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Quantifying New Testament Textual Variants: Key Witnesses in Acts and the Catholic Letters

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 September 2018

Gregory R. Lanier
Gregory R. Lanier*
Affiliation:
843 Royalwood Ln, Oviedo, FL 32765, USA. Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

This article interacts with Peter J. Gurry's recent estimate of the total textual variants in the Greek New Testament (NTS 62 (2016)) by (i) employing a different (and complementary) method using data from the Editio Critica Maior and (ii) producing an estimate that is narrowly confined to the ‘key’ manuscript witnesses for Acts and the Catholic Letters (a mix of majuscules and minuscules, both Byzantine and non-Byzantine). The results prove more useful for framing the development and distribution of textual variants in this group of key witnesses.

Keywords

ECMCBGMtextual criticismvariantsActsCatholic LettersmanuscriptsByzantine
Type
Articles
Information
New Testament Studies , Volume 64 , Issue 4 , October 2018 , pp. 551 - 572
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2018 

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References

1 The print volumes are as follows. (i) Catholic Letters: Aland, B. et al. , eds., Novum Testamentum Graecum, Editio Critica Maior, vol. iv: Die Katholischen Briefe (Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, rev. edn 2013 2)Google Scholar; hereafter, Part 1 of this volume (Text) will be designated ECM–CL, and Part 2 (Begleitende Materialien) will be designated ECM–CL–Supp. (ii) Acts: Strutwolf, H. et al. , eds., Novum Testamentum Graecum, Editio Critica Maior, vol. iii: Acts (Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 2017)Google Scholar; hereafter, Part 1.1–2 of this volume (Text) will be designated ECM–Acts, and Part 2 (Begleitende Materialien) will be designated ECM–Acts–Supp. For selections of the initial output for ECM–Acts, see Hüffmeier, A., ‘The CBGM Applied to Variants from Acts’, TC 20 (2015)Google Scholar (available at http://rosetta.reltech.org/TC/v20/TC-2015-CBGM-Hüffmeier.pdf).

2 Gurry, P. J., ‘The Number of Variants in the Greek New Testament: A Proposed Estimate’, NTS 62 (2016) 97–121CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 M. B. Morrill, ‘A Complete Collation and Analysis of All Greek Manuscripts of John 18’ (PhD diss.; University of Birmingham, 2012); S. M. Solomon, ‘The Textual History of Philemon’ (PhD diss.; New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, 2014); Wasserman, T., The Epistle of Jude: Its Text and Transmission (Coniectanea Biblica New Testament Series 43; Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 2006)Google Scholar. Gurry also makes use of the collations in Text und Textwert but, due to their selectivity, was unable to factor them systematically into the computations (Aland, K. et al. , eds., Text und Textwert der griechischen Handschriften des Neuen Testaments (16 vols.; ANTF; Berlin: de Gruyter, 1987–2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar).

4 See his discussion in Gurry, ‘Number’, 109–12.

5 Gurry, ‘Number’, 113.

6 As Gurry acknowledges in his reflections on the ‘value of the estimate’ (‘Number’, 113–17).

7 Gurry notes regarding his ultimate findings: ‘This simply confirms what seasoned textual critics have always known and that is that a significant percentage of the variants in our manuscripts have little or no claim to being original’ (‘Number’, 118). This use of ‘original’ has itself been a subject of much debate; see Holmes, M. W., ‘From “Original Text” to “Initial Text”: The Traditional Goal of New Testament Textual Criticism in Contemporary Discussion’, The Text of the New Testament in Contemporary Research: Essays on the Status Quaestionis (ed. Ehrman, B. D. and Holmes, M. W.; NTTSD 42; Leiden: Brill, 2013 2) 637–88Google Scholar.

8 This does not mean that such masses of manuscripts are totally useless, of course. Every manuscript ‘was Scripture in an early Christian community’ (Swanson, R. J., New Testament Greek Manuscripts, vol. vi: Romans (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 2001) xxvGoogle Scholar; emphasis original), and the scribal habits, paratextual features and pattern of readings are always worthy of study on a stand-alone basis or in clusters, families, and so on.

9 For the most recent argument in favour of isolating a distinctive D-text in Acts, see Epp, E. J., ‘Text-Critical Witnesses and Methodology for Isolating a Distinctive D-Text in Acts’, NovT 59 (2017) 225–96Google Scholar.

10 There is debate about whether there ever was a distinct ‘Western’ form at all; either way, the chief witness 05/D does not contain CL, and while ECM–CL includes Old Latin readings, the collation data is not available in a form usable for this study.

11 See Gurry, ‘Number’, 104–7.

12 There is subjectivity for every collator when defining units of collation; by following ECM's results, I avoid adding more subjectivity to the mix.

13 See ECM–CL 26*–27*.

14 See ECM–CL–Supp 3–4. These are relatively infrequent, and in general the editors acknowledge that they lean in the direction of defining such cases as true variant ‘readings’ if there is ‘even the remotest possibility’ that it should be treated as such (ECM–CL 27*).

15 This appears consistent with how the Coherence-Based Genealogical Method (CBGM) treats such readings in constructing ancestor/descendant relationships. The CBGM, in short, is a relatively recent method for approximating the family tree (genealogy) of GNT textual witnesses through quantitative methods. It was developed by Gerd Mink and has been applied by the Institut für Neutestamentliche Textforschung (INTF) in Münster to the Catholic Letters and Acts. For an overview and critique, see Gurry, P. J., A Critical Examination of the Coherence-Based Genealogical Method in New Testament Textual Criticism (NTTSD 55; Leiden: Brill, 2017)CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Gurry, P. J. and Wasserman, T., A New Approach to Textual Criticism: An Introduction to the Coherence-Based Genealogical Method (Resources for Biblical Study; Atlanta: SBL, 2017)Google Scholar.

16 Gurry summarises: ‘This means that at any point of comparison where there are at least two readings, all of them are counted as “variants”, even those that the collator or editor believes to be the original source of the other(s)’ (‘Number’, 106).

17 Though this method could be used for any sub-set of manuscripts collated in the ECM.

18 I am intentionally avoiding the use of text-type labels, which have not only been increasingly challenged of late but also are largely irrelevant in Acts (apart from the D-tradition) and Catholics; see, for instance, E. J. Epp, ‘Textual Clusters: Their Past and Future in New Testament Textual Criticism’, Text of the New Testament, 637–88 .

19 Full details for each can be found in the standard introductions: Parker, D. C., An Introduction to the New Testament Manuscripts and their Texts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Metzger, B. M. and Ehrman, B. D., The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005)Google Scholar; Aland, K. and Aland, B., The Text of the New Testament: An Introduction to the Critical Editions and to the Theory and Practice of Modern Textual Criticism (trans. Rhodes, E. F.; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1987)Google Scholar.

20 Wachtel includes all four in the traditional short list of ‘ältesten und besten Handschriften’ for CL (Wachtel, K., Der Byzantinische Text der Katholischen Briefe: Eine Untersuchung zur Entstehung der Koine des Neuen Testaments (ANTF 24; Berlin: de Gruyter, 1995) 52Google Scholar).

21 See arguments to the contrary in D. B. Wallace, ‘The Majority Text Theory: History, Methods, and Critique’, The Text of the New Testament, 711–44 and Robinson, M. A., ‘New Testament Textual Criticism: The Case for Byzantine Priority’, TC 6 (2001)Google Scholar.

22 While ECM–CL–Supp frequently denotes these witnesses as ‘nearly pure’ (p. 15), the data used here reveal that, just for these four witnesses, there is variability within the group of ~ 8% (= how often there is more than one reading among them).

23 Attributed to Eichhorn.

24 Metzger and Ehrman, Text, 88.

25 Metzger and Ehrman, Text, 91.

26 E.g. Wachtel, Byzantinische Text; Anderson, A. S., The Textual Tradition of the Gospels: Family 1 in Matthew (NTTSD 32; Leiden: Brill, 2004)Google Scholar; J. Perrin, ‘Family 13 in Saint John's Gospel’ (PhD diss.; University of Birmingham, 2012); Welsby, A., A Textual Study of Family 1 in the Gospel of John (ANTF 45; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2014)Google Scholar. Classic efforts include e.g. Ferrar, W. H., A Collation of Four Important Manuscripts of the Gospels, with a View to Prove their Common Origin, and to Restore the Text of their Archetype (London: Macmillan, 1877)Google Scholar; Lake, K., Codex 1 of the Gospels and its Allies (TS 7; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1902)Google Scholar; Lake, K. and New, S., Six Collations of New Testament Manuscripts (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1932)Google Scholar.

27 http://intf.uni-muenster.de/cbgm2/ for ECM–CL and http://intf.uni-muenster.de/cbgm/actsPh4/ for ECM–Acts (the latter was accessed most recently in August 2017, when the print editions were released; though it was still technically in beta form at the time, the number of changes is probably very small).

28 Mink provides an offhand estimate based on James that, per my analysis, proves to be inaccurate: ‘Since many of these 761 places [= VUs] comprise more than one word and since the text consists of about 1740 words, it follows that about half the text is subject to variation’ (Mink, G., ‘Problems of a Highly Contaminated Tradition: The New Testament’, Studies in Stemmatology ii (ed. van Reenan, P. et al. ; Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2004) 13–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 19).

29 See also Mink's distribution curve for James in ‘Problems’, 29–31; these results cohere with his initial findings.

30 Recall: f1 (minuscule 1), f13 (minuscule 69), 33, 81, 1175, 1241, 1739, 2344.

31 Variations within the CL are already included in the Tables 1–10.

32 Recall the average for Acts was 0.59 (from section 4.2).

33 For instance, the textual profile of minuscule 33 varies quite significantly between the first half of Acts and the second (Geer, T. C., ‘The Two Faces of Codex 33 in Acts’, NovT 31 (1989) 39–47Google Scholar).

34 A final analysis might, in theory, be worth pursuing, namely: ‘How do these witnesses compare to one another for important variants?’ Several scholars (Fee, Hurtado, others) have argued that there is a need to compare witnesses not only across all VUs but, more importantly, at ‘genealogically significant’ ones. While such a tighter focus has, at times, been helpful in classifying manuscripts according to families and text-types (see e.g. Geer, T. C., Family 1739 in Acts (Atlanta: Scholars, 1994)Google Scholar), picking ‘significant’ VUs is inherently subjective. For this reason (and others), the CBGM/ECM effort has consciously departed from the notion of privileging some VUs over others (see Wachtel, K., ‘The Coherence Method and History’, TC 20 (2015) 1–6Google Scholar, at 4; Spencer, M., Wachtel, K. and Howe, C. J., ‘The Greek Vorlage of the Syra Harclensis: A Comparative Study on Method in Exploring Textual Genealogy’, TC 7 (2002)Google Scholar section14.2), and we will follow suit here.

35 Similarly, K. Wachtel notes for ECM–Acts: ‘[T]he high agreement rates connecting these witnesses demonstrates that a large body of text was safely transmitted from the very beginning of its transmission through the Byzantine period to today’ (‘On the Relationship of the “Western Text” and the Byzantine Tradition of Acts: A Plea against the Text-Type Concept’, Novum Testamentum Graecum: Editio Critica Maior, vol. iii/3: Studien (ed. Strutwolf, H. et al. ; Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 2017) 137–48Google Scholar, at 140).

36 Many thanks to Dr Charles E. Hill for his comments on an earlier draft.