The Textus Receptus

Contents: Introduction * The Origin of the Textus Receptus * The History of the Textus Receptus * The Text of the Textus Receptus * Addendum I: The King James Version * Addendum II: The "New TR"

Introduction
Textus Receptus, or "Received Text," (abbreviated TR) is the name we use for the first published Greek text of the New Testament. For many centuries, it was the standard text of the Greek Bible. The name arose from the work of the kinsmen Bonaventure and Abraham Elzevir, who said of their 1633 edition, "Textum ergo habes, nunc ab omnibus receptum" -- "So [the reader] has the text which all now receive." The irony is that the Received Text is not actually a single edition, but a sort of text-type of its own consisting of hundreds of extremely similar but not identical editions. Nor do any of its various flavours agree exactly with any extant texttype or manuscript. Thus the need, when referring to the Received Text, to specify which received text we refer to. If this all sounds complicated, it is because of the complicated history of the Textus Receptus. Let's take it from the beginning.

The Origin of the Textus Receptus

Although printing with movable type was in use no later than 1456, it was many years before a Greek New Testament was printed. This is not as surprising as it sounds; the Greek minuscule hand of the late fifteenth century was extremely complicated, with many diverse ligatures and custom symbols. Cutting a Greek typeface required the creation of hundreds of symbols -- far more than a Latin typeface. Printers probably did not relish the idea. (It is worth noting that the Complutensian Polyglot invented a new type of Greek print for its edition.) It was not until the early sixteenth century that Cardinal Ximenes decided to embark on a Greek and Latin edition of the New Testament -- the famous Complutensian Polyglot. The New Testament volume of this work was printed in 1514 -- but it was not published until after 1520. This left a real opportunity for an enterprising printer who could get out an edition quickly. Such a printer was John Froben of Basle. Apparently having heard of the Complutension edition, he was determined to beat it into print. Fortunately, he had the contacts to pull this off.

Froben decided to approach Desiderius Erasmus, one of the most notable (if rather humanistic) scholars of his generation. The proposal appears to have been transmitted on April 17, 1515. Work began in the fall of that year, and the work was pushed through the press in February of 1516. For a project that had taken fifty years to get started, the success of Erasmus's edition (which contained his Greek text in parallel with his own Latin version) was astonishing. The first printing soon sold out, and by 1519 a new edition was required. Three more would follow, each somewhat improved over the last. It is sad to report that such a noble undertaking was so badly handled (all the more so since it became the basis of Luther's German translation, and later -with some slight modifications -- of the English King James Version). The speed with which the book went through the press meant that it contained literally thousands of typographical errors. What is more, the text was hastily and badly edited from a few late manuscripts (see below, The Text of the Textus Receptus).

A part of page 336 of Erasmus's Greek Testament, the first "Textus Receptus." Shown is a portion of John 18.

The History of the Textus Receptus

Erasmus's first edition was a great success; some 3300 copies of his first two editions were sold. The success of Erasmus's edition soon called forth new Greek testaments, all of them based largely on his. The first of these was published by Aldus Manutius in 1518 -- but although it contained an independent text of the Septuagint (the first such to be printed), its New Testament text was taken almost verbatim from Erasmus, including even the typographical errors. Hence the first truly new publication was Erasmus's own

edition of 1519. This featured almost the same text as the 1516 edition, but with the majority (though by no means all!) of the errors of the press corrected. It also features some new readings, believed by Scrivener to come from 3 eap (XII; classified by von Soden as e: Kx a: I [K]; c: K). Erasmus's third edition of 1522 contained one truly unfortunate innovation: The "Three Heavenly Witnesses" in 1 John 5:7-8. These were derived from the recently-written Codex 61, and (as the famous story goes) included by Erasmus "for the sake of his oath." Sadly, they have been found in almost every TR edition since. There followed a great welter of editions, all slightly different (based on such figures as I have seen, it would appear that editions of the Textus Receptus typically vary at between one hundred and two hundred places, though very few of these differences are more than orthographic). None of these editions were of any particular note (though the 1534 text of Simon Colinus is sometimes mentioned as significant, since it included some variant readings). It was not until 1550 that the next great edition of the Textus Receptus was published. This was the work of Robert Stephanus (Estienne), whose third edition became one of the two "standard" texts of the TR. (Indeed, it is Stephanus's name that gave rise to the common symbol for the Textus Receptus.) Stephanus included the variants of over a dozen manuscripts -- including Codices Bezae (D) and Regius (L) -- in the margin. In his fourth edition (1551), he also added the verse numbers which are still used in all modern editions. The Stephanus edition became the standard Textus Receptus of Britain, although of course it was not yet known by that name. (The esteem in which the Textus Receptus was already held, however, is shown by Scrivener's report that there are 119 places where all of Stephanus's manuscripts read against the TR, but Stephanus still chose to print the reading found in previous TR editions.) Stephanus's editions were followed by those of Theodore de Bza (1519-1605), the Protestant reformer who succeeded Calvin. These were by no means great advances over what had gone before; although Beza had access to the codex which bears his name, as well as the codex Claromontanus, he seems to have made little if any use of them. A few of his readings have been accused of theological bias; the rest seem largely random. Beza's editions, published between 1565 and 1611, are remembered more for the sake of their editor (and the fact that they were used by the translators of the King James Bible) than for their text. The next great edition of the Textus Receptus is the Elzevir text already mentioned in the Introduction. First published in 1624, with minor changes for the edition of 1633, it had the usual minor variants from Stephanus (of which Scrivener counted 287), but nothing substantial; the Elzevirs were printers, not critics.

The Elzevir text, which became the primary TR edition on the continent, was the last version to be significant for its text. From this time on, editions were marked more by their marginal material, as scholars such as Mill, Wettstein, and later Griesbach began examining and arranging manuscripts. None of these were able to break away from the TR, but all pointed the way to texts free of its influence. Only one more TR edition needs mention here -- the 1873 Oxford edition, which forms the basis of many modern collations. This edition is no longer available, of course, though some editions purport to give its readings. Beginners are reminded once again that not all TR editions are identical; those collating against a TR must state very explicitly which edition is being used.

The Text of the Textus Receptus

Erasmus, having little time to prepare his edition, could only examine manuscripts which came to hand. His haste was so great, in fact, that he did not even write new copies for the printer; rather, he took existing manuscripts, corrected them, and submitted those to the printer. (Erasmus's corrections are still visible in the manuscript 2.) Nor were the manuscripts which came to hand particularly valuable. For his basic text he chose 2e, 2ap, and 1r. In addition, he was able to consult 1eap, 4ap, and 7p. Of these, only 1eap had a text independent of the Byzantine tradition -and Erasmus used it relatively little due to the supposed "corruption" of its text. Erasmus also consulted the Vulgate, but only from a few late manuscripts. Even those who favour the Byzantine text cannot be overly impressed with Erasmus's choice of manuscripts; they are all rather late (see table): Manuscript Date 1eap 1r 2e 2ap 4ap 7p XII XII Von Soden Classification (in modern terms) e: family 1; ap: Ia3 Andreas

XII/XIII Kx (Wisse reports Kmix/Kx) XII XV XI/XII O18 Ib1

Not only is 1r an Andreas manuscript rather than purely Byzantine, but it is written in such a way that Erasmus could not always tell text from commentary and based his reading on the Vulgate. Also, 1 r is defective for the last six verses

of the Apocalypse. To fill out the text, Erasmus made his own Greek translation from the Latin. He admitted to what he had done, but the result was a Greek text containing readings not found in any Greek manuscript -- but which were faithfully retained through centuries of editions of the Textus Receptus. This included even certain readings which were not even correct Greek (Scrivener offers as an example Rev. 17:4 ). The result is a text which, although clearly Byzantine, is not a good or pure representative of the form. It is full of erratic readings -- some "Caesarean" (Scrivener attributes Matt. 22:28, 23:25, 27:52, 28:3, 4, 19, 20; Mark 7:18, 19, 26, 10:1, 12:22, 15:46; Luke 1:16, 61, 2:43, 9:1, 15, 11:49; John 1:28, 10:8, 13:20 to the influence of 1eap), some "Western" or Alexandrian (a good example of this is the doxology of Romans, which Erasmus placed after chapter 16 in accordance with the Vulgate, rather than after 14 along with the Byzantine text), some simply wild (as, e.g., the inclusion of 1 John 5:7-8). Daniel B. Wallace counts 1,838 differences between the TR and Hodges & Farstad's Byzantine text (see Wallace's "The Majority Text Theory: History, Methods, and Critique," in Ehrman & Holmes, The Text of the New Testament in Contemporary Research, Studies & Documents, Eerdmans, 1995. The figure is given in note 28 on page 302.) This, it should be noted, is a larger number than the number of differences between the UBS, Bover, and Merk texts -- even though these three editions are all eclectic and based largely on the Alexandrian text-type, which is much more diverse than the Byzantine text-type. Thus it will be conceded by all reputable scholars -- even those who favour the Byzantine text -- that the Textus Receptus, in all its various forms, has no textual authority whatsoever. Were it not for the fact that it has been in use for so long as a basis for collations, it could be mercifully forgotten. What a tragedy, then, that it was the Bible of Protestant Christendom for close to four centuries!

Addendum I: The King James Version

Authorized in 1604 and published in 1611, the King James version naturally is based on the TR. When it was created, there was no demand for critical editions. (Though in fact the original KJV contains some textual notes. These, like the preface, are usually suppressed in modern versions, making the version that much worse than it is. In addition, editions of the KJV do not print precisely the same text. But this is another issue.) Even accepting that the KJV derives from the TR, and has most of its faults, it is reasonable to ask which TR it is based on. The usual simplistic answer is Stephanus's or Beza's. F.H.A. Scrivener, however, who studied the matter in detail, concluded that it was none of these. Rather, it is a mixed text, closest to Beza, with Stephanus in second place, but not clearly affiliated with any edition. (No doubt the influence of the Vulgate, and of early English translations, is also felt here.) Scrivener reconstructed the text of the KJV in 1894, finding some 250

differences from Stephanus. Jay P. Green, however, states that even this edition does not agree entirely with the KJV, listing differences at Matt. 12:24, 27; John 8:21, 10:16 (? -- this may be translational); 1 Cor. 14:10, 16:1; compare also Mark 8:14, 9:42; John 8:6; Acts 1:4; 1 John 3:16, where Scrivener includes words found in the KJV in italics as missing from their primary text. Since there are people who still, for some benighted reason, use the King James Bible for Bible study, we perhaps need to add a few words about its defects (defects conceded by all legitimate textual critics, plus most people who know anything about translations). This is not to deny that it is a brilliant work of English prose; it is a brilliant work of English prose. But it is not an adequate English Bible. The first reason is the obvious textual one: It is translated from the Textus Receptus. There was no good alternative at the time, but we know now that it is simply a bad text. This is true event if one accepts the Byzantine text as original; the TR is not a good representative of that text-form, and is even worse if one accepts any other text form, or if one is eclectic. The Old Testament suffers the same problem -- in some ways, worse. The Hebrew text had hardly been edited at all when the KJV was translated. Today, with more Hebrew manuscripts, the Dead Sea Scrolls, various translations, more ancient commentaries, and a better grasp of textual criticism, we can establish a much better Hebrew text. The lack of Hebrew scholarship at the time contributed to an even greater problem with the Old Testament: The translators didn't know what it meant. Textual damage caused some of the cruxes; others arose from ignorance of classical Hebrew. The translators often had to turn to the translations in LXX or the Vulgate -- which often were just as messed up as the Hebrew. Today, we have more samples of ancient Hebrew to give us references for words; we have knowledge of cognate languages such as Ugaritic and Akkadian, and we have the tools of linguistics. There are still unsolved problems in the Old Testament -but they are far fewer. The same is true, to a lesser extent, of the New Testament. Greek never entirely vanished from the knowledge of scholars, as Hebrew did, but the language evolved. At the time the KJV was translated, classical Greek -- the Greek of Homer and the tragic playwrights -- was considered the standard. Koine Greek -- the Greek of the New Testament -- was forgotten; the Byzantine empire had undergone a sort of Classic Revival. People referred to the Greek of the New Testament as "the Language of the Holy Spirit" -- and then sneered at its uncouth forms. Over the past century and a half, the koine has been rediscovered, and we know that the New Testament was written in a living, active language. This doesn't affect our understanding of the meaning of the New Testament as much as our increased knowledge of Hebrew affects our understanding of the Old -- but it does affect it somewhat.

In addition, there is the translation style. The KJV was created by six separate committees, with relatively little joint effort and a relatively small body of prior work (this was 1604, after all; the committee from Cambridge couldn't just buzz down to Westminster for the afternoon, e.g.). This meant that there wasn't much standardization of vocabulary; a word might be translated two or three or even half a dozen different ways. Sometimes, of course, this was necessary (as, e.g. with , "again," "from above" in John 3:3, 7, 31 -- a case where the KJV translators seem, ironically, to have missed the multivalued meaning). But it is generally agreed that that KJV used various renderings for solely stylistic reasons; their translation was meant to be read aloud. They produced a version that was excellent for these purposes -- but, in consequence, much less suitable for detailed study, especially, e.g., of Synoptic parallels, which can look completely different when the KJV renditions are set side by side. Plus the committee was under instructions to stay as close as possible to the previous standard, the so-called Bishop's Bible, which in turn had been created based on the Great Bible. And even it was derived largely from Tyndale's work. The Great Bible had been created some 75 years earlier, and Tyndale in the decades before that -- not long in ordinary terms, but this was a time when English was evolving fast. This heritage means that a number of the features -e.g. the use of you/ye/thou/thee/thy/thine -- was actually incorrect even by the standards of the time, and its influence came to produce a truly curious effect: "Thou," initially the second person singular pronoun, (as opposed to "ye," the plural form, loosely equivalent to the American Southernism "y'all") was briefly a form used to address a social inferior, and then, under the influence of the KJV itself, treated as a form of address to one deserving of high dignity. This is genuinely confusing at best. Finally, the KJV does not print the text in paragraphs, but rather verse by verse. Readers can see this, but it's one thing to know it and another to really read the text in that light. To be fair, the translators were aware of most of these problems. The preface, in fact, urges "the Reader... not to conclude or dogmatize upon this or that peremptorily." The Old Testament, according to Alister McGrath, contained 6,637 marginal notes, most of them variant readings (more notes than many modern translations, we should note). But I have yet to find a recent printing of the KJV which includes its marginal notes, let alone its preface. And, of course, since the time of publication, the language of the KJV -- already somewhat antiquated in its time, based as it was largely upon Tyndale's translation -- has become entirely archaic. In an aside, we might note that, at the time of its publication, the KJV was greeted with something less than enthusiasm, and for the first few decades of its life, the Geneva Bible remained the more popular work; the Geneva edition (unlike the other pre-KJV translations) remained in print for more than thirty

years after the KJV was published. During the Commonwealth period (16491660), there was talk of commissioning another new translation. It wasn't until the KJV became quite venerable that it somehow assumed an aura of special value -- even of independent canonicity. Quite simply, while the King James Bible was a brilliant work, and a beautiful monument of sixteenth century English, it is not fit to be used as a Bible in today's world.

Addendum II: The "New TR"

The phrase "The New TR" is sometimes applied to editions which threaten to dominate the field of textual criticism. Thus the edition of Westcott & Hort was a sort of "New TR" in the late nineteenth century, and in the twentieth century the name is sometimes applied to the United Bible Societies edition. In terms of number of copies printed this description of the UBS text may be justified -- no complete new edition has been issued since its publication -- but no reputable textual scholar would regard it as the "final word." Another sort of "New TR" is found in the Majority Text editions of Hodges & Farstad and Robinson & Pierpont. These are attempts to create a true Byzantine text (as an alternative to the TR, which is a very bad Byzantine text), but they have received relatively little critical attention -- less, probably, than they deserve (though few would consider them to contain the original text). Thus they cannot be considered truly "received" texts.

Critical Editions of the New Testament

Contents: Introduction * Aland: Synopsis Quattuor Evangeliorum * Bover * Hodges & Farstad * Huck * Merk * The "Nestle" text: Nestle editions 1-25 | Nestle-Aland editions 26, 27 * Das Neue Testament auf Papyrus * Souter * Swanson * Tasker * Tischendorf * United Bible Societies Edition * Vogels * Westcott & Hort Summary: A Comparison of the Various Editions Appendix: Latin Editions

Introduction
Karl Lachmann (1793-1851) broke with the Textus Receptus in 1831. This, then, was the first "critical edition" of the New Testament -- an edition compiled

using specific rules based on the readings of a significant selection of important manuscripts. Since then, many others have appeared. Some of these (Lachmann's own, and that of his younger contemporary Tregelles) are now almost completely obscure. Others -- notably those of Westcott and Hort and the United Bible Societies -- have exercised great influence. Ideally, a critical edition will include an apparatus supplying information about how the readings were decided upon. There are, however, critical editions (e.g. that of Westcott & Hort) which do not include such information. The list below describes most of the major editions since Tischendorf's vital eighth edition.

Aland: Synopsis Quattuor Evangeliorum

Editor. Text and apparatus edited by Kurt Aland. Dateof Publication. The first edition appeared in 1963. A revised edition, listed as the fourth, appeared in 1967; another revised edition, the ninth, came out in 1976. The final major revision, the thirteenth, was published in 1985. The first three major editions (officially listed as the first through twelfth) use the same basic arrangement of the text; the revisions took place primarily in the apparatus. The thirteenth edition entirely recast the work; a new text was adopted and a new apparatus created. The structure of the synopsis was unchanged, but otherwise it was an entirely new publication. The Text. The text of the first twelve editions is essentially that of the early Nestle-Aland editions. With the thirteenth edition, the text was adjusted to match that of the Nestle-Aland editions 26th edition. The Aland Synopsis is one of the more substantial now available. All four gospels are presented in full, and there is a complete text of the Gospel of Thomas (in Latin, English, and German; neither Coptic nor Greek texts are offered!). The critical apparatus is also more than usually complete; an apparatus is usually supplied wherever a passage is cited, not just at its "main" appearance. In addition, the apparatus gives a fairly full list of variants -- many more than are found in the equivalent editions of the Nestle-Aland text, and not limited simply to harmonization variants. While SQE will not allow the student to completely reconstruct the cited manuscripts (especially the minuscules), it includes enough data to allow a valid comparison of the various text-types. (This cannot be said of NA27!) For compactness, SQE uses the same set of critical symbols as the Nestle text (for details, see the picture in that article). Unfortunately, the apparatus does have its drawbacks. (We are now referring specifically to the recent editions, from the thirteenth on.) For one thing, it has a high number of errors (most of them seemingly errors of the press; these are slowly being corrected). The selection of witnesses is also questionable. The Byzantine text of the uncial era, for instance, is represented by four manuscripts, E F G H. All of these, it should be noted, belong to the K x

recension. Thus, although there are more Byzantine witnesses than in the Nestle-Aland edition (which offers only K and ), they offer less diversity (of the witnesses in Nestle-Aland, K is a member of Family , while is Kx). The new minuscules are also an odd lot. Why would anyone make 1006 (purely Byzantine) an explicitly cited witness, while omitting 1241 (arguably the most Alexandrian minuscule of Luke)? As a final note, we should observe that while SQE cites many member of Family 1 (1 and 209, as well as 205, 1582, 2542 not cited explicitly as members of the family) and Family 13 (13, 69, 346, 543, 788, 983; note that the best family witness, 826, is omitted), it cites them in such a way that the readings of the individual manuscripts can only be determined when the manuscript is cited explicitly (that is, if -- say -- 346 is not cited explicitly on either side of a reading, it may agree either with f 13 or ). To sum up, SQE is a good synopsis with a useful critical apparatus, but one should take care not to rely upon it too heavily (due both to its inaccuracies and its slightly biased presentation of the evidence).

Bover
Editor. Text and apparatus edited by Jos Maria Bover, S.J. Dateof Publication. The first edition, Novi Testamenti Biblia Graeca et Latina appeared in 1943. The first four editions (1943-1959) are essentially identical; the fifth edition of 1977 and following (revised by Jos O'Callaghan Martnez) is slightly different, but primarily in the area of the parallel texts. The Text. The Latin text of Bover, until the fifth edition, is simply the Clementine Vulgate (in the fifth edition the Neo-Vulgate was substituted and a Spanish version added). Thus the Latin text has no critical value. The Greek text is somewhat more reputable. It is a fairly typical Twentieth Century product, compiled eclectically but with a clear preference for Alexandrian readings (though not as strong a preference as is found in the Westcott & Hort and United Bible Societies Edition editions). It has been esteemed by some for its balanced critical attitudes; others might view it as having no clear guiding principle. The Apparatus. Bover's Latin text has no apparatus at all (from the critic's standpoint, there is really no reason for it to be there), and the Greek apparatus is limited. Bover's manuscript data, like that of Merk, comes almost entirely from von Soden. Like Merk, Bover cites a few manuscripts discovered since von Soden's time (papyri up to P52, including the Beatty papyri; uncials up to 0207; a few of the minuscules up to 2430, plus a modest handful of lectionaries). In construction Bover's apparatus strongly resembles Merk's, using essentially the same manuscript groupings and much the same set of symbols. (For an example, see the entry on Merk). The most significant difference between the two in their presentation of the data is that Bover also lists the readings of the various editions -- T=Tischendorf, S=von Soden, V=Vogels, L=Lagrange

(Gospels, Romans, Galatians only), M=Merk, H=Westcott & Hort (h=Hort's margin; (H)=Hort's text against the margin); W=Weiss; J=Jacquier (Acts only), C=Clark (Acts only), A=Allo (1 Cor., Rev. only). These critical editions also define the apparatus; Bover only offers manuscript information at points where the critical editions disagree. His apparatus is thus much more limited than that of Merk or even Nestle. It also shares the defects one would expect from a work based on von Soden: Many of the collations are inaccurate or imperfectly reported (for details, see the entry on Merk). Bover's transcription of von Soden is somewhat more careful (and often more explicit) than Merk's, and is therefore perhaps slightly more reliable. It is, however, less full even for the readings it contains -- citing, e.g., fewer fathers (the introduction does not even list the fathers cited!) and fewer versions. And Bover has recast Von Soden's groupings a bit -- instead of having five sets of witnesses (for Gospels, Acts, Paul, Catholics, Apocalypse), he uses the same groupings for Acts, Paul, and Catholics. This is reasonable in one sense -- the groupings for the three are fairly similar -- but it makes it harder to use the apparatus, as one is always having to look up exceptions (e.g. 1739 files with H in Paul, but I in the other two). Also, a warning for those with older eyes: The typeface (at least in some editions) is rather unsuitable for the purpose; the symbols | and ] -- keys to understanding the apparatus -- are almost indistinguishable.

Hodges & Farstad

Editors. Zane C. Hodges and Arthur L. Farstad Dateof Publication. The first edition, The Greek New Testament According to the Majority Text, appeared in 1982. A slightly revised second edition appeared in 1985. The Text. Unlike most critical editions, that of Hodges and Farstad does not attempt to reconstruct the original text on the basis primarily of the earliest manuscripts. Rather, it assumes that the Byzantine Majority text is the original text, and reconstructs this text. For the most part, this is done by "counting noses" -- looking for the reading which has the highest number of supporters (which in the gospels often becomes a matter of printing the reading of K x). In the Apocalypse and the story of the Adulteress, however, H & F resort in a limited way to stemmatics, meaning that they print a few readings which, although well-supported, are not the majority reading. It should be noted that Hodges and Farstad did not assemble their text based on manuscript collations; rather, for the most part they simply followed Von Soden's K text and its subgroups (which, in their edition, is denoted when entirely unified and M when a portion of the type defects). Thus the edition may not always represent the actual majority text. Even so, H & F is the only edition of the Byzantine text-form to have an apparatus of any sort. This makes it useful to anyone who wishes to examine the strength and depth of the Byzantine tradition. (The critic does not have to subscribe to the editors' theories to find

the edition useful.) The edition also serves as a useful demonstration that the Byzantine text-type, although more united than any other known type, is not the monolithic entity its opponents sometimes make it out to be. The Apparatus. The H & F text has two apparatus. The first, and more important for the editors' purposes, is the apparatus of variants within the Byzantine tradition. Here the editors list places where the Byzantine tradition divides, even noting some of the strands identified by Von Soden (e.g. H & F's M r is von Soden's Kr; their Mc is von Soden's Kc, etc.) They also note the variant readings of the Textus Receptus (demonstrating, incidentally, that the TR is a poor representative of the Byzantine type). This first apparatus, which contains relatively few readings, has its variants marked in the text with numbers and has lemmata in the margin. The second apparatus lists variants between the H & F text and the United Bible Societies edition. A quick sample indicates that these are roughly three times as common as variations within the Byzantine tradition. For these variants the editors use the same symbols as the recent editions of the Nestle-Aland text. A handful of witnesses -- Vaticanus, Sinaiticus, Alexandrinus, Ephraemi Rescriptus, and certain papyri -- are noted in both apparatus, but their readings are noted only for variants included for other reasons. The H & F apparatus gives far less information about these manuscripts than even the Nestle apparatus, and cannot be used for textual classification of any specific witness. Although the apparatus of H & F is very limited, it serves a useful purpose even to those who do not believe in Byzantine priority. It is the only available tool (other than von Soden's cryptic edition) for determining if a reading is the Byzantine reading, a Byzantine reading in cases where that text divides, or entirely non-Byzantine. This can be important when dealing with mixed manuscripts. Also, H & F includes some variants not covered in NA27.

Huck
The name "Huck," like the name Nestle, is actually a term for a constellation of editions (in this case, of a gospel synopsis rather than a critical edition), with various editors over the years. The two, in fact, are almost of an age. Albert Huck published his first synopsis in 1892, but this was designed for a particular class and synoptic theory; the third edition of 1906 was the first for general use. With the ninth edition of 1936, the book passed from the hands of Albert Huck to H. Lietzmann and H. G. Opitz. At this time the text was revised (Huck's own editions were based on Tischendorf's text; Lietzmann used a text approximating that of Nestle). The 1981 edition was taken over by H. Greeven, and the arrangement of pericopes significantly altered. Greeven also altered the text, using his own reconstruction rathr than any previous edition. Editors. Albert Huck; later taken over by H. Lietzmann, H. G. Opitz, H. Greeven

Dateof Publication. The first edition was published in 1892; a revised third edition came out in 1906, another revision constituted the fourth edition of 1910. The revised ninth edition of Lietzmann-Opitz was published in 1936. Greeven's thirteenth edition appeared in 1981. The Text Prior to the appearance of Greeven's edition, Huck could not really be considered in any way a critical edition. Huck used Tischendorf's text, Lietzmann a modification of Nestle's. Neither editor provided a full-fledged critical apparatus. (Lietzmann admitted to having a "limited" apparatus. Not only was the number of variants limited, but fewer than a dozen Greek witnesses were cited, and the data on the versions was much simplified.) The value of Huck, at that time, lay in the arrangement of the parallel gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke; John was not included). This, obviously, was sufficient to keep the book in print for nearly a century, but the editions have little value to the textual critic. For this reason, the remainder of this discussion will be devoted to Huck-Greeven, which simultaneously provided a new text (edited by Greeven), a much fuller apparatus (also by Greeven), and a modification of the synopsis itself, including more parallels as well as some portions of the gospel of John. The text of the Greeven revision is somewhat problematic. Greeven claims that it averages about nine variations per chapter from the UBS/Nestle text. This would be about typical for a modern edition -- if anything, it's at the low end of the scale. The problem is, Greeven gives not a hint of his critical principles. Nor does Greeven give us a list of differences from UBS. Thus it is almost impossible to reconstruct his method. This makes it difficult to know how far to rely upon his text. The apparatus is as peculiar as the text. In no sense is it complete; the focus in upon parallels, almost to the exclusion of other variants. It is at first glance an easy apparatus to read; each reading begins with the lemma, followed by its supporters if they are relatively few, then a square bracket ] followed by the alternate readings and their support; different variation units are separated by large spaces and bold vertical lines. Deciphering the list of witnesses is a much different matter. Witnesses are grouped by type (though Greeven denies that his groups have any actual meaning), and cited by group symbols (e.g. are the Lake and Ferrar groups), and are cited in group order. However, Greeven does not list the order of the witnesses outside the four groups (Alexandrian, Lake, Ferrar, Soden). Nor are the contents of the various fragments listed explicitly. Thus it is almost impossible to be certain which manuscripts are actually cited within the notation Rpl (referring to all uncited uncials and the large majority of minuscules). It is best to trust the apparatus only where it cites a witness explicitly. The citation of the versions, as opposed to the citing of the Greek witnesses, is excellent. All Old Latin witnesses are cited by name, with lacunae indicated. Where the Harklean Syriac attests to multiple readings, Greeven shows the nature of each variant. Where the manuscripts of the various Coptic versions do not show a consensus, Greeven indicates the number on each side of the reading. Unfortunately, the Armenian and Georgian versions are not handled with anything like the same precision, but this is no reason to condemn the

edition; most others treat these versions with equal disdain. The list of Fathers cited is quite full and unusully detailed, listing both the language and the date of the author, and including at least a handful of Syriac, Coptic, and even Arabic texts as well as the Greek and Latin Fathers. A wide variety of Harmonies are also cited (under a symbol which implies they are versions of the Diatessaron, though this is not stated). The introduction gives a good concise description of these harmonies. Great care must be taken to understand Greeven's apparatus, which is strongly dependent not only on the order of the witnesses, but on the typographic form in which they are presented (e.g. Or does not mean the same thing as Or, even though both refer to Origen). To sum up, the apparatus of Greeven is very difficult, though it offers a wide variety of useful information, and does not list all the variants one would "expect" to find. Students are therefore advised not to rely solely upon it, but to use at least one other source -- both to get a full list of variants in a particular gospel and to check one's interpretation of the apparatus for the variants it does contain. Greeven can give a sense of the support for a reading. It cannot and does not give specifics capable of being transferred to another apparatus.

Merk
Editor. Text and apparatus edited by Augustinus Merk, S.J. Dateof Publication. The first edition, Novum Testamentum Graece et Latine, appeared in 1933. The tenth edition, issued nearly four decades after the editor's death, was published in 1984. Overall, however, the changes in the edition, in both text and apparatus, have been minimal. The Text. Merk's Greek text is a fairly typical mid-Twentieth-Century production, an eclectic edition which however leans strongly toward the Alexandrian text. The Latin text, as one would expect of a Jesuit, is the Clementine Vulgate. The Apparatus. The significance of Merk lies not in its text but in its apparatus -by far the fullest of the hand editions, and accompanied by a serviceable critical apparatus of the Vulgate (a noteworthy improvement, in this regard, over the otherwise fairly similar edition of Bover). Merk's apparatus is largely that of von Soden, translated into Gregory numbers and slightly updated. Merk includes nearly all the variants in von Soden's first two apparatus, and a significant number of those in the third. In addition to the manuscripts cited by von Soden, Merk cites several manuscripts discovered since von Soden's time (papyri up to P52, including the Beatty papyri; uncials up to 0207; minuscules up to 2430, although all but four minuscules and three lectionaries are taken from von Soden). Merk also cites certain versions and fathers, particularly from the east, not cited in von Soden. But this strength is also a weakness. Merk's apparatus incorporates all the errors of von Soden (inaccurate collations and unclear citations), and adds

errors of its own: inaccurate translation of von Soden's apparatus, plus a very high number of errors of the press and the like. Merk does not even provide an accurate list of fathers cited in the edition -- e.g. the Beatus of Libana is cited under the symbol "Be," but the list of Fathers implies that he would be cited as "Beatus." The Venerable Bede, although cited relatively often (as Beda), is not even included in the list of Fathers! The list of such errors could easily be extended (a somewhat more accurate list of fathers cited in Merk is found in the article on the Fathers). Thus the student is advised to take great care with the Merk. As a list of variants, no portable edition even comes close. Every student should have it. But knowing how far to trust it is another question. The following table shows a test of the Merk apparatus, based on the readings found in the apparatus of UBS4 in three books (Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians). The first column lists the manuscript, the second the number of readings for which it can be cited, the third the number of places where Merk's apparatus disagrees with the UBS apparatus, and the fourth the percentage of readings where they disagree. Manuscript Readings Disagreements Percent Disagreement P46 45 1 2% 67 0 0% A 63 0 0% B 63 1 2% C 34 1 3% D 63 0 0% 63 7 11% 6 63 5 8% 33 63 3 5% 81 63 1 2% 104 63 4 6% 256 59 5 8% 263 59 8 14% 330 59 9 15% 436 59 9 15% 462 58 5 9% 1175 51 4 8% (but see below) 1319 59 3 5% 1739 63 1 1% 1912 63 4 6% 2127 59 4 7% (Note: Data for 330 and 462 taken from the collations by Davies.) We should add one caveat, however: Merk does not list where manuscripts such as P46, C, and 1175 have lacunae -- in the case of 1175, he cites the manuscript explicitly for certain readings where it does not exist! In addition, it is

often impossible to tell the readings of the manuscripts in the bottom parts of his apparatus, as they are cited as part of al or rel pl. Thus the table cites 256 for 59 readings instead of the 63 citations for the Old Uncials because there are four readings where it is simply impossible to know which reading Merk thinks 256 supports. Still, we see that overall the Merk apparatus is almost absolutely accurate for the Old Uncials (though it sometimes fails to note the distinction between first and later hands). Minuscules vary in reliability, though there are only three -263, 330, and 436 (all members of Ia3, which seems to have been a very problematic group) -- where Merk's apparatus is so bad as to be of no use at all. The conclusion is that students should test the apparatus for any given minuscule before trusting it. The Merk apparatus, adapted as it is from Von Soden, takes getting used to. The apparatus always cites the reading of the text as a lemma, then cites variant(s) from it. Normally witnesses will be cited for only one of the two readings; all uncited witnesses are assumed to support the other reading. To know which witnesses are cited for a particular reading, however, requires constant reference to Merk's list of groups (given in the introduction), as witnesses are cited by position within the groups, and often in a shorthand notation -- e.g. 1s means "1 and the witness immediately following" -- which in the Gospels is 1582; 1ss would mean "1 and the two witnesses immediately following" (1582 and 2193). Note that "1s" is not the same as "1s." 1s means "1 and all manuscripts which follow to the end of the group." So where 1s means 1 1582, 1s means 1 1582 2193 (keep in mind, however, that if the subgroup is large, not all manuscripts of the group may be intended). 1 r has yet another meaning: from 1 to the end of the major group -- in this case, from 1 to 131. All this is not as bad as it sounds, but the student is probably well-advised to practice it a few times! Other symbols in Merk's apparatus include >, indicating an omission; |, indicating a part of a versional tradition (or the Greek side of a diglot where the Latin disagrees); "rel" for "all remaining witnesses," etc. Many of the remaining symbols are obvious (e.g. ~ for a change in word order), but the student should be sure to check Merk's introduction in detail, and never assume a symbol means what you think it means! The example below may make things a little clearer. We begin with the table of witnesess -- in this case for Paul. Grou Witnesses p P46 BSCA 1739 424c 1908 33 P 104 326 1175 81 1852(R) H HIM(1 2CHb) 048 062(G) 081(2 C) 082(E) 088(1C) 0142 P1013151640 | Ca1 D(E)G(F) 917 1836 1898 181 88 915 1912 | 2 Ca 623 5 1827 1838 467 1873 927 489 2143 | 920 1835 1845 919 226 547 241 1 460 337 177 1738 321 319 69 Ca3

Cb1 Cb2 Cc1 Cc2 K

462 794 330 999 1319 2127 256 263 38 1311 436 1837 255 642 218 | 206 429 1831 1758 242 1891 522 2 635 941 1099 | 440 216 323 2298 1872 1149 491 823 35 336 43 | 1518 1611 1108 2138 1245 2005 | 257 383 913 378 1610 506 203 221 639 1867 876 385 2147 | KL |

Let us take Romans 2:14 as an example. Merk's text (without accents) reads: (14) , In the apparatus we have 14 ] G| ar | -- i.e. for , the reading of Merk's text, the Greek side of G (but not the Latin), the Armenian, and part of Origen read . All other witnesses support Merk's text. B SA-1908 104-1852 Ds 467 1319-38 436 43 Cl ] rel -- i.e. is supported by B, S (= ), the witnesses from A to 1908 (=A, 1739, 6, possibly 424**, and 1908), the witnesses from 104 to 1852 (=104, 326, 1175, 81, 1852), by D and all other witnesses to the end of its group (=D G 917 1836 1898 181 88 915 1912, with perhaps one or two omitted), by 467, by the witnesses from 1319 to 38 (=1319 2127 256 263 38), by 436, by 43, by Clement, and by Origen. The alternative reading is supported by all other witnesses -- i.e. by the uncited witnesses in the H group (in this case, P ), by the entire Ca2 group except 467, by the uncited witnesses of Ca3 (=920, 1835, etc.), by all witnesses of the Cb groups except 43, and by all remaining witnesses from 1518 on down to L at the end. ] G d t vg | -- i.e. for G (and its Latin side g), the old latins d t, the vulgate, and part of Origen read . Again, all other witnesses support Merk's text.

The Nestle Text

The history of the "Nestle" text is complex; the text has undergone one major and assorted minor revisions, while the apparatus has been upgraded repeatedly. The sections below outline the history of the early versions of the edition, then proceeds to describe the modern form (Nestle-Aland 27 and its predecessor Nestle-Aland 26).

Nestle Editions 1-25

The first edition of "Nestle" was prepared in 1898 by Eberhard Nestle (18511913). It was not really a critical text; Nestle simply compared the current editions of Westcott & Hort, Tischendorf, and Weymouth. The reading found in the majority of these editions became the reading of the text (if the three

disagreed, Nestle adopted the middle reading). The apparatus consisted variant readings from the three texts (plus a few variants from Codex Bezae). The text was slightly revised with the third edition, when the text of Bernhard Weiss was substituted for that of Weymouth. With some further slight revisions, this remained the "Nestle" text through the twenty-fifth edition. The nature of "Nestle" changed radically with the thirteenth edition of 1927. This edition, under the supervision of Eberhard Nestle's son Erwin Nestle (18831972), for the first time fully conformed the text to the majority reading of WH/Tischendorf/Weiss. It also added in the margin the readings of von Soden's text. But most importantly, it included for the first time a true critical apparatus. Over the following decades the critical apparatus was gradually increased, and was checked against actual manuscripts to a greater extent (much of this was the work of Kurt Aland, whose contributions first began to appear in the twentyfirst edition of 1952). More manuscripts were gradually added, and more variants noted. It should be observed, however, that the "Nestle" apparatus remained limited; often no more than five or six manuscripts were noted for each variant (it was exceedingly rare to find more than twelve, and those usually comprehended under a group symbol); most manuscripts were cited only sporadically; the Byzantine text was represented by the Textus Receptus (K); the Egyptian text (H) was cited under an inadequate group symbol. Also, the apparatus included fewer variants than might be hoped -- not only fewer variants than von Soden and Tischendorf (which was to be expected), but also fewer variants than Merk. Even the readings of Sinaiticus, Vaticanus, the papyri, and the Textus Receptus were inadequately noted. In addition, some regard the form of the apparatus as a difficulty. Instead of noting the text of variants in the margin, a series of symbols are inserted in the text. The advantages of this system are brevity (the apparatus is smaller) and also, to an extent, clarity; the scope of variants can be seen in the text. (Though the reason appears to have been rather different: the Nestle apparatus was as it was because the editors continued to use the original plates of the text, meaning that any apparatus had to fit in a fairly small space.)

The illustration below illustrates several of the major features of the Nestle apparatus, along with some explanations. The form of the apparatus resembles that of the twenty-sixth and twenty-seventh editions, but the same symbols are used in all editions. Many of the aforementioned problems were removed in the completely redone Twenty-sixth edition:

Nestle-Aland Editions 26-27

The twenty-sixth edition of NestleAland, published in 1979, was the first to be produced entirely under the supervision of Kurt Aland. The result was very nearly a new book. The Text. The text of NA26 is, in all major respects, the same as that of the United Bible Societies Edition, of which Aland was an editor. The only differences lie in matters not directly associated with textual criticism, such as accents, punctuation, and arrangement of paragraphs. The characteristics of the text are described under the section on the UBS edition. The Apparatus. The apparatus of NA26 is equally radically revised. Instead of the haphazard citation of witnesses found in the earlier editions, a select list of witnesses is cited for all readings. The witnesses cited include all papyri, all early uncials, and a selection of late uncials and minuscules -- usually about twenty witnesses for each reading. The most important of these witnesses, the papyri and the early uncials, are cited explicitly. (In the twenty-seventh edition, certain important minuscules -- 33, 1739, 1881, 2427 -- are elevated to the ranks of the explicitly cited witnesses.) The remaining witnesses, mostly Byzantine or mixed, are cited explicitly only when they differ from the Byzantine text; otherwise they are contained within the Majority Text symbol . An example of the use of the Majority Text symbol is shown in the example above. This apparatus offers distinct advantages. It cites many important manuscripts in a minimum of space, and is quite convenient to use once one becomes accustomed to it. In addition, the Nestle-Aland apparatus is probably the most accurate since Tischendorf. The several appendices offer additional useful information, e.g. about the differences between the major twentieth century editions. The margin has a much fuller set of cross-references than most comparable editions, and includes several ancient systems of enumeration. There are still a few drawbacks. Some witnesses have lacunae which are not noted in the appendix. The reader may therefore assume, falsely, that a witness

agrees with the majority text when in fact it is defective. (This was a particular problem in the twenty-sixth edition with 33, which is often illegible. This was solved in the twenty-seventh edition by citing 33 explicitly. However, the even more problematic 1506 is still not cited explicitly. In addition, the Nestle text does not list lacunae precisely; when it says, e.g., that 81 lacks Acts 4:8-7:17, 17:28-23:9, it means that it lacks those verses in their entirety. The verses on the edge of these lacunae -- Acts 4:7, 7:18, 17:27, 23:10 -- will almost certainly be fragmentary, so one cannot trust citations from silence in those verses.) The set of variants in NA26 is still relatively limited; with minor exceptions, only those variants found in NA25 are cited in NA26. The thorough critic will therefore need to use a fuller edition -- Tischendorf, Von Soden, or Merk -- to examine the full extent of variation in the tradition. Students are also advised to remember that Nestle-Aland cites only Greek and Latin fathers. The eastern tradition is entirely ignored. Those wishing to know the text of Ephraem, say, will have to turn to another source.

Das Neue Testament auf Papyrus

Editor. Volume 1 (Catholic Epistles) edited by K. Junack and W. Grunewald; Volume 2 (Romans, Corinthians) edited by K. Junack, E. Gting, U. Nimtz, K. Witte; additional volimes forthcoming. Dateof Publication. Ongoing. First volume published 1986. The Text. This is not truly a critical text; in one sense it is not a text at all. A continuous text (that of the United Bible Societies Edition) is printed, but this is followed by continuous texts of the various papyri extant for the particular passage. The significance of this edition, therefore, is not for its text but for its apparatus, which is the fullest collection of the texts of the papyri and uncials now known. It is also esteemed as highly accurate. The apparatus in general falls into three parts: The text (as found in UBS and any extant papyri), the commentary on the papyri (describing their readings as well as information on early editions), and the full apparatus, noting readings of all papyri and uncials extant for this passage. It should be noted that the edition is not a true collation of the uncials, though it is a full transcription of the papyri. While every significant variant in the uncials is noted, spelling and orthographic variants are not noted, nor peculiar forms used in the manuscripts (e.g. the text does not note places where D/06 confuses the endings - and -). The apparatus of the Auf Papyrus edition is unusually simple and straightforward. The three basic sections of the apparatus are shown in the sample below (adapted, obviously, from the apparatus for Philippians 1:1. This is the actual apparatus, save that it has been reset for on-screen clarity and omits all sections not relevant to Philippians 1:1).

The Basic Text: The UBS reading, with the readings of P46 below (in smaller type). The Commentary, describing the details of what the papyri read, including comments on previous editions. Note that, had other papyri contained this passage, their readings would also have been discussed under separate heads. The Apparatus, showing the major readings of both papyri and uncials. The section for Philippians 1:1 is exceptional in that it has a part both for the book title and the text itself. Most pages will show only one part. The first section, at the top of the page, shows the readings of P 46 in detail, setting them off against the UBS text. Note that the apparatus shows even the page layout (e.g. the line is page 168, line 21. This is noted with the notation "|168,21"). Where the text of the papyrus agrees exactly with the UBS text for a given word, this is noted with the ditto mark (,,). If there is any difference, or if some of the letters in the papyrus are uncertain or illegible, the word is spelled out, with (as is normal) dots below letters indicating uncertainty and letters in brackets [ ] indicating lacunae. Observe that P 46 is totally defective for the final words of verse 1, and so there is no text cited below the UBS text for that line. Below the actual text is the discussion, describing the actual readings and the differences between editions. Notice, first, the discussion of order, followed by

the discussion of individual lines. So, e.g, we learn that the Kenyon edition (Ed. pr.2) omitted the terminal sigma of in the title, as well as the two uncertain vowels of in line 22 and all letters in line 23. Below the discussion of the papyri we see the actual apparatus. This is exceptionally clear and easy to understand. To begin with, it lists all papyri and uncials which contain the passage (though lacunae in the uncials are not noted with the fullness of the papyri). The apparatus is straightforward: Every variant starts with a lemma (the UBS text of the variant in question), along with a list of supporters if appropriate. This is followed by the variant reading(s) with their supporters. Again, we should note what this edition is not. It is not, despite the very full apparatus (which genuinely invites comparison to Tischendorf, save that it is restricted to readings found in papyri and uncials), a collation. Since the orthographic variants of the uncials are not noted, you cannot use it to reconstruct the actual text of an uncial. And if you wish a collation of a papyrus, you will have to do it yourself. Finally, if you wish to know which corrector of an uncial gave rise to a correction, you may have to refer to another edition. Despite these drawbacks, Das Neue Testament auf Papyrus is one of the most useful tools available -- the first real step in many years toward a full critical apparatus of the Epistles. It's most unfortunate that it is priced so high; this volume should be on every textual critic's desk, not confined to seminary libraries.

Souter
Editor. Critical apparatus by Alexander Souter; the text itself is considered to be that underlying the English Revised Version of 1881. Dateof Publication. The first edition, Novvm Testamentvm Graece, appeared in 1910. A revised edition (offering, e.g., the evidence of the Beatty papyri) was released in 1947. The Text. The text of Souter is that of Archdeacon Edwin Palmer, and is considered to be the Greek text underlying the English Revised Version. This produced a rather curious edition. To begin with, the scholars responsible for the RV were mandated to make the fewest possible changes in the text of the King James Version. It was decided that changes in the text could only be made by a two-thirds majority of the committee. What is more, the committee had a rather haphazard method for determining the original text, allowing Hort (who generally favoured the Alexandrian text) and Scrivener (who preferred a more Byzantine text) to state their cases, then choosing between the two. The result is a text which frequently follows Hort, but sporadically adopts Byzantine readings as well. Palmer's method exacerbated this problem. Since he wished to keep the text as close as possible to the KJV and the Textus Receptus, he made only the minimal number of revisions to the Greek text. Thus the text of Souter always

follows the TR at points of variation which cannot be rendered in English, while more often than not following the text of Westcott & Hort at points where the variation affects the sense of the passage. At least, this is what commentaries on the edition say. Interestingly, Souter's introduction does not mention Palmer. Even more interesting, a check reveals that the text of the Apocalypse was not prepared by this method; it regularly goes against the TR in variants which have no significance in English. I do not know the source of Souter's text of that book. Still, that leaves 26 books largely based on the Textus Receptus. For this reason, critical editors rarely pay much attention to the text of Souter. The apparatus is another matter. The Apparatus. Souter's apparatus lists only a limited number of variants (perhaps a third the number found in Nestle-Aland). The apparatus is, however, exceptionally clear and easy to use (which is fortunate, since the introduction consists of a mere two and a half pages, in Latin). The reading of the text is given, usually followed by its support (in the order papyri, uncials, minuscules, version, fathers; Souter does not classify witnesses). The variant readings and their support follow (in some readings where the variant is thinly supported, the evidence for the text is not listed). A noteworthy feature of Souter's apparatus is the degree of detail it gives about the Fathers. These are cited in careful and specific detail. This is one of the best features of Souter's edition. The revised edition of Souter cites papyri through P 48, uncials through 0170, minuscules through 2322, a full list of versions (including Armenian, Gothic, Georgian, and Ethiopic), and nearly two hundred fathers of all eras. The Byzantine text is cited under the symbol .

Swanson
Editor. Critical apparatus and parallels compiled by Reuben J. Swanson. The text is that of the United Bible Societies edition. Dateof Publication. Published in several volumes, and ongoing. The first volume, The Horizontal Line Synopsis of the Gospels, Greek Edition; Volume I. The Gospel of Matthew, was published in 1982 (and has since been republished with the text of Codex Vaticanus replacing the original text). At present, the four gospels and the Acts have been published (in separate volumes), and Paul is underway. The Text. The Greek text of Swanson, as noted, is that of the UBS edition (now being replaced by Vaticanus), and has no independent interest. The value of Swanson lies in its bulky but extremely clear apparatus. The Apparatus . Swanson's apparatus, in the gospels, consists of three parts: Texts with parallels, critical apparatus, and list of Old Testament allusions (the

later simply a list of the Gospel verses and the Old Testament passages they cite). The apparatus of parallels is perhaps the simplest of any now available. The first line of the text is that of the Gospel under consideration. (This text can readily be recognized by the typeface; in Matthew, e.g.,it is underlined.) Below it are the texts of the other gospels. This arrangement in parallel lines has the advantage of allowing much easier comparison with the other gospels. The parallels are pointed up by the type, since places where the other gospels match the chosen edition are printed in the same style. The example below illustrates the point for the opening words of Matthew 9:1 and its parallels in Mark 5:18, Luke 8:37b.
M 9. 1 Mk 5.81 L 8.37b

The apparatus is equally straightforward (and equally bulky). The apparatus for the above line of text, for instance, appears as follows, showing the full text of all the witnesses Swanson cites, including variations in spelling: M 9. 1 BL 1.565.1582 C* Cc EFKW * c 13

This strength of Swanson is also a weakness, as it results in absolutely massive volumes. Swanson's volume of Matthew, for instance, requires 362 pages of text and apparatus. Taking page size into account, this is 15.4 square metres of paper surface. By comparison, the Aland synopsis of all four gospels takes only 29.1 square metres, and manages to include more material (more manuscripts in the apparatus, if perhaps a poorer selection; citations from non-canonical gospels and other sources; a fuller set of cross-references, etc.) The list of witnesses cited in Swanson is, in many ways, superior to the various Aland editions. It is a relatively short list, omitting fragmentary manuscripts and (for obvious reasons, given the nature of the apparatus) versions and fathers, but the witnesses are generally balanced (as opposed to the Aland apparatus, which is biased toward the Alexandrian text and heavily biased against the Byzantine). Again taking Matthew as an example, it includes the earliest Alexandrian witnesses ( B C L), the one and only "Western" witness (D), several leading "Csarean" witnesses ( 1 13 28 565 1582), two important mixed witnesses (P45 W), and (most unusually) an adequate set of Byzantine witnesses (A E F G K Y ). While the apparatus contains some errors (inevitable in a project of such scope), it is generally accurate, and contains

details not found in any other critical edition. It is also interesting to examine a passage such as Matthew 15:22, where the Nestle text seems to indicate a fairly stable tradition (no variant with more than four readings), but Swanson reveals no fewer than thirteen variants in this passage, despite only fifteen of his witnesses being extant.

Tasker
Editors. Text and apparatus compiled by R. V. G. Tasker based on the version translated in the New English Bible. Dateof Publication. The New English Bible itself appeared in 1961; Tasker's retroversion into Greek, The Greek New Testament, Being the Text Translated in The New English Bible, appeared in 1964. (As noted, Tasker's text is a retroversion; for the most part the NEB committee did not actually prepare a text.) The Text. As has often been the case when a text is compiled by a translation committee, Tasker's text is rather uneven. It has been admitted that the reading adopted is often simply that preferred by the person who first attempted a translation. The result is a text largely Alexandrian (normally following the preUBS Nestle text on which it is largely based), but with odd mixtures of "Western" and Byzantine readings depending on the opinions of the translators. This text, since it does not adhere to any textual theory or display much coherence, has not met with widespread approval. The Apparatus. Tasker's apparatus is very limited; it discusses only the few hundred variants noted in the NEB margin. Only a handful of manuscripts (including 11 papyri up to P51, 27 uncials up to 0171, and 44 minuscules up to 2059) are cited, and those sporadically. It is a rare note that cites more than ten manuscripts. On the other hand, the notes do describe why the committee adopted the reading it did -- a useful practice since adopted by the UBS committee in its supplementary volume.

Tischendorf
Editors. Text and apparatus edited by Constantin von Tischendorf. Dateof Publication. Tischendorf published no fewer than eight major editions in his life, as well as abridged editions and various collations and facsimiles. His magnum opus, however, was the Editio octava critica maior (1869-1872), which remains unsurpassed as a complete edition of the New Testament text. The Text. Tischendorf's text is eclectic, though Tischendorf did not have a detailed textual theory. In practice he had a strong preference for the readings of his discovery , especially where it agreed with D. His text thus has

something of a "Western" tinge, although it is generally Alexandrian (insofar as that text was known in the mid-Nineteenth century, before B was made widely known). The resulting text, therefore, is not held in particularly high regard; the value of Tischendorf lies in... The Apparatus. Tischendorf's apparatus was, in its time, comprehensive, and it remains the most complete available. It cited all major readings of all major manuscripts, offering the evidence of almost all known uncials, plus noteworthy readings of many minuscules, the versions, and the Fathers. Tischendorf's apparatus is generally easy to read, particularly if one knows Latin. A lemma is cited for all variants. If each variant has significant support, the evidence for the text is listed following the lemma, followed by the variant reading(s) and their support. If the variant is supported by only a few witnesses, the variant reading is cited immediately after the lemma. So, for example, in Gal 1:4 the apparatus reads: cum *ADEFGKLP al50 fere syrp Or1,238 etc ... (= Gb Sz) cum 17. 67** al sat mu Ignintpol314 al
c

This translates as , the reading of Tischendorf's text (read also by the uncited editions, i.e. Lachmann and Tischendorf7) is supported by the uncials * A D E(=Dabs) F G K L P and about fifty other witnesses plus the Harklean Syriac (syrp) and the cited text of Origen. The variant is supported by the Textus Receptus ( ) and the editions of Griesbach and Scholz; by c, B, 17 (=33), 67** (=424c), by many other Greek witnesses, and by the cited text of Ignatius. The greatest single difficulty with Tischendorf's apparatus is the nomenclature. Tischendorf died before he could finish his introduction, so many of the witnesses cited were difficult to identify (this is particularly true of the Fathers, cited by a complex system of abbreviations). Another complication is attributions; Tischendorf lived in the nineteenth century, and even he did not have the time or the resources to verify everything he cited (nor could he always identify the manuscripts cited in prior editions). So one often encounters a notation such as "6 ap Scri" (i.e. 6 according to Scrivener) or "cop ms ap Mill et Wtst" (i.e. a manuscript of the [Bohairic] Coptic according to Mill and Wettstein). An introduction supplying much of the needed background was supplied by Caspar Rene Gregory in 1894, but it is worth remembering that Tischendorf wrote before Gregory revised the manuscript numbering system. Thus almost all minuscules (except in the Gospels), and even some of the uncials, have the wrong numbers. In Paul, for instance, the minuscules most often cited include 17, 31, 37, 39, 46, 47, 67, 71, 73, 80, and 115; in modern notation, these are 33, 104, 69, 326, 181, 1908, 424, 1912, 441+442, 436, and 103. In addition, the names used for the versions have sometimes changed (e.g. syr p is the Harklean version, not the Peshitta!). To make matters worse, Tischendorf often did not even use numbers for manuscripts; the sigla for more recently-discovered documents often consists of a letter and a superscript indicating a collator, e.g. ascr means the "a" manuscript collated by scr=Scrivener. This is the manuscript we know as 206. Most of the manuscripts cited under these symbols are

relatively unimportant, but it is worth noting that lo ti=pscr is the important minuscule 81. To save space, in the Gospels Tischendorf cites a group of uncials as unc 9; these represent a block of Byzantine uncials. In addition to manuscripts, Tischendorf cites the readings of earlier editions: the Stephanus and Elzevir editions of the Textus Receptus, Griesbach, Scholz, Lachmann, and Tischendorf's own previous edition). (In fact, Tischendorf's editio minor includes only those variants where these editions disagree.) Tischendorf also gives more explicit Latin evidence than most editions; see the notes on Tischendorf under the Latin Editions.

United Bible Societies Edition

Editors. Original edition compiled by Kurt Aland, Matthew Black, Bruce M. Metzger, and Allen Wikgren; Carlo M. Martini joined the committee for the second and third editions; the fourth edition was prepared by Barbara Aland, Kurt Aland, Johannes Karavidopoulos, Martini, and Metzger. Dateof Publication. The first edition, The Greek New Testament, appeared in 1966. The second edition, slightly revised, appeared in 1968. The third edition (1975) contained a significantly revised text (now generally cited as UBS or GNT) and a slightly revised apparatus. The fourth edition (1993) has the same text as the third, but a significantly revised apparatus. The Text. The UBS3 text, which is also shared by the 26th and 27th editions of Nestle-Aland, was prepared by a committee. As a result, it has few of the erratic readings which might be found in the text of a single editor (a fact which has been in large measure responsible for its widespread adoption). On the other hand, it is a strongly eclectic text, with no clear textual theory behind it. In general it follows the Alexandrian witnesses, and is closer to the Westcott & Hort text than most of the other modern editions, but it is not as radically Alexandrian as Westcott and Hort. The supplementary volume to the edition describes how the committee decided its text -- but only by example. The volume gives details on how the committee chose many readings -- but makes no attempt to describe the theories followed by the five editors. Nor do we know how the individual editors voted on the various readings (except for the handful of readings where they have filed signed "minority opinions"). We have very little real sense how the text came about. The Apparatus. The apparatus of UBS is extremely limited; it is concerned only with variants "meaningful for translators." In any given chapter of a book, one can expect to find only a half dozen or so variants. Thus the apparatus can in no sense be considered complete. On the other hand, the apparatus is easy to use and very full. For each reading, all papyri, all early uncials, and a handful of late uncials are cited, as are several

dozen minuscules, an assortment of lectionaries, a number of versions, and a wide selection of fathers. All witnesses are explicitly cited for all variants, usually in the order papyri, uncials, minuscules, lectionaries, versions, fathers. (There are a few minor exceptions to this; lectionaries are generally grouped under the symbol Lect, and in the fourth edition certain uncials are listed following the symbol Byz, denoting the Byzantine text.) Care must be taken with the list of witnesses, however. UBS 1-UBS3 contain lists of uncials and minuscules cited; however, many of the uncials (e.g. E F G H of the gospels) are cited only exceptionally (this even though the list implies they are cited fully), and many of the minuscules are cited for only part of their content. The correct list of minuscules cited for each section of UBS 3 is as follows:

Gospels: (family 1) (family 13) 28 33 565 700 892 1009 1010 1071 1079 1195 1216 1230 1241 1242 1253 1344 1365 1546 1646 2148 2174 Acts: 33 81 88 104 181 326 330 436 451 614 629 630 945 1241 1505 1739 1877 2127 2412 2492 2495 Paul: 33 81 88 104 181 326 330 436 451 614 629 630 1241 1739 1877 1881 1962 1984 1985 2127 2492 2495 Catholics: 33 81 88 104 181 326 330 436 451 614 629 630 945 1241 1505 1739 1877 1881 2127 2412 2492 2495 Revelation: 1 94 1006 1611 1828 1854 1859 2020 2042 2053 2065 2073 2081 2138 2344 2432

This problem has been reversed in UBS4, which explicitly lists which minuscules are cited for which sections -- but no longer lists the actual contents of the manuscripts. This information must now be gathered from other sources.

Vogels
Editors. Heinrich Joseph Vogels. Dateof Publication. Original Greek text published 1920; Latin parallel added 1922; final edition published 1955. The Text. It's hard to imagine a critic who would rate this text highly. The editing principle, if there is one, seems to have been "choose the Alexandrian reading unless the Byzantine is easier." This is especially true in the gospels, where the Byzantine element is very strong (almost strong enough that we could call it a Byzantine edition for those books), but has some truth elswhere also. The text has many major agreements with the Byzantine text (e.g. Colossians 2:2, where Vogels chooses the Byzantine reading against the united opinions of every modern editor), but also curious agreements with the Alexandrians. It is thus the most Byzantine of the major editions, with some influence from Von Soden, but not Byzantine enough to be considered even faintly a Majority Text edition.

The Latin side, as one would expect of a Roman Catholic scholar, is the Clementine Vulgate. The Apparatus. The apparatus is as frustrating as the text. The number of variants cited is at the low end of adequate, the number of witnesses cited is small -- and the minuscules are cited by Tischendorf numbers! It's not hard to read the apparatus; it uses the fairly standard system of citing the lemma, then a bracket ], then the variant readings, then their support. Vertical bars | separate the variants. The real question is, why would anyone want to use the apparatus? If you're going to have to deal with Tischendorf numbers anyway, why not use Tischendorf (since it's now available online)? The Latin apparatus records a handful of variants, but without indication of the manuscript tradition behind them (it could be Amiatinus or it could be most of the tradition); it's even less use than the Greek apparatus.

Westcott & Hort

Editors. Brooke Foss Westcott (1825-1901) and Fenton John Anthony Hort (1828-1892) Dateof Publication. The text was published in 1881 (under the title The New Testament in the Original Greek; an Introduction [and] Appendix, authored by Hort, appeared in 1882 (revised edition by F. C. Burkitt in 1892). The Text. The WH text is a very strongly Alexandrian text -- so much so that Hort has been accused of constructing his text simply by looking for the reading of Codex Vaticanus. The situation is not that simple; a better statement would be to say that the edition used B as a proof text. Hort (who was the chief architect of the textual theory of the book) would follow other witnesses if the internal evidence was sufficiently strong. The most noticeable instance of this is the famous Western Non-Interpolations. Still, it is fair to say that Hort's text falls closer to B than that of any other critical edition. It is, in fact, the one New Testament edition which approaches the method, used in some forms of nonBiblical criticism, of editing from a proof text. The Apparatus. The WH edition has no true critical apparatus; not one manuscript is cited in the main body of the edition. There are a few variant readings in the margin; these are readings where the editors disagreed on the text or were very uncertain of the original readings. They also have a list of "interesting" variants. In neither apparatus do they supply a list of witnesses. The only textual evidence they give is in the discussion of readings in their Introduction [and] Appendix, and even these are difficult to use as manuscripts are (inevitably) cited using Tischendorf numbers.

The lack of an apparatus in WH has been criticised by some. This is rather unfair in context. They worked very shortly after Tischendorf published his eighth edition; they had nothing to add to it. (As both men were caught up in academic and pastoral duties, they did not have the leisure to go and examine manuscripts in odd places. In any case, all manuscripts known to be valuable, save B itself, had been studied by Tischendorf.) The problem with the WH edition is not its lack of an apparatus, but the fact that the coordinated apparatus (Tischendorf's) is now hard to find and hard to read. The WH edition has another interesting feature: Some dozens of readings are obelized as "primitive errors" -- i.e. passages where the original reading is no longer preserved in the extant manuscripts. Westcott and Hort did not see fit, in these cases, to print conjectural emendations (they printed what they regarded as the oldest surviving reading), but the presentation of their data makes it clear that they felt it to be needed in these passages.

Summary: A Comparison of the Various Editions

This section offers various comparisons of the materials in the sundry editions, to show the qualities of each edition. (Note: Some editions, such as Swanson, are not included in certain of the comparisons, because they count variants in different ways.) For a truly detailed comparison of the major editions for the book of Colossians, see the Sample Apparatus of Colossians. Statistic1: VariantsPer Chapter Let's take a few selected chapters, and count how many variants are cited in each chapter by the various editions (note: variants are usually but not quite always counted based on the way the editor divides them; the fact that SQE 13 and Huck/Greeven both show 76 variants in Matthew 10, for instance, does not mean that they have the same variants or even include similar classes of variants, just that they have about as many separate citations in the apparatus): Sample 1: Matthew 10 Edition Aland: SQE ed. 13 Bover Hodges & Farstad Huck/Greeven Variants in Apparatus 76 (as shown on pp. 138-149) 21 showing ms. support; 2 more where only editors cited 10 MT variants; 19 MT vs. UBS variants 76 (as shown on pp. 57-60)*

Merk Nestle ed. 13

55 (+27 variants in the Latin parallel) 43

Nestle-Aland ed. 25 50 Nestle-Aland ed. 27 58 Souter Tasker Tischendorf UBS Ed. 3 UBS Ed. 4 Westcott & Hort 12 1 147 5 2 4 with marginal variants, 3 "noteworthy rejected"

* For comparison, the equivalent sections in Huck/Lietzmann show 5 variants Sample 2: Mark 2 Edition Aland: SQE ed. 13 Bover Hodges & Farstad Huck/Greeven Merk Nestle ed. 13 Variants in Apparatus 109 (as shown on pp. 60-66) 36 showing ms. support; 3 more where only editors cited 11 MT variants; 46 MT vs. UBS variants 102 (as shown on pp. 49-66)* 70 (+27 variants in the Latin parallel) 47

Nestle-Aland ed. 25 50 Nestle-Aland ed. 27 48 Souter Tasker Tischendorf UBS Ed. 3 UBS Ed. 4 Westcott & Hort 8 None 140 10 8 13 with marginal variants, 1 "noteworthy rejected"

* For comparison, the equivalent sections in Huck/Lietzmann show 12 variants Sample 3: John 18

Edition Aland: SQE ed. 13 Bover Hodges & Farstad Merk Nestle ed. 13

Variants in Apparatus 96 (as shown on pp. 455-475) 36 showing MS support; 1 more where only editors listed 13 MT variants; 40 MT vs. UBS variants 65 (+32 variants in the Latin parallel) 42

Nestle-Aland ed. 25 49 Nestle-Aland ed. 27 72 Souter Tasker Tischendorf UBS Ed. 3 UBS Ed. 4 Westcott & Hort Sample 4: Acts 6 Edition Bover Hodges & Farstad Merk Nestle ed. 13 Variants in Apparatus 5 3 MT variants; 5 MT vs. UBS variants 37 (+11 variants in the Latin parallel) 24 6 1 162 4 3 7 with marginal variants, 1 "noteworthy rejected"

Nestle-Aland ed. 25 27 Nestle-Aland ed. 27 26 Souter Tasker Tischendorf UBS Ed. 3 UBS Ed. 4 Westcott & Hort Sample 5: Acts 18 Edition Variants in Apparatus 9 None 78 3 2 3 with marginal variants; 0 "noteworthy rejected"

Bover Hodges & Farstad Merk Nestle ed. 13

15 showing MS support; 1 more where only editors listed 8 MT variants; 26 MT vs. UBS variants 53 (+22 variants in the Latin parallel) 56

Nestle-Aland ed. 25 60 Nestle-Aland ed. 27 59 Souter Tasker Tischendorf UBS Ed. 3 UBS Ed. 4 Westcott & Hort 24 2 134 11 10 4 with marginal variants; 2 "noteworthy rejected"

Sample 6: 1 Corinthians 13 Edition Bover Hodges & Farstad Merk Nestle ed. 13 Variants in Apparatus 8 showing MS support; 6 more where only editors listed 2 MT variants; 10 MT vs. UBS variants 26 (+11 variants in the Latin parallel) 16

Nestle-Aland ed. 25 17 Nestle-Aland ed. 27 13 Souter Tasker Tischendorf UBS Ed. 3 UBS Ed. 4 Westcott & Hort 2 1 46 1 3 2 with marginal variants; 1 "noteworthy rejected"

Sample 7: Colossians 2 Edition Bover Variants in Apparatus 14 showing MS support; 2 more where only editors cited

Hodges & Farstad 8 MT variants; 14 MT vs. UBS variants

Merk Nestle ed. 13 Nestle-Aland ed. 25 Nestle-Aland ed. 27 Souter Tasker Tischendorf UBS Ed. 3 UBS Ed. 4 Westcott & Hort

37 (+36 in the Latin parallel) 31 31 31 14 None 98 6 7 9 with marginal variants (3 being primitive errors), 0 "noteworthy rejected"

Sample 8: James 2 Edition Bover Hodges & Farstad Merk Nestle ed. 13 Variants in Apparatus 10 showing MS support; 2 more where only editors cited 5 MT variants; 19 MT vs. UBS variants 41 (+24 in the Latin parallel) 36

Nestle-Aland ed. 39 25 Nestle-Aland ed. 49 27 Souter Tasker Tischendorf UBS Ed. 3 UBS Ed. 4 Westcott & Hort 13 1 67 3 4 6 with marginal variants (one being a punctuation variant), 0 "noteworthy rejected"

Sample 9: 1 John 4

Edition Bover Hodges & Farstad Merk Nestle ed. 13

Variants in Apparatus 7 showing MS support; 1 more where only editors cited 4 MT variants; 7 MT vs. UBS variants 39 (+24 in the Latin parallel) 28

Nestle-Aland ed. 25 29 Nestle-Aland ed. 27 35 Souter Tasker Tischendorf UBS Ed. 3 UBS Ed. 4 Westcott & Hort 5 None 57 4 5 5 with marginal variants, 1 "noteworthy rejected"

Sample 10: Revelation 8 Edition Bover Hodges & Farstad Merk Nestle ed. 13 Variants in Apparatus 7 showing MS support; 1 more where only editors cited 17 29 (+30 in the Latin parallel) 19

Nestle-Aland ed. 25 19 Nestle-Aland ed. 27 29 Souter Tasker Tischendorf UBS Ed. 3 UBS Ed. 4 Westcott & Hort 9 None 56 1 None 4 with marginal variants, 1 "noteworthy rejected"

Sample 11: Revelation 15 Edition Bover Variants in Apparatus 4 showing MS support; 2 more where only editors cited

Hodges & Farstad Merk Nestle ed. 13

20 19 (+23 in the Latin parallel) 13

Nestle-Aland ed. 25 14 Nestle-Aland ed. 27 24 Souter Tasker Tischendorf UBS Ed. 3 UBS Ed. 4 Westcott & Hort 7 1 45 3 2 2 with marginal variants, 0 "noteworthy rejected"

Appendix: Latin Editions

In addition to a full set of Greek editions, a thorough student of the New Testament text should have access to a variety of Latin editions. We will not dwell at length on the various Latin editions, but the following section supplies brief notes. Observe that only editions with an apparatus are listed. So, for example, the Latin text of Bover, which is the Vulgate without apparatus, is ignored Merk. (For publication data, see the entry on Greek Merk). This is in many ways the handiest of the Latin editions, as it combines Greek and Latin editions side by side, with a critical apparatus of each. The Latin text is the Clementine Vulgate, but the apparatus (quite full for a manual edition) makes it easy to ascertain which variants are older. More than three dozen Vulgate witnesses are cited in total, with usually several dozen in each book; in addition, the Old Latin codices are cited heavily. Unfortunately, the result is not as accurate as might be hoped. Tests against Tischendorf and the smaller WW edition seem to indicate a high rate of errors, at least for am and ful. If exact knowledge of the readings of these manuscripts is for some reason essential, the student is advised to rely on other sources if possible. Nestle. This exists both as a standalone edition and as a Greek/Latin diglot; I've used the diglot. The scope of the edition is extremely limited: The text is the Clementine Vulgate, and the only variants noted are those in amiatinus (A), Fuldensis (F), and editions such as the Sixtine and Wordsworth-White editions. In addition, the presentation is such that it is often nearly impossible to

determine which just which manuscripts support which readings. As a parallel to Greek Nestle, Latin Nestle has some slight value (mostly because the parallels line up nicely). It is not, in itself, a particularly useful edition, either in text or apparatus. Tischendorf. Tischendorf published Latin editions (what didn't he publish?), but this is a reference to the eighth edition of his Greek New Testament. This, of course, lacks a Latin text, but if you are using the Latin solely for purposes of examining the Greek, Tischendorf's edition is more useful than several of the other editions here. Tischendorf cites the Clementine Vulgate (vg cle) and four manuscripts consistently: am(iatinus), demid(ovianus), fu(ldensis) and tol(etanus), with their consensus being noted simply as vg. He also cites others, such as harl(eianus), occasionally. It's only a handful of manuscripts, but at least you know exactly what you are getting. Weber (the StuttgartVulgate ). The vgst of the Nestle editions. In some ways, the best of the hand editions; it is the only edition other than Wordsworth-White (on which it is significantly dependent) to have a critical text, and the only one other than Merk to have a real apparatus with a significant selection of witnesses. Plus, it notes the exact extent of all the manuscripts is noted. And, unlike Merk, the apparatus is generally regarded as accurate. Sadly, it has two drawbacks: Not enough variants, and not enough range of witnesses. To demonstrate the point about variants, we look at 1 Thessalonians. The Stuttgart edition has, by my casual count, 88 variants, often of very slight scope. This is twice the count of the lesser Wordsworth-White -- but Merk has 104 variants, often covering more text, in this book. Thus, as with the Greek, one really should have two hand editions. For the Greek, it's Nestle for accuracy and Merk for a full list of variants; on the Latin side, one should have vg st for accuracy and Merk for range. WordsworthWhiteEditio Minor. This is probably the sort of edition that should have been used in the Nestle diglot. It is a critical text (identical in some parts to the larger Wordsworth-White edition, though distinct in certain books where the larger edition was unfinished at that time). The critical apparatus cites also enough good manuscripts to be useful, as well as the readings of the Sixtine and Clementine editions. That's the good news. The bad news is, the manuscripts are not cited with any regularity. All variants in the editions are noted, but readings of the manuscripts only rarely. Taking as a random example the book of 1 Thessalonians, the edition cites a total of 45 variants. Only five of these cite the manuscripts; the rest cite only editions. Thus the apparatus, while generally accurate, is quite limited.

New Testament Manuscripts

Papyri
Contents: * P11 * P13 * P20 * P24 * P28 * P39 * P45 * P46 * P48 * P51 * P52 * P54 * P74 * P75 * P78 * P90 * Note: Many of the papyri, especially the Beatty and Bodmer papyri, have been subject to so much discussion that no attempt is made to compile a full bibliography.

P11

Location/Catalog Number
Saint Petersburg, Russian National Library Gr. 258A

Contents
1 Corinthians 1:17-22, 2:9-12, 2:14, 3:1-3, 3:5-6, 4:3-5:5, 5:7-8, 6:5-9, 6:11-18, 7:3-6, 7:10-14, with even the surviving verses often damaged (so much so that Tischendorf was unable to tell whether the fragments he had were of five or six leaves).

Date/Scribe
Dated paleographically to the seventh century. Some older manuals give its date as the fifth century, but this was based on comparison with uncial manuscripts; a comparison with the style of papyri resulted in the change.

Description and Text-type

Aland and Aland list P11 as Category II. Von Soden listed its text as "H or I." In fact the text of P11 seems fairly ordinary (though its fragmentary nature makes a firm determination difficult; the Nestle text, for instance, cites it explicitly only about fifteen times, most often with the Alexandrian group A C 33, but also, with the Byzantine and "Western" texts; there appears to be some slight kinship with the later members of Family 1739, particularly 1881. Overall, the best description of its text is probably "mixed," although most of the readings are old. It does not appear to have any immediate relatives). The most noteworthy thing about P11, therefore, is not its text but its history: It was the first biblical papyrus to be discovered (Tischendorf observed it in 1862), and the only one to be cited in Tischendorf (as Q).

Other Symbols Used for this Manuscript

von Soden: 1020 Tischendorf: Qp

Bibliography
Collations: Ellwood M. Schofield, The Papyrus Fragments of the Greek New Testament See also K. Junack, Das Neue Testament auf Papyrus, Vol. 2: Die paulinischen Briefe SamplePlates: Editionswhichcite: Cited in all editions since Tischendorf. OtherWorks: Kurt Aland, "Neutestamentliche Papyri," NTS 3

P13

Location/Catalog Number
London (British Museum, Papyrus 1532 verso) and elsewhere (Florence, Cairo). Designated by its discoverers P. Oxy. 657

Contents
P13 is an opisthograph, with the epitome of Livy on the reverse side. Presumably the manuscript originally contained all of Hebrews (it has been suspected that it contained other material as well; a full-length scroll could contain rather more than twice the material found in Hebrews); it now retains Hebrews 2:14- Portions of two columns of P13, beginning with Hebrews 4:2. Note 5:5, 10:8-22, 10:29the extensive damage (which is even worse in the lower halves of 11:13, 11:28-12:17, the columns). P13 is the only extensive NT opisthograph. Note the with many minor surviving numbering at the top of the left column. lacunae. Despite the damage, P13 is the most extensive papyrus outside the Beatty and Bodmer collections.

Date/Scribe
Dated paleographically to the third or fourth century. It has been speculated that the scroll was carried to Egypt by a Roman official, then left behind and rewritten.

Description and Text-type

Aland and Aland list P13 as a free(?) text with "A number of distinctive readings, often with P46." Von Soden lists its text-type as H. The most substantial of the Oxyrhynchus papyri, P13 is also perhaps the most important. As noted by the Alands, it frequently aligns with P 46 (and -- perhaps even more often -- with B for the portions of Hebrews where both exist); Kenyon notes an 82% agreement rate between the two papyri, with similarities even in punctuation and pagination (even though the two cannot have had the same contents; a scroll simply could not contain ten Pauline letters. It is possible that

P13 contained Romans and Hebrews, in that order, in which case it followed the same order as P46). P13 contains a number of singular and subsingular readings, but this seems to be characteristic of the P46/B type. Since this type contains only three other witnesses (P46, B, and the Sahidic Coptic), P13 is an extremely important witness which has not, so far, received sufficient attention (Zuntz, e.g., never even mentions it in his work on 1 Corinthians and Hebrews).

Other Symbols Used for this Manuscript

von Soden: 1034 Designated P. Oxy. 657 in the Oxyrhynchus Papyri series.

Bibliography
Collations: B. P. Grenfell and A. S. Hunt, Oxyrhynchus Papyri, Volume 4. See also K. Junack, Das Neue Testament auf Papyrus, Vol. 2: Die paulinischen Briefe SamplePlates: Comfort, Manuscripts of the Greek Bible (1 page) Comfort, The Quest for the Original Text of the New Testament (1 page; same photo as above) Editionswhichcite: Cited in all editions since von Soden. OtherWorks: Comfort, Early Manuscripts & Modern Translations of the New Testament, p. 37

P20

Location/Catalog Number
Princeton University Library, Am 4117 -- Oxyrhynchus Papyrus 1171

Contents
Portions of James 2:19-3:9

Date/Scribe
Dated paleographically to the third century.

Description and Text-type

P20 is a fragment of a single leaf, 11.5 cm. tall and somewhat less than 4.5 cm. wide at the widest. It is the central portion of a leaf; both left and right edges are damaged, as is the bottom. Portions of 20 lines survive on each side, with usually about twelve characters per line. The original seems to have had about 30-35 characters per line, so the surviving portion is relatively slight. The hand is rough and hasty-looking; given the state of the manuscript, it is often difficult to distinguish the letters. The small amount of remaining text makes it difficult to classify the manuscript. The Alands list it as Category I, with a "normal" text. Von Soden lists it as H (Alexandrian). Schofeld reports that it only twice departs only twice from the "Bgroup," -- but of course this is a vague group description. Still, the general feeling is that the manuscript is Alexandrian.

Other Symbols Used for this Manuscript

von Soden: 1019

Bibliography
Collations: B. P. Grenfell and A. S. Hunt, Oxyrhynchus Papyri, volume 9. SamplePlates: W. H. P. Hatch, The Principal Uncial Manuscripts of the New Testament Editionswhichcite: Cited in Von Soden, Merk, Bover, NA26, NA27. OtherWorks: Comfort, Early Manuscripts & Modern Translations of the New Testament, pp. 39-40 Ellwood M. Schofield, The Papyrus Fragments of the Greek New Testament

P24

Location/Catalog Number
Newton Centre: Andover Newton Theological School, Franklin Trask Library, O.P. 1230 (i.e. Oxyrhynchus Papyrus 1230)

Contents
Portions of Rev. 5:5-8, 6:5-8

Date/Scribe
Dated paleographically to the fourth century by the Alands, though some have preferred the third century. The hand is unattractive and rather difficult; the copyist was probably not a trained scribe.

Description and Text-type

P24 is a fragment of a single leaf, shaped rather like a very short, fat letter T turned upside down. The vertical stroke of the T contains two lines, with only about five or six surviving letters per line; the cross of the T contains portions of four lines, with about sixteen letters on the two central (and best-preserved) lines. The lines appear to have been fairly long -- about 30-32 letters per line -so even the best-preserved lines retain only about half the text of the relevant verses. The fact that the manuscript has so many letters per line, and so many lines per page (there are over 1600 letters between Rev. 5:6 and Rev. 6:6, which at 32 letters per line gives us some 50+ lines per page) implies a large papyrus size; Schofield thought it might have been a church Bible. With only about 150 letters to examine, it is simply not possible to decide P 24's text-type. The Alands list P24 as Category I, but this is doubtless based primarily on its date (early manuscripts of the Apocalypse being so rare); even they don't venture a guess as to whether its text is free, normal, or strict. Comfort observes that the manuscript has "only" three divergences from A, but in context this is quite a high number.

Other Symbols Used for this Manuscript Bibliography

Collations: B. P. Grenfell and A. S. Hunt, Oxyrhynchus Papyri, volume 10. SamplePlates: Comfort, Early Manuscripts & Modern Translations of the New Testament, has plates of the entire manuscript. Editionswhichcite: Cited in Von Soden, Merk, Bover, NA26, NA27. OtherWorks: Comfort, Early Manuscripts & Modern Translations of the New Testament, pp. 41-42 Ellwood M. Schofield, The Papyrus Fragments of the Greek New Testament

P28

Location/Catalog Number
Berkeley (Palestine Institute Museum), Pacific School of Religion Papyrus 2 -Oxyrhynchus Papyrus 1596

Contents
Portions of John 6:8-12, 17-22

Date/Scribe
Dated paleographically to the third century. The hand slants slightly and looks hasty and unattractive. Numbers are spelled out (as, e.g., in P 66) rather than written as numerals (as in P75). Its use of the Nomina Sacra is incomplete; although we find abbreviated, in verse 9, we find spelled out.

Description and Text-type

P28 is a fragment of a single leaf, ten cm. tall and five wide. The surviving portion is from the bottom of the leaf, and is broken on both sides. Eleven lines survive on the recto, twelve on the verso (plus a few blots from a thirteenth). About 13-15 letters survive on each line, out of an average of perhaps 32 letters per line (the lines seem to have been somewhat irregular). Textually, most scholars have regarded P28 as Alexandrian. The Alands list it as Category I, with a "normal" text. Grenfell and Hunt described it as eclectic, somewhat closer to than B (though, given the list of variants below, I find it hard to see what led them to this conclusion). The small amount of surviving text makes any determination difficult, but the description "eclectic" seems to fit; it has noteworthy differences with almost every important manuscripts. The following table shows the notable readings of P 28, with their supporters (the text is as transcribed by Finegan): Readings of P28 and supporters 6:11 (P28 . ..) P66 A B D L W 892 al UBS 6:11 ... .... (i.e. or similar) P28 P66 (P75 .............., which could agree with P28 or with the later witnesses) N 69 579 6:11 Other readings * E F H 33 700 Byz; G f1 f13 565 (579 ) A B K L W f1 33 565 700 892 rell UBS; D

6:9 P28 P66c P75 rell UBS D*; P66* e

(P28 ........... but lacks space for a D E F G H K f13 892 Byz longer reading) P66 P75 * A B L N W f1 33 565 579 1241 al UBS 6:17 (P28 .... ...) (P75 .... ) rell UBS D

6:17 (L) W (f13 33 69 788 pc UBS; (P28 ..... ) (P75 D; . .... .. . ) B N ; A E F G H (K) f1 565 579 700 892 Byz 6:19 P28 P75-vid rell UBS 6:20 (P28 ...) (P75 ...) rell UBS 6:21 P28 rell UBS 6:22 (P28 ... ) D * D * f13 579 1424 pc (P75 ....) A B L N W 33 al UBS; E F G H 565 579 700 1241 Byz

(There are, of course, many other variants in this part of John, but P 28 is too fragmentary to testify to these, and the line lengths seemingly too irregular to testify to most of the add/omit variants. NOTE: NA27 and related editions list P28 as reading in verse 10. This is based solely on calculations of line lengths; the only surviving text is -. This reading does appear likely -- the line is extremely short if the reading is -- but is too uncertain for us to use it in determining textual groupings.) A similar situation occurs in verse 19, . P28 breaks off in the previous line at ...., i.e. , and all that survives of the text is . The Aland Synopsis lists P28 as omitting , but this is based solely on line lengths and must be considered quite uncertain.

Other Symbols Used for this Manuscript Bibliography

Collations: B. P. Grenfell and A. S. Hunt, Oxyrhynchus Papyri, volume 13. SamplePlates: Finegan, Encountering New Testament Manuscripts Editionswhichcite: Cited in Merk, Bover, NA26, NA27.

OtherWorks: Comfort, Early Manuscripts & Modern Translations of the New Testament, p. 43 Ellwood M. Schofield, The Papyrus Fragments of the Greek New Testament

P39

Location/Catalog Number
Rochester (New York, USA). Ambrose Swabey Library, Inv. no. 8864 -Oxyrhynchus Papyrus 1780

Contents
Portions of John 8:14-22

Date/Scribe
Dated paleographically to the third century. The hand is very clear and the surviving text easily read; one suspects an expert scribe.

Description and Text-type

P39 is a fragment of a single leaf, preserving the entire height of the manuscript but only one edge. There are 25 lines per page, but only about six or seven surviving letters per line (occasionally less, especially on the verso). There appear to have been about thirteen or fourteen letters per line (column?), meaning that about half the text survices. There is general agreement that the manuscript is Alexandrian. The Alands list it as Category I, with a "strict" text. Grenfell and Hunt list it as aligning with B; Schofield goes further, claiming it never departs from B. When these authors wrote, of course, P75 was not known. In the area covered by P39, there are only a handful of differences between P75 and B. P39 does not testify to verse 14, /. In verse 15, where P75 d f cop add , P39 is not extant, but line lengths make is more likely than not that it omits the word with B rell. (The next variant in P75, the omission of in verse 22, occurs after the end of the manuscript (which actually breaks off at the end of verse 21; all that is visible of verse 22 is part of a stroke of the first letter).

Other Symbols Used for this Manuscript

von Soden: 1019

Bibliography
Collations: B. P. Grenfell and A. S. Hunt, Oxyrhynchus Papyri, volume 15. SamplePlates: Editionswhichcite: Cited in Merk, Bover, NA26, NA27. OtherWorks: Comfort, Early Manuscripts & Modern Translations of the New Testament, p. 47 Ellwood M. Schofield, The Papyrus Fragments of the Greek New Testament

P45

Location/Catalog Number
Dublin, Chester Beatty Library, P. Chester Beatty I; Vienna, Austrian National Library, Pap. Vindob. G. 31974 (one leaf, containing Matt. 25:41-26:39)

Contents
P45 is surely in the worst condition of any of the substantial Biblical papyri. Even the surviving leaves (a small fraction of the original contents, estimated at 30 of 220 original leaves) are damaged; the most substantial pages are perhaps 8090% complete, but many others are just small fragments. There are relatively few complete lines; many of the surviving leaves represent only about 20% of the width of the original manuscript. Therefore any list of verses included in the manuscript will make it seem more substantial than it really is; very many of these verses survive only in part (often very small part). With that said, the verses represented at least partly in P 45 are: Matt. 20:24-32, 21:13-19, 25:41-26:39; Mark 4:36-40, 5:15-26, 5:38-6:3, 6:16-25, 36-50, 7:3-15, 7:258:1, 8:10-26, 8:34-9:8, 9:18-31, 11:27-12:1, 12:5-8, 13-19, 24-28; Luke 6:31-41, 6:457:7, 9:26-41, 9:45-10:1, 10:6-22, 10:26-11:1, 11:6-25, 28-46, 11:50-12:12, 12:18-37, 12:42-13:1, 13:6-24, 13:29-14:10, 14:17-33; John 4:51, 54, 5:21, 24, 10:7-25, 10:3111:10, 11:18-36, 43-57; Acts 4:27-36, 5:10-20, 30-39, 6:7-7:2, 7:10-21, 32-41, 7:52-8:1, 8:14-25, 8:34-9:6, 9:16-27, 9:35-10:2, 10:10-23, 31-41, 11:2-14, 11:24-12:5, 12:13-22, 13:6-16, 25-36, 13:46-14:3, 14:15-23, 15:2-7, 19-26, 15:38-16:4, 16:15-21, 16:32-40, 17:9-17. It is possible that the codex originally contained other books (e.g. the Catholic Epistles); unlike many of the major papyri, it is not a single-quire codex, but

rather uses gatherings of two leaves, meaning that it could have had many more leaves at the end. All told, we have two leaves of Matthew, six of Mark, seven of Luke, two of John, and thirteen of Acts, with the leaves of Matthew being only the smallest fragments. The leaves of Mark and Acts are rather more substantial, but still badly damaged; those of Luke and John are relatively complete. The leaves are broad enough, and the single column of text wide enough, that these thirty leaves contain substantial amounts of text, but still only about 5% of the original contents. Kenyon was of the opinion that the gospels were originally in the "Western" order Matthew, John, Luke, Mark, with Acts (and conceivably other material) following. Given the state of the manuscript, the fact that it used multiple quires, and the fact that it was brought to the west in pieces, this cannot be proved -but Mark and Acts were discovered together, so it seems likely.

Date/Scribe
Dated paleographically to the third century.

Description and Text-type

It appears that P45 was originally the most extensive of all papyrus manuscripts -- the only one to include more than one NT section. It has, however, been very badly damaged, meaning that relatively little text survives. This makes an accurate assessment of the manuscript's type rather difficult. Wisse, for instance, did not even attempt a profile. When Kenyon first published the manuscript, however, he attempted to classify it, stating that in Mark it seemed to be Csarean; in Luke and John, neither purely Alexandrian nor Western; in Acts, primarily Alexandrian (although it has some of the smaller "Western" variants, it has few if any of the greater). Kenyon, however, was probably led astray by Streeter's bad definition of the "Csarean" text and by all the bad work which followed from this. Two more recent works have re-examined the ground and produce a very different conclusion. The first and, in the long term, probably more important is E. C. Colwell, "Method in Evaluating Scribal Habits: A Study of P45, P66, P75" (1965; now available as pages 106-124 in Colwell's Studies in Methodology in Textual Criticism of the New Testament). This showed that P45 is the result of a freely paraphrased copy; the scribe of P45 or one of its immediate ancestors felt free to expand, paraphrase, and shorten the text. (Though Colwell noted that deletions were much more common than additions -- "The dispensable word is dispensed with.")

The noteworthy point here is that this sort of editing is typical of at least two other Gospel text-types, the "Western" and the "Csarean." (Though both of these add and harmonize more than they delete.) Observe what this means: To a scholar who simply studied the types of readings in P45 (as opposed to the pattern of readings, which is the true definition of a text-type), P 45 would appear to belong to one of the periphrastic text-types. Of the two, the "Csarean" is, of course, the more restrained, and also has more Alexandrian readings; P 45, as an Egyptian manuscript, probably started with an Alexandrian text. Thus, Colwell established that P45 needed to be examined more closely before it could be labelled "Csarean." Kenyon's "Csarean" classification was not rigorous, and was just what one would expect from a non-rigorous examination of a manuscript like P45. Colwell's implicit call for a more detailed study was supplied by Larry W. Hurtado in Text-Critical Methodology and the Pre-Caesarean Text: Codex W in the Gospel of Mark. This study suffers from major methodological flaws, but it pretty definitely establishes its main conclusion: That P 45 and W do not belong with the so-called "Csarean" text. (Hurtado has also been interpreted to mean that the "Csarean" text does not exist. This conclusion, however, is premature, given his methodology; see the discussion of the "Csarean" text in the article on text-types.) So where does this leave P45? The truth is, very little controlled analysis has been done of the manuscript. It was discovered too late for Von Soden. Wisse did not profile it. The Alands list it as Category I with a free text, but it seems likely that this assessment is based simply on what they think of the manuscript. The manuscript needs a re-evaluation before we can really state firm conclusions. My own analysis indicates that the manuscript is in fact closer to B than to any other uncial. On the face of it, it would appear that P 45 comes from the Alexandrian tradition, but has been so heavily edited that it begins to appear "Westernized."

Other Symbols Used for this Manuscript Bibliography

Note: As with most major manuscripts, no attempt is made to compile a complete bibliography. Collations: The basic publication remains Frederic G. Kenyon, Chester Beatty Biblical Papyri (Part II, The Gospels and Acts, in two fascicles). Various authors (Gerstinger, Merk, Zuntz) have published supplements or additional analysis. SamplePlates: Aland & Aland, The Text of the New Testament (1 plate)

Sir Frederick Kenyon & A. W. Adams, Our Bible and the Ancient Manuscripts (1 plate) Editionswhichcite: Cited in NA16 and later, UBS, Merk, Bover OtherWorks: The two most important works are probably those already cited: E. C. Colwell, "Method in Evaluating Scribal Habits: A Study of P45, P66, P75" (1965; pp. 106124 in Colwell's Studies in Methodology in Textual Criticism of the New Testament). Larry W. Hurtado in Text-Critical Methodology and the Pre-Caesarean Text: Codex W in the Gospel of Mark.

P46

Location/Catalog Number
Dublin, Chester Beatty Library, P. Chester Beatty II; Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Inv. 6238

Contents
86 leaves (out of an original total of 104), containing portions of Romans 5:17-1 Thes. 5:28 (plus Hebrews, following Romans). The surviving leaves (most of which are somewhat damaged) contain Romans 5: 17-6:3, 6:5-14, 8:15-25, 27-35, 8:37-9:32, 10:1-11, 11, 24-33, 11:35-15:9, 15:11-end (with 16:25-27 following chapter 15!); 1 Cor. 1:1-9:2, 9:4-14:14, 14:16-15:15, 15:17-16:22; 2 Cor. 1:1-11:10, 12-21, 11:23-13:13; Gal. 1:1-8, 1:10-2:9, 2:12-21, 3:2-29, 4:2-18, 4:20-5:17, 5:20-6:8, 6:10-18; Eph. 1:1-2:7, 2:10-5:6, 5:8-6:6, 6:8-18, 20-24; Phil. 1:1, 1:5-15, 17-28, 1:302:12, 2:14-27, 2:29-3:8, 3:10-21, 4:2-12, 14-23; Col. 1:1-2, 5-13, 16-24, 1:27-2:19, 2:23-3:11, 3:13-24, 4:3-12, 16-18; 1 Thes. 1:1, 1:9-2:3, 5:5-9, 23-28; Heb. 1:1-9:16, 9:18-10:20, 10:22-30, 10:32-13:25 The original contents of P46 are subject to debate. If the manuscript was indeed 104 pages long (and the quite numberings make it clear that it was intended to be so), there is no possible way it could have contained the Pastoral Epistles; the remaining space would have allowed inclusion of 2 Thessalonians but not much more. But, of course, scribes had to guess how many pages they would need in a single-quire codex. The Pastorals represent only a little more than 10% of the Pauline corpus, and an error of 10% in estimating the length of the codex is not impossible. Thus, while it seems fairly likely that P 46 did not and was not intended to include the Pastorals, the possibility cannot be denied that they were included on additional leaves attached at the end.

Date/Scribe
Various dates have been proposed for P46, based entirely on paleographic evidence. The earliest dates have been around the beginning of the second century (a date which has significant implications for the formation of the Pauline canon, but to which few experts subscribe); the latest have placed it in the third. The most widely accepted date is probably that of the Alands, who place it circa 200 C.E. The scribe of P46 seems to have been a professional copyist, working in a scriptorium. The former is implied by the neat book hand. The latter is less certain, but Zuntz notes several places where the scribe came to a crux in copying and left a small gap in the manuscript. Zuntz theorizes, and this seems reasonable, that the scribe was unable to read or understand the exemplar, and so left space to allow the corrector to settle the reading. Despite his apparent profession, the scribe left a great deal to be desired; P 46 contains a high number of peculiar errors. Zuntz thinks (and here again I believe he is right) that the copyist did much of the copying while tired or otherwise not at his best, as the errors seem to come in bunches, and are often quite absurd (e.g. writing for ). The correctors weren't much better. The first corrector was the scribe himself, who occasionally spotted his own errors and attempted to repair them. The second corrector seems to have been contemporary, and employed as the . But this scribe wasn't all that much better; according to Zuntz, he missed the large majority of the original scribe's peculiar errors. (This raises the possibility that the errors were in their common exemplar, but Zuntz does not believe this.) A third corrector, working probably in the third century, made a handful of corrections in a cursive script, as well as a line count. Zuntz thinks that this corrector was a private owner of the manuscript, making corrections as he spotted them rather than systematically examining the manuscript.

Description and Text-type

The text of P46 has been the subject of a quiet but significant controversy, with too many scholars ignoring others' results. When the manuscript was first found, it was thought to have mostly Alexandrian readings, but with a number of "Western" readings as well, especially in Romans. The only possible word for this description is "simplistic." A number of those socalled "Western" readings are not readings characteristic of D-F-G, but rather scribal blunders in P46. The rest are much more interesting, because they have a very strong tendency to agree with B.

This point is well worth remembering. If two manuscripts display a mixture of Alexandrian and "Western" readings, they may simply be mixed manuscripts. But if they display the same pattern of mixture, then they are genetically related. It should also be noted that P46 and B have a number of singular agreements -and that these agreements are by no means harmonistic adjustments or the like. Several of them (e.g. Col. 2:2, ; Col. 3:6, omit ) display strong signs of originality. It was Zuntz who first tackled this issue head-on. In The Text of the Epistles: A Disquisition upon the Corpus Paulinum, he examined the text of Paul starting not from the established Alexandrian/Byzantine/"Western" perspective but from the standpoint of P46. This proved an immensely (and probably excessively) laborious process; it took Zuntz a whole volume just to examine the data for two books (1 Corinthians and Hebrews). Nonetheless, it produced a noteworthy result: P46 and B form a group (along with a handful of other witnesses) which is clearly distinct from the main Alexandrian group found in A C 33 81 1175 etc. Zuntz proceeded to confuse the issue by calling this type "proto-Alexandrian," Even though he found that, where the types differed, both the proto-Alexandrian and Alexandrian texts preserved original readings, he still gave the clear impression that the proto-Alexandrian text was a forerunner of the mainstream Alexandrian group. I believe Zuntz knew better, but he did not really analyse the relations between his types, except on a reading-by-reading basis. This made his results hard to understand. In addition, Zuntz analysed the data only with respect to P46. This sounds reasonable, but in fact it has severe drawbacks. By his method, any manuscript which has a significant number of readings found only in P46+B, and not in the Alexandrian or Byzantine or "Western" texts, will appear to belong to the P46 type. So the Bohairic Coptic, which actually appears to be an Alexandrian text with some P46/B mixture, went into the P46/B type, as did 1739 (which on detailed examination shows readings of all three other texttypes, plus some of its own, making it perhaps a text-type in its own right). Unfortunately, Zuntz's research has not been pursued. Metzger's The Text of the New Testament, for instance, persists in describing it in terms of Alexandrian and "Western" readings. And Zuntz's research needs to be continued, as it focusses entirely on P46 and does not examine the tradition as a whole. My own results imply that there are fully five text-types in Paul: The Alexandrian text of A C 33 81 1175 1506 and the Bohairic Coptic; the P 46/B type (consisting only of these two and the Sahidic Coptic; this type too seems associated with Egypt, and so needs a name); the Western text of D F G and the Latins, the Byzantine text, and the Family 1739 text (in Paul, 1739 0121 0243 6 424** 630+2200 (Romans-Galatians) 1881; Origen's text is close to, but not identical with, that of this group). The Alexandrian, P46/B, and 1739 texts are somewhat closer to each other than to the other two, but by no means a single text. But it

should be noted that these results, like Zuntz's, have not been tested (though based on stronger statistical tools than most scholars have used). P46 should have been the most important papyrus ever discovered. P 45 is too fragmentary and periphrastic to be important, P47 too limited in extent, P66 too error-prone, and P72 and P75 too close to B to really contribute much. P46 should have changed our view of the entire history of the text of Paul. Somehow, this seems not to have happened.

Other Symbols Used for this Manuscript Bibliography

Note: As with most major manuscripts, no attempt is made to compile a complete bibliography. Collations: Frederick G. Kenyon, The Chester Beatty Biblical Papyri. (P46 is found in fascicle III, covering Paul) See also K. Junack, Das Neue Testament auf Papyrus, Vol. 2: Die paulinischen Briefe SamplePlates: Aland & Aland, The Text of the New Testament (1 plate) Comfort, Manuscripts of the Greek Bible (1 plate, same page as the above) Comfort, The Quest for the Original Text of the New Testament (1 plate; same page as above) Metzger, Manuscripts of the Greek Bible (1 plate) Metzger, The Text of the New Testament (1 plate -- again, the same leaf) Sir Frederick Kenyon & A. W. Adams, Our Bible and the Ancient Manuscripts (1 plate) Editionswhichcite: Cited in NA16 and later, UBS, Merk, Bover OtherWorks: Perhaps most important of the many works on P46 is the one already mentioned, as it is the only one to treat P46 in light of its own text rather than by comparison to the more recent uncials: G Zuntz, The Text of the Epistles: A Disquisition Upon the Corpus Paulinum.

P48

Location/Catalog Number
Florence, Laurenxian Library, PSI 1165.

Contents
Portions of Acts 23:11-17, 25-29.

Date/Scribe
Dated paleographically to the third century. The script is considered quite similar to P13.

Description and Text-type

P48 is extremely defective even for the surviving portion of a leaf. We have portions of three margins, but the key word is "portions"; we have really only about ten lines, from the middle of the page, and even those have lost portions (e.g. one whole vertical strip of papyrus has been lost). The latter verses hardly exist at all; the surviving material is just a few strings and strips extending down to the bottom margin of the page. It has become traditional to regard P48 as "Western" -- the Alands, e.g., list is as having a Category IV text, free but related to D. It is worth noting, however, that P48 and D have no common material at all. Determining the actual text-type of P48 is extremely difficult simply because of its limited size. The Nestle-Aland text, for instance, reports ten readings from the first section (Acts 23:11-17). Two of these readings are singular according to the apparatus, one is supported only by pc, and four are supported only by versions (usually Latin). One is supported by 614 h and the Harklean margin. But several of these are really conjectural readings from the heavily damaged portion of the papyrus. At least one reading (23:16, insert ) is based on only the barest handful of letters and is reconstructed on the basis of 614 h hark-marg. This can hardly be accepted as valid evidence of text-type.

Other Symbols Used for this Manuscript Bibliography

Collations: E. Lobel, C. H. Roberts, E. P. Wegener, Oxyrhynchus Papyri, Volume 18. See also K. Junack, Das Neue Testament auf Papyrus, Vol. 2: Die paulinischen Briefe SamplePlates: Editionswhichcite: Cited in NA26, NA27, and the UBS editions. (The edition of Merk also claims to cite it, but lists it as containing Matthew!)

OtherWorks: Comfort, Early Manuscripts & Modern Translations of the New Testament, p. 55

P51

Location/Catalog Number
Oxford (Ashmolean Museum, Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 2157).

Contents
Portions of Galatians 1:2-10, 13, 16-20. Every line of the surviving fragment is damaged (usually at both ends); every surviving verse is missing at least a few letters.

Date/Scribe
Dated paleographically to the fourth or fifth century.

Description and Text-type

Aland and Aland list P51 as Category II. It is hard to see how they determined this, however, as the fragment is so small. Collating its text against P 46 A B D G K L 81 30 365 1739 produced only eight eight variants where at least two of these manuscripts agree against the others; in these eight readings, P 51 showed the following rates of agreement: Manuscript Agreement Rate P46 A B D G K L 81 330 365 1739 3/7=43% 3/8=38% 3/8=38% 7/8=88% 2/8=25% 2/8=25% 2/8=25% 2/8=25% 3/8=38% 4/8=50% 2/8=25% 5/8=63%

Thus P51 is quite close to B. This is confirmed by the original editors, who describe the text as "eclectic... its closest affinities seem to be with B, but an agreement with D F G against A B P46 is worth noting." This reading is not, however, a true agreement with the "Western" witnesses; where D* F G read and the remaining witnesses have , P51 appears to conflate to read . (It should be noted, however, that every letter of this reading is at least slightly damaged; we should perhaps not place much importance on this variant.) It is curious to note that P 51 is not close to B's ally P46; as the editors note, "None of the three peculiar readings of ...[P 46]... find support here, nor does [P51] ever agree with P46 except when the latter is supporting B." The most interesting reading of P 51 is, however, in Gal. 1:5, where (along with H 0278 330) it reads . Thus, given the small amount of text we have to work with, we can hardly be dogmatic about P 51's text.

Other Symbols Used for this Manuscript Bibliography

Collations: E. Lobel, C. H. Roberts, E. P. Wegener, Oxyrhynchus Papyri, Volume 18. See also K. Junack, Das Neue Testament auf Papyrus, Vol. 2: Die paulinischen Briefe SamplePlates: Editionswhichcite: Cited in NA26, NA27, and the UBS editions. (The edition of Merk also claims to cite it, but lists it as containing Matthew!) OtherWorks: Comfort, Early Manuscripts & Modern Translations of the New Testament, p. 55

P52

Location/Catalog Number
Manchester, John Rylands Library, Gr. P. 457

Contents
Portions of John 18:31, 32, 33, 37, 38 (see transcription below)

Date/Scribe
Generally dated to the second century. C. H. Roberts, who first observed the manuscript, dated it before 150 C.E.. More recent observers have tended to date it in the range of 110 to 125 C.E.

Description and Text-type

Aland and Aland list P52 as a normal text. However, it should be noted that we really know nothing about the textual affiliations of this manuscript, which contains roughly 118 legible letters. The most noteworthy feature of the manuscript is its age -- though even this should be taken with some caution. How certain can a paleographic determination be when it is based on so small a sample? The story of the manuscript is well-known. Acquired by Grenfell in Egypt in 1920, it went unnoticed among many other manuscript fragments until 1934, when C. H. Roberts recognized that it contained part of the Gospel of John. Impressed with the antiquity of the writing, he hastily published a booklet, An Unpublished Fragment of the Fourth Gospel in the John Rylands Library. Despite some caution among scholars about his early and precise dating, almost all accept that it comes from the second century -- simultaneously proving that the codex form and the Gospel of John were in use by that date. The surviving fragment is only about 9 cm. tall by 6 cm. wide at its widest, counting lines makes it appear that the pages contained about eighteen lines of about 32 letters per line. This implies a page size of about 22 cm. by 20 cm. Textually P52 tells us little. The complete text is transcribed below:

recto

verso

As noted, it appears that P52 had about thirty characters per line. If so, then the likely reconstruction of the surviving lines is as follows (surviving characters shown in upper case, the rest in lower)

recto ... verso (...) Observe the mis-spellings of (line 1r), (line 4r). Perhaps more interesting are the uses of the name of Jesus in lines 2r and 5r. Was the name abbreviated? This is an important and difficult question. Looking at the verso, we find the following line lengths: 28, 30 (38 if is included), 29, 28, 29, 28, 31. In the recto, if "Jesus" is abbreviated, we have 35, 31, 31, 33, 28, 30; if it is expanded, 35, 34, 31, 33 (28 if we omit ), 31, 30. This is problematic, as the average line lengths on recto and verso are distinctly different -- 29 for the verso, 31.33 or 32.33 for the recto. If we consider only the recto, using the long forms produces less deviation for the line lengths (standard deviation of 1.97; it is 2.42 if we use the short lengths). However, if we take all thirteen lines we can measure, using the abbreviations produces the lesser deviation (2.14, with a mean line length of 30.1; without abbreviations the mean is 30.5 and the deviation 2.30). On the whole, then, it is perhaps slightly more likely that the manuscript used the nomina sacra than not. As far as interesting variants go, P52 tells us little. The following is a list of variants to which it attests (note that these are all either idiosyncratic readings or of trivial importance, often both):

18:32 P52-vid P66-vid rell; W sa ac2 pbo pc 18:32 P52-vid c rell; * omits 18:33 P52-vid P66-vid B C* Dsupp L W X f13 579 1071 844 lat; P60-vid A Cc (N ) 087 565 700 892supp ; 33 1424 (P52 might support this reading; with this line is longer than it ought to be, but without it it is too short).

18:37 P52 (or other reading omitting 5-10 letters); rell 18:38 P52 rell; P66

By the nature of the case, P52 cannot help us with the variant add/omit (after in verse 37).

Other Symbols Used for this Manuscript Bibliography

The bibliography for P52 is too extensive to be tracked here. The basic article is the C. H. Roberts item (An Unpublished Fragment of the Fourth Gospel in the John Rylands Library) mentioned above. For more popular works on the subject see the lists below. Collations: Collations of P52 are common -- and often rather optimistic in their readings of almost obliterated letters. Many include reconstuctions of the text as well. The following list includes some of the less scholarly, but more widely available, reconstructions: Finegan, Encountering New Testament Manuscripts, pp. 85-100 (text, recontruction, and comparison with other manuscripts) Metzger, Manuscripts of the Greek Bible, p. 62 (includes reconstructed text) Salmon, The Fourth Gospel: A History of the Text, pp. 50-53 SamplePlates: Almost every modern introduction to textual criticism includes photos of P 52 (which is why no photo is included here). Examples include: Aland & Aland, The Text of the New Testament Finegan, Encountering New Testament Manuscripts Metzger, Manuscripts of the Greek Bible Salmon, The Fourth Gospel: A History of the Text Editionswhichcite: Cited in all the recent Nestle-Aland editions and the like; it should be noted, however, that P52 is so short that it plays no real role in the critical apparatus. OtherWorks: Comfort, Early Manuscripts & Modern Translations of the New Testament, pp. 55-56

P54

Location/Catalog Number
Princeton (University Library, P. Princeton 15).

Contents
Portions of James 2:16-18 (beginning with ), 22, 24-25, 3:2-4. The manuscript is damaged on both sides and at the bottom (though the defect at the bottom does not involve much text); in addition, the manuscript is broken in the middle (it in fact consists of two major pieces and some shreds), which explains how a single leaf can contain four sections of text. All four sections are damaged. The state of the fragment is so bad that it is hard to determine even the line length, but it appears to have been about twenty characters; we have about ten characters in the surviving lines. A total of 29 lines survive.

Date/Scribe
Dated paleographically to the fifth or sixth century. The hand is quite firm and clear (or would be if the fragment were not so discoloured and faded).

Description and Text-type

Aland and Aland list P54 as Category III or possibly Category II. The Nestle text, however, cites it for only four readings (one of them, in 2:18, being subsingular); there just isn't enough text to make a clear determination of the manuscript's type.

Other Symbols Used for this Manuscript Bibliography

Collations: E. H. Kase, Papyri in the Princeton University Collections, Volume II Ellwood M. Schofield, The Papyrus Fragments of the Greek New Testament SamplePlates: Editionswhichcite: Cited in NA26, NA27, and the UBS editions. OtherWorks:

P74

Location/Catalog Number
Cologne, Bodmer library. Bodmer Papyrus XVII

Contents
Contains most of Acts (1:2-5, 7-11, 13-15, 18-19, 22-25, 2:2-4, 2:6-3:26, 4:2-6, 8-27, 4:29-27:25, 27:27-28:31) and fragments of all seven Catholic Epistles (portions of 75 verses of James, 16 verses of 1 Peter, 4 of 2 Peter, 27 of 1 John, 4 of 2 John, 2 of 3 John, and 5 of Jude).

Date/Scribe
Dated paleographically to the seventh century.

Description and Text-type

Aland and Aland list P74 as Category I. Richards lists it as a member of his Group A3 (Family 1739), but even he admits "P74 was classified even though there are only eight non-TR readings in 1-3 John by which the manuscript could be judged. We placed P74 in A3 because seven of its eight non-TR readings are group readings in A3, while only five of the eight are group readings in A 2 [the main Alexandrian group], and just three of the eight are A 1 [Family 2138] group readings" (W. L. Richards, The Classification of the Greek Manuscripts of the Johannine Epistles, p. 139). However, Richards seems to have been betrayed by his inaccurate groups and his small sample size. In the Catholic Epistles as a whole (meaning primarily James), P74 is not close to Family 1739. The following data examines all readings of P74 in the Catholics cited explicitly in NA27. There are exactly fifty such readings. Of these fifty, P74 agrees with the Byzantine text in a mere six. Nine of its readings are singular or subsingular (i.e. not supported by any of the test witnesses A B L P 33 323 614 1241 1505 1739) It has six readings which have only one supporter among the test witnesses. Its rate of agreements are as follows: Witness Overall Agreements A B L P 33 Agreements supported only by P74 and the listed witness

17 of 50 (34%) 0 30 of 49 (61%) 4 21 of 50 (42%) 1 11 of 50 (22%) 1 14 of 46 (30%) 0 21 of 44 (48%) 0

323 614 1241 1505 1739

17 of 50 (34%) 0 14 of 50 (28%) 0 20 of 49 (41%) 0 14 of 50 (28%) 0 22 of 50 (44%) 0

Thus P74's allegiance is clearly with A. If we omit P74's nine singular readings, they agree in 30 of 41 variants, or 73% of the time. A is the only manuscript to agree with P74 over 70% of the time. In addition, A agrees with the larger part of P74's most unusual readings. We also observe that P74's next closest relative is 33, which is fairly close to A. Without adding statistics, we can observe that P74 seems to have a similar text of Acts. Although it has been called Byzantine, in fact it is a high-quality Alexandrian text of that book, and deserves the Alands' Category I description.

Other Symbols Used for this Manuscript Bibliography

Collations: Rudolf Kasser, Papyrus Bodmer XVII: Actes des Aptres, Eptres de Jacques, Pierre, Jean et Jude See also K. Junack, Das Neue Testament auf Papyrus (volumes 1 and 3, Catholic Epistles and Acts) SamplePlates: Aland & Aland (1 plate) Editionswhichcite: Cited in all UBS editions and in NA26 and NA27 OtherWorks:

P75

Location/Catalog Number
Cologny (Geneva), Switzerland, Bodmer library. Bodmer Papyrus XIV, XV

Contents
Contains major portions of Luke and Acts: Luke 3: 18-22, 3:33-4:2, 4:34-5:10, 5:376:4, 6:10-7:32, 7:35-39, 41-43, 7:46-9:2, 9:4-17:15, 17:19-18:18, 22:4-end, John 1:111:45, 11:48-57, 12:3-13:10, 14:8-15:10. The volume, despite loss of leaves, is in surprisingly good condition, we even have portions of the binding (which is thought to have been added later). We have all or part of 102 pages (51 leaves), out of an original total of about 144 (72 leaves). Generally speaking, the earlier leaves are in better condition; many of the pages in the latter part of John have gone to pieces and have to be reconstructed from fragments.

Date/Scribe
Dated paleographically to the third century (with most scholars tending toward the earlier half of that century); Martin and Kasser, who edited the manuscript, would have allowed a date as early as 175. The scribe seems to have been generally careful, writing a neat and clear hand (though letter sizes vary somewhat), and (with some minor exceptions) using a fairly consistent spelling. Colwell observed that his natural writing tendencies of the scribe were strongly restrained by the text before him, indicating a copy of very high fideily. The editors of the codex argued that the copyist was a professional scribe. We do note, however, that lines are of very variable length (25 to 36 letters per line), as are the pages (38 to 45 lines per page). As P75 is a single-quire codex of (presumably) 36 folios, it has been argued that the scribe was trying to get more text on a page to hold the codex to the available space.

Description and Text-type

The fact which has struck every examiner of P75 is its extremely close resemblance to B. A number of statistical studies to this effect have been made; as far as I know, however, all have been done by textual critics with weak mathematical backgrounds and with inadequate controls. Thus, none of their figures for agreements between manuscripts can be regarded as meaning much. Still, the result is unquestionable: P75 is closer to B than to any other manuscript, and vice versa. There are enough differences that P 75 cannot be the parent of B, and is unlikely to be a direct ancestor, but P 75 and B certainly had a common ancestor, and this ancestor must have been older than P 75. Moreover, both manuscripts have remained quite close to this ancestral text. The mere fact that the two agree does not tell us how good this ancestral text is (most scholars would regard it as very good, but this is for other reasons than the closeness of the two manuscripts). But we are able to reconstruct this text with great accuracy. Interestingly, there has been no systematic study examining the text of P 75. The Alands, of course, list it as Category I, with a strict text, but this is based simply on the date and character of the manuscript; it is not really an examination of the text. Wisse, for some reason, did not profile P75, even though it is the only

papyrus of Luke substantial enough to allow such an evaluation (at least of Chapter 10). The discovery of P75 has had a profound effect on New Testament criticism. The demonstration that the B text is older than B seems to have encouraged a much stronger belief in its originality. The UBS committee, for instance, placed the Western Non-Interpolations back in their text based largely on the evidence of P75. The irony, as E. C. Colwell pointed out in the essay "Hort Redivivus: A Plea and a Program" (p. 156 in the reprint in Studies in Methodology in Textual Criticism of the New Testament), is that P75 should have had no such effect. The existence of manuscripts such as P75 had never been questioned. The major Bodmer papyri (P66, P72, P74, and P75) are important and influential witnesses, but they should have little effect on our textual theory. The truly significant witnesses were the Beatty papyri -- P46, as Zuntz showed, should have completely altered our view of the text of Paul (but somehow it didn't); P 47 perhaps should have a similar if less spectacular effect on our text of the Apocalypse; and P45 (as Colwell showed) allows us to see the sorts of liberties some copyists could take with the Biblical text. This is not to deny the great value of P75. Since P66 is a notably inaccurate copy, and P45 paraphrases (see Colwell, "Method in Evaluating Scribal Habits: A Study of P45, P66, P75," pp. 196-124 in Studies in Methodology), P75 is the earliest substantial and careful manuscript of the Gospels. Most would also regard it as having the best text. It does have a few limitations, however. It has been accused of omitting minor words such as personal pronouns (see page 121 in the Colwell essay).

Other Symbols Used for this Manuscript Bibliography

Note: As with most major manuscripts, no attempt is made to compile a complete bibliography. Collations: Rudolf Kasser and Victor Martin, Papyrus Bodmer XIV-XV. Two volumes; Volume I contains the Lukan material, Volume II the Johannine. Supplementary portions of the text are found in Kurt Aland, "Neue neutestamentliche Papyri III," New Testament Studies #22. SamplePlates: Complete plates in Kasser & Martin. Sample plates in almost every recent book, including Aland & Aland, Metzger's Text of the Ne Testament and Manuscripts of the New Testament, Finegan, Encountering New Testament Manuscripts, and anything ever published by Philip Wesley Comfort.

Editionswhichcite: Cited in all editions published since its discovery -- including NA 35 and higher, all UBS editions, and even Hodges & Farstad. OtherWorks: Calvin Porter, "Papyrus Bodmer XV (P75) and the Text of Codex Vaticanus," Journal of Biblical Literature 81. E. C. Colwell, "Method in Evaluating Scribal Habits: A Study of P 45, P66, P75," pp. 196-124 in Studies in Methodology

P78

Location/Catalog Number
Oxford, Ashmolean Museum. Oxyrhynchus Papyrus 2684

Contents
Portions of Jude 4-5, 7-8 (additional material illegible)

Date/Scribe
Dated paleographically to the third or fourth century.

Description and Text-type

P78 contains only a fragment of a single leaf, measuring a little over 10 cm. across by 2.5 cm. tall. This suffices to hold three to four lines of text. There are two columns of about a dozen lines each. The surviving portion appears to be the top of the page. The verso portion is easily read, although written in a rather hurried, inelegant hand. The left-hand column begins with verse 4, and ends with verse 5, . Column 2 begins with verse 7, and ends with verse 8, []. The recto portion is in much worse shape, being practically illegible. The left column begins with verse 8, . The rest of this column is only marginally legible, and the second column cannot really be deciphered (at least in visible light). The fragment thus contains a total of only about 100 Greek characters. Nonetheless its text is striking. The Alands classify it as Category I (based on its date) with a "free" text. We note several striking readings:

v. 5 -- add after (singular reading)

v. 7: for (with 630 1505 2495 and certain other Family 2138 witnesses) v. 8 -- for (singular reading) v. 8: for (a reading seemingly supported only by Latin and Syriac witnesses)

Several of these may be the result of a hasty and careless scribe. Sadly, the fragment is so short that we cannot really draw further conclusions.

Other Symbols Used for this Manuscript Bibliography

Collations: L. Ingrams, P. Kingston, P. Parsons, J. Rea, Oxyrhynchus Papyri, volume 34. SamplePlates: Editionswhichcite: Cited in UBS4, NA26, and NA27. OtherWorks: Comfort, Early Manuscripts & Modern Translations of the New Testament, pp. 64-65

P90

Location/Catalog Number
Oxford, Ashmolean Museum. Oxyrhynchus Papyrus 3523

Contents
Portions of John 18:36-19:7

Date/Scribe
Dated paleographically to the second century (making it, after P52, perhaps the oldest surviving New Testament papyrus). The script is considered similar to the "unknown gospel," P. Egerton 2.

Description and Text-type

P90 contains only a part of a single leaf, about 15 cm. tall and nowhere more than six cm. wide. It appears that we have the entire height of the leaf, but only a portion of its width, with thirteen or fewer characters surviving on each line (24

lines visible on the recto, 23 on the verso). Even the surviving characters are often illegible. (So much so that, of the eleven readings noted in NA 27, eight are marked vid.) The manuscript appears to have originally has about twenty characters per line, meaning that even the best-preserved lines are missing a third of their text, and most are missing half or more. The hand is generally clear but not polished. Because the manuscript is so newly-discovered, it has not been classified according to any of the standard classification schemes. It does not appear to contain any noteworthy variants. The following table shows its rate of agreement with some key manuscripts in the variants cited in NA 27: MS Agreements Percent Agreement P66 5/11 45% 7/11 64% A 1/11 9% B 3/11 27% sup D 3/11 27% K 2/11 18% L 6/11 55% 18% 2/11 1 3/11 27% With such small samples, our percentages of agreement obviously don't mean much. But it will be clear that P90 is not Byzantine; it appears to be an Alexandrian witness of some kind. Comfort listed it as closest to P 66 (based probably on some relatively unusual readings they share), but his bias toward early papyri is well-known; in fact it looks closer to . Its lack of kinship with B is noteworthy.

Other Symbols Used for this Manuscript Bibliography

Collations: L. Ingrams, P. Kingston, P. Parsons, J. Rea, Oxyrhynchus Papyri, volume 50. SamplePlates: Editionswhichcite: Cited in NA27. OtherWorks: Comfort, Early Manuscripts & Modern Translations of the New Testament, pp. 68-69

Biographies of Textual Critics

Note: This section includes biographies only of critics who worked after the invention of printing. Editors such as Alcuin who worked during the manuscript era will be covered in the appropriate place in the history of their editions. Contents: Kurt Aland * Johann Albrecht Bengel * Richard Bentley * John W. Burgon * A. C. Clark * Desiderius Erasmus * Robert Estienne (Stephanus) * Arthur L. Farstad * John Fell * Caspar Ren Gregory * Johann Jakob Griesbach * J. Rendel Harris * Fenton John Anthony Hort * A. E. Housman * Karl Lachmann * Eberhard Nestle * Erwin Nestle * F. H. A. Scrivener * Johann Salomo Semler * Stephanus: see Robert Estienne * Constantine von Tischendorf * Samuel Prideaux Tregelles * Hermann Freiherr von Soden * Brooke Foss Westcott * Johann Jakob Wettstein * Francisco Ximnes de Cisneros *

Kurt Aland
1915-1994. Born in Berlin, and died in Mnster/Westphalia. Perhaps the preeminent critic of the Twentieth Century; certainly one would be hard-pressed to name a critic with a greater list of achievements. It is harder to see whether Aland actually affected the practice of textual criticism. Aland's publications are too numerous to list; we can only mention the works most accessible to students. Aland managed the apparatus of the Nestle-Aland editions starting with the twenty-first edition, and created the new and much more comprehensive format used for the twenty-sixth edition. He also produced the Synopsis Quattuor Evangeliorum, which is now the most comprehensive Gospel synopsis in existence. He maintained the list of manuscripts after the death of Von Dobschtz and Eltester, and eventually released the Kurzgefasste Liste der Griechischen Handschriften des Neuen Testaments. With his second wife Barbara, he wrote one of the standard introductions to New Testament textual criticism. He established the "Thousand Readings in a Thousand Minuscules" project which eventually resulted in the volumes of Text und Textwert der griechischen Handschriften des Neuen Testaments. Perhaps even more notable, Aland founded the Institute for New Testament Textual Research in Mnster. This is the only college in the world devoted solely to NT textual studies. (Though one might wish it cast a slightly wider net, examining other textual traditions as well.) Finally, Aland was one of the five editors responsible for the United Bible Societies text, the most widely-used New Testament text of the present period. For all this, it is surprising to note how little influence Aland had on textual theory. Eldon Epp wrote two articles on "the Twentieth Century Interlude in

Textual Criticism," and while Aland answered by pointing out a great deal of activity, very much of it work he himself had inspired or guided, he was unable to answer Epp's point that there had been no real methodological progress. Despite Aland, our textual theory is remains a matter of groping -- of "Reasoned Eclecticism" (in which every textual critic does what is right in his own eyes) and arguments about the "Csareasn" text and in which everyone uses the UBS text though no one entirely accepts it. Aland described his own theory as the "local-genealogical method." As described, this would seem to be an application of the rule "that reading is best which best explains the others": Aland creates a stemma of the readings in a particular variant, trying to determine which one is the source of all the others. In practice, however, Aland clearly preferred a strongly Alexandrian text. This means that his description must be modified: He constructed a genealogy under the influence of the knowledge of text-types and the history of the text. Now this, in theory, is probably the most correct method possible. But it only works if the history of the text is accurately known. Aland did not study this matter in any detail -- he acknowledged only the Alexandrian and Byzantine texts, and had a Hort-like dislike of the Byzantine text. With these restrictions on his method, it's hardly surprising that few textual critics have adopted it.

Johann Albrecht Bengel

1687-1752. Born in Winnenden, Wrttemberg, Germany, and later Abbot of Alpirsach in that principality. His 1734 edition has been called the first Protestant attempt "to treat the exegesis of the New Testament critically" -- a reference primarily to his Gnomon (1742), but also to his New Testament. What the latter actually was was a minimally revised edition of the Textus Receptus which had critically chosen readings in the margin. In practice, therefore, Bengel's importance rests not on his text, nor on his collations, which Scrivener notes are rather poor, but on the introduction to his text, his marginalia, and the articles which explained them. Beginning in 1725, Bengel discussed textual families (distinguishing the Asiatic text, which is our Byzantine text, and the African text, which is everything else). He also outlined critical principles, including the highly significant "prefer the harder reading." These modern principles caused Bengel to propose more changes to the Textus Receptus than any other edition before Lachmann's. (Bengel was the first to note how probable variants were, ranging from for a certain reading on down to .) This, unfortunately, led to charges the the editor was perverting the scriptures (not for the last time!).

Richard Bentley
1662-1742. Classical and New Testament critic, and a master of many fields (portions of his correspondence with Sir Isaac Newton are preserved). Appointed Master of Trinity College (Cambridge) in 1699/1700 (and previously keeper of the Royal Libraries), he had already been interested in textual

criticism (both sacred and secular) for some years. In the secular field, he edited Horace and Terence, discovered that Homer had used the digamma, exposed the Epistles of Phaleris as forgeries, and generally improved the tools available to practitioners in the field. In 1720 he published a prospectus for a New Testament edition, including the final chapter of the Apocalypse as a sample, which included an outline of critical principles. In this he argued that a text based on early manuscripts would differ from the Textus Receptus in two thousand instances, and similarly from the Clementine Vulgate in two thousand instances. In fact Bentley did little with the manuscripts available to him; his critical apparatus was disorganized and the notes and collations he left are no better. (His personal life was much the same; he was constantly involved in scholarly and personal controversies; he was an intriguer and seemingly misappropriated university funds. He also was lampooned in Pope's Dunciad, -happily for Bentley, in book IV, which was not published until after Bentley's death.) Still, he recognized that the Textus Receptus would need significant alteration to agree with the best manuscripts; he is thus a forerunner of Lachmann. Bentley's critical rules, too, were radical; some still have significance today. Sadly, Bentley never completed his edition; he involved himself in many projects, and perhaps did not originally realize the amount of work needed to prepare an edition; in any case, his New Testament finally languished, and the money raised to pay for it had to be returned to the subscribers after his death.

John William Burgon

1813-1888. British conservative critic and Dean of Chichester. An intemperate defender of the Byzantine text and the Textus Receptus, remembered primarily for such polemic works as The Revision Revised and The Last Twelve Verses of Mark. Although most of the manuals speak only of the the uncompromising tone and reactionary zeal of his writings, Burgon was in fact an enterprising and careful student of manuscripts; his work in this area deserves to be remembered.

A(lbert) C. Clark
Classical and New Testament scholar. LIke many textual "freethinkers," Clark came to NT criticism from work on classical texts -- in this case, the orations of Cicero, on which he became the world's greatest authority. When he turned to the New Testament, he turned to the text of Acts, and tried diligently to stand criticism on his head. He noted, correctly, individual manuscripts tend to lose rather than gain text. He generalized this to mean that the canons of criticism lectio brevior praeferenda is false. This position is defensible, and to some extent the answers to Clark talked past his points. But when Clark attempted to reconstruct the text of Acts based on these principles, he perhaps went too far, developing a general preference for the "Western" text regardless of other criteria. Few of Clark's results have been accepted, even though there are probably useful cautions in his writings.

Desiderius Erasmus
1469?-1536. Humanist; editor of the first published Greek New Testament. The son of a priest, Erasmus had a clerical education and became a monk, but later was granted a release from his vows. Very much a humourist, works such as In Praise of Folly poked fun at the problems in the church. Thus Erasmus was not a Protestant, and did not rebel against the Catholic Church as Luther did. Erasmus is, of course, the editor of the Textus Receptus, as well as the author of assorted religious and secular writings. His critical skills are often held in contempt -- and it is certainly true that the Textus Receptus is a poor monument indeed, with a text mostly Byzantine but with enough peculiar readings to make it a bad representative of the type. The early editions also contained a number of typographical errors that was simply astonishing. Still, Erasmus did about as well as could have been expected in his time; all the materials known to him (except the Vulgate and 1eap) were Byzantine. Erasmus did exercise a certain amount of critical judgement, and -- odd as it sounds -- where he departs from the Byzantine text, it is more often than not in the direction of the early manuscripts.

Robert Estienne (Stephanus)

1503-1559. French (later Genevan) publisher. Stephanus was not a textual critic as such, but his several editions of the Greek New Testament offered noteworthy innovations. His most important work was his third edition (1550). Textually it is just another Textus Receptus, but in the margin it includes the readings of over a dozen manuscripts plus the Complutensian Polyglot (symbolized by Greek numbers; the manuscripts are believed to have included the uncials Dea, Le and the minuscules 4e, 5, 6, 7e, 8 (probably), 9 (possibly), 38 (possibly), 82, 120, 398, 2298; also certain seemingly lost manuscripts, e.g. Tischendorf's 8a/10p, 3r. The citations were neither complete nor particularly accurate, but they were at least specific; the manuscripts are cited individually). His fourth edition of 1551, published after he went to Geneva and became a Protestant, is also noteworthy, as it pioneered our modern system of verses.

Arthur L. Farstad
1935-1998. American conservative critic and Majority Text advocate. Editor, with Zane C. Hodges, of The Greek New Testament According to the Majority Text. One-time president of the Majority Text Society. Active in the translation of the New King James Version.

John Fell
1625-1686. Classical and New Testament critic. Dean of Christ Church, Oxford, Bishop of Oxford, and one of the most important figures in the history of the Oxford University Press. Fell acquired better type and equipment for the press,

internalized the financing (bearing some of the responsibility himself), and set up a regular schedule for the publication of classical authors. Fell's contributions to New Testament criticism are not as great, but still notable; he edited an edition of Cyprian, and also published a New Testament in 1675. This volume did not have a noteworthy text (differing only very slightly from the Elzevir 1633 edition of the Textus Receptus), but it has, for the time, an unusually full apparatus (though most of the materials cited were available elsewhere). It also had an introduction discussing the practice of textual criticism. Somewhat later, Fell encouraged the work of John Mill, though Fell's death meant that Mill had to find other support for the publication of his work. Thus it is truly sad that Fell should be best remembered for Thomas Browne's doggerel adaption of Martial which begins "I do not love you, Doctor Fell."

Caspar Ren Gregory

1846-1915 . American/German student of manuscripts. His first great accomplishment was his preparation of the prolegomena to Tischendorf's eighth edition (1884-1894). In 1908 he published his great catalog of manuscripts, Die griechischen Handschriften des Neuen Testaments, providing for the first time a comprehensive and (usually) orderly arrangement of the materials known to critics. Like his predecessor Tischendorf, Gregory sought out and made available large numbers of manuscripts, though he did not edit an edition. As a critic Gregory was not particularly original; he generally accepted the theories of Westcott and Hort. Although of American ancestry, he adopted Germany as his homeland, and volunteered on the German side in World War I. He was accepted despite his age, and killed in battle in 1915.

Johann Jakob Griesbach

1745-1812. German critic, who exercised great influence in many Biblical disciplines. He studied at Tbingen, Halle (where he studied under J. Semler), and Leipzig, becoming a professor at Jena in 1775. He is considered responsible for synoptic studies, first using the term "synoptic" in his Commentarius Criticus in 1811. But if Griesbach's influence on synoptic studies was great, his influence on textual criticism is perhaps even more fundamental. Although it was Semler who introduced Griesbach to the theory of text-types, Griesbach is largely responsible for the modern view of types. It was Griesbach who popularized the names Alexandrian, Byzantine, and Western. He also paid particular attention to matters not previously studied in depth -- e.g. patristic quotations and the Armenian version. Griesbach published a list of fifteen critical canons, which he exercised with much greater skill than most of those who followed him (e.g. while he accepted the rule that we should prefer the shorter reading, he hedged it around with

many useful warnings -- not just those about scribal errors, author's style, and nonsense readings, but also warning of the dangers of omission of nonessential words such as prepositions). It is probably fair to say that while most modern critics accept most of Griesbach's rules, they do not apply them with nearly as much skill. (The standard example of Griesbach's skill is that he deduced the Vaticanus text of the Lord's Prayer in Luke 11:2-4 working only from the handful of minuscules and uncials known to him.) Griesbach published several editions of the New Testament text (1775-1777, 1796-1806, 1803-1807). Textually, these did not differ greatly from the Textus Receptus, because Griesbach made it a policy only to print readings already printed by some other editor -- but his extensive margin noted many other good readings, and (more to the point) he used a system to note where these readings were as good as or better than those in the text. This was a fundamental forerunner of the {A}, {B}, {C}, {D} notations found in the United Bible Societies Editions. It is safe to say that all more recent critical editions have been influenced by the work of Griesbach.

J(ames) Rendel Harris

1852-1941. British critic and paleographer. Born in Plymouth, England, he was a life-long Quaker. A graduate of Cambridge, he taught at several universities before becoming curator of manuscripts at the John Rylands library (19181925). He never produced an edition, but authored some useful general works (e.g. New Testament Autographs, 1882) and many journal articles; he also collated such important manuscripts as 892.

Fenton John Anthony Hort

1828-1892. British critic and professor at Cambridge. Arguably the greatest textual critic of his age. Best known for the New Testament edition which he edited with Brooke Foss Westcott. What made this edition so important, however, was not its text (though it has been the model for all editions since) but its Introduction [and] Appendix, which was entirely the work of Hort. In it, Hort outlined his theory of text-types (which was adapted from Griesbach and his predecessors). In the process, Hort is considered to have destroyed all claims that the Byzantine Majority text is early. This is perhaps the most important effect of Hort's work; nearly every Greek text edited since his time has been "Hortian." (For discussion of his arguments, see the article on the Byzantine Priority position.) Hort was also a member of the committee which prepared the English Revised Version, and most of that edition's departures from the Byzantine Text were made on the advice of Hort. (The committee's policy was reportedly to hear the arguments of Hort and Scrivener and then vote on which reading to adopt.)

A(lfred) E(dward) Housman

1859-1936. British poet and critic, best known to the public for his poetry. (Only two books of his poetry -- A Shropshire Lad, 1896, and Last Poems, 1922 -appeared in his lifetime, but among recent poets they are second only to Kipling in their folk/popular sense and second to none in their straightforward lyricism; this is probably the source of his popularity.) Housman was, however, a textual critic of note, publishing an edition of Marcus Manilius (1903-1930) and various essays which are at once highly influential and, for the most part, readable. It is perhaps characteristic of Housman (believed by many to have been a repressed homosexual and certainly a recluse) that he chose to work on Manilius, an obscure author (of a five-volume poetic work, "Astronomica,") whose works held little personal appeal to him. Housman never engaged in New Testament criticism; his beliefs would probably have caused him to avoid it even had he been invited to do so. His essays on criticism are, however, widely quoted, both for their common sense and their (sometimes sarcastic) cleverness. Despite his brilliance, one must resist the temptation to hold him in too high an esteem; his warnings against over-reliance on particular critical principles are valid, but his warnings, e.g., against the cult of the "best manuscript" should not cause us to esteem all manuscripts equally. In addition, he was perfectly willing to resort to personal insult in scholarly argument (e.g. he wrote of Elias Stroeber, who published an edition of Manilius, that "[his] mind, though that is no name to call it by, was one which turned as unswervingly to the false... as the needle to the pole," and wrote of his edition that it "saw the light in... Strasbourg, a city still famous for its geese.") It is also worth remembering that Housman's work on Manilius involved a degree of conjectural emendation which most New Testament critics would consider unacceptable.

Karl Lachmann
1793-1851. German philologist and critic. Trained in classical studies, Lachmann enunciated the principle that agreement in error implies identity of origin. Lachmann used this principle to create a stemma for the manuscripts of Lucretius; his resulting edition is considered a landmark of classical textual criticism. From Lucretius, Lachmann turned his attention to the New Testament, publishing the first edition of the NT to be completely free of the influence of the Textus Receptus (1831; second edition 1842-1850). This was, obviously, a great milestone in the history of the New Testament text, and arguably the most important single event in New Testament textual criticism. It should be noted, however, that Lachmann's edition was far from perfect. He undertook to publish "the" text of the fourth century -- an entity which demonstrably never existed, and in any case it is not the original text. Nor did Lachmann use his critical methods on the New Testament manuscripts; he simply took a handful of early

witnesses and adopted the reading of the majority. The resultant text was certainly better than the Textus Receptus, but it was neither consistent nor particularly close to modern editions. The Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible sums up Lachmann's six textual criteria as follows:

Nothing is better attested than that in which all authorities agree. The agreement has less weight if part of the authorities are silent or in any way defective. The evidence for a reading, when it is that of witnesses of different regions, is greater than that of witnesses of some particular place, differing either from negligence or from set purpose. The testimonies are to be regarded as doubtfully balanced when witnesses from widely separated regions stand opposed to others equally wide apart. Readings are uncertain which occur habitually in different forms in different regions. Readings are of weak authority which are not universally attested in the same region.

It will be observed that these are canons of external evidence, to a large extent anticipating Streeter's theory of local texts. They go far to explain the peculiarities of Lachmann's edition. In addition to his works on classical and biblical texts, Lachmann did a great deal of work on early German writings. In some instances, his edition remains the standard critical text. (This fact seems not to get much attention in the annals of textual criticism.)

Eberhard Nestle
1851-1913. German scholar, father of Erwin Nestle. He published an influential handbook of criticism, as well as a number of scholarly articles. But he is primarily remembered for his edition of the New Testament text -- this despite the fact that he can hardly be said to have "edited" an edition. His work was entirely mechanical (comparing the editions of Westcott and Hort, Tischendorf, and a third, originally that of Weymouth, later that of Weiss); today, it could have been edited by a computer. (For details, see the article on the The Nestle Text.) But this accomplishment, trivial as it seems on its face, was to have important results: As Gregory observed, the British and Foreign Bible Society was somehow convinced to adopt the Nestle text in place of the Textus Receptus. This would have a fundamental effect on translations into many modern languages, and also make make texts based on ancient manuscripts more respectable.

Erwin Nestle
1883-1972. German scholar, son of Eberhard Nestle. Noteworthy primarily for taking and updating his father's "Nestle Edition." Erwin Nestle deserves the credit for supplying the Nestle text with a full critical apparatus (beginning with the thirteenth edition); although the witnesses cited have been increased in the more recent Nestle-Aland editions, the variants noted are still almost without exception those listed by Erwin Nestle.

F(rederick) H(enry) A(mbrose) Scrivener

1813-1891. British writer and manuscript editor. A contemporary of scholars such as Westcott and Hort, Scrivener did not share their views. Usually portrayed as a supported of the Majority Text, Scrivener's opinions (as revealed by his great work A Plain Introduction to the Criticism of the New Testament, fourth edition revised by Edward Miller, 1894) are in fact much more nuanced. As opposed to scholars such as Burgon who always preferred the Majority Text, Scrivener revered the older manuscripts and generally would not accept a reading which did not have early support. Still, all things being equal, he preferred the Majority reading. As a member of the committee which prepared the English Revised Version, Scrivener was the chief spokesman for the Byzantine text, and the normal policy was for readings to be decided by the committee after Scrivener and Hort stated the case for each. Scrivener never compiled a text, but he was, after Tischendorf, perhaps the greatest publisher of manuscripts of any age. Since Tischendorf did not see fit to update Scholz's manuscript catalog, Scrivener numbered new manuscripts as he became aware of them. This system conflicted with the "old Gregory" numbering, and has been abandoned since the publication of the "new Gregory" system -- but is still occasionally met with in publication such as Hoskier's collation of 700 (Scrivener's 604) and the same author's apparatus of the Apocalypse.

Johann Salomo Semler

1725-1791. German critic and rationalist. Semler did not publish an edition (though he produced an edition of Wettstein's Prolegomena, with some additional material, in 1764), and he did not set forth new principles. His work was more theoretical, as he was a student of text-types. Starting with the "African" and "Asian" groups of Bengel, Semler offered three text-types, "Eastern" (the Byzantine text, which he associated -- as have many since -- with Lucian), "Western" (as found primarily in the Latin versions), and "Alexandrian" (as found in Origen and the Coptic and Ethiopic versions). Thus Semler is the original source of the Griesbach/Hort theory of "Western," "Alexandrian," and "Byzantine" types. It was Semler who brought the word "recensions" into the context of New Testament criticism (unfortunately bringing a new, non-classical

meaning to the word; in classical criticism, a recension is the result of deliberate critical work).

Constantine von Tischendorf

1815-1874. In full, Lobegott Friedrich Constantin von Tischendorf. A full biography is simply impossible in the space I'm willing to grant (and I don't have the materials anyway). Although called a German, nearly all his active work was done before Germany was united; he spent his entire career at the University of Leipzig, though of course he spent much of his professional life travelling to places such as Mount Sinai. He was born in what was then Saxony. His fascination -- inspired by an article by Lachmann, though the two had very bad relations once Tischendorf stared publishing -- was with manuscripts; they were the reason for his globetrotting expeditions, and most of his time at home was devoted to publishing his finds. His most famous discovery, of course, is the Codex Sinaiticus, but he found dozens of others, publishing most of the uncials. He also managed to read most of Codex Ephraemi, and provided the best information on Codex Vaticanus available to that time. He published editions of many different ancient works, such at the LXX (four editions, 1850-1869) and the Vulgate, but these frankly were of little interest. (One, indeed, was adjusted to the Vulgate; even Gregory, who admired Tischendorf and continued his work, though Tischendorf should not have put his name on it.) His major work consisted of his eight editions of the New Testament (the first published in 1840) -- though in fact the first seven of these were not really critical editions, any more than were his LXX and vulgate texts; rather, they were collections of manuscript data. And Gregory describes the fourth as the first with a significant apparatus and text. The seventh (1859) had a worse text though a fuller apparatus. Thus it was not until his eighth edition (1865-1872) that he finally put his lifetime of experience to work. It is sad to note that it was not really a particularly insightful edition, being based on no theory of the text and with biases toward certain manuscripts. (For details, see the relevant entry in the article on Critical Editions.) By the time it was completed (or, rather, completed except for the prologue, which was vitally necessary and which he did not manage to produce), Tischendorf was rather a sick man; he suffered a stroke in 1873 and died at the end of 1874, leaving almost no useful papers behind, leaving it to Gregory to create one as best he could.

Samuel Prideaux Tregelles

1813-1875. British scholar and editor. Almost entirely self-taught, Tregelles was the British Tischendorf. He did not discover as many manuscripts, and he published only one edition, but he too spent much of his life gathering data; he and Tischendorf not infrequently compared collations. At the end of his life, Tregelles prepared his single edition of the text, based exclusively on the oldest manuscripts. The resultant text is generally similar to Tischendorf's, but -- due to its more limited critical apparatus -- does not receive much attention today. This is rather unfortunate; having worked over his text to some extent, I would

have to say that he was a most sensitive and intelligent critic; one wishes he could have worked with all the matericals now known. But he had no real access to Vaticanus, and Sinaiticus was Tischendorf's find, and manuscripts such as 1739 and the Koridethi Codex and the papyri were still unknown; Tregelles had few materials at his disposal. In this sense it might honestly be said that Tregelles's greatest contribution lay in encouraging the work of Westcott and Hort.

Hermann Freiherr von Soden

1852-1914.

Brooke Foss Westcott

1825-1901. One of the great scholars of nineteenth century England. He studied both mathematics and classics at Trinity College, Cambridge (though, curiously, his mathematical training does not seem to have influenced his textual studies at all, or at least he did not manage to convey them to his colleague Fenton John Anthony Hort, who uses statistics very poorly in his introduction to the Westcott and Hort edition). Wstcott became a fellow of Trinity in 1849, was ordained in 1851, and became an assistant master at Harrow in 1852. He reportedly was not a good classroom teacher (and this is reflected to some extent in his voluminous writings, which -- though intelligent and insightful -- are not particularly enjoyable reading). In 1870 he became Regius Professor of Divinity at Cambridge, and set out to reform the teaching methods and qualifications for a theology degree. Canon of Westminster from 1883, he became Bishop of Durham in 1890, and in that role was instrumental in dealing with the labour problems of the Durham coal miners. Despite his extraordinary accomplishments, however, Westcott is remembered in textual circles for at most two things: his part in the preparation of the English Revised Version, and (first and foremost) his collaboration with Hort to produce their New Testament. The theory behind this edition, it is generally agreed, was Hort's, and it was Hort who explained it in the Introduction, but Westcott was not a passive collaborator, as is shown by the various readings where the two scholars disagreed. What Westcott might have accomplished as a textual scholar without his multi-decade collaboration with Hort can hardly be determined at this time.

Johann Jakob Wettstein

1693-1754.

Francisco Ximnes de Cisneros

1437-1517. Spanish Cardinal and Archbishop of Toledo. The driving force behind the Complutensian Polyglot, though he was not directly involved in

editing the work and did not live to see it published (the work was complete at the time of his death, but Papal authorization was not forthcoming for another three years). He was a great patron of learning (he founded the university of Alcala), and was confessor to Queen Isabella and advisor to King Ferdinand; he was briefly regent after the latter's death. But he also persecuted heretics, and his determination and that of the Inquisition effectively snuffed out the revival of learning he has encouraged. He also caused ruined the settlement between the Christians and Moors of conquered Granada. The phrase "wise fool" might have been invented for him.