An Update on James Leonard and the Byzantine Text

            As I reported last month, a series of posts at the New Testament Textual Criticism discussion-group on Facebook presented a case that the Byzantine Text has a large and ancient stratum that includes distinct readings.  Moderator James Leonard responded by deleting the posts and ejecting the poster (that is, me) from the group.  No rules of the forum were broken – Leonard simply decreed that views that do not favor the Alexandrian Text are unwelcome. 

            Leonard proceeded to claim, “For the record, we do think that many Byzantine readings are early, but that the existence of a coherent Byzantine text type is a later development, and that many or most readings from the Byz text which differ from modern critical editions (NA28, SBLGNT, Tyndale House NT) are often unattested by the Greek manuscript tradition prior to the 9th century.”

            Leonard has yet to answer the challenge to produce a list of distinct Byzantine readings in Matthew or Mark which lack manuscript-support prior to 800.  Instead, as if he misread the invitation, Leonard submitted Philippians 1 as Exhibit A in his case for the lateness of the Byzantine Text.  

            I responded on May 31, showing that Leonard’s view depends on a flawed method, and that it collapses when one takes off Leonard’s arbitrary blinders so as to see versional and patristic evidence.  Twenty-nine of the 31 Byzantine variants listed in Philippians 1 in the Nestle-Aland apparatus are supported before 800 – including an agreement between the Byzantine reading of Philippians 1:24, and the reading of Philippians 1:24 in Papyrus 46. 

            (Leonard can of course continue to circulate his delusion that most distinct Byzantine readings are not attested before 800, but one would hope that his friends will be kind enough to point out to him, sooner or later, that 93% of the evidence in his own hand-picked sample-passage is crushing his credibility.  Perhaps they are afraid of what might happen to their group-membership if they point out that the emperor is naked.)

            Or so I thought last month.  My research was, as I mentioned at the time, based on a quick and non-exhaustive investigation of the evidence.  Now, additional evidence has been pointed out to me regarding the two Byzantine readings that initially appeared to lack support before 800:

(1)  The Byzantine reading συμπαραμενω in Philippians 1:25 is supported by Chrysostom (c. 400), who emphasizes the term in his Fourth Homily on Philippians:  “He showed them that if he remained, he remained for their sake, that it proceeded not from wickedness of those who plotted against him.  He subjoined also the reason:  that he might secure their belief.  For if this is necessary, that is, I shall by all means remain, and I will not ‘remain’ simply, but ‘will remain with you.’ For this is the meaning of the word, ‘and I shall abide with,’ [συμπαραμενω – See Migne P. G. Vol. 62, Col. 207, line 26] that is, I shall see you.”   And he re-affirms, as he begins to explain verse 26, “You see that this explains the word ‘abide with you’” [συμπαραμενω again] – and he proceeds to cite Romans 1:12 as a similar passage (where συμπαρακληθηναι is used).   

(2)  The Byzantine reading αυτοις μεν εστιν in Philippians 1:28 (where NA reads εστιν αυτοις) is supported, according to Tischendorf’s apparatus, by the Peshitta (late 300’s/early 400’s), by Theodoret  (first half of the 400’s), and by John of Damascus (early 700’s). 

The number of Byzantine readings in Philippians 1 that have no support before 800 is thus reduced to zero. 

    

            There is a saying:  “The dogs bark, but the caravan passes.”  In text-critical academia, the advocates of a heavily pro-Alexandrian position have been attempting to steer the caravan for some time.  They have tended to look at those with other views (especially those with pro-Byzantine views, and even those who, like myself, believe that the Byzantine Text includes a large independent and ancient stratum that the Hortian transmission-model unfairly minimized in a way that has still not been adequately undone) the way a caravan-driver looks at a dog along the side of the road.  

            However, they are not really in the driver’s seat.  The evidence is.  And when the evidence opposes a position as strongly as the evidence opposes Leonard’s claims, it is obvious (wherever people are allowed to see the evidence clearly) whose view is in the caravan with the evidence, and whose credibility has gone to the dogs.  

[Thanks to those who helpfully provided data on this subject.] 

  

James Leonard and the Byzantine Text

The Byzantine Text
of Philippians 1.

            Recently Dr. James Leonard, an administrator of a discussion-group on Facebook that occasionally looks into questions about the text of the New Testament, asserted there that many or most readings from the Byzantine Text which differ from the Nestle-Aland compilation are often unattested by the Greek manuscript tradition prior to the ninth century.  That assertion was met with an invitation from a member of the discussion-group:  list all of the Byzantine readings in Matthew and Mark that are unattested before the ninth century.

            Dr. Leonard’s response was twofold:  first, he quickly ejected the invitation-maker from the discussion-group.  And second, responding to the invitation, he presented a list of Byzantine readings from Philippians chapter 1.

           Such a response is insufficient – not only because it restricts legitimate discussion, and does not involve the text of Matthew and Mark, but also, as it turns out, because Leonard’s data from Philippians 1 does not come remotely close to vindicating the idea that many or most readings in the Byzantine Text are unsupported before the 800’s.  

           As a convenient (but problematic) method of data-collection, Leonard consulted the Nestle-Aland apparatus, and after finding 31 variant-units in that chapter, he promptly acknowledged that in 19 of those 31 variant-units, the Byzantine Text and the Alexandrian Text agree.  That left him with only 12 variants capable of being examples of Byzantine readings that have no support before the year 800.  Six of them, however, he admits to be attested before then. 

            To show the amount of text involved in this analysis, here are three pictures.  The first one shows the Byzantine Text of Philippians chapter 1.  The second one shows the six Byzantine readings which fit Leonard’s description; they differ from modern critical editions of the Greek New Testament and are not attested in Greek manuscripts prior to the ninth century.  (The variant that is highlighted in yellow is a transposition-variant; the variant concerns the order in which the verses appear.)  The third picture shows the Byzantine readings in Philippians 1 which a cursory investigation indicates are unattested in witnesses from earlier than the 800’s. 

Byzantine readings
in Philippians 1
not supported in
Greek MSS
made before 800.

            Here are the six non-Alexandrian Byzantine variants in Philippians 1 which Leonard affirmed to be supported in Greek manuscripts before the 800’s:  [bold print added] 

● (1)  1:5 – Byz does not have της after απο.  Leonard:  “The earliest attestation for the Majority Reading comes from the 6^th century D-Text witness 06.” 

● (2)  1:8 – Byz has εστιν after μου.  Leonard:  “The earliest attestation for the Maj Reading comes from the 5^th century B-Text witness 02.”

● (3)  1:18 – Byz does not have οτι after Πλην.  Leonard:  “The earliest attestation for the Majority Reading is the 6^th century D-Text witness 06.” 

● (4)  1:23 – Byz does not have γαρ after πολλω.  Leonard:  “The earliest attestation for the Majority Reading is the 4^th century B-text witness 01.”

● (5)  1:24 – Byz has εν after επιμενειν.  Leonard:  “The earliest attestation for the Majority Reading are from 4^th and 5^th century B-Text witnesses.”  However, Leonard is mistaken.  Papyrus 46 (from the late 100’s or early 200’s) also supports the Byzantine reading here.  The text of Philippians 1:24 in Papyrus 46 agrees 100% with the Byzantine Text, while disagreeing with Vaticanus and Sinaiticus.  I have supplied here a picture of this part of Papyrus 46, with the words of Philippians 1:24 individually underlined.  

● (6)  1:27 – Byz reads ακουσω instead of ακουω.  Leonard:  “The earliest attestation for the Majority Reading are from 4^th and 5^th century B-Text readings.”

            Thus, after listing 12 readings as examples of Byzantine readings that show that Byzantine readings do not have manuscript-support until the 800’s, Leonard acknowledged that half of his examples have manuscript-support before the 800’s. 

Philippians 1:24 in Papyrus 46.

            Now let’s take a closer look at the six readings in Philippians 1 which, Leonard maintained, have no manuscript-support before the 800’s: 

● (1) 1:11 – Byz has καρπων δικαιοσύνης των (“fruits of righteousness”) instead of καρπον δικαιοσύνης τον (fruit of righteousness). 

● (2) 1:16-17 – Byz has these two verses in the opposite order.

● (3) 1:17 – Byz has επιφερειν instead of εγείρειν.

● (4) 1:25 – Byz has συμπαραμενω instead of παραμενω. 

● (5) 1:28 – Byz has αυτοις μεν εστιν instead of εστιν αυτοις.

● (6) 1:28 – Byz has υμιν instead of υμων.

 

Byzantine readings
in Philippians 1
not supported
by any witnesses
before 800.

           Let’s look for pre-800 attestation of these readings from all sources, not only Greek manuscripts.  Leonard himself, after all, has stated that if all existing Greek manuscripts suddenly disappeared, “We could reconstruct the New Testament from the early versions with considerable confidence.”  What do we see about the text of Philippians 1 in the versional evidence, when we look?  We see that the Peshitta supports the Byzantine reading in 1:11; the Harklean Syriac supports the Byzantine order of verses 16 and 17 (and so does Chrysostom;  see his Homily 2 on Philippians); the Peshitta supports επιφερειν in verse 17, and the Byzantine reading υμιν in verse 28 is supported by the Vulgate, as well as by Coptic, Gothic, and Ethiopic witnesses, carrying its support back to the 300’s.        

            The idea that Byzantine readings in Philippians 1 typically lack attestation before the 800’s dies a quick death in every case except two:  the Byzantine readings συμπαραμενω in verse 25 and αυτοις μεν εστιν in Philippians 1:28 (where NA reads εστιν αυτοις) appear to have no support from witnesses earlier than the 800’s.    

            None of this analysis shows that any of these Byzantine readings in Philippians 1 are original.  Nor does it show that readings that lack early support should automatically be rejected.  What this analysis shows is that the idea that Byzantine readings in Philippians 1 have no support before the 800’s is opposed by 29 out of 31 readings.  

            And this was in a passage selected by Leonard!  Will he continue to promote the idea that Byzantine readings typically or frequently lack attestation from before the 800’s, after being shown that 93.5% of his own Exhibit A refutes that assertion?  Probably.

(P.S.  My conclusion that  the Byzantine readings συμπαραμενω in verse 25 and αυτοις μεν εστιν in Philippians 1:28 lack support before 800 is provisional; I did not investigate this further after it was clear that the evidence opposed Leonard’s claim so thoroughly.  If anyone wishes to add more data about this, feel free to do so in the comments.)

Nestle-Aland 28: Much Ado About Almost Nothing

          It has been almost four years since the release of the 28th edition of the Nestle-Aland Novum Testamentum Graece, the first revision of the critical text of the Greek New Testament since 1979.  Its text in the Gospels, Acts, the Epistles of Paul, and in Revelation is unchanged from what was printed in 1979.  The apparatus (the list of variants and the witnesses that support them) is much improved, but still has room for improvement.  

          Aside from the introduction of a new font, new orthographic standardization, and new formatting, the only place where NA28 reflects new text-critical decisions is in the General Epistles (James-Jude), where 36 alterations of the text in the previous edition have been introduced.  (Officially, the count is 34, but in First Peter 1:16, two variant-units occur close together, and in Jude verse 5, two variant-units overlap.)    

          One persistent claim about NA28 is that it expresses a new appreciation for the Byzantine Text.  Dan Wallace, for example, reported that Klaus Wachtel conveyed that as the editors worked through the General Epistles, “They came to see much greater value of the Byzantine manuscripts than they had previously.”  James Leonard has similarly stated than an “interesting result” of the use of the Coherence-Based Genealogical Method is that “it is finding more and more individual Byzantine readings to be more plausible.”

          However, an examination of the new readings in NA28 indicates that the Byzantine Text was valued primarily in the role of a merely confirmatory witness, reinforcing the readings found in the important minuscule 1739.  As evidence of this, let’s investigate all of the textual changes from NA26 (1979) to NA28 (2013) in James, First Peter, and Second Peter.  Red text signifies that NA28 rejects a Byzantine reading that was in NA26 and NA27.  A black circle accompanies each adoption of a Byzantine reading.

JAMES

● 1:20:  κατεργάζεται instead of εργάζεται, agreeing with 1739 and the Byzantine Text.

2:3:  η κάθου εκει instead of εκει η κάθου, rejecting the word-order found in the Byzantine Text, and which was followed in NA27. 

● 2:4:  Και is adopted before ου at the beginning of the verse, agreeing with the Byzantine Text.

● 2:15:  ωσιν is included after λειπομενοι, agreeing with 1739 and the Byzantine Text.

● 4:10:  του is included before κυριου, agreeing with 1739 and the Byzantine Text.

FIRST PETER

1:6: λυπηθέντας instead of λυπηθέντες, rejecting a Byzantine reading that was in NA27.

● 1:16:  οτι is not included after γέγραπται.  The non-inclusion of οτι is supported by P72, À, 1739, and the Byzantine Text.

1:16: ειμι is not included at the end of the verse, rejecting a reading which is supported by the Byzantine Text, P72, and 1739.  At this point, the compilers of NA28 returned to a reading found in NA25. 

2:5:  τω is not included before θεω, rejecting a Byzantine reading that was in NA27 in brackets.  (Papyrus 72 supports the inclusion of τω here.)

● 2:25:  αλλ’ instead of αλλα.  This orthographic shift in NA28 constitutes the adoption of a Byzantine reading that is also supported by À.

● 4:16:  μέρει instead of ονόματι, agreeing with a Byzantine reading that is opposed by a widespread array of witnesses, including P72, À, B, 1739 and 1505.

● 5:1:  τους after Πρεσβυτέρους, agreeing with 1739 and the Byzantine Text.  Rival variants are ουν (supported by P72, A, and B), no word at all (supported by 1505), and ουν τους (supported by À).  This is an interesting variant-unit, not least because the reading in Codex Sinaiticus looks like a conflation, made by a copyist using two exemplars, one of which had ουν and the other of which had τους.  

● 5:9:  τω is not included before κόσμω, agreeing with 1739 and the Byzantine Text.

5:10:  Ιησου is not included after Χριστω, rejecting a reading that is supported by P72, A, 1739, and the Byzantine Text.  The non-inclusion of Ιησου is supported by À, B, and 1505.

SECOND PETER

● 2:6:  ασεβειν instead of ασεβέσιν, agreeing with À, 1739, and the Byzantine Text.  Ασεβειν was also the reading of NA25. 

● 2:11:  παρα κυρίω instead of παρα κυρίου, agreeing with À, B, 1739, and the Byzantine Text.  Παρα κυρίω was also the reading of NA25. 

● 2:15:  καταλιπόντες instead of καταλείποντες, agreeing with P72, 1739, and the Byzantine Text.

● 2:18:  όντως instead of ολίγως, agreeing with 1739 and the Byzantine Text.  The recent history of this variant-unit is interesting:  in the first edition (1966) of the United Bible Societies’ Greek New Testament, the compilers adopted ολίγως and ranked it at level “C,” signifying a “considerable degree of doubt” about it.  In the fourth edition (2001), the compilers still adopted ολίγως but ranked it at level “A,” signifying that “the text is certain.”  Obviously it was not so certain after all. 

● 2:20:  ημων is not included after κυρίου, thus agreeing with B and the Byzantine Text but disagreeing with a wide array of witnesses.   

3:6:  δι’ ον instead of δι’ ων at the beginning of the verse, rejecting a reading with very widespread support that includes the Byzantine Text, in favor of a reading with negligible support:  according to J. K. Elliott, the Greek witnesses for this reading consist of 025, eight minuscules, and one lectionary.  One of those minuscules was 1175 (from the 900’s), which was given special weight in the CBGM.  Nevertheless it is difficult to see what drove, or could ever drive, the conclusion that all Greek manuscripts are incorrect at this point except for that small group. 

3:10:  ουχ ευρεθήσεται instead of ευρεθήσεται, rejecting the Byzantine Text and rejecting all Greek manuscripts.  The Greek reading in NA28 is not supported by any Greek manuscripts.  As a Greek word, it is a conjectural emendation, based on the assumption that a reading in the Sahidic text of Second Peter was translated from an exemplar that had this reading. 

●3:16:  ταις after πάσαις, agreeing with À, 1739, and the Byzantine Text. 

3:16:  στρεβλώσουσιν instead of στρεβλουσιν, rejecting the Byzantine reading and adopting the reading of P72 and 1739.

3:18:  αμήν is not included at the end of the verse, rejecting the reading of P72, A, and the Byzantine Text and adopting the reading shared by B and 1739.

          From this review of the newly adopted readings in James, First Peter, and Second Peter in NA28, a few conclusion can be drawn:

(1)  The Byzantine Text’s readings are hardly ever adopted unless they agree with 1739.  Exceptions are at James 2:4, First Peter 2:25, 4:16, and Second Peter 2:20.  

(2)  NA28 agrees with the Byzantine Text at 15 places where NA27 disagreed.

(3)  NA28 disagrees with the Byzantine Text at 9 places where NA27 agreed. 

(4)  Calculating that the net number of agreements between the Nestle-Aland compilation and the Byzantine Text has thus increased by six, and observing that there are 187 disagreements between NA27 and RP2005, it follows that the total number of disagreements between the Nestle-Aland compilation and the Byzantine Text in these three books has decreased from 187 (in NA27) to 181 (in NA28).

         How exactly does a net gain of six agreements in James, First Peter, and Second Peter express a significant new appreciation for the Byzantine Text when the compilers of Novum Testamentum Graece continue to reject the Byzantine readings in 181 other places in these three books?  The answer is simple:  it doesn’t.     

An Early Egyptian Manuscript Named Mae

          Once upon a time, there was a letter named Ash.  It was a combination of the letters A and E, smashed together.  For centuries, Ash began names such Æneas, Æesop, and Æschylus, and was found in Cæsar, as well as less distinguished words such as archæology.  After a distinguished career in mediæval English, Ash eventually retired.  Ash is still employed, however, in the textual apparatus of the Nestle-Aland Novum Testamentum Græce:  “mae” is the abbreviation used there to represent two manuscripts written in Middle Ægyptian.  The first Middle Ægyptian manuscript, referred to as mae¹ in the apparatus, is the Scheide Codex (described by Metzger in 1980), a copy of practically the entire Gospel of Matthew made in the 400’s.  The second Middle Ægyptian manuscript, named mae² in the apparatus, is Codex Schøyen 2650 – a manuscript which is surprisingly important considering how little attention it has received. (Other manuscripts, extant for other New Testament books, are also called mae; in the UBS4 apparatus they are called meg.)

          Codex Schøyen 2650 was probably produced sometime in the 300’s.  It is a prized item in the collection of Martin Schøyen.  It was first described in detail in 2000 by Hans-Martin Schenke, who proposed that its text reflects a form of the text of the Gospel of Matthew that is drastically different from the canonical text – perhaps even the Hebrew text which some patristic writers suggest was the basis for the Greek text of Matthew.  This tantalizing suggestion, however, was opposed by other scholars, including the late William L. Petersen and Tjitze Baarda.  Baarda was gentle in his criticism of Schenke’s approach; Schenke died in 2002, and Baarda may have wished to adhere to the proverb, De mortuis nil nisi bonum.                 

          But let the truth be told:  mae² is a very good manuscript of the Gospel of Matthew (despite being extensively damaged; the text begins in 5:38, and every page has been damaged at least a little).  As a representative of the Alexandrian Text of Matthew its only rivals are Vaticanus and Sinaiticus.  If any researchers have had reservations about citing mae² as a witness for the fourth-century Coptic text of the canonical Gospel of Matthew, such doubts should be forever set aside.
          Codex Schøyen 2650 was the subject of James Leonard’s 2012 dissertation, which he prepared with the full resources of Tyndale House at his disposal; his preparation also involved a year of research at the H. Milton Haggard Center for New Testament Textual Studies.  His dissertation has since been published by Brill as Codex Schoyen 2650:  A Middle Egyptian Coptic Witness to the Early Greek Text of Matthew’s Gospel.  Leonard demonstrates with thunderous force that Schenke’s appraisal of the manuscript’s text minimized its close adherence to the Alexandrian Text (especially Sinaiticus and Vaticanus) and maximized readings which can be, and should be, regarded as points at which the translator resorted to paraphrasing, or which are the results of the Coptic dialect’s inherent inability to directly correspond to every nuance of the Greek text.
          This is not to say that mae² does not have more than its fair share of anomalies.  Leonard selected three passages for very thorough analysis:  5:38-6:18, 12:3-27, and 28:1-20.  In the first two passages, when mae²’s text initially appears to stray from the Alexandrian Text, there is almost always an explanation rooted either in the translator’s approach, in scribal mistakes, or in the limitations of Coptic syntax.  But in Matthew 28, we encounter the following oddities:

● 28:1 – Mae² adds, “when the stars were yet above” as a way of signifying that it was very early in the morning.  (Mae¹ also has a unique reading here.)

● 28:2 – Mae² says the angel “took” the stone, rather than that the angel rolled away the stone.

● 28:2 – Mae² includes not only the phrase “from the door” (agreeing with the Byzantine Text) but also “of the tomb” (agreeing with the Caesarean Text). 

● 28:5 – Mae² makes the unusual statement that when the guards shook due to their fear of the angel, “they arose as dead men.”

● 28:5 – Mae² does not have the phrase “who was crucified.”

● 28:10 – Mae² does not have the phrase “Do not be afraid.”

● 28:10 – Mae² says, “Tell my brothers to return to me in Galilee” instead of “Tell my brothers to go to Galilee.”

● 28:12 – Mae² adds “of the people” after “elders.”

          These do not add up to justification for the idea that the translator’s base-text was descended from a different source than the forms of Matthew 28 that are extant in Greek, but they do show that Egyptian translators were far from the models of precision that they are sometimes claimed to have been.

          Leonard points out a distinctive characteristic of the translation preserved in mae² that is particularly interesting:  “Mae² often compresses synonymous verb pairings to a single verb.”  Leonard illustrates this by citing 9:27, where, in the Nestle-Aland compilation and in the Byzantine Text, two blind men “cry out and say.”  The compilers of the Nestle-Aland text were so confident that this is the correct text that they did not even note that there is a variant-reading at this point. But in a few important manuscripts (C (which was corrected), L, and f¹³), the text only says that the blind men “cry out.”  Mae² agrees with this shortened reading.  Leonard mentions Matthew 9:36, 11:1, 12:44, 21:21, 23:23, 26:4, 26:74, 27:2, and 27:48 as other passages which display this phenomenon in mae².        

          This spurs a question which, although it was not even raised by Leonard, seems worth exploring:  if scribes in Egypt could thus shorten the text when translating, could they not do the same thing when transcribing?  The tendency to compress synonymous verb-pairs displayed in mae² could easily account for the short Alexandrian readings one finds in passages such as Luke 24:53, where the Byzantine reading has been regarded as a conflation.

           Mae²’s text generally adheres closely to the text of B and Aleph even at some points where they have almost no other support:  Mae² does not have 12:47 (a verse which is exceptionally vulnerable to loss due to homoeoteleuton); mae²  agrees with B in 14:24 (where B’s text, though adopted in the Nestle-Aland/UBS compilation, looks very much like something intended to ensure that “in the middle of the sea” was not misunderstood as referring to depth rather than distance); mae²  agrees with B and Aleph in 14:30 (where the word ισχυρόν was susceptible to loss via homoeoteleuton); mae² even agrees with the two flagship manuscripts of the Alexandrian Text in Matthew 27:49, where they state (in a flat contradiction of John 19:31-34) that Jesus was pierced with a spear before He died; mae² has the interpolation in a slightly different form, mentioning the water before the blood.

          In Codex Vaticanus, although the text is very strongly Alexandrian, Western readings pop up here and there, seemingly out of nowhere (such as in Matthew 27:24b).  The same phenomenon manifests itself in mae²:  the entire text of 21:44 is absent from mae², as it is from Codex D and several Old Latin manuscripts.

          Along with Leonard’s many insightful observations about the readings of mae² is a chapter about their possible impact on the Nestle-Aland compilation; Leonard proposes that at several variant-units where the evidence seems finely balanced, the weight of mae² might tip the scales.  These include variant-units in 6:33 and 12:15, among others.

Although the publisher is asking for
about $130 for a copy,
less expensive copies
can be obtained second-hand 
(at least, this was possible
when this post was written).

          Leonard does not investigate the question of possible lector-influence upon the Alexandrian Text displayed in mae², even though he provides some data which would be helpful in such an investigation.  It is sometimes thought that where the Byzantine Text has the name “Jesus” where the Alexandrian Text does not, this is due to a Byzantine tendency to add the name “Jesus” at the beginnings of lections.  In mae² we see the opposite tendency:  Jesus’ name is missing in 16:21 and 17:8.  Lector-influence may, however, be the cause of mae²’s inclusion of Jesus’ name in 9:36. 

           Now that James Leonard has provided the go-to resource for mae², irrevocably establishing it as a strongly Alexandrian witness, the stage is set for the next logical step:  a comparison of mae² to its slightly younger relative, mae¹.  Although these two manuscripts represent the same Egyptian dialect (sometimes called Mesokemic), and their production-dates are relatively close, they disagree at many important points, such as 5:44 (mae¹ has the longer form; mae² agrees with B), 6:33 (mae¹ has “of God”), 9:13 (mae¹ has “to repentance;” mae² does not), 12:47 (mae¹ includes the verse), 17:21 (mae¹ includes the verse), 24:7 (mae¹ includes “and pestilences”), etc.  That dissertation is yet waiting to be written.  In the meantime we can celebrate that Leonard’s dissertation is available.



Codex Schoyen 2650:  A Middle Egyptian Coptic Witness to the Early Greek Text of Matthew's Gospel - a Study in Translation Theory, Indigenous Coptic, and New Testament Textual Criticism, by James M. Leonard, is Copyright © 2014 Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands.