. Instead of skipping letters or words of an exemplar, one or more lines are skipped. Elliott writes:

Another cause of omission is line-omission. Clark in his Acts of the Apostles (38) shows how the shorter text of Acts was frequently the result of line omission. ... This cause of omission is less demonstrable in the Pastoral epistles, (Elliott 6-7).

There are not many examples; I will list two here.

• 1Ti 1.14. Elliott uses line omission to explain what happened in MS 1518 (a XIV/XV cent. MS in Jerusalem) at this verse. The NA27 has the following:

14 ὑπερεπλεόνασεν δὲ ἡ χάρις τοῦ κυρίου ἡμῶν μετὰ πίστεως καὶ ἀγάπης τῆς ἐν Χριστῷ Ἰησοῦ. (1Ti 1.14, NA27)

MS 1518, according to Elliott, has this:

14 ὑπερεπλεόνασεν δὲ ἡ χάρις τοῦ κυρίου ἡμῶν Ἰησοῦ Χριστῷ. (1Ti 1.14, MS 1518)

The difference is obvious; instead of being about "the over-abundant grace of our Lord with faith and love in Christ Jesus" it is now about "the over-abundant grace of our Lord Jesus Christ". Elliott posits the following:

The omission may represent one or two lines of an exemplar. The scribe's eye passed from του κυ ημων to the divine names, which he inverts and alters to ιυ χω to follow του κυ ημων.

That's one way to explain 1518's variant. I'm skeptical, though. If it is simple line omission, why would the further change in word order be made except to make sense of the verse with the omission? And wouldn't that imply knowledge of the omission by the scribe?

• 1Ti 6.5. In this case Elliott accepts a longer text that has some decent testimony against the shorter text of Siniaticus and Alexandrinus. NA27 has the following:

5 διαπαρατριβαὶ διεφθαρμένων ἀνθρώπων τὸν νοῦν καὶ ἀπεστερημένων τῆς ἀληθείας, νομιζόντων πορισμὸν εἶναι τὴν εὐσέβειαν. (NA27)

5 διαπαρατριβαὶ διεφθαρμένων ἀνθρώπων τὸν νοῦν καὶ ἀπεστερημένων τῆς ἀληθείας, νομιζόντων πορισμὸν εἶναι τὴν εὐσέβειαν [αφιστασο απο των τοιουτων]. (Elliott's reading)

Elliott's longer text is the Byzantine reading (translated by the NKJV as "from such withdraw yourself"). He notes the following support: D^c K L Ψ P 061. T.R. and most minuscules. Lect. Byz. L (vg DLT). Arm. Goth. EthPP. L (vt mon. m.) and a host of Fathers to boot. He appeals to the validity of the omitted text on the basis of style and further posits its omission due to line omission.

If original, the omission could be accounted for, by the careless omission of one line of the exemplar. If secondary, the longer reading would be a gloss introduced to the text. In view of the above comments on the language [the previous paragraph discussed style] the former is more likely. Accept the longer reading. (Elliott 94)

So in this case Elliott uses line omission to explain the omission. He does this only after he has justified that the text is worthy of including on the basis of style.

So, line omission can be a way to argue for the inclusion of the longer text (yes, the rule of brevior lectio potior isn't always right; it is a guideline and not a rule) when the longer text makes sense based on author style or when the vast majority of quality witnesses include the text. At least, that's the way I'd apply it; I'd guess Elliott would not necessarily qualify the statement as I do.

Next up: Author's Style and Usage

I realize what I am about to write may be considered heresy by some. These are just thoughts rolling around in my head; I've come to no conclusions yet. When I think, I write. And I'm thinking. So I'm writing.

I'm re-reading the first few chapters of Aland & Aland's The Text of the New Testament (amazon.com). I didn't notice it last time I read this -- back when I was first imbibing in things text-critical -- but doggone this thing has an attitude, and the best word I can come up with to describe it is arrogance.

What Eberhard Nestle did was actually quite simple (a radical breakthrough is always simple in retrospect); he compare the texts of Tischedorf and of Westcott-Hort. Where the two differed, he consulted a third edition for a deciding vote. (Aland and Aland, 19)

It's the little parenthetical that doesn't need to be there but is. This sort of thing happens frequently (go ahead, give it a read). The only purpose this parenthetical serves is to puff up the first edition of Nestle as something special when it was just a majority-rules approach resting on the text-critical work that had gone before it. Nothing wrong with that, but here they make it sound like the practice was hugely radical. This is all the more strange for a comment 20 pages later:

Much in Tischendorf's apparatus may simply be ignored. For example, he regularly cites printed editions in support of variants, e.g., in verse 27 (third from last line) for the reading αυτου: ς^e Gb Sz Ln Ti. This means that the Textus Receptus in Elzevir's edition (ς^e) John Jakob Griesbach's editon of 1827 (Gb), Johannes Martin Augustinus Scholz in his edition of 1830-1836 (Sz), Karl Lachmann's edition of 1842-1850 (Ln) and Tischendorf in his edition of 1859 (Ti) read αυτου; such information is quite dated today and of no value. (Aland & Aland, 39)

So I'm confused. Nestle was a genius because he took as standard text where Tischendorf and W&H agreed (he used edition info to establish his text); but the editional information in Tischedorf's apparatus, which was published 20 years before Nestle's first edition, is useless? A&A go on to speak highly of other aspects of T's edition, but why heap scorn on this one? Especially when appendix 3 of NA27 shows differences of editions [including T!] for NA variants? Are they saying their own edition's appendix 3 is useless too, and may summarily be ignored? I just don't get it.

I won't even go into the disdain for the TR and anything associated with it; the examples are numerous and need not be recounted here. OK, one example will suffice:

... while one should beware of The Greek New Testament According to the Majority Text by Arthur L. Farstad and Zane C. Hodges (1982) as an anachronism in every respect (A&A, 25).

Now I'm not a fan of Hodges & Farstad's work in that volume (punctuating, formatting and typesetting the Greek as if it was English?), but c'mon. It seems as if it has somehow been tainted by the shadow of the TR and therefore isn't even worth consideration.

One more thing that confuses me is that these first chapters are spent building up to the UBS/NA (but particularly the NA) as being the glory of glories of all Greek editions. They heap some elitist scorn on W&H for their edition, primarily because W&H didn't examine actual manuscripts but relied on critical editions to inform their work (A&A 18). The "non-Western interpolations" are mentioned in derision at least three times, if I recall correctly. Yet the all-glorious Nestle text (the 25th edition), by the counts in this very book, differs from W&H in only 558 places outside of orthorgraphical differences. (NB: just about 8000 verses in the NT, NA27 has 138,020 words. You do the math and figure the percentages). I'm unsure of the differences between NA25 and NA27.

So, NA is the bees-knees. W&H were hacks who could only use critical editions of texts and manuscripts as they stumbled to put together their text. Yet NA is built on top of that foundation and shares it to a very large portion. And NA are the geniuses? Sure, there is a lot of work they've done in the apparatus, and that's groovy. And they do give W&H credit to some (small) degree. But can't they admit that all they've done is re-examine the evidence (comprehensively, systematically) and then ended up changing W&H in a few places?

It's that attitude I can't get past as I read the book this time. Although in a mostly polite way, they treat older pre-WH editions lightly because they largely follow the TR. But NA follows W&H with slight modifications and it's oh-so-better? And NA/UBS *isn't* similar to the TR even though many non-Nestle editions of the past, say, 75 years (Souter, Tasker, Zondervan's Reader's GNT to name a few) are at least as WH-like as NA/UBS? (at least in the Pastorals which, yes, I have examined and compared).

I don't mean to slight the technical achievement behind the NA27 and UBS4 editions. It's awesome. And the work going on with the Editio Critica Maior is mind-boggling. I'm thrilled they're doing the work. But I don't want to slight W&H either. It was -- and still is, to large degree, as the work of NA has proved -- a useful edition. So drop the arrogance and get with it.

Oh, and lastly -- are we really at the point where the status of the Greek of the NT is really only in tweak mode without new major MS discoveries? If so, then I say it is time to begin re-questioning methodology. We can't be that good. Or is 'reasoned eclecticism' really that perfect?

OK, I'm off my soap box. But I might come back, you never know.

Update (2007-04-17): (Responding particularly to Tom Reynolds in the comments). Perhaps I should clarify; I'm not interested in promoting a TR position. I think Maurice Robinson is doing interesting things and that he isn't starting with a KJV-only presupposition (though I could be wrong) but I think the NA/UBS text should be the first consulted (and I'd pick NA if I had to choose between NA and UBS). If you've listened to any of Klaus Wachtel's papers at the SBL the past few years, you've heard him bring up some isolated Byzantine readings as serious possibilities. Not the majority theories per se; just a few readings. But NA/UBS is where we start. It is the best available text.

No, what I was responding to here was the tone in A&A's first few chapters. For all their hullabaloo about the poorness of the TR and the slips of W&H, their text isn't that different from either. They've just spear-headed the detail-work of looking everything up and providing first-hand-accounted evidence (so it's second-hand for you & me) for the readings. They haven't come up with a stupendously fabulous text -- in the vast majority it is the same text everyone else comes up with when they attack the problem (the Byzantine priorists being at greatest variance). Simply examining other Greek NT editions published in the 20th century (like Tasker, Souter, RGNT and some others) shows that everyone is dipping in the same pool; they're simply justifying their readings differently. NA/UBS definitely do the best job of justifying their readings (though I think the data presented in Reuben Swanson's volumes easier to understand and more handy to reference and get an idea of MSS trends and content, not individual variance).

While reading those few chapters, one thing in my head was John Lee's book A History of New Testament Lexicography (amazon.com). Lee conclusively demonstrates that most NT lexicons today (including the hallowed BDAG and BAAR) are essentially translations of translations of translations of 16th century work. Expanded with evidence, yes, but the important parts folks look at -- the glosses and basic definitions -- can be traced directly back in most cases. Are we really that good at lexicography too? Or is it time for another approach to the problem building on what we've learned?

That's what I couldn't help pondering as I read A&A, knowing I'd done collations of the Pastorals against W&H for several 20th century Greek NT editions. And they're all basically the same, apart from Byzantine/TR stuff and what would likely be J.K. Elliott's text based on his Greek Text of the Epistles to Timothy and Titus. The stuff folks actually use is the same, basically, from edition to edition. (I think that's just fine, BTW) And I can't reconcile that knowledge against the arrogance teeming through A&A's intro chapters. Why is their text so much better if it is the same?

I've surely beat this into the ground now. I do think there is room for growth in methodology, though; and I think that growth can come from places other than Muenster.

In the "best sentences I've read tonight" department, from J.B. Lightfoot's The Apostolic Fathers Part I: S. Clement of Rome. A Revised Text with Introductions, Notes, Dissertations and Translations (Volume I). Macmillan: London 1890.

On the whole this MS appears to give a good text. The shortcomings of the scribe are generally such that they can be easily corrected; for they arise from petty carelessness and ignorance, and not from perverse ingenuity. (p. 120)

Follow-up (2007-03-29): After discussing Alexandrinus' version of First Clement, Lightfoot moves on to the version recorded in the Constantinopolitan MS. On p. 123-124, he writes:

[Constantinopolitanus] is written with a fair amount of care throughout, so far as regards errors of transcription. In this respect it compares favourably with A, which constantly betrays evidence of great negligence on the part of the scribe. But, though far more free from mere clerical errors, yet in all points which vitally affect the trustworthiness of a MS, it must certainly yield the palm to the Alexandrian. The scribe of A may be careless, but he is guileless also. On the other hand the text of C shows manifest traces of critical revision, as will appear in the sequel.

[This is part of a series of posts looking at "thorough-going eclecticism" as practiced by J.K. Elliott in his book The Greek Text of the Epistles to Timothy and Titus. See the introductory post for more information. --RWB]

NB: In this post, I abbreviate "homoioteleuton" with "hom." (as Elliott does in his book). I've also posted on homoioteleuton before.

The first basic principle Elliott lists is that of hom. In his introduction, he uses 1Ti 5.16 as an example, where a shorter text (πιστος η πιστη) is explained by an instance of hom. from the longer text (ΠΙCΤοςηΠΙCΤη). Elliott writes:

... the scribes eye has passed from the first ΠΙCΤ to the second, and he has omitted the intervening letters. Hom. seems to have been a frequent cause of error in the Pastoral Epistles ...

Elliott provides several examples from the first chapter of First Timothy where hom. may be appealed to to explain a variant and, therefore, argue for the longer text. These instances include:

• 1Ti 1.9: MS 1874, 623, and 1836 omit καὶ μητρολῴαις from πατρολῴαις καὶ μητρολῴαις. This as well can be explained by hom.: παΤΡΟΛΩΑΙCιακμηΤΡΟΛΩΑΙC. After writing the first word, the scribe's eyes skipped to the same ending on the second word, and progressed from there.
• 1Ti 1.10: MS 915 and 917 omit πόρνοις. The word that ends v. 9 has the same ending (ἀνδροφόνοις πόρνοις) , so hom. can be used to explain the omission: ανδροφοΝΟΙCπορΝΟΙC
• 1Ti 1.14: MS 1908 and 489 have καὶ ἀγάπης ἐν Χριστῷ Ἰησοῦ (omitting the article) while NA27 have καὶ ἀγάπης τῆς ἐν Χριστῷ Ἰησοῦ. Elliott notes that hom. may be a contributing factor to 1908 and 489 omitting τῆς: αγαΠΗCΤΗCεν
• 1Ti 1.17: Uncials S^c D^bc K L P H along with TR (hence KJV) and most minuscules have μονῳ σοφῳ θῳ (only wise God) while UBS/NA have μόνῳ θεῷ (only God). Hom. can explain the longer reading as being shortened; the scribe's eyes wandered from omega to omega: μονΩσοφΩΘΩ. The scribe, I'd guess, would be less likely to omit θῳ; perhaps he could've even missed σοφῳ in his anxiousness to not miss θῳ. Metzger, in his Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament provides the flip side of the coin:

  After μόνῳ the Textus Receptus inserts σοφῷ, with אc Dc K L P most minuscules syrh goth. The word is no doubt a scribal gloss derived from Ro 16.27; the shorter reading is strongly supported by good representatives of both the Alexandrian and the Western types of text (א* A D* F G H* 33 1739 itd, g vg syrp copsa, bo arm eth arab).
  Metzger, B. M., & United Bible Societies. (1994). A textual commentary on the Greek New Testament, second edition a companion volume to the United Bible Societies' Greek New Testament (4th rev. ed.) (572). London; New York: United Bible Societies.

  I'd never really considered hom. as responsible for the omission of σοφῷ; I'll have to think about this a little more.

You'll note that one consequence of a thorough-going eclecticism is that of disregarding documentary evidence. Surely one can't tell everything from textual provenance and the general quality of readings in a MS. It is possible for the better MSS to be wrong, and the less trustworthy MSS to be correct. But I'd think the better road is in the middle, not on the edges. Even so, there are some decent real-world examples above where hom. may be at play in the readings. Seeing these examples and working through them helps me know what to look for in the future when considering variants listed in various apparatuses.

Next up: Line omission.

I've recently been able to finally examine J.K. Elliott's The Greek Text of the Epistles to Timothy and Titus (vol. 36 in the Studies and Documents series published by the University of Utah Press, published in 1968). It is out of print and tough to come by. I'd link to Amazon, but there's only a stub there that says it isn't available. LibraryThing has no listing either. If you're interested in this book, get thee to a theological library!

In the volume, which forms some portion of Elliott's doctoral dissertation from Oxford, Elliott argues against Westcott & Hort's geneaological methodology. Here's what he has to say about the geneaological method:

But it is not only the disintegration of the theory of local text types which has made W. and H.'s (and Streeter's) genealogical method impractical. Mixture makes it impossible to confine a text to a certain geographical area or text grouping. Similarly, a full genealogical plan cannot be constructed to work back to an archetype. The genealogical method is possible in only a restricted way, such as in the building up of family 1, family 13, and family pi. F.H. Tinnefeld works back from D E F G to an archetype.  But such a genealogical method is limited, and even in these family groups, variants, corruption and conflate readings occur. They have to be explained, and as a result the term 'family' can be applied only in a loose way. (Elliott, 3-4).

This volume presents Elliott's application of "thoroughgoing eclecticism" to the Pastoral Epistles. The introduction necessarily defines this methodology, and does so rather succinctly. He derives five primary "principles for use in a thoroughgoing eclectic study of the N.T. text" (Elliott, 6). These are:

• Homoioteleuton and line-omission
• Author's style and usage
• Atticism
• Deliberate alterations
  • Theological or liturgical alterations
  • Grammatical and linguistic alterations
  • Assimilation or harmonization of parallel passages
• Accidental errors

Notably absent in Elliott's principles are any mention as to manuscript quality or provenance. That is, no given MS is preferred over another. Indeed, Elliott takes some readings that by documentary evidence alone are incredibly weak—but Elliott's criteria render more appealing. What his methodology ends up requiring is thinking about each variant from a number of angles, doing research on variants, and—ultimately—really getting to know the text. It speaks volumes against the "cult of the best MS" (Elliott, 4):

The increase of Biblical and textual studies since the time of W. and H. has done much to dispel the 'cult of the best ms.' Some critics still try to clutch at the remnants of W. and H.'s methods. But, with the distrust of the superiority of any given ms. or text type, with the disintegration of closely-knit family units, and with the recognition that the genealogical method is impractical, it is difficult to justify the use of these methods. A more rational system of textual criticism is obviously necessary to replace the old, and it is possible using new knowledge. For example, there is much greater knowledge of Koine Greek due to papyrological studies, more grammars of N.T. Greek are available, the readings of fathers, versions and papyri are accessible. Past methods have been disproved, new knowledge is available: the way is clear for an eclectic study of the N.T. text. (Elliott, 4)

How easy is it for us to say, "yeah, that reading is in B and aleph, so it's gotta be the best"? Pretty easy. How easy is it to actually look at the variants and consider if some form Elliott's principles may have happened? That requires thought, it requires familiarity with the language and the manuscripts, it requires familiarity with syntax and grammar, it requires familiarity with author style. It requires a whole lot more than simply looking to see which MS are earliest and from a provenance we happen to like.

In a series of posts, I hope to go over these main principles of Elliott's methodology, provide examples from his work in the Pastorals, and discuss them just a bit. At least, that's what I hope to do. My intent is simply to sharpen my own understanding of textual criticism and specifically to see what I think of Elliott's methodology as applied here. We'll see if it actually happens.

Lastly, if I may be so bold, another angle that an eclectic methodology may profit from is an examination of prominence and word order along the lines of Stephen Levinsohn (amazon.com). A colleague of mine is doing some really fascinating work in this area, and Jenny Read-Hiemerdinger has done some good work (in JSNTSup volumes here (amazon.com) and here (amazon.com)) in applying this perspective to textual criticism; specifically in examining readings in Acts of codex Bezae. Fun stuff.

Update I (2007-03-24): The series has begun.

• Update II (2007-03-24): Thorough-going Eclecticism Part I: Homoioteleuton
• Update III (2007-04-18): Thorough-going Eclecticism Part II: Line Omission

PJ Williams at the Evangelical Textual Criticism blog was the first to note it; word came to him via Michael Holmes.

Bruce M. Metzger has passed.

Textual criticism is a strange field. It takes years—decades, even—to be comfortable with the variety of languages, witnesses, manuscripts, not to mention the paleography. Metzger had decades of information filed away in his head, along with recall of resources. It seems textual criticism is one field where the elder statesmen who retain critical faculties along the way become more valuable to the field, not less valuable.

He will be impossible to replace and sorely missed.

I couldn't locate a formal bibliography of his works (well, at least not quickly). Here, however, is his author page on LibraryThing. Take a look. The list is only books, so articles, monographs, fetschriften essays, conference papers and whatnot are not included, but the ground he covered is amazing.

A colleague and I were looking at Luke 6.4 in the NA27:

[ὡς] εἰσῆλθεν εἰς τὸν οἶκον τοῦ θεοῦ καὶ τοὺς ἄρτους τῆς προθέσεως λαβὼν ἔφαγεν καὶ ἔδωκεν τοῖς μετʼ αὐτοῦ, οὓς οὐκ ἔξεστιν φαγεῖν εἰ μὴ μόνους τοὺς ἱερεῖς;(Lk 6:4, NA27)

Specifically, the first word ὡς, which has a possible variant of πως. Here's the NA27 apparatus:

[replace] πως 01² L Θ f 1.13 33. 700. 1241. 1424 pc co | – P⁴ B D sy^p | txt 01^* A C W Ψ M
Nestle, E., Nestle, E., Aland, K., Aland, B., & Universität Münster. Institut für Neutestamentliche Textforschung. (1993, c1979). Novum Testamentum Graece. At head of title: Nestle-Aland. (27. Aufl., rev.) (171). Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelstiftung.

Reading the apparatus, you really don't know what to think. The variant πως is likeable because it is cleaner and reads easier. But according to one of the so-called "canons" of textual criticism, we're to prefer the harder reading — which is just what the NA27 editors have done. But why?

In this case, we can view some of the original MSS, particularly Sinaiticus (01). As noted in the apparatus, both readings are witnessed in Sinaiticus. The original reading is ὡς, a corrector has revised to πως. So, what does it look like?

(kudos to zhubert.com and csntm.org for lookup and graphic)

So it's fairly easy to tell the π is slipped in by a corrector because the style is different (compare other π in same snippet, fifth letter on top line, fifth letter on second line) and because it is on the margin. So it wasn't in the original pass.

What does this prove? Not much. But the initially attractive variant (and still attractive depending on how you measure it) looks a little less attractive because we can see the nature of the addition. Perhaps a well-meaning scribe also appreciated that πως would be the easier read here and slipped the variant in. Either way, we've confirmed it wasn't done by the original scribe, whatever you may think of his work.

Of course, you should ask other questions at this point because perhaps the variant is a true correction. While the "rule" about preferring the more difficult reading makes sense at times, one has to account for grammatically incompetent or perhaps near-sighted scribes. Maybe even hard-of-hearing scribes.

For instance, the variant under discussion here (ὡς vs. πως) could be the result of a mispronunciation (was that an aspiration or a pi?) from a lector. Or perhaps the previous word ended with a closed syllable (particularly if closed on a labial plosive) and the following aspirated syllable was mis-heard and thus mis-copied. Or perhaps the scribe mis-read the original line for similar reasons when he copied it. But in this case that isn't likely, the previous syllable is open, which we've confirmed by examining the source.

Another reason why apparatuses are helpful, but examining the actual MSS can be more useful.

What did my colleague and I decide? I guess we like sticking with NA27 because of the 'harder reading' argument and also because the original hand of Sinaiticus wrote it that way; along with the confluence of other witnesses of the reading. C'est la vie.

Update (2007-01-09): Note Stephen C. Carlson's (Hypotyposeis) comment. Thanks, Stephen. I hadn't noted the possible harmonization to Mt 12.4 nor the previous variant in Lu 6.3; thanks for supplying the info. Much better info for evaluating the variant. Yet another thing that a bottom-of-the-page apparatus doesn't handle nicely (or at all).

If you've read Metzger's Early Versions, then you've heard of the Sogdian version of the NT. And likely that's all you've heard.

If you want to know more about the language called Sogdian, now you can! Check out the Sogdian Primer. The intro notes that most Christian texts found in the Sogdian language are translations from Syriac.

More intros to Iranian languages are available at http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~iranian/.

I've recently finished working through looking at variants (in the four Gospels) between Scrivener's 1881 Greek New Testament (ostensibly the Greek text behind the Authorised Version, with variants from the Greek text behind the Revised Version in bold) and the NA27.

In what will come as a surprise to no one who has read of variants between the various TR editions (loosely 'Byzantine') and the NA/UBS editions, I make note of the following sorts of general differences:

• Scrivener's TR seems to be the more harmonizing of the two in accounts among the synoptics.
• Scrivener's TR adds specificity where NA/UBS assumes things. For example, in Jn 20.29, Scrivener's TR explicitly adds Θωμᾶ (Thomas) while NA27 assumes it.
• Also, when editions are different, Scrivener's TR will tend to make pronoun references explicit by including the name (likely with article) instead of the pronoun. This is seen when things like NA/UBS have "and he answered and said to them" where Scrivener will have "and Jesus [with article] answered and said to them" (sorry, no easy refs at hand).
• When different, Scrivener's TR routinely adds an article to personal name (though not neccesarily place names) where NA/UBS lack the article.
• John has far fewer differences (and they're far easier to reconcile) than the synoptics do.
• Differences of case and number (but same word)
• Differences of orthography
• Bona-fide, different-word variants. Though likely to Bart Ehrman's dismay, they are not earth-shattering or of the nature to severely change the meaning of the text in the vast majority of instances. And where they are, they are well-documented in the apparatus and commentaries.

I post this anecdotal list not to present some new, gasp-inducing information; rather it is simply to record it for myself. Writing helps me remember things, which is why you've no doubt noticed that when I discuss things like this, many times I simply restate the obvious or conventional wisdom in different words.

I will say, however, that working through each and every variation (thinking about which parts of the two editions are the same, and which parts are different) underscored the sorts of variations one finds in the Gospels of these two editions. And that, of course, will help me in the future when examining variants of all stripes. "Oh yeah, like the diffs we find in the gospels of NA and TR editions". Note that most Bible Software support textual comparisons for this sort of purpose. Logos has a video showing the feature used with English versions (go to around 1:14 for the specific feature), but it works with any language.

At least for me, it's one thing to read an abstract, digested version of information (such as you'd find in an a book on textual criticism or the Byz/NA debate) and quite another thing to actually work through primary data and come to my own conclusions. The above anecdotal notes are nothing different than an introductory tome on the matter would make note of; but for me, it sticks in my head better (with examples more readily in mind) because I actually worked thorugh it.

I will also say that as I go through Acts, at least at present, the variations are of a different character than the gospels.

I notice that TC: A Journal of Biblical Textual Criticism has a review of the NA27 edition, with apparatus, that is contained in the Stuttgart Electronic Study Bible (SESB). If you're a user of the NA27 in SESB, then you want to read this article. Do it now.

Here's the abstract of the review article, which is a 26 page PDF.

Abstract: The Stuttgart Elecronic Study Bible is a groundbreaking electronic publication. It contains the most widely used scholarly biblical texts, BHS and NA, as well as their critical apparatuses. In this extensive review article, Krans focuses on NA²⁷, especially its critical apparatus, though he frequently draws BHS and its apparatus into the discussion as well. He asks this question: What are the possibilities, surprises, limitations, and future prospects of the implementation of NA²⁷ in SESB 1.0?

Over on PaleoJudaica, Jim Davila notes that there will be a Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit in Seattle, over at the Pacific Science Center.

I'm really looking forward to it. Actually, one Saturday while the scrolls are in town (not sure which one, though), my employer (Logos Bible Software) is taking the whole company to see the show! So after I've seen what's there I'll be sure to report back.

Here's the exhibit web site, if you're interested: Discovering the Dead Sea Scrolls. They have some background on featured scrolls. They sound mostly fragmentary, though some interesting passages are represented. There are also some lectures associated with the scroll exhibit, though I don't know that I'll be getting down to Seattle for those.

So, after lunch with my sweet, darling wife last Friday, we went for a walk around downtown Bellingham. We passed by the most awesome used book store in Bellingham, Henderson's Books. Amy had a book to look for, and I just hadn't been in there for ages so I needed to spend some time in my favorite aisles.

Digging around, I found two books, both by the same author. These are translations of the French originals:

• The Gospel of Philip: Jesus, Mary Magdalene, and the Gnosis of the Sacred Union
• The Gospel of Thomas: The Gnostic Wisdom of Jesus

They were both written by one Jean-Yves Leloup. The translations are published by Inner Traditions, which appears to publish "spiritual" sorts of things.

That said, the books were cheap (eight bucks apiece!) and they contain Coptic editions of both gospels as well as translation. The edition on Thomas has some commentary as well. But ... I consider them suspect based on the publisher and jacket-blurb content. Laloup's work may be just fine, but stuff added by the publisher of the English translation raises some flags.

So we all know where the book is coming from, the back-cover blurb sensationalises GPhilip Logion 55, positing that GPhilip is "best known for its portrayal of the physical relationship shared by Jesus and his most beloved disciple, Mary Magdalene". The blurb then takes an Ehrman-ian turn and blathers on about suppression of such ideas by those heterodoxy-bashing party-poopers, the orthodox.

Now, here is GPhilip logion 55, according to Leloup's translation:

The Wisdom [Sophia] thought to be sterile [steira] is the mother of angels
The companion [koinonos] of the Son is Miriam of Magdala
The teacher loved her more than all the disciples;
he often kissed her on the mouth
When the disciples saw how he loved Miriam, they asked him:
"Why do you love her more than us?"
The teacher answered
"How can it be that I do not love you as much as I love her?"

Compare this with Schenke's translation in Schneemelcher's NT Apocrypha:

55a: The Sophia who is called barren is the mother of the [angels] and [the] companion of the S[aviour].
55b: The S[aviour lov]ed [Ma]ry Mag[da]lene more than [all] the disciples,{footnote} and kissed on her [mouth] often. The other [disciples] (p. 64) [    ]. They said to him: 'Why do you love her more than all of us?' The Saviour answered and said to them {}: 'Why do I not love you like her?'

Translational differences are apparent when comparing Laloup's first two lines with Schenke's translation of the same content. Go back and reread them an you'll see what I'm talking about. Now just who is the Son/Saviour's companion?

A few typographical differences are also apparent. First, Schenke gives us brackets, so we know what is there and what is supplied in the translation. We don't have that luxury with Leloup's work ... unless we have facility with Coptic. In this instance, we see that Schenke notes "mouth" is supplied, while with Laloup we need to go back to the Coptic to work this out (yes, the Coptic does have brackets).

I'm pretty sure this is the spot where the back-jacket-sensationalised "physical relationship" between Jesus and Mary Magdalene comes from, but we see it is no big deal. Offhand, I'd guess there is more to seeing Mary Magdalene as the "most beloved" disciple in contrast to John as the "beloved" disciple; and there could be more to the kiss in comparison with Judas Iscariot's kiss of betrayal. And, if I recall correctly, kissing on the mouth carried somewhat different meaning (certainly not what we think of today). Positing some sort of physical (sexual) relationship based on this reconstruction/conjecture is a massive stretch.

So ... if you need the Coptic of these works quick and cheap, then check them out. But be sure to check the translation against trustworthy sources before doing too much with it.

I've blogged a few times in the past about a Manuscript Copying Project whereby a small group of folks each copy out, by hand, editions of Second Timothy in Greek from a common source. Here are the relevant links to previous articles:

• Manuscript Transmission, Scribal Habits, etc.
• Copying Greek Text by Hand
• Manuscript Copying Project picks up steam!

To those who are out there who have committed to doing a copy, I apologize for being silent on this for so