Editing the
Bible - Assessing the Task Past and Present is a collection of insightful essays
edited by John S. Kloppenborg and Judith H. Newman in 2012. Michael
Holmes, Klaus Wachtel, Holger Strutwolf, David Trobisch, and Ryan Wettlaufer
each contributed a chapter. Some thoughts on each one:
What Text is
Being Edited (Michael
Holmes)
In 22 pages, Holmes does an excellent job of not answering the question, "How
closely will the next printed compilation made in Muenster resemble the
original text?". After reviewing the approaches of Metzger and
the UBS Committee, and of Robinson and Pierpont, and of the editors of the
Editio Critica Maior (ECM) – not considering his own important SBLGNT
compilation – it is clear that the goal of CBGM-users is going to
be (unless they shift course) an approximation of the archetype - not the
original text as such, and that the points or instability that were seen in
NA27 will not be diminished but increased in NA29. The “Ausgangstext” is
now their target.
As he walks the
reader through the steps that some scholars have taken away from the goal of
pursuing the reconstruction of the original text, Holmes takes time
to defend his own conjectural emendation in First Corinthians 6:5. He
also points out the willingness of the current team of NTG editors to adopt a
conjectural emendation in Second Peter 3:10. He then raises some
additional issues, and while he emphatically
disagrees with the confident skepticism of Koester and Petersen, he seems to
lean sympathetically toward D.C. Parker’s skepticism regarding modern scholars’
ability to confidently reconstruct a New Testament text that existed before 200
A.D.
A footnote (p.
121) states an interesting admission about the pericope adulterae:
“some form of it may have been known to second-century figures such as
Papias.” Throughout the essay a generally conservative picture is
taken regarding the composition-dates of New Testament books, which will
hopefully serve as a reality check to seminary students who have been taught
that there is a scholarly consensus that certain books were composed in the
100s.
The Coherence
Based Genealogical Method (Klaus
Wachtel)
In 15 pages with 10 diagrams, the history of the CBGM is reviewed and its application
to New Testament textual criticism are illustrated by one of its foremost
advocates. For all intents and purposes a new canon has been
created: “Prefer the reading that yields the maximum
parsimony.” Initially developed for evolutionary biology and applied
to part of The Canterbury Tales, CBGM did not have much impact on
the text of the Catholic Epistles in NA28. Wachtel illustrates its
usefulness by focusing on a variant-unit in James 2:3 - one which I described
in my
commentary on the Epistle of James as a “very difficult
contest.” After considering Wachtel’s analysis I still prefer the reading
ἐκεῖ ἢ κάθου ῶδε. (C.B.G.M., as I have insisted previously, is a
nothingburger that is going to make the text of compilations employing it more
unstable, not less.) The Revised local stemma diagram (p. 137) has
a degree of force but it does not take into account the possibility that
variant a (ἢ κάθου ἐκεῖ) arose due to
spontaneous whim of at least two historically unconnected scribes.
Insights on
Scribal Practices Based on the CBGM (Holger Strutwolf)
In 21 pages (six
of which are filled by full-page diagrams) the recently Festschrifted
professor explains the tense complementary relationship between the application
of the canons applies in the past and more modern methods, beginning with the
assertion that the primary goal of textual criticism is to reconstruct the
original text. After acknowledging Royse's research that demonstrated
that the scribes of six papyri made omissions twice as frequently as they made
additions, Strutwolf doggedly insists (p. 156) that "the traditional rule
of lectio brevior is still functioning well."
There is a persistent, almost dogmatic, assumption, that the text of the
New Testament has grown rather than diminished - despite evidence such as what
is acknowledged on p. 145, where GA 2186 is in view: "Nearly all of
its singular readings consist of omissions."
Does the textual history as a whole show us,
as Strutwolf asserts, that “in fact the text grew over time”? I do not
grant that after the 300s there was much gradual growth other than minor
expansions made to render the text’s meaning more explicit.
That is, however, a subject for another time.
Strutwolf correctly points out the
importance of proof-readers - but the more the force of his argument weighs
against adopting singular readings, the more it also weighs against adopting
non-existent readings, which the Nestle-Aland NTG 28 did with Strutwolf’s leadership.
The plain picture that the author of this chapter needs to see is that the
Western text developed rapidly, and liturgically motivated accretions arose
only slightly less rapidly in the Byzantine line.
Somewhat frustratingly, Strutwolf seems to affirm
some untenable ideas such as the “tenacity of transmission” while chiming in
for the opposite as well. Some readers may find this balanced, to me it
is symptomatic of indecisiveness.
There
appears to be a typographical glitch on p.144, line 2, where “Δ│ησους” appears instead of “Ἰησους.”
The New Testament in Light of Book Publishing in Antiquity (David
Trobisch)
The
author of A User’s Guide to the
Nestle-Aland 28 Greek New Testament provides nine pages of an informative review of the customs in
play in the era when the books of the New Testament were released, and offers
some thoughts on what the impact on the text of the New Testament might have
been. In keeping with the custom of the Center
for Iniquity, Trobisch uses “C.E.” rather than “A.D.” Among the
five changes he proposes for future New Testament compilations, he notes the
useful division of the New Testament into four units (Gospels, Acts/General
Epistles, Pauline corpus, Revelation), endorses the precedent set in the
Robinson-Pierpont Byzantine Textform of having the General Epistles immediately
follow Acts, and recommends the use of nomina sacra contractions
(already a feature of my yet-to-be-published Archetype of the Gospels).
Unseen
Variants (Ryan
Wettlaufer)
Should
conjectural emendations be in the printed text of the New Testament?
In New
Testament Textual Analysis I answered “No,” and the late J. K. Elliott
affirmed (as Wettlaufer acknowledges) that there is no need for it. But
Wettlaufer, agreeing with Holmes, does his best to make a case for doing
exactly that. The reader is certainly in no danger of being infected with
a “Trust the experts” attitude in this chapter since its author opposes Beza,
Greenlee, Elliott and Kilpatrick. Wettlaufer overplays his hand when he
lauds Bart Ehrman’s 1993 The Orthodox
Corruption of Scripture, apparently unaware of, or simply ignoring,
Burgon’s similarly titled chapter XIV in Causes of Corruption. Wettlaufer
is ridiculously and recklessly bold in his statement that “it would not be
irresponsible to assume that almost any reasonable conjecture of James could
deserve serious study.” This chapter serves as an exhibit of the influential
mindset that will keep the NTG unstable for at least its next few iterations.
All in all, these chapters
are well worth reading for the sake of providing evidence of how unstable the
editions from Muenster are going to be.
P.S. That "Iniquity" was intentional. Do not emend it.
While the
shorter reading is explainable as a loss due to
parablepsis from the ἐν before νυκτί to the ἐν after it, and its longer rival
is supported by C K L 049 104 629 1751 Byz, the Byzantine reading was
assumed so readily by the editors of UBS4 to be a harmonization to First
Thessalonians 5:2 that it didn’t even receive a listing in the apparatus. The array of external against it is indeed
very impressive – P72 ﬡ A B P Ψ 048vid 0156 33 323 945 1739 Vulgate
Coptic. 
