The CBGM: Critically Biased?

Our guest today is Dr. Stephen Carlson of Australian Catholic University.  He is perhaps best-known to some readers due to his 2012 dissertation (at Duke University) that featured a very detailed compilation of the book of Galatians.   Dr. Carlson, thank you for joining us.

SCC: Thank you, Jim, for your interest.

JSJ:  You wrote a recent article that appeared in the Journal of Biblical Literature with a provocative title:  “A Bias at the Heart of the Coherence-Based Genealogical Method.”  Before we get to the article’s substance, could you briefly explain the claims that advocates of the Coherence-Based Genealogical Method have made about it?  What is the CBGM supposed to provide that we did not have before, and how?

SCC: The basic claim of the advocates of the CGBM is that they have a “more rigorous” way to evaluate external evidence in the textual criticism of the New Testament. External evidence, your readers may recall, is the weight we put on a particular variant reading due to the manuscripts that record it. Prior to the CBGM, the usual way to deal with external evidence is to sort them into text types like Alexandrian, Western, and Byzantine, and then evaluate the external evidence based on how well the text types support a particular variant reading. And the CBGM folks are right that his approach is not sufficiently rigorous. Indeed, a big problem with this traditional approach is contamination, where a manuscript may obtain its readings from multiple sources. This makes it difficult to define the various text types (the rise and fall of the “Caesarean” text type in Mark is a good case in point) and hard to assign some manuscript to a particular type when it has the characteristic readings of more than one text type. In essence, the CBGM proposes to be more rigorous than this by eschewing text types altogether and looking at relations between “potential ancestors” of various manuscripts. In my article, I argue that the way that potential ancestors are identified and even defined is fundamentally flawed and we should look for other ways for evaluating the external evidence.

JSJ:  The CBGM has a reputation for being complex and inaccessible.  But in your recent article, you state that you have been able to implement its algorithms, and that as a result, you noticed a problem.  Would it be accurate to say that you detected a built-in bias in the “genealogical coherence” aspect of the C.B.G.M. as it currently exists?  

SCC: Yes, I detected a bias in how they identify genealogical coherence. In the CBGM genealogical coherence comes from manuscripts having a common, extant “potential ancestor” in their textual flows, and potential ancestors are identified on how much they differ from the initial text. But distance from the initial text is not a valid genealogical criterion and it can be misled by genealogically irrelevant data. As a result, the CBGM is biased against bad copies of earlier texts and in favor of good copies of later texts. Bias is a problem of course because it distorts our ability to evaluate the external evidence and it gives more weight to certain manuscripts (or less weight to others) than we would if we knew the actual history of the text. The worst that can happen is that the CBGM would give apparently strong support to a late, non-initial reading, especially where the internal evidence is not decisive enough to countermand the misleading impression of the CBGM.

JSJ:  Generally, it’s understandable to assume parsimony, but random things sometimes happen that affect the text, such as having the same scribal accident occasionally occur independently in different transmission-streams.  How are these things handled?  How many “accidental agreements” have to occur before one says, “These agreements are not accidental”?  Or to put it another way:  could you explain the concept of coherence and non-coherence?

SCC: Accidental coincidence is a major problem. In fact, I think it is the most underappreciated problem among New Testament textual critics (who tend to be more worried about contamination). The CBGM does have an approach to accidental coincidence, which its proponents tend to call “multiple emergence.” Basically, you look at all the manuscripts attesting a particular reading and sort them to groups, so that each group is coherent (that is, having a textual flow that goes through a common, potential ancestor). When the manuscripts are not coherent, they’ll be in their own group. If you have multiple groups of such manuscripts, then you have multiple emergence of the variant. Of course, if the CBGM is not able to identify correctly that a group of manuscripts attesting the same reading is actually coherent because of some bias, then the CBGM will wrongly subdivide them into several groups and suggest that some readings are coincidental when they are in fact not.

JSJ:  Here’s a diagram [resembling Figure 4 in your article] reconstructing a simple transmission-stream.  In your article the flow is from left to right; here, it is from top to bottom, waterfall-style.  Can you tell us what this diagram is saying, and what is wrong with this picture?

SCC: This diagram is a simple stemma of a hypothetical history textual transmission. The story here begins at the top with A, the initial text. Two copies, B and X, are made of it, and B has one error, while X has two. (This is represented in the diagram with a length between A and X being twice the length of the branch between A and B.) Likewise, two copies, C and Y, are made of X, with C being more error prone than Y. Similarly, two copies of made of Y, E and D, with D more error prone than E. If we lose A, X, and Y, can we reconstruct the true history of the text based on B, C, D, and E?

            It turns out that if we assume no contamination or coincidences, we can reconstruct the history on the traditional “common-error” principle, but under the same assumptions we cannot under the CBGM. The reason that the CBGM cannot reconstruct the true history of the text under these very ideal condition is that it has a bias that makes accidental coincidences between B and E look coherent when they are not. And it suggests that the variants that B and E carry are better than the ones carried by C and D. For 1 John, these relations actually hold if you translate B to the fourth-century 03 (B/Vaticanus), C to the fourth-century 01 (ℵ/Sinaiticus), D to the fifth-century 02 (A/Alexandrinus), and E to the tenth-century 1739 (but a very good copy of a much earlier text). So this simple stemma does not point to a merely theoretical problem but an actual one in the transmission of 1 John.

JSJ:  How realistic is it, in your opinion, to use real-life manuscripts’ texts as proxies for potential ancestors of other manuscripts’ text?   Especially considering that we have a relatively small representation of surviving manuscripts, and also considering that no versional evidence and no patristic evidence is used in the  CBGM?

SCC: It’s only realistic within the Byzantine text and only if we look at a lot of them. Otherwise, it’s not realistic at all. Outside of the Byzantine text, the manuscripts are too few and too divergent from each other to be good proxies for potential ancestors. Due to the bias at the heart of the CBGM, the extent of these divergences are enough to make many of them appear to be potential descendants of more carefully copied text, when they are in fact cousins to varying degrees. Indeed the big problem with the potential ancestor notion in the CBGM is that it assumes that all relations between manuscripts can be characterized in terms of ancestors and descendants, instead of siblings and cousins, which is vastly more common on the historical record we actually possess. As for versional and patristic evidence, the CBGM does not even look at them, and even if they did, they may be so incomplete that it could yield nonsensical results (imagine if an Old Latin manuscript is a “potential ancestor” of a Greek one?).

JSJ:  Toward the end of your article, you pointed out that the CBGM gives an unjustifiable level of weight to a combination of witnesses – a combination that includes 1739 – in First John 1:7, where δε is not included in the text of Nestle-Aland 28 even though its support is both ancient and vast.  Again:  what’s wrong with this picture?

SCC:  This is the bias in action. The CBGM really likes 1739 due to its relatively short distance to the initial text. This means that every reading it has—including its singular readings—is potentially the initial reading even when every earlier text disagrees with it. This means that the critic has to establish the text based solely on internal evidence, which is notoriously difficult in cases involving “particles and articles” that don’t really affect the propositional meaning or translation of the text. In the past, textual critics didn’t think this external evidence was good enough to warrant serious consideration; with the CBGM now they apparently do. I can only hope that our ability to evaluate the internal evidence for more substantive variant readings is good enough to overcome the CBGM’s bias.

JSJ:  Let’s look at another textual variant that was adopted in Nestle-Aland 28:  the Byzantine reading Πρεσβυτέρους τους at the beginning of First Peter 5:1.  Vaticanus, Alexandrinus, P72 and 2412 read Πρεσβυτέρους οὖν, Sinaiticus, Y, 623, and 1611 read Πρεσβυτέρους οὐν τους, and 1505 simply supports Πρεσβυτέρους.  I can see how internal arguments could lead to the adoption of τους, but how does the CBGM get there?  And how can one tell when the CBGM has had a decisive role in decision-making in NA28, and when it was not a factor?

SCC: This variation unit is one of those where the editors of the Editio Critica Maior (ECM) changed their mind. In the first edition of the ECM for 1 Peter in 2000, they went with Πρεσβυτέρους οὖν with 03 (B, Vaticanus); but in the second edition of the ECM in 2013, they went with Πρεσβυτέρους τοὺς with 1739 instead. Now, 03 and 1739 are the two closest manuscripts to the initial text for the CBGM, so their readings are always going to look good for the CBGM, particularly when the Byzantine text agrees with them. Moreover, all the variants are coherent, so there is little guidance on that front. Apparently, what happened is that that the editors changed their mind on the internal evidence between the two editions. Why they did so is unclear, and I cannot find any documentation or commentary on this variant. The only clue I have are the local genealogies published on Muenster’s institute’s website ( http://intf.uni-muenster.de/cbgm2/LocStem1.html ), and they differ between the two editions. In any case, the external evidence is effectively neutralized here under the CBGM and plays no important role.

JSJ:  Do you think that the recent decision to adopt μέρει in First Peter 4:16 was made primarily due to a rethinking of internal considerations, and the CBGM was simply along for the ride?  Mink’s argument (see p. 72 of Wasserman & Gurry’s New Approach) sure sounds like it was driven by internal evidence.

SCC:  This variant gets a bit outside the scope of my paper but it shows a different way that the bias at the heart of the CBGM can pop up, but it takes some explaining. There are two readings in 1 Pet 4:16. The older reading of the NA27 is “in this name” (ἐν τῷ ὀνόματι τούτῳ) and is supported by an all-star cast of P72, 01 (ℵ/Sinaiticus), 02 (A/Alexandrinus), 03 (B/Vaticanus), 044 (Ψ), 33, 81, 1611, 1739, Old Latins, Coptic, Syriac, Armenian, Gothic, Ethiopian, and Cyril. The testimony of the earliest and most widespread witnesses is unanimously in favor of “in this name.” And it makes good sense in light of our knowledge of the earliest persecutions against Christians. The newer reading in the NA28 is “in this respect” (ἐν τῷ μέρει τούτῳ) is entirely Byzantine (049, P, 104, 180, etc.).

            It is important to note that the Byzantine text is not monolithically in favor of the second reading: there are also quite a few Byzantine manuscripts that have the “in this name” reading. In my research, this is the result of contamination, because I have ways of connecting the Byzantine manuscripts with this reading to older, non-Byzantine texts, but the bias of the CBGM can’t find this contamination because its potential ancestor formula is flawed. In fact, it gets the source relationships backwards, and is unable to recognize the actual sources of the contamination. As a result, the user of the CBGM is misled into thinking that going from “in this respect” to “in this name” is a common, independent change, when in fact the opposite was actually more common, to correct an older manuscript with “in this name” to “in this respect” in conformance with the more common, contemporary Byzantine reading. As a result, I strongly suspect that the CBGM results in this case have colored the editors’ reassessment of the internal evidence, causing them to favor a different sense of the transcriptional probabilities than their predecessors. For a good internal analysis on the merits of the previous NA27 reading (“in this name”) see Jarrett Knight’s article in JBL last year.

JSJ:  I’ve gotten the impression that the more rival readings there are in a particular variant-unit, the less useful the CBGM becomes – downright chaotic – and the more unstable the Nestle-Aland compilation is likely to become at those points.  Have you gotten this impression, and if so, why does this seem to be the case?

SCC: There is a big issue over the size and scope of variation units that is largely ignored in our discussions to date, so there isn’t much to go on. I suspect that, as in the case of 1 Pet 5:1, when all the variants are coherent (which seems to be easier to happen when there are more of them), then the CBGM does not have much to offer the textual critic for decision. But I’ll need to look at a lot more of them to be more confident.

JSJ:  When I look at things like the diagram of the textual flow for Second Peter 3:10 (on page 76 of Wasserman & Gurry’s A New Approach to Textual Criticism, about the CBGM), it looks like the CBGM began by building a line of descent for each set of rival variants in a specific variation-unit, and somewhere along the line its focus shifted, from being about relationships of readings, to something more concrete, involving relationships of manuscripts (or, manuscripts’ texts).  (See the diagrams on pages 89-91, and then, on p. 105, “The global stemma for the Harklean Group in the Catholic Letters.)  I still don’t quite grasp how that was done – how the global stemma was made without simply ignoring some of the data.  Could you explain that in a little more detail? 

SCC:  The key thing to know about the global stemma is that, aside from a few toy examples, it was never published or used to edit the text in the ECM. I spent a lot of time trying to understand it and how it relates to the textual flows, only to learn that it is still under development and irrelevant to the text of the NA28. I recommend ignoring it until it is actually implemented because it is still under development and who knows how it can change. All I can say is that the portion of the global stemma published in Wasserman & Gurry defies easy historical interpretation.

JSJ:  Are there any other reasons to approach the CBGM with caution?

SCC: Let me enumerate some of them.

(1) In addition to its bias, we mentioned that the CBGM does not take into account versional and patristic evidence, an important set of evidence for the early periods of the text.

(2) The behavior of the “connectivity parameter,” which we have not discussed, seems to be affected by the sampling bias, so the number would have to be different in the well-sampled Byzantine text than outside of it, but the CBGM has no provision for this.

(3) Another issue is that the method may be too beholden to what the editors think is the initial text. For the ECM/NA28, the editors started with a subset of the NA27 for all intents and purposes, but what if they started with the Byzantine or Codex Bezae? At this point, it’s an open question.

(4) Further, I suspect that the CBGM is not even finding contamination correctly (see above for 1 Pet 4:16), but that is something under active research and a matter for a different time.

(5) Finally, the major problem I have with the ECM and the NA28 is that the editors have not adequately explained their reasoning in all the places where they changed the text. This is particularly important because the CBGM’s problems mean that the external evidence will appear less decisive than it used to and put a lot more pressure on getting the internal arguments right. Yet, when the internal arguments are not documented, it forces people to assume it was the CBGM that caused the change when it could have been something else. Fortunately, the decisions leading to the Acts is better documented that the Catholics, but even then I still want something even more thorough.

JSJ:  Thank you for sharing your thoughts with us.

SCC: You’re welcome. I hope my explanations are helpful to your readers.

Is Penn Also Among the Prophets?

            Until the release of the Revised Version in 1881 and the American Standard Version in 1901, the King James Version was, with few exceptions, the default English version of the New Testament from the 1600s onward.  But there were exceptions.  One of them was the 1836 Book of the New Covenant, translated by Granville Penn, for which Penn provided a supplemental volume, Annotations to the Book of the New Covenant.

   

            Penn – grandson of William Penn the founder of Pennsylvania – began his Annotations with a 90-page Expository Preface, in which he briefly surveyed past English versions and past text-critical enterprises (up to the 1830 compilation made by Scholz), and explained his text-critical method.  This preface is sharply written and is still definitely worth reading by students of New Testament textual criticism today – not only to see an erudite textual critic at work, but also to see in action the oversimplified assumptions that led to a nearly complete overthrow of the Textus Receptus. 

            After the preface, and a lengthy extract from Johann L. Hug’s 1810 work on Codex Vaticanus, Penn provided a point-by-point textual commentary on the text, focusing mainly on passages where the meaning of his base-text is different from the meaning of the rival reading in the Textus Receptus.  Not only did Penn make many insightful observations regarding textual variants, and the meaning of some obscure terms, but he made doctrinal, apologetic, exegetical, and devotional comments as well, as if writing with a pastoral concern for his readers – occasionally drifting into outright preaching.            

            No doubt it would be edifying to explore Penn’s exhortations in more detail; somehow his study of the same variants that shocked Bart Ehrman 150 years later seems to have left Granville Penn’s faith intact and unshaken.  But today I wish to focus on some remarkable parallels between Penn’s text and the text of the Revised Standard Version (the forerunner of versions such as the ESV, NIV, NLT, and NRSV).  Here are 50 sample passages where Penn’s Book of the New Covenant, in 1836, forecast the contents of the 1946 RSV.  I have added the symbol ♠ to indicate where the RSV and Penn’s compilation agree.  (Penn re-numbered some chapters’ verses; I have resorted to the usual arrangement in this list.)

● 1.  Matthew 1:25 – (♠) does not include firstborn

● 2.  Matthew 5:22 – (♠) does not include without a cause

● 3.  Matthew 5:44 – (♠) does not include bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you

● 4.  Matthew 6:1 – (♠) says righteousness instead of alms (“piety” in RSV, but plainly based on the same reading)

● 5.  Matthew 6:13 – (♠) does not include the doxology to the Lord’s Prayer

● 6.  Matthew 6:33 – says seek ye first His justification and His kingdom

● 7.  Matthew 8:28 – (♠) has Gadarenes

● 8.  Matthew 11:19 – (♠) justified by her works

● 9.  Matthew 14:24 – (♠) has many furlongs from land

● 10. Matthew 16:2-3 – non-inclusion

● 11. Matthew 17:21 – (♠) non-inclusion

● 12.  Matthew 18:11 – (♠) non-inclusion

● 13. Matthew 20:7 – (♠) does not include and whatever is right you shall receive

● 14. Matthew 20:16 – (♠) does not include For many are called, but few are chosen.

● 15. Matthew 27:49-50 – includes Vaticanus’ interpolation which states that someone took a spear and pierced Jesus’ side, and water and blood flowed, before He died.

● 16.  Mark 1:14 – (♠) says gospel of God instead of gospel of the kingdom of God

● 17. Mark 6:36 – (♠) says buy themselves something to eat

● 18. Mark 7:16 – (♠) verse not included

● 19. Mark 9:29 – (♠) does not include and fasting

● 20. Mark 10:24 – (♠) does not include for those who trust in riches

● 21. Mark 11:26 – (♠) verse not included

● 22. Mark 13:14 – (♠) does not include spoken of by Daniel the prophet

● 23. Mark 15:3 – (♠) does not include but He answered nothing

● 24. Mark 15:8 – (♠) has going up, instead of crying aloud

● 25. Mark 16:9-20 – (♠) verses not included

● 26. Luke 1:28 – (♠) does not include blessed are you among women

● 27. Luke 9:55-56 – (♠) says But he turned, and rebuked them; and they went on to another village.

● 28. Luke 15:21 – includes Make me as one of your hired servants

● 29. Luke 22:43-44 – verses not included

● 30. Luke 23:17 – (♠) verse not included

● 31. Luke 23:38 – (♠) does not include written in letters of Greek, Latin, and Hebrew

● 32. Luke 23:34 – does not include Then Jesus said, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do

● 33. Luke 24:1 – (♠) does not include and certain other women with them

● 34. Luke 24:42 – (♠) does not include and a piece of honeycomb

● 35. John 3:13 – (♠) does not include who is in heaven

● 36. John 5:3-4 – (♠) does not include anything between “blind, lame, and withered” and “And a certain man was there”

● 37. John 7:53-8:11 – (♠) verses not included

● 38. John 13:32 – does not include If God is glorified in him

● 39. Acts 28:16 – (♠) does not include the centurion delivered the prisoners to the captain of the guard, but

● 40.  Romans 9:28 – (♠) has only for, the Lord will finally, and summarily, settle an account with the land:

● 41. Romans 14:6 – (♠) does not include and he who does not regard the day, to the Lord he does not regard it

● 42. First Cor. 10:28 – (♠) does not include for the earth is the Lord’s and all its fullness

● 43. Galatians 4:26 –  (♠) does not include all

● 44. Galatians 6:15 –  (♠) does not include in Christ Jesus

● 45. Ephesians 3:9 – (♠) has dispensation instead of fellowship (fellowship is an ultra-minority reading in the Textus Receptus), and does not have through Jesus Christ

● 46. Ephesians 6:1 – does not include in the Lord

● 47. Hebrews 1:3 – reads making all things manifest (instead of sustaining all things), and does not include by himself and our (RSV does not include by himself and our)

● 48. Hebrews 2:9 – reads apart from God instead of by the grace of God

● 49. First Peter 4:14 – (♠) does not include the final sentence of the verse

● 50. Jude verse 5 – refers to Joshua (Greek:  Ἰησοῦς) instead of to “the Lord”

            These readings, mere samples, clearly show that while the New Testament base-text of the RSV – a primarily Alexandrian base-text – can be traced back to the 1881 revision by Westcott and Hort, a very similar compilation had already been created by Granville Penn in 1836 – when Westcott was eleven and Hort was eight.  How did he foresee this?  Is Penn also among the prophets?

            What was the method that was used by Penn in 1836, using fewer than 700 manuscripts, and without Sinaiticus, without Washingtonianus, without the Sinaitic Syriac, and without any papyri?  Did Granville Penn develop a coherence-based genealogical method?  No; his method was very simple:  adopt the reading of Codex Vaticanus almost all the time! 

            To Grenfell Penn, “The only text which we can take hold of, palpably and securely, as having really existed in the most ancient time to which our retrospective researches can attain, is undeniably that of the ‘Vatican MS.’” 

            In several respects Penn anticipated the theories and proposals that were later expressed by Hort in his 1881 Introduction – including Hort’s pivotal theory regarding conflations.  Penn’s analysis of Mark 6:33 and Mark 9:38 may sound somewhat familiar to those who have read Hort’s Introduction, §134-141.     

            Penn seems to have sincerely believed that distinct readings in the Textus Receptus “are consequences of the depravation of the copies during the dark ages.”  His belief that Byzantine readings are late accretions provided the platform for its corollary that the oldest manuscripts must contain the oldest readings.

            This belief, however, was not confirmed by subsequent research.  In E. C. Colwell’s view, “the overwhelming majority of readings were created before the year 200.”  George D. Kilpatrick proposed (on page 42 of his article The Bodmer and Mississippi Collection of Biblical and Christian Texts) that if one sets aside accidental readings, “Almost all variants can be presumed to have been created by A.D. 200.”  Aland & Aland (in The Text of the New Testament, page 290) have stated, “Practically all the substantive variants in the text of the New Testament are from the second century.”  This may cause some to wonder why the critical text of 2020 is so little changed from the critical text of 1836.

            In closing, I would like to raise two questions.

            First:  what would happen if compilers of the text of the New Testament, instead of inventing new excuses to adopt the readings in Codex Vaticanus (besides “It’s older!”), acknowledged that the ancient texts displayed in younger manuscripts were transmitted in transmission-lines that were much more stringent than the transmission-lines from which our earliest manuscripts emanated?  That is, what if textual critics stopped favoring a reading on the grounds that it is attested in a manuscript that was stored in a drier climate?  (For this is what one is really doing when one casually adopts whatever reading is attested in the earliest manuscripts because they are earlier:  what was the chief factor that allowed those manuscripts to outlast others, and thus become the oldest, if not dry weather?)  We might then get a truly eclectic text that amounts to something significantly different from what Granville Penn produced in 1836 using the Codex-B’s-God’s-Mouthpiece method.

            Second:  seeing that there’s not much special about Westcott and Hort’s compilation, if one were to remove Hort – and his theory about the Lucianic recension, and his séance, and his liberalism, and his racism, etc., etc. – from the picture, one would still have to grapple with the erudite and well-presented arguments that Granville Penn enunciated 50 years before Hort, adding subsequent discoveries to the picture in the process.  How far from the Byzantine Text might that take us?

Readers are invited to double-check the data in this post.

News from Germany: A Sequel to CBGM

Dr. Nicholas Zegers

            The city of Müenster, Germany is abuzz with news of a groundbreaking new method of textual analysis that has been developed by scholars at the Institut für Neutestamentliche Witze.  The new method, colloquially called the Conjecture Based Genealogical Method (not to be confused with its predecessor, the similarly named Coherence Based Geneaological Method), promises to shape the future of the text of the New Testament.  I sat down with resident scholar Dr. Nicholas Zegers at Caputo’s coffee bar in Müenster to find out more:

Q:  Dr. Zegers, what led to this new method, and what is the basic idea behind it?

Dr. Zegers:  The CBGM2, as I like to call it, is built upon the principles of CBGM1, applied to non-extant readings – thus the name “Conjecture Based.”  As we at the Institute were analyzing a group of variant-units with unusually high numbers of rival variants, the data appeared to break down; it was somewhat like traffic gridlock, when no car takes the lead.  And then it occurred to us:  considering that our extant manuscripts are only a small slice of all manuscripts ever made; why not add a conjectural reading, or a series of conjectural readings, to the database, and see if the gridlock dissipates?

Q:  And did it?

Dr. Zegers:  To an extent, yes – particularly in cases where the extant witnesses share a high level of contamination.  Using CBGM2, we reconstructed a number of hypothetical Ur-readings and secondary readings at specific variant-units, and regrouped the extant readings according to the classical principle of granting preference to the reading which best accounts for the others.  When we do this at many variant-units, we can establish a pre-genealogical relationship between the texts of entire manuscripts, and the conjecturally reconstructed texts.  And from there, we can build a stemma that includes the reconstructions.

Q:  Splendid.  Did you find anything interesting?

Dr. Zegers:  Yes; in a substantial number of variant-units, some rival extant readings were previously in a virtual tie, using conventional analysis, and even using CBGM1, but when CBGM2 was applied, they resolved themselves into discrete patterns that, when combined, suggest lines of descent.  Not only did this organization of the data account for many nonsense-readings, but sometimes readings which are poorly supported externally are favored on relational grounds, and on occasion, a hypothetical reading – usually a proposed Ur-reading but sometimes what had been posited as merely a possible secondary reading – augmented the coherence of the stemma, and was vindicated by the analysis as the variant that best accounted for its rivals.

Q:  Can you share an example or two?

Dr. Zegers:  Certainly; I can recollect a few off the top of my head.  We anticipate that the application of CBGM2 will elicit the introduction of new conjectural or singular readings into the text of several books of the New Testament:  our research so far confirms “the Prophet” rather than “a prophet” in John 7:52.  In James 1:17, the reading found exclusively in Papyrus 23 is favored.  And at this juncture, things don’t look good for the final phrase of John 4:9.  Non-extant readings are confirmed to be original in Acts 8:7, Acts 8:36, Acts 23:7, Galatians 4:25, First Corinthians 6:5, and Second Timothy 1:13. 

Q:  It sounds like this new method might disturb some folks who like their English New Testaments to have Greek manuscripts as a foundation.

Dr. Zegers:  Well, the basic idea is really nothing new.  What has to be understood is that most manuscripts of New Testament materials once had mothers and siblings, so to speak, which are no longer extant.  From a certain point of view, we are not creating new evidence; we are recovering the voices of manuscripts which once existed but which have been silenced by the ravages of time and chance.  Furthermore, CBGM2 confirms exponentially more traditional readings than non-extant readings, sometimes surprisingly so.  The reference in Luke 24:42 to Jesus eating a piece of honeycomb, for example, is strongly supported by CBGM2.  We’re still not sure how that happened.

   

Q:  This all sounds fascinating, even revolutionary.  When can we expect to see this research in print?

Dr. Zegers:  The first forty-five fascicles are in preparation, and are expected to be released in alternating volumes in a co-operative publication effort by Brill and Gorgias Press.  A preliminary draft of an introductory essay, published initially in Caucasian Albanian, is already available; following a period of peer review, it will be accompanied by an exhaustive digital database in Kotlin.

Q:  Thank you for sharing this exciting news.  I can hardly wait to read more about it.

Zegers:  You’re quite welcome.  

 

Interview with Maurice Robinson - Part 3

RP2005

          Today we conclude our interview with Dr. Maurice Robinson, one of the compilers of the Byzantine Textform.

Q:  Dr. Robinson, what would you say to someone who said, “I want to follow the Majority Text, but I want to follow the majority text in manuscripts up to the year 900, and set aside the late manuscripts, most of which are Byzantine”?

Robinson:  Should others desire to adopt a different type of Byzantine preference theory, they certainly are welcome to do so. Clearly, a theory for the Gospels based on a Byzantine uncial consensus (e.g., that of A E F G H K M S U V Ω, and parts of W) would approximate closely the results obtained when the wider minuscule consensus is included.
          The problem would be more severe, however, in the Acts and Epistles, where the available uncial manuscripts are fewer, particularly those of Byzantine type that predate the 9th century.  The consensus base for those New Testament books would seem to require inclusion of later minuscule testimony, else the resultant text of those New Testament books will be less Byzantine than what the similar process might produce among the Gospels.  Further, the situation in Revelation would be far worse, since the competing Byzantine groups there primarily depend upon minuscules made after the 800’s (generally representing the Majority-Andreas and Majority-Koine forms of the text) — leave these out of consideration, and it would be difficult to say what the resultant text might become (most likely quite non-Byzantine in nature).

          For the Gospels, a pre-9th century Byzantine consensus would be as strong and even more viable than portions of the Hodges-Farstad theory where they appealed to less-than-Byzantine minority groups to settle instances of textual division; certainly such a method also would be far more reasonable than adopting a recensional form of text found only among late manuscripts (such as the Family 35 subgroup).  Other possible approaches that would result in a basically Byzantine form of text could include following the archetype of Family Π/Ka or (perhaps with less likelihood of success) von Soden’s K1 group. From my perspective, however, none of these alternatives appear superior to the present Byzantine-priority hypothesis, methodology, and obtainable results.

Q:  Any comments on Nestle-Aland 28?

Robinson:  Particularly I am disappointed with one aspect of the new format, namely the editors’ decision to eliminate mention of fluctuating degrees of minority Greek manuscript support for variant readings (the “pc” and “al” designations). This move leaves users of the NA28 apparatus unclear as to the relative amount of support a given variant reading might have, and – even worse – readers might presume that only the manuscripts cited for a particular NA28 reading actually support such – and this even though the editors explicitly claim the new format supposedly should prevent such.

          Although the editors claim that “pc and al cannot be used in a precisely defined way, because full collation of all the manuscripts would yield more witnesses for known variants,” such special pleading appears peculiar, particularly when the full collation data of Text und Textwert are compared against readings designated pc or al in the former NA27 apparatus.  The Text und Textwert data regularly validate the propriety of the pc and al designations within a concise, more limited apparatus. From my perspective, those designations ought to be reinstated in future NA editions, along with re-inclusion of at least some of the previous consistently cited witnesses from NA26/27 that no longer appear in NA28.

        On a positive note, the new typeface is nice, and the NA28 regularization of some orthographic forms was long overdue. Similarly, I consider the elimination of conjectural suggestions from the apparatus beneficial, although an appendix listing the more important of these could be informative in terms of understanding scholarly views on the matter.

Q:  In the approach you describe in “The Case for Byzantine Priority,” a prohibition on conjectural emendation is Rule #1. What do you think of NA28’s introduction of a conjectural emendation into the text of Second Peter 3:10?

Robinson:  Given that the UBS/NA editions long have had a conjecture at Acts 16:12, the inclusion of a new conjecture at Second Peter 3:10 (dating from at least the time of Tischendorf — see his 8th edition’s apparatus) is unsurprising, particularly since the basic Alexandrian reading in that location — found in the main text of previous critical editions dating back to Tregelles and W-H — simply makes no good sense (kai ta en auth erga eureqhsetai, literally “and the works in her shall be found”). The point is well illustrated in the translational circumlocutions that appear among those English versions based on the critical text.  Consider the following, grouped according to how they render eureqhsetai:

Lexham:     “and the deeds done on it will be disclosed.”

HCSB:       “and the works on it will be disclosed.”

NRSV:       “and everything that is done on it will be disclosed.”

NIV:          “and everything done in it will be laid bare.”

NET:          “and every deed done on it will be laid bare.”

CEB:          “and all the works done on it will be exposed.”

ESV:          “and the works that are done on it will be exposed.”

GW:           “and everything that people have done on it will be exposed.”

ISV:           “and everything done on it will be exposed.”

NCV:         “and everything in it will be exposed.”

TEV:          “with everything in it will vanish.”

NIrV:         “God will judge the earth and everything done in it.”

Mess:         “and all its works exposed to the scrutiny of Judgment.”

NLT:          “everything on it will be found to deserve judgment.”

Voice:        “and all the works done on it will be seen as they truly are.”

NAB:         “and everything done on it will be found out.”

         Of these, only the Roman Catholic New American Bible comes close to the base meaning of the problematic construction. So certainly, the NA28 conjectural inclusion of ouk before eureqhsetai makes far better sense without requiring alteration of the proper meaning of the word in the process (thus NA28 in conjecture: “shall [not] be found”). The proposed conjecture, therefore, is quite good, and similar in quality to what Rendel Harris suggested for First Peter 3:19, where the main text en w kai should be supplemented by the conjectural addition of Enwc (thereby reading, “in which also Enoch”) — a brilliant conjecture; yet equally without manuscript evidence, and equally recognized by most scholars as non-original, just as they ought to regard the current NA28 conjecture at Second Peter 3:10.

          Put simply, researchers — particularly those involved in the study and use of actual manuscript testimony — should not invent or prefer readings that have no known existence among the Greek manuscript base merely because such might “make better sense” than an otherwise problematic preferred reading (not that I consider eureqhsetai to be original over against the Byzantine katakahsetai, but obviously the critical text editors do so presume). As I recently commented on the Evangelical Textual Criticism blog,

The problem I have with conjectural readings is not restricted to a priori concerns related to a Byzantine Priority or majority text position, but rather as ultimately involving transmissional considerations; i.e., any conjectured reading — assuming such supposedly to be more reasonable than what appears among the existing witnesses — would have to explain transmissionally how and why such would utterly disappear from our known transmissional history. Were such conjectures actually superior to all extant alternatives, I would consider their lack of perpetuation to be inexplicable.

Q:  Could you briefly explain how the NA28 has many conjectural emendations if one considers short series of variant-units instead of just single variant-units?

Robinson:  I have already written extensively on the so-called “zero-support” verses in the Nestle-Aland editions, both in a published essay in Translating the New Testament: Text, Translation, Theology and in a subsequent ETS presentation in 2012. 

          To summarize: if individual variant support in NA27 is considered in a linear manner (i.e., the stated documentary support for an entire verse containing at least two variant units, when reduced to its combined joint agreement), at least 105 whole verses exist in the critical text that apparently lack any actual existence in the form published, whether from any Greek manuscript, ancient version, or patristic source. In those instances, the result obviously becomes de facto conjecture.
          In my follow-up paper, I examined two-verse segments in NA27 using the same criteria, and found an additional 210 similar portions of text that again as published lack attestation from any known witness (suffice it to say that among the manuscripts comprising the Byzantine Textform, such never occurs in relation to passages of similar length). Note that the same findings apply to the NA28 edition as well, since its main text and apparatus support basically remain the same.

The Greek New Testament
for Beginning Readers

Q:  Could you explain again why Revelation is so different in the Hodges-Farstad compilation?

Robinson:  Although more differences appear between H-F and RP in Revelation than elsewhere in the New Testament, they are not that extensive as when either text is compared against the Old Uncial form of the critical editions. Rather, the primary differences between the Byzantine form of text in H-F and RP mainly involve H-F utilizing a particular stemmatic approach that prefers a minority Byzantine subgroup that they considered original – a group that at times represents less than 30% of the Byzantine manuscripts of that book. In contrast, RP2005 presents a non-stemmatic model representing a general consensus among the two primary Byzantine groups within that book.

          Where these two groups divide, RP generally follow the Majority-Koine group except where a significant number of its manuscripts align with the Majority-Andreas group – this because the Majority-Andreas group appears to reflect a single archetype derived from the Andreas commentary that usually accompanies those particular manuscripts.

Q:  It was recently acknowledged by a textual critic from Dallas Theological Seminary that “many” people subscribe to the Byzantine Priority school.  Besides you, who are these people?

Robinson:  What Dallas critic might have suggested such (I speak as a fool)?  I would prefer to say that many have a preference for a text similar to the Byzantine who might claim to be majority or Byzantine supporters, but who speedily dissent from such whenever the Byzantine Textform departs from their favored Textus Receptus/KJV type of reading.

            Beyond Pierpont and myself, among those who are not TR/KJV partisans but who favor some form of the Byzantine text (not necessarily agreeing with our specific theory or methodology nor resultant form of the text) would include Hodges and Farstad, John Wenham, Jakob van Bruggen, Peter Johnston, Harry Sturz, Wilbur Pickering, Paul Anderson, Thomas Edgar, James Davis, Donald Brake, Timothy Friberg (not all still living) and others, including several more Europeans along with many of my own students.  Not all of these have published in relation to textual matters, and thus some names may be unfamiliar; yet in general they remain pro-Byzantine to some degree.  There also are numerous laypeople that have communicated with me or these others over the years who hold to some sort of Byzantine or majority text position, but I only mention here a few who have published within academia.

Q:  Finally:  in NA28, in Second Peter 2:18, the editors rejected oligws and adopted ontws, even though the adoption of oligws had previously been given an “A” ranking (as if the editors were certain that it was correct).  Any idea how that happened?

Robinson:  The answer apparently is the “wag the dog” influence of CBGM and little else; this particularly in view of Metzger’s previous strong defense of oligws in his Textual Commentary. I also note that in the process UBS5 lowered the rating from “A” to “C” – again without providing any particular reason or justification for such.  Nice that they here adopted a Byzantine reading, but clearly not for the same reason that I would do so.

Thank you for sharing your thoughts.

 — end of interview — 

Links:  Part One.  Part Two.