Textual-Criticism

Two latest posts on the Tyndale New Testament blog contain some interesting further comments about the edition and its preparation.

The Tyndale House Greek New Testament is set to be released with Crossway on 15 November 2017, just in time for SBL. The text is already available for pre-order on Amazon.

According to the volume’s blurb, the principal editors, Dirk Jongkind and Peter Williams, have

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Geoffrey Smith has made available offprints of new transcriptions for 5258 (132), containing fragments of Eph 3:21–4:2, and 5259 (133), containing fragments of 1 Tim 3:13–4:8. Dated to the third century, 5259 (133) is the earliest published witness to 1 Timothy.

HT: Andreas Köstenberger, Brice Jones, Rick Brannan

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Software certainly can’t replace expertise when filtering through text-critical data. But it can provide some useful assistance in pulling that data together.

For an overview of some of the text-critical tools available in Logos Bible Software ( affiliate disclosure), check out the overview in this video for how to use the textual criticism section in the exegetical guide.

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The newest volume of TC has been released, containing eight book reviews and the following articles:

• Gregory R. Lanier, “A Case for the Assimilation of Matthew 21:44 to the Lukan “Crushing Stone” (20:18), with Special Reference to 104”
• Aron Pinker, “A New Attempt to Interpret Job 30:24”
• Georg Gäbel, The Import of the Versions for the History of the Greek Text: Some Observations from the ECM of Acts
• Katie Marcar, “The Quotations of Isaiah in 1 Peter: A Text-Critical Analysis”

HT: New Articles and Reviews in the TC Journal — Evangelical Textual Criticism

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Leonard Greenspoon has a helpful review of the third edition of Emanuel Tov’s Text-Critical Use of the Septuagint in Biblical Research (Eisenbrauns, 2015). Particularly useful are Greenspoon’s observations about changes in this edition over against the previous one.

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Peter Gurry reflects on the “logical impossibility” criterion that feeds into the Editio Critica Maior’s account of “variants”:

The Editio Critica Maior defines a “variant” as a reading that is both “grammatically correct and logically possible.” If it doesn’t meet these two criteria it is marked with an f for Fehler (= error). Neither criteria is completely objective, but then most of the errors so recorded in the ECM are pretty obvious gibberish. Occasionally, however, one finds cause…

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Via the ETC blog and Peter Gurry, Elijah Hixson has an informative overview of Codex Rossanensis’s presence in recent news.

The following is a guest post from Elijah Hixson. Elijah is currently writing his doctoral thesis on Codex Rossanensis and two other purple codices at the University of Edinburgh under the supervision of Paul Foster. When I saw last week that Rossenansis had recently be restored I asked Elijah if he would give us a…

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The Center for the Study and Preservation of the Majority Text has a website dedicated to its edition of the Greek New Testament. The website also provides a copy of that edition as a free PDF.

The Byzantine Greek New Testament (BGNT)The Byzantine Greek New Testament (BGNT), is a new scholarly edition of the Greek New Testament. The BGNT base text is compiled from a consensus of readings from the Byzantine Kr or family 35 textform. It will serve as the comparison base text for both our online and future printed edition…

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From Dan Wallace:

New manuscripts digitized by the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts (CSNTM) have just been added to our searchable collection. These include 10 new manuscripts from the National Library of Greece in Athens, the site of our ongoing digitization project for 2015–16.

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From ETC:

Today, the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts (CSNTM) launched their new and vastly improved website at CSNTM.org.

For details about the reboot see ETC’s post and the CSNTM website.

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Chris Stevens has the latest article in the Journal of Greco-Roman Christianity and Judaism, “John 9.38-39a: A Scribal Interjection for Literary Reinforcement.”

The latest reviews from the Review of Biblical Literature include:

• Francis Borchardt, The Torah in 1 Maccabees: A Literary Critical Approach to the Text, reviewed by Thomas Hieke
• Cilliers Breytenbach and Jörg Frey, eds., Reflections on the Early Christian History of Religion—Erwägungen zur frühchristlichen Religionsgeschichte, reviewed by Thomas J. Kraus
• Walter Dietrich, Die Samuelbücher im deuteronomistischen Geschichtswerk: Studien zu den Geschichtsüberlieferungen des Alten Testaments II, reviewed by Mark W. Hamilton
• James D. G. Dunn, The Oral Gospel Tradition, reviewed by David B. Sloan
• Paul S. Evans and Tyler F. Williams, eds., Chronicling the Chronicler: The Book of Chronicles and Early Second Temple Historiography, reviewed by Michael D. Matlock
• Katharina Galor and Hanswulf Bloedhorn, The Archaeology of Jerusalem: From the Origins to the Ottomans, reviewed by Aren M. Maeir
• Moshe Garsiel, From Earth to Heaven: A Literary Study of the Eliijah Stories in the Book of Kings, reviewed by Keith Bodner and by David A. Glatt-Gilad
• Alison Ruth Gray, Psalm 18 in Words and Pictures: A Reading through Metaphor, reviewed by Leslie C. Allen
• Mignon R. Jacobs and Raymond F. Person Jr., eds., Israelite Prophecy and the Deuteronomistic History: Portrait, Reality, and the Formation of a History, reviewed by James M. Bos and by Thomas Wagner
• Ronald Jolliffe, Gertraud Harb, Christoph Heil, Anneliese Felber, and Angelika Magnes, Q11: 39a, 42, 39b, 41, 43-44: Woes against the Pharisees, reviewed by Peter J. Judge
• W. G. Lambert, Babylonian Creation Myths, reviewed by Michael S. Moore
• Daniel C. Matt, trans., The Zohar: Pritzker Edition (vol. 6), reviewed by Ralph K. Hawkins
• Abera M. Mengestu, God as Father in Paul: Kingship Language and Identity Formation in Early Christianity, reviewed by Inhee C. Berg
• Anthony M. Moore, Signs of Salvation: The Theme of Creation in John’s Gospel, reviewed by Brian J. Tabb
• Valérie Nicolet-Anderson, Constructing the Self: Thinking with Paul and Michel Foucault, reviewed by Chris L. de Wet
• Vernon K. Robbins, Who Do People Say I Am? Rewriting Gospel in Emerging Christianity, reviewed by Michael J. Kok
• David S. Vanderhooft and Abraham Winitzer, eds., Literature as Politics, Politics as Literature: Essays on the Ancient Near East in Honor of Peter Machinist, reviewed by Shawn W. Flynn
• Ryan Donald Wettlaufer, No Longer Written: The Use of Conjectural Emendation in the Restoration of the Text of the New Testament, the Epistle of James as a Case Study, reviewed by Jeff Cate

The latest reviews from the Review of Biblical Literature include:

• Daniel I. Block, Beyond the River Chebar: Studies in Kingship and Eschatology in the Book of Ezekiel, reviewed by Sven Petry
• Reinhard Feldmeier, Power, Service, Humility: A New Testament Ethic, reviewed by David Briones
• David G. Firth, 1 and 2 Samuel: A Kingdom Comes, reviewed by Ralph Henson
• Martha Himmelfarb, Between Temple and Torah: Essays on Priests, Scribes, and Visionaries in the Second Temple Period and Beyond, reviewed by L. Michael Morales
• Cornelia Linde, How to Correct the Sacra Scriptura?: Textual Criticism of the Bible between the Twelfth and Fifteenth Century, reviewed by Jeffrey L. Morrow
• Kim Lan Nguyen, Chorus in the Dark: The Voices of the Book of Lamentations, reviewed by Charles William Miller
• Jesse E. Robertson, The Death of Judas: The Characterization of Judas Iscariot in Three Early Christian Accounts of His Death, reviewed by Lee M. Jefferson
• Michael Trainor, About Earth’s Child: An Ecological Listening to the Gospel of Luke, reviewed by C. Jason Borders
• David Trobisch, A User’s Guide to the Nestle-Aland 28 Greek New Testament, reviewed by Michael W. Holmes and by Jan Krans

Rob Bradshaw has made available George Milligan’s essay, “The Greek Papyri: With Special Reference to Their Value for New Testament Study,” Journal of the Transactions of the Victoria Institute 44 (1912): 62–78.

On the web:

• Logos Bible Software adds select works of C. K. Barrett and the Justification and Variegated Nomism set to their pre-publication  program.
• Lawrence Schiffman considers Jubilees’ rationale for Torah’s commandments.
• J.-L. Simonet comments on what may be some newly-identified lectionary leaves.
• Tommy Wasserman notes the forthcoming Biblia Graeca from Eisenbrauns.

On the web:

• Larry Hurtado comments on Alan Mugridge’s PhD thesis, “Stages of Development in Scribal Professionalism in Early Christian Circles,” which is currently under revision for publication.
• Nathan Eubank enters the biblioblogosphere (HT: Stephen Carlson).
• Baker is now releasing the “Teach the Text” commentary series. Currently available is Marvin Pate’s volume on Romans, and Robert Chisholm’s volume on Samuel is available for preorder (HT: M. Miller).

The 28th edition of the Nestle-Aland Greek New Testament, including the critical apparatus, is now available on Logos Bible Software’s prepublication program. For Peter Williams’ review of the edition earlier this week, see here.

Logos Bible Software is now taking $0.00 pre-orders for their upcoming edition of Codex Bezae. Among the manuscript’s noteworthy characteristics,

It is the oldest-known manuscript containing the story of the adulterous woman found in John 7–8, as well as a longer ending of the Gospel of Mark. There are also several apparent additions, including a story found nowhere else of Jesus addressing a man found working on the Sabbath.

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On the web:

• Mark Hoffman notes that Google Maps’ street view now includes several additional locations of significance around Israel.
• Charles Jones identifies several publicly accessible dissertations from the University of Pennsylvania.
• Dirk Jongkind reflects on Acts 17:3 in connection with the two latest Nestle-Aland texts.

Christian Askeland highlights four PhD studentships available at the University of Aberdeen set to engage the topic of “Authority and Texts: Concepts and Use,” considering questions like:

What constitutes authority and provides authenticity to texts and what is the role of textual criticism? How should authoritative texts (including religious, legal, and other texts), be used and interpreted, and how is this issue determined? Is investigation of the contextual meaning of texts at their time of composition necessary to understanding and respecting their authority, or do different criteria exist which influence readings of texts?

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Dan Wallace digests the SBL meeting discussion of the recently announced Romans fragment in the Green collection.

It’s still on the pricey side, but CBD currently has the Hendrickson facsimile of Codex Sinaiticus on sale for $499, $300 off the normal retail price. According to CBD’s product page,

Hendrickson Publishers, in conjunction with the British Library, is now releasing a limited number of full color facsimiles of the entire Codex Sinaiticus. This edition includes both the Old and New Testaments, represented by “life size” pages (13.5" x 16.5").

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Stanley Porter has the latest article in the Journal of Greco-Roman Christianity and Judaism, “Early Apocryphal Non-Gospel Literature and the New Testament Text.” Porter concludes:

There are several observations to make regarding the text of the Greek New Testament in the apocryphal non-Gospel literature. (1) The evidence for the Greek New Testament in the apocryphal non-Gospel literature is not as great as one might expect, and this includes the apocryphal Acts, Epistles (for which there is no text early enough or in Greek for consideration) and Apocalypses. . . . (2) The Acts and apocalyptic apocryphal literature is relatively sparse in its use of the Greek New Testament, and is virtually nothing compared to that of the apocryphal Gospels. . . . (3) The evidence from the apocryphal non-Gospel literature is the same as that for the apocryphal Gospels—in other words, that the text of the Greek New Testament was relatively well established and fixed by the time of the second and third centuries. (197–98)

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The latest reviews from the Review of Biblical Literature include:

New Testament and Cognate Studies

• Jo-Ann A. Brant, John, reviewed by Matthew Gordley
• Bart B. Bruehler, A Public and Political Christ: The Social-Spatial Characteristics of Luke 18:35–19:43 and the Gospel as a Whole in Its Ancient Context, reviewed by John Cowan
• Jaime Clark-Soles, Engaging the Word: The New Testament and the Christian Believer, reviewed by Ronald Witherup
• Gerald J. Donker, The Text of the Apostolos in Athanasius of Alexandria, reviewed by Justin A. Mihoc
• Craig A. Evans, Jesus and His World: The Archaeological Evidence, reviewed by Panayotis Coutsoumpos
• Charles W. Hedrick, Unlocking the Secrets of the Gospel according to Thomas: A Radical Faith for a New Age, reviewed by William Arnal
• Josep Rius-Camps and Jenny Read-Heimerdinger, The Message of Acts in Codex Bezae: A Comparison with the Alexandrian Tradition, Volume 4: Acts 18.24–28.31: Rome, reviewed by Vaughn CroweTipton
• Christopher D. Stanley, ed., The Colonized Apostle: Paul in Postcolonial Eyes, reviewed by Steed Davidson

Second Temple Judaism

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On the web:

• Tommy Wasserman notes a new iOS app for New Testament manuscripts.
• E. K. McFall has the latest article in the Journal of Greco-Roman Christianity and Judaism: “Are Dionysos and Oedipus Name Variatnios for Satan and Antichrist?”
• Dan Wallace recounts an experience of reading a manuscript that “doesn’t exist.”
• Alin Suciu highlights Lorenzo Perrone’s lecture on recently-discovered texts of Origen’s homilies on the Psalms. For a selection of previous background posts, see here.

On the web:

• Jim Davila reports the discovery of some previously lost Greek homilies on the Psalms, potentially by Origen ( 1, 2).
• Peter Williams provides a link to a set of images of the manuscript.
• Roger Pearse comments on the press release and quotes Jerome’s catalogue of Origen’s writings.
• Alin Suciu passes along a letter from Lorenzo Perrone, provides several updates on the discussion, and releases a guest post from Mark Bilby.
• Dirk Jongkind comments on a textual variant in the text’s quotation of 1 Corinthians.

Via Michael Bird:

New within the past few days in Hobby Lobby’s collection of biblical antiquities is a small fragment from Rom 9– 10 (HT: Peter Williams). For the fragment’s brief spot on CNN, see here. The fragment’s proposed date is the mid-second century. The side displayed in the CNN footage contains five lines. The image quality isn’t fantastic, but the last letters on the fragment look like they could be ΕΚΤΟΥ, which could seem to put that part of the fragment at Rom 9:12 or 21. If line 3 begins ΚΡΙ and line 4 ends ΗΣ*ΣΟΥ, could we then be looking at Rom 9:20–21 here?

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Through its Academic Bible website’s homepage, the German Bible Society is offering a free download of the brochure Textual Research on the Bible: Introductions to the Scholarly Editions of the German Bible Society. The Society envisions that the brochure will

provide insight into this fascinating field of research. We have particularly in mind the interests of first-year students, who might benefit from a basic introduction like this. Thus we invite lecturers of exegesis and textual criticism to make use of this brochure in their classrooms. (Letter from the German Bible Society and Nida Institute)

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