New Testament Textual Criticism

A discussion of the evidence for the rival variants in Mark 1:2 (primarily "in the prophets" versus "in Isaiah the prophet"), and a review of the scribal tendency toward specificity and its relevance to this variant-unit. 

(With many embedded links.)

Desde el resurgir del igualitarismo 1 Corintios 14:34–35, escrito por el apóstol Pablo, ha causado un revuelo interpretativo. En un sentido, se podría decir que aunque léxica y sintácticamente el significado natural de estos versículos es relativamente sencillo, su complejidad textual enturbia su interpretación. Por lo que es necesario lidiar con algunas dificultades textuales que aparentemente justifican el igualitarismo antes de clarificar el significado de estos versículos.

According to some, the doctrine of inerrancy is laden by so many qualifications as to render it irrelevant. Particularly troubling for New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman has been the doctrine’s demand that inerrancy be restricted to the original manuscripts. His complaint is that those original manuscripts no longer exist and there is, as a result, no inerrant, authoritative source for Christian faith and practice.

Many have put forth effective responses to the more troubling of Ehrman’s assertions. This paper is not intended to be another complete response to Ehrman. Rather, it will look specifically at the question of textual corruption in the body of extant New Testament manuscripts and whether inerrancy can, in any way, apply to them. Is inerrancy necessarily a lost cause due to the lack of the original manuscripts or does Ehrman’s “all-or-nothing” approach present a false dilemma?  The answer will be demonstrably that, given the materials and methods of textual criticism, the biblical text that has been reproduced is itself largely inerrant.

This study examines the text transmission of the figure of Martha of Bethany throughout the Fourth Gospel in over one hundred of our oldest extant Greek and Vetus Latina witnesses. The starting point for this study is instability around Martha in our most ancient witness of John 11–12, Papyrus 66. By looking at P66’s idiosyncrasies and then comparing them to the Fourth Gospel's greater manuscript transmission, I hope to demonstrate that Martha's presence shows significant textual instability throughout the Lazarus episode, and thus that this Lukan figure may not have been present in a predecessor text form of the Fourth Gospel that circulated in the second century. In order to gain the greatest amount of data on the Fourth Gospel's text transmission, I rely on several sources. Occasionally these sources conflict in their rendering of a variant; I have tried to make note of these discrepancies and look at photographs of witnesses whenever possible. Although this study is primarily focused on Greek and Vetus Latina witnesses, an occasional noteworthy variant (e.g., from a Syriac or Vulgate witness) may be mentioned when relevant to the subject at hand. The work of many established redaction critics, who have already hypothesized that Martha was not present in an earlier form of this Gospel story, will also be addressed.

Read the entire paper here: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/harvard-theological-review/article/was-martha-of-bethany-added-to-the-fourth-gospel-in-the-second-century/6CBD2C9576A583DD02987FE836C427B7

Der griechische Text von RP 2018 übersetzt und kommentiert, zuvor bis dato nicht gesichtete Quellen zur Datierung angeführt und kommentiert. Update 2021. Research Interests: Greek Literature, New Testament, New Testament Textual Criticism, New Testament Greek Grammar und Griechisch. Zur Neuauflage mussten nach neuen Kollationen einige Stellen bei Robinson-Pierpont korrigiert werden.

The sample rough draft of Hebrew Matthew chapters 1 and 2 attempts to compare the Hebrew Matthew MSS available today with more being discovered. The format chosen is English with Hebrew variants listed within the Hebrew MSS as noted.

This is part of a larger attempt to translate and study the 4000+ Hebrew New Testament MSS I recently found from around the world.

This article challenges the common scholarly conviction that Acts in Codex Bezae Cantabrigiensis (D05) represents a single cohesive textual tradition, arguing instead that D05 should be understood as an evolving text, consisting of multiple textual layers without any trace of unified editorial activity. The Coherence-Based Genealogical Method (CBGM), together with detailed internal considerations, is used to show that it is possible to differentiate intermediary variants in Acts 5:38–39 between the shorter readings in B03 (Codex Vaticanus) and the longer ones in D05. Such intermediary textual stages are also found among the so-called Western readings, revealing how Gamaliel tradition gradually grew over time as new pieces were added to the text from various sources. These findings challenge the notion of the Western text as a definable textual entity.

This collection of essays originates from the 2014 Evil in Second Temple Judaism and Early Christianity conference hosted by the Centre for the Social-Scientific Study of the Bible at St Mary's University, Twickenham. Featuring an international collection of senior and junior scholars, it represents the cutting edge of scholarship on portrayals of evil in the Second Temple period and the earliest centuries of Christianity. The individual essays consider the significance of “evil” as it relates to a diverse set of topics, including Qumran and its texts, images of disability in 2 Maccabees, dissociations of Jesus from evil in early Christian manuscripts, the “apocalyptic Paul,” Jesus' exorcisms, Gospel cosmologies, the epistle of James, 4 Ezra, the Ascension of Isaiah, Marcion, John Chrysostom, and the Acts of the Martyrs. Contents Christopher A. Rollston: An Ur-History of the New Testament Devil: The Celestial שׂטן (śāṭān) in Zechariah and Job – Jutta Leonhardt-Balzer: Evil at Qumran – Benjamin Wold: Demonizing Sin? The Evil Inclination in 4QInstruction – Louise J. Lawrence: Evil and the Body of Antiochus IV Epiphanes: Disability, Disgust and Tropes of Monstrosity in 2 Maccabees 9:1–12 – Tommy Wasserman: Variants of Evil: The Disassociation of Jesus from Evil in the Text of the New Testament – James G. Crossley: Jesus, Healings and Mark 2:1–12: Forgiveness, a Release, or Bound Again to the Great Satan? – Christopher W. Skinner: Overcoming Satan, Overcoming the World: Exploring the Cosmologies of Mark and John – Jonathan A. Draper: Darkness as Non-Being and the Origin of Evil in John's Gospel – Loren T. Stuckenbruck: How Much Evil Does the Christ Event Solve? Jesus and Paul in Relation to Jewish “Apocalyptic” Thought – James P. Davies: Evil's Aetiology and False Dichotomies in Jewish Apocalyptic and Paul – Chris Tilling: Paul, Evil, and Justification Debates – Steve Walton: Evil in Ephesus: Acts 19:8–40 – Lloyd K. Pietersen: Artemis, Demons, Mammon and Satan: The Construal of Evil in First Timothy – Susanne Luther: The Evil of the Tongue: Evil and the Ethics of Speech in the Letter of James – Nicholas J. Ellis: A Theology of Evil in the Epistle of James: Cosmic Trials and the Dramatis Personae of Evil – Robbie Griggs: Apocalyptic Experience in the Theodicy of 4 Ezra – Jonathan Knight: The Portrayal of Evil in the Ascension of Isaiah – Chris Keith: “The Scriptures are Divine Charms”: Evil, Books, and Textuality in Early Christianity – Dieter T. Roth: Evil in Marcion's Conception of the Old Testament God – Paul Middleton: Overcoming the Devil in the Acts of the Martyrs

The books of 1 and 2 Samuel offer a three-fold thematic scheme that supports the central claim of the Pentateuch, the claim found in Deuteronomy 6:4 and known to the Jews as “the Shema,” a verse that declares the God of Israel is one, true and living God, a theme that undergirds all of the historical books as well. Thus, the foundational theme of 1 and 2 Samuel is the central claim of the Pentateuch, a theme shared by all books of the Holy Scriptures. The secondary, structural theme of the book of 1 Samuel supports the primary theme of the historical books by offering the testimony that God has called out David to establish the Davidic lineage to bring about Israel’s redemption as supporting evidence that YHWH is the true and living God. The secondary, structural theme of the book of 2 Samuel supports the primary theme of the historical books by offering the testimony that God has justified David in his role as king. The third, imperative theme of the books of 1 and 2 Samuel states that Israel loved the Lord their God with all of their strength by accepting the one whom God called and justified as their king and redeemer. The application of this third theme for today’s reader is to believe that God has called and justification the Lord Jesus Christ as King of Kings in the establishment of the Kingdom of Heaven. The New Testament believer should trust in Jesus as the fulfillment of prophecies concerning the Messiah coming from the Davidic lineage who will reign eternally over all nations. As believers, we have been called to be a part of the Kingdom of Heaven, and we are justified as members of this Kingdom through faith in Jesus Christ.

New Testament textual critics have long maintained that the earliest textual tradition of the Acts of the Apostles is bipolar, transmitted in two early textual forms. This conviction is now being challenged, with recent studies suggesting that the tradition is more complex than the two-text concept had proposed. How should we then approach Acts? This article approaches Acts from an evolutionary point of view, applying phylogenetic methods to its manuscripts. Scholars have been using computer-assisted phylogenetic methods for years to produce trees and networks that describe the relationships among manuscripts within a textual tradition. These methods were originally developed for evolutionary biology, but studies have shown that they can also be applied to manuscript traditions. Here, these methods are applied to selected manuscripts to test their applicability, since Acts has never been subjected to such a study. Chapter 5 of Acts is used as a test case to demonstrate how phylogenetic analysis can be conducted. The preliminary results point to a complex set of relationships among manuscripts, concurring with recent hypotheses about the complexity of the tradition. At the same time, however, these methods do recognize the two early textual groups of Acts. While it seems that the tradition in Acts 5 is too complex to be fitted into a single tree, a network is capable of depicting the complexity of the tradition.

I presented my paper, "THE REDISCOVERY OF CODEX BEZAE CANTABRIGIENSIS AND ITS SUBSEQUENT EFFECT ON THE RECEPTION OF LUKE 16:19-31" in room Central 214 of the Pontifical Gregorian University on Friday, July 05. My lecture was part of the Synoptic Gospels program unit (chairs: J. R. C. Cousland and John P. Harrison), which met for presentation at the 2019 International Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL) in Rome, Italy (July 01-05, 2019). The Pontifical Biblical Institute and the Pontifical Gregorian University were the host institutions.

Description:
The Synoptic Gospels, which have formed a coherent unit since antiquity, have played an important role in modern scholarship. This section provides an open forum for the presentation of papers, from a variety of perspectives and using a variety of methods, on these seminal religious texts.

Call for papers:
This year’s primary focus will be on the parables in the Synoptic tradition. The Synoptic Gospels Section will have three sessions: i) a session for invited papers only on the parables; ii) a general invitation for papers related to the parables in the synoptic tradition, with particular focus on matters of material culture and methodologies; and iii), a general invitation for papers on the Synoptic Gospels. There are plans to publish a selection of studies on the parables.

An introduction to conflations in the texts of New Testament documents - focusing upon, and challenging, Hort's proposals that conflations in Byzantine MSS' texts imply that the Byzantine Text is derivative of the Alexandrian and Western text-types.

Seven years, and a bibliography of over 100 pages: that is what Detlev Koepke invested in researching the gospel of Thomas.
Over 600 carefully worded pages disclose in great detail his intricate study and findings on Jesus in the gospel of Thomas as well as in the New Testament, and Q.
Mary Magdalene, John the Baptist and James are discussed in a separate chapter each, and we are presented with a full translation from Coptic, and a commentary on the gospel of Thomas.

The second half of this book focuses on the New Testament and history of Christianity: its historical background, Josephus, Paul, the Roman Empire and Christian persecution are some of the highlights.
Detlev Koepke passed away in 2015, leaving behind a truly majestic piece of work on the gospel of Thomas, its relation to Christianity, and the historical Jesus. A most complete work on the combination of these topics.

Detlev Koepke was fluent in 4 languages, and learned ancient Greek and Coptic specifically for and during his research. Most of his research was conducted utilising Harvard Divinity School library as well as his own extensive personal library: "no stone has been left unturned".

2021 edition, republished with permission from his son, David Koepke

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Includes Discussion content (92 pages) - see https://www.academia.edu/57161277/Publication_List_and_Discussion_Content_access

A defense of the genuineness of John 7:53-8:11, with an explanation of the mechanism that elicited its early loss, a description of many of the witnesses for inclusion and non-inclusion of the passage, and a special chapter on the Old Latin chapter-summaries.

The reliability of the NT text is often argued on the basis of how many more manuscripts we have for the NT than for works in the classical canon like Homer or Tacitus, and the fact that many of these are of such a relatively earlier date. While this remains true, there are some problems with the way the argument is often presented that make it needlessly inaccurate or at least vulnerable to critique. This paper tries to clarify the problems and suggests ways to better the argument, as part of a book on the NT text from Elijah Hixson and Peter Gurry.

People are kind and loving to each other in the Book of Ruth. So God blesses everyone.
The Book of Ruth is pivotal in our human evolution, as discussed in the forthcoming Red Line of Hope.
This is an appendix for that book; it is a (nearly) line-by-line commentary on the Book of Ruth

This brief essay describes minuscule 1780, a complete Greek manuscript of all 27 books of the New Testament.  This is one of only two such manuscripts in the United States.  Digital page-views are online, and this essay features an index of the New Testament books in the manuscript.  In addition, minuscule 1780's text of First Peter 1:1-12 is compared to the same passage in Codex Sinaiticus, and the outcome shows that in those 12 verses, 1780 has the more accurate text. 
(3 pages, with embedded links)

The word χαλκολιβανον (chalcolibanon) in Revelation 1:15, describing the feet of a visionary presence, which appears nowhere else in classical literature, is usually explained as meaning “brass of Lebanon”. Since Lebanon has never been renowned for its brass or copper, this text, from a to-be-published restoration-translation of the Aramaic Revelation, proposes an alternate reading and translation of the phrase.

This paper (in Dutch) investigates the possibility that, for the first chapter(s) of his gospel, Luke reworked a source (either Hebrew or Aramaic) which had at its centre the birth of John the Baptist. It deals with questions as:
-was Zacharias, the father of John, murdered in the Temple?
-was Zacharias only mute or also deaf?
-was there an original annunciation to Elisabeth?
-why did Elisabeth hide herself and for whom?
-does the Visitatio go back to the story of an angel visiting Elisabeth?
-who sang the Magnificat: Mary or Elisabeth?
-can some details in the Protoevangelium of James (Infancy Gospel of James) be explained by the author being influenced by this hypothetical source about John the Baptist?

In the Epistle to the Colossians, the family of 06 and other documents traditionally labeled as “Western” display notable variant readings in passages concerning women and their status in the Christian community. In this note the author examines these readings with the purpose of detecting what pictures they provide over against the other branches of the tradition. He also evaluates to what degree, if any, an ideologically oriented scribal tendency is at work.

A critical analysis of the claim that Pietists had a view of the Bible that allowed for errors in historical matters or matters other than for spiritual life and faith. This study focuses on the preeminent Pietist, J. A. Bengel, and his comprehensive commentary, his Gnomon, and finds Bengel's view of the Bible as God's word written, true in all it affirms.

In Scribal Habits in Sixth-Century Greek Purple Codices, Elijah
Hixson assesses the extent to which unique readings reveal the
tendencies of the scribes who produced three luxury manuscripts
of Matthew’s Gospel. The manuscripts, Codex Purpureus
Petropolitanus (N 022), Codex Sinopensis (O 023) and Codex
Rossanensis (Σ 042), were each copied in the sixth century from the
same exemplar. Hixson compares the results of a modified singular
readings method to the number of actual changes each scribe
made. An edition of the lost exemplar and transcriptions of
Matthew in each manuscript follow in the appendices. Of
particular relevance to New Testament textual criticism is the
observation that the singular readings method does not accurately
reveal the habits of these three scribes.