The Text & Canon Institute - News and Views

Dr. Peter Gurry

            Special guests are here today:  Dr. John Meade and Dr. Peter Gurry, of Phoenix Seminary in Arizona.  They are here to share some information about the Text & Canon Institute, which was officially founded in January of 2019.  Thanks for joining us.

JM/PG: Our pleasure.

TTotG: A profile of the Text & Canon Institute is already online.  Have there been any changes since then?

PG: Since we launched, we have started two major initiatives.  The first is a scholarship and mentoring program for Phoenix Seminary ThM students who are interested in doing doctoral work in areas related to the text and canon of the Bible.  TCI Fellowship provides a scholarship of up to $10,000 toward the ThM degree and gives opportunity to work closely with me and Dr. Meade as we direct the Institute and carry out its mission.  Our first fellow is Clark Bates who is working with New Testament minuscules.

            We also announced a major conference that I’ll say more about below.  We’ll have another major announcement this fall that will be of particular interest to scholars across a range of sub-disciplines. So, stay tuned and sign up for our newsletter.

Dr. John Meade

TTotG:  I noticed that in in the announcement of the founding of the Institute, Phoenix Seminary’s Chief Academic Officer, Dr. Bingham Hunter, said, “The Institute is well positioned to defend the reliability of the biblical text and foster the church’s confidence in the books of sacred Scripture.”  Would one be correct in assuming that the Text & Canon Institute approaches textual criticism from a conservative perspective, taking for granted that the original text is divinely inspired and inerrant?

PG: Yes, although I wouldn’t just call it the conservative perspective, but rather the historic perspective of the church.  Also, we try not to take anything for granted around here!  From our vantage, the historic view of the Bible’s inspiration is not a hindrance to good, historical work but a strong motivation for it.  We believe that God can and certainly does work apart from human agency, but he often works through it.  Just as Scripture’s inspiration is God’s word given through human languages and words, so we should not be surprised to see both divine and human elements in the Bible’s subsequent transmission and canonization.

TTotG: There’s not a lot of online data about Phoenix Seminary.  Could you tell us more about it? – How many professors are there on campus; what is the average class-size; that sort of thing?

PG: I don’t know what the official average class size is, but in my experience it’s around 15.  We have a resident faculty of nine that we supplement with various visiting professors and adjuncts. Historically, the seminary began its life as an extension of Western Seminary in Portland and in the 1990s, became independent.  We have had several campuses over the years but recently moved into our permanent home here in Scottsdale.  

            Theologically, we are interdenominational but on the conservative side of the big tent of American evangelicalism. Our faculty is definitely “baptistic” but many of us are not Baptists.  Largely, we grew out of the Bible church movement that sprung up in the early part of the last century.  Phoenix itself is interesting in that it has never been dominated by one major Protestant denomination in the way places in the South or Northeast have been.  So, we are not a hotbed of Methodists, Baptists, or anything else.  In fact, the religion with the single biggest footprint here is probably Mormonism due, in large part, to our proximity to Utah.

TTotG: I’m unfamiliar with the geography involved:  technically, is Phoenix Seminary in Scottsdale, rather than Phoenix?  Or are Scottsdale and Phoenix the same place?

PG: It can be confusing.  The seminary is in Maricopa County which includes Phoenix, Scottsdale, Tempe, Mesa, Gilbert, etc.  The county as a whole is quite large and is the fastest growing in the U.S., with a population of over 4 million.  Technically, the seminary is in Scottsdale which is next door to the city of Phoenix.  Because many people outside the area think of all of Maricopa County as being Phoenix, we often talk about the seminary as being in Phoenix even though locals know we are located in Scottsdale.

TT: Does the Text & Canon Institute have any on-campus territory of its own?  If a patron were to donate, say, a Megillah-scroll, or a Book of Hours, or a lectionary-page to the Institute, would there be a place to store it or to put it on display?

PG: Sure. As part of Phoenix Seminary, we have full access to the seminary’s Biblical Research Center which houses the largest, privately-owned, theological library in Arizona.  If anyone wants to make such a donation, get in touch!

TTotG: Considering that Wayne Grudem teaches at Phoenix Seminary, would it be fair to say that Phoenix Seminary is the center of the ESV universe?

PG: No. I think the center, if there is such a universe, is in Wheaton, IL at the headquarters of Crossway Bibles, the publisher of the ESV.  We do tend to be fans of the ESV around here — but not uncritical ones.

TTotG: What’s happening at the Text & Canon Institute in February of 2020?  A conference of some sort?  Is the program all arranged?

PG: Sacred Words is the Text & Canon Institute’s inaugural church oriented conference, happening Feb 21–22, 2020 in Phoenix. (Phoenix is lovely in February!) It’s an opportunity to learn from internationally known speakers about how the Bible has been copied, collected, and confessed as God’s word.  Somewhat uniquely, we have speakers covering the text and canon of the whole Bible rather than just the NT as is often the case in these types of events.  To do that, we’ve brought together a great lineup of North American Evangelical scholars to help the church understand how she got her (Protestant) Bible.  The speakers are Dan Wallace (Dallas Theological Seminary), Peter Gentry (Southern Baptist Theological Seminary), Stephen Dempster (Crandall University), Jeff Cate (California Baptist University), Darian Lockett (BIOLA University), Anthony Ferguson (Gateway Seminary), and Tim Mitchell (University of Birmingham, UK).  In several cases, I know that speakers will be presenting the results of very recent research. So, it’s not to be missed if you can make it.

TTotG: Has any new research been completed on the text of the Harklean Group?  How far back do you think it goes?

PG: I think the text of the Harklean Group goes back to Thomas of Harkel and his translation finished in 616.  Obviously, it has to go back before that since that text came from the Greek manuscripts he had available near Alexandria.  But how much earlier, we can’t say.  As for new research, the most recent is my own in relation to the Catholic Letters, the edition of Mark  completed by Samer Yohanna, and the edition of Revelation by Martin Heide.  Personally, I think it’s about time we started a project on a critical edition of the entire Harklean New Testament.

TTotG: You are probably best-known to our readers on account of your work in New Testament textual criticism, but the Text & Canon Institute also focuses on Old Testament textual issues. Will the Institute address some of those issues – for instance, [turning to John Meade], if the apostles regarded the Septuagint’s form of the book of Jeremiah as canonical, why shouldn’t we?

JM: Yes, the TCI focuses on matters related to Old Testament textual criticism also.  We hope to dedicate a colloquium to the topic of Jeremiah’s text and the apostles’ and early church’s reception of that book.

TTotG: In terms of specific passages, what three New Testament textual contests that are currently unsettled would you most want to be firmly resolved? (Top three?)

PG: Luke 23:34; Mark 16:9-20; and the one I’m currently working on:  Ephesians 5.22.

TTotG: And in the Old Testament?

JM: The David and Goliath Narrative (I Samuel 16-18); Isaiah 53:8; the tabernacle instructions (Exodus 35-40).

TTotG: Turning to Old Testament textual issues: at what point would you say the text of the Torah ceased to be produced in transit, from redactor to redactor, and became sacrosanct, traveling strictly from scribe to scribe?  Was it sacrosanct as soon as the ink was dry, or did each generation that transmitted it feel free to adjust and expand it, or something in between?

JM: There’s little doubt that later redactors edited the books of Moses, since it’s pretty clear that Moses did not record the story of his own death (Deut. 34).  Probably, scribes still recognized the sacrosanct character of the Torah, even as they were finalizing its form.  When this happened is difficult to pinpoint, although I think the references in Chronicles (ca. 400 BC) to the Torah of Moses strongly suggest a long-standing collection similar to the one we possess.  The Greek translation of the Torah (ca. 280 BC) shows a stable work (though see the major differences in Exodus 35-40). The books of Jubilees and Reworked Pentateuch from Qumran could possibly be interpreted as “rival Pentateuchs,” but more likely is the case that these works were viewed as commentaries, rewritten bibles, or revelatory exegeses on the already established Torah of Moses.

TTotG: How do you feel about some of the large numbers in the Old Testament?  For example, when we see references to 600,000 Hebrew men in the days of Moses, should we reckon that this was literally the case?  Or should we assume that the historical quantity has been miscopied by scribes and was originally 60,000?  Or something else?  

JM: I’m not sure I understand the full import of your question.  Perhaps, there’s miscopying.  But a better solution is that Hebrew ’elep in these contexts probably means something like a “military company” or “clan” in the sense of a subgroup within tribes.  The word can indicate the number 1,000 especially when referring to a unit of weight (cf. I Samuel 17:5 with Goliath’s coat weighing some 5,000 shekels of bronze), but in some contexts like I Samuel 17:18, Jesse is simply asking David to take supplies to the captain of his brothers’ troop or military company, maybe 10 or more men — not 1,000 fighting men.  

            In several military scenes in the OT, this meaning is far better than 1,000s.  One finds it difficult to imagine Joshua leading a stealth ambush at night of 30,000 against an already much smaller Ai (Joshua 7:3) in Joshua 8.  Probably, Joshua’s 30,000 warrior men of valor should be understood as 30 troops, perhaps containing 10 to 12 men in each for a total of around 300 men.  So, Moses is probably leading out 600 troops of ten or so men for a total of 6,000 men with somewhere between 12,000-24,000 women, children, and others, totaling 24,000-48,000 slaves leaving Egypt.  This fits other descriptions that Israel was a small and insignificant people as Deut. 7 says.

TTotG: Dr. Gurry, I don’t know your text-critical approach to conjectural emendations, but, if you were making a compilation of the Greek New Testament, and you could put one or two or three conjectural emendations in the apparatus, what would they be?

PG: Oh goodness, I don’t know offhand.  I can say that I am open to conjecture in principle but in practice I haven’t come across any that finally convince me.  Although the NA28’s conjecture in II Peter 3:10 has its charms.

TTorG: Dr. Meade – Same question, but in regard to the Old Testament text.

JM: I don’t have a list of conjectures that I like.  Generally, I think the original wording is found in our manuscripts.

TTotG: Finally, while the “text” part of “Text & Canon Institute” is justified in light of emerging public awareness of the field of textual criticism, is “Canon” a real concern?  I’m not getting a sense that American evangelicals are clamoring for reevaluations of the Biblical canon.  What am I missing?

PG/JM: If by “reevaluation,” you mean are evangelicals open to removing books from the Protestant canon, I would say no.  But our experience is that many evangelicals have little or no knowledge about the history of the Bible they trust.  When they realize that Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox (and other ecclesial bodies) have different books in their Bibles, they naturally have questions.  When you add popular conspiratorial understandings of the process of canonization to that mix, then I would say that the “canon” of Text & Canon is easily justified from the perspective of the person in the pew.  Of course, at the academic level, all sorts of questions about canonization are in need of pursuit.  A further point goes back to an earlier question about different textual forms of Jeremiah and whether there was a canonical form(s) of the book.  So, yes, text and canon are more closely linked conceptually, historically, and theologically than most people realize.

TTotG: Thanks for sharing your insights and news.

The ESV Study Bible and Mark 16:9-20

As a follow-up to the analysis of the shortcomings of Dr. Bruce Metzger’s comments about the external evidence about the ending of the Gospel of Mark, I have put together a review of some very similar statements about Mark 16:9-20 which are found in the ESV Study Bible. 

The author of the ESV Study Bible’s notes for the Gospel of Mark is listed at the ESV Study Bible's website as Dr. Hans Bayer, a professor at Covenant Theological Seminary (near St. Louis, Missouri).  (Dr. Wayne Grudem is the General Editor.)  Covenant Theological Seminary is a Presbyterian school; its professors annually affirm the Westminster Confession, which includes a statement that the New Testament in Greek was “inspired by God, and, by His singular care and providence, kept pure in all ages.”   However, inasmuch as the Greek text of the New Testament text used by the authors of the Westminster Confession is very different from the base-text of the ESV, it would seem that the purity to which this part of the Westminster Confession refers is being interpreted as basic doctrinal purity, not as textual purity. 

Now let’s consider Dr. Bayer’s note about Mark 16:9-20 in the ESV Study Bible, going point by point.  (The excerpts attributed to Dr. Bayer are from the English Standard Version Study Bible, © 2010 Crossway Bibles (a division of Good News Publishers), Wheaton.  Used for review purposes.  Excerpts from Dr. Bruce Metzger are from A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, © 1971 by the United Bible Societies, Stuttgart.)

Dr. Bayer:  “Some ancient manuscripts of Mark's Gospel contain these verses and others do not, which presents a puzzle for scholars who specialize in the history of such manuscripts.”

If “ancient” manuscripts are defined as manuscripts produced before the death of Charlemagne (in 814), then two ancient Greek manuscripts, one ancient Latin manuscript, one ancient Sahidic manuscript (the production-date of which is far from certain), and one ancient Syriac manuscript do not contain any part of Mark 16:9-20.  All other ancient copies of Mark 16, whether Greek or non-Greek, include at least part of this passage, showing that it was in those copies when they were in pristine condition.  

The two Greek manuscripts that lack Mark 16:9-20 (Vaticanus and Sinaiticus) were both almost certainly produced at Caesarea in the 300s.  As I explained in the survey of Dr. Metzger’s comments, Codex Vaticanus has a distinct blank space after Mark 16:8, as if the copyist did not have access to an exemplar with the passage but nevertheless recollected it and attempted to reserve space for it.  And in Codex Sinaiticus, the text from Mark 14:54-Luke 1:56 is written on replacement-pages; the copyist who made those four pages drastically shifted his rate of letters per columns in order to avoid having a blank column between the end of Mark and the beginning of Luke.  This indicates that the copyists of the only two Greek manuscripts in which Mark ends at 16:8 knew of at least one manuscript, older than the ones they were making, in which the passage was included.

Dr. Bayer:  “This longer ending is missing from various old and reliable Greek manuscripts (esp. Sinaiticus and Vaticanus), as well as numerous early Latin, Syriac, Armenian, and Georgian manuscripts.”

Dr. Bayer’s dependence upon Dr. Metzger is obvious as he describes these pieces of evidence in exactly the same order in which Dr. Metzger described them.  Dr. Bayer, however, has provided his readers with an even more distant and out-of-focus perspective than Dr. Metzger did, with the result that his readers have been given a false impression of the scope of the evidence.  The two Greek manuscripts that Dr. Bayer names (Sinaiticus and Vaticanus) are the only ancient Greek manuscripts of Mark 16 in which the text stops at verse 8.  Now imagine if someone told you, “Various houses in this town are made of brick, especially the homes of Mr. Andrews and Mr. Baker” – and then you found out that the homes of Mr. Andrews and Mr. Baker were the only brick houses in the village.  Would you not feel rather misled?  

The “numerous” Latin manuscripts to which Dr. Bayer refers consist of one copy:  Codex Bobbiensis, which has an anomalous text throughout Mark 16 (regarding which see the pertinent part of the earlier article about Dr. Metzger’s comments.)  The “numerous” Syriac manuscripts to which Dr. Bayer refers consist of one copy:  the Sinaitic Syriac, which shares other unusual readings with Codex Bobbiensis.  The Armenian manuscripts to which he refers are really numerous, but they are medieval; they are not early.  Neither are the two Georgian manuscripts to which he refers. 

Dr. Bayer:  “Early church fathers (e.g. Origen and Clement of Alexandria) did not appear to know of these verses.”

This appears to be a paraphrase of Dr. Metzger’s claim that “Clement of Alexandria and Origen show no knowledge of the existence of these verses.”   Clement hardly quoted from the Gospel of Mark at all, except for one large citation from chapter 10.  Origen, likewise, did not use the Gospel of Mark very much.  See my analysis of Dr. Metzger’s statement for further details.  Also notice that farther along in the same footnote, Dr. Bayer says that many church fathers knew the passage. 

Dr. Bayer:  “Eusebius and Jerome state that this section is missing in most manuscripts available at their time.”

This appears to be another echo of Dr. Metzger’s comments.  The pertinent statement from Eusebius is embedded in his composition Ad Marinum, in which Eusebius, in the course of answering a question about how to resolve a perceived discrepancy between Matthew 28 and Mark 16 regarding the timing of Christ’s resurrection, stated that a person could say that verses 9-20 are not in every single manuscript, or that they are absent from the accurate ones, or from almost all manuscripts.  But after framing all that as something that a person might say, Eusebius proceeded to describe, in considerable detail, how Mark 16:9 could be harmonized  with Matthew 28:1 (and thus retained).  He seems to expect Marinus to take this second approach.  In the course of answering the next question, Eusebius states that “some copies” of Mark mention that Jesus cast out seven demons from Mary Magdalene (a detail stated in Mark only in 16:9), and in his answer to the question after that one, he affirms that the Mary who stands at the tomb in John 20 is the same individual “from whom, according to Mark, He had cast out seven demons.” 

Although one might imagine, based on Dr. Bayer’s vague description of Jerome’s testimony, that Jerome reported the results of his own investigation into how his manuscripts of Mark ended, what we really have in Jerome’s Ad Hedibiam (Epistle 120) is a condensed translation of Eusebius' Ad Marinum.  The third, fourth, and fifth questions in Jerome’s letter to Hedibia are the same as the first, second, and third questions in Eusebius’ letter to Marinus, and Jerome’s answers are based mainly on the answered that Eusebius had supplied.  This is not an independent statement by Jerome; he would not have made this statement if he had not been translating Eusebius’ earlier composition.  Jerome included verses 9-20 in the Vulgate (in 383), and referred to 16:14 in Against the Pelagians when explaining where he had seen the interpolation now known as the Freer Logion.

Dr. Bayer:  “And some manuscripts that contain vv. 9-20 indicate that older manuscripts lack the section.”

Again, this resembles Dr. Metzger’s statement:  “Not a few manuscripts which contain the passage have scribal notes stating that older Greek copies lack it.”  As I have explained elsewhere, this refers to 14 manuscripts (out of over 1,700) which have special annotations about Mark 16:9-20.  The annotations tend to express support for the passage.  In one form (shared by ten manuscripts), the annotation states that although some copies lack the verses, most copies include them, and in another form (shared by three manuscripts), the annotation states that although some copies lack the passage, the ancient copies include it all.  That is the opposite of the impression given by the ESV Study Bible’s note.

Dr. Bayer:  “On the other hand, some early and many later manuscripts (such as the manuscripts known as A, C, and D) contain vv. 9-20, and many church fathers (such as Irenaeus) evidently knew of these verses.”

Dr. Bayer specifically named the two Greek manuscripts in which the text of Mark stops at 16:8, and he reached into the 900s to find versional evidence for that form of the text.  But here as he describes the patristic evidence, he supplied only one specific name.  That is not even-handed treatment of the evidence.  The “many church fathers” to whom Dr. Bayer refers includes the following:  Justin (c. 160), Tatian (c. 172), Irenaeus (c. 184), Epistula Apostolorum (probably; 150-180),Tertullian (probably; 190-205), Hippolytus (c. 220), Vincentius of Thibaris (257), De Rebaptismate (258), Porphyry/Hierocles (anti-Christian writers from 270/303), Acts of Pilate (300s), Marinus (c. 330), Aphraates (335), Wulfilas (c. 350), Ephrem Syrus (c. 360), Ambrose (370’s or 380’s), Philostorgius (c. 380), Epiphanius (c. 385), Old Latin capitula (pre-380’s), the Peshitta (mid-late 300s), Chromatius (c. 380), Apostolic Constitutions (380), De Trinitate (380’s, attributed to Didymus the Blind), Jerome (383), John Chrysostom (probably, c. 407), the author of the Freer Logion (pre-400), Augustine (400), Greek manuscripts cited by Augustine (400), the lectionary-system used by Augustine (early 400s), Macarius Magnes (405), Doctrine of Addai (early 400s; probably a composite of earlier material), Pelagius (c. 410), Patrick (mid-400s), Nestorius (c. 430), Marcus Eremita (435), Peter Chrysologus (453), Eznik of Golb (c. 440), and Prosper of Aquitaine (c. 450).  If the list of patristic writings and manuscripts were extended to the production-date of the Armenian copies that Dr. Bayer described as “early,” it would be increased by dozens and dozens.

Dr. Bayer:  “As for the verses themselves, they contain various Greek words and expressions uncommon to Mark, and there are stylistic differences as well.”

Granting that Mark 16:9-20 contains some stylistic differences from the preceding section, Dr. Bayer’s point about the presence of Greek words “uncommon to Mark” is nullified by the presence of even more Greek words “uncommon to Mark” – that is, used only once in the Gospel of Mark – in another 12-verse section (15:40-16:4), as Dr. Bruce Terry shows in an essay at http://web.ovc.edu/terry/articles/mkendsty.htm .

In addition, the ESV – in a copy that I saw with a 2007 copyright by Crossway – has the following footnote:  “Some manuscripts end the book with 16:8; others include verses 9-20 immediately after verse 8.  A few manuscripts insert additional material after verse 14; one Latin manuscript adds after verse 8 the following:  But they reported briefly to Peter and those with him all that they had been told. And after this, Jesus himself sent out by means of them, from east to west, the sacred and imperishable proclamation of eternal salvation. Other manuscripts include this same wording after verse 8, then continue with verses 9-20."

That footnote is extremely imprecise.  Written accurately, it would go like this:  “Over 1,700 Greek manuscripts include verses 9-20 immediately after verse 8.  Two Greek manuscripts end the book with 16:8; one of them has a prolonged blank space after verse 8.  One manuscript inserts additional material between verse 14 and verse 15.  One Latin manuscript interpolates an ascension-scene between 16:3 and 16:4, removes part of verse 8, and then adds the following:  But they reported briefly to a boy and those with him all that they had been told.  And after this, Jesus appeared and sent out by means of them, from east to east, the sacred and imperishable [proclamation] of eternal salvation, Amen.  Five Greek manuscripts (and versional evidence from Egypt) include similar wording between verse 8 and verse 9; one medieval Greek manuscript has this ending in the margin.

How long will the editors of the ESV and the ESV Study Bible allow their readers to be misled by these inaccurate and misleading notes?