Rising Star: What's Nelson Hsieh Think? (Part One)

Nelson Hsieh

"James, you handsome rogue," I wondered, "Regarding New Testament textual criticism, what school of thought is represented by the new guy, Nelson Hsieh, the Assistant Professor of New Testament at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary?"  I decided to find out, so here is the first part of an interview with Dr. Hsieh on an assortment of issues.

Q:  The foundational premise of Hort’s approach, and his motive for rejecting all distinctly Byzantine readings, was his theory of a Lucianic recension.  Peter Gurry insists that virtually nobody adheres to that theory anymore.  So, regarding the Gospels-text only, where and how did the Byzantine Text originate?

         

Hsieh:  I’m not fully convinced that the Lucianic recension theory has been 100% refuted. The testimony of Jerome certainly suggests that Lucian had some sort of editorial hand among Gospel manuscripts. And the Lucianic recension of the Septuagint is quite well-established and the characteristics of the Septuagint Lucianic recension certainly match many of the characteristics of the New Testament Byzantine text; see Bruce M. Metzger, “Lucian and the Lucianic Recension of the Greek Bible,” NTS 8 (1962): 189–203; Kurt Aland, “The Text of the Church?,” TJ 8 (1987): 131–44.

 Furthermore, we probably shouldn’t create a false dichotomy where, on one side, there is a recension in the strict sense (a large-scale editorial effort to edit a text according to predetermined principles) and, on the other side, there is no editing or revision at all. Maybe Lucian made some small revisions in the fourth century in just the Gospels (since Jerome speaks about Lucian in the context of the Gospels), and not necessarily a large-scale recension of the entire New Testament.

Certainly some Byzantine readings are early as shown by Harry Sturz with alignments between the papyri and later Byzantine readings; see Harry A. Sturz, The Byzantine Text-Type and New Testament Textual Criticism (Nelson, 1984) and also David Alan Black, “A Sturzian Solution to the Problem of ‘Original Text’ as Illustrated by Eph 1:1, Matt 5:22, and John 3:13,” in Can We Recover the Original Text of the New Testament?, ed. Abidan Paul Shah and David Alan Black (Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2023), 67–86. 

The papyri were not available to Westcott & Hort, so they obviously couldn’t see examples of Byzantine-papyri agreements. And the church fathers often show us that Byzantine readings are early, even if we don’t possess any early Greek manuscript witnesses for a Byzantine reading (e.g. with the Long Ending of Mark being found in Irenaeus). But a few isolated early Byzantine readings do not mean that the Byzantine Text as a whole is early.

Maybe the answer about origin is a combination of several factors: Lucian’s revisions to the Gospels, early scribal interpolations (e.g. the Long Ending of Mark in the second century, and Pericope of the Adulteress in the third century), and later scribal revisions/smoothing out of the text — which eventually were supplemented by later editorial efforts (like the Harklean Syriac version and von Soden’s K^r group) leading to a fairly standardized late Byzantine Majority text in the 13th century onwards (as Klaus Wachtel argues for the Catholic Epistles). But we can’t be certain. And I don’t see why Lucian has to be tossed out entirely; he could have had a small part in the origin of the Byzantine Textform.

Q:  Considering the likelihood that users of Scripture in languages other than Greek would like to observe that the the text in their language was based on Greek, when a Greek text was used at a scriptorium as the basis for a version, did that particular form of the Greek text get locked into place?

Hsieh:  It is hard to see why a version must have been “locked into place” by an initial Greek exemplar. On subsequent copying, it would be unsurprising for scribes to check against whatever Greek manuscripts were available, which could have differed from the initial Greek exemplar. 

And we have clear examples where versions are corrected/updated against different Greek exemplars (Old Latin vs. Vulgate, and Old Syriac vs. Peshitta). Any “locking in” probably had more to do with liturgical use and/or ecclesiastical authority like with the Peshitta as liturgical standard for the Syriac church, and with the Vulgate for the Latin/Western church.

Q:  In Acts 27:37, 03 and an early layer of the Sahidic version both say that “about 76” souls were aboard the ship.  F. F. Bruce, and Dean John Burgon before him, surmised how this variant came into existence from the usual “276.” Considering how unlikely it is that two independent scribes made the same quirky mistake, was 03’s exemplar (or ancestor) the basis for the Sahidic version of Acts?

Hsieh:  To draw a connection between 03’s exemplar and the Sahidic version of Acts, we would need far more evidence than a single reading, so I wouldn’t make any claim until we could look at more instances of 03-Sahidic agreements that disagree with the rest of the tradition. This is not something I’ve researched before, so I can’t say anymore unless someone already has a list of such agreements.

Q:  In the book of Revelation, what reading do you consider the most unstable in the Nestle-Aland compilation? 

Hsieh:  Probably Revelation 5:9: “You redeemed to God by your blood,” which follows the singular reading in Codex Alexandrinus that omits the pronoun “us,” so there is no object for the verb

“redeem.” ECM Revelation rightly goes with the rest of the manuscript tradition in including the pronoun “us.” The variant occurs at the end of a column in Codex Alexandrinus, so it is easy to understand the scribe of Alexandrinus accidently omitting the pronoun.

Q:  There is a longstanding philosophical debate that overlaps with the text-critical contest between the Byzantine Textform and the Nestle-Aland compilation, orbiting the question, To what is the ordinary Christian obligated to submit to:  the text as issued by the initial producers of each book of the New Testament, or the text as approved and disseminated by the church?.  Which side do you favor?

Hsieh:  Of course, we don’t have the initial/original text regardless of whether one is a Byzantine Textform or critical text advocate, so it’s not possible for an ordinary Christian to submit to a text that we do not possess. We only have an approximation of the initial/original text (whether Byzantine Textform or critical text – both are approximations). I am an evangelical and a Baptist, so obviously I wouldn’t favor a Roman Catholic approach where the biblical text is approved and disseminated by the “church.”

I would say that the ordinary Christian submits to the Word of God that (in God’s providence) is available to them. So a tenth century monk who only has access to one Byzantine text manuscript submits to the biblical text available to him, while a Christian in the twenty-first century submits to the biblical text available – whether a translation, or a Greek critical text. 

But more important is how significant the differences are between the Nestle-Aland editions and the Byzantine Textform. I have looked at all the differences between Robinson & Pierpont’s Byzantine Textform and Nestle-Aland 27 (in RP’s lower apparatus), and I will say that there is not really any textual difference that would significantly affect doctrine or practice for the ordinary Christian. For example, the Byzantine text has four more references to fasting (1 Cor 7:5; Matt 17:21; Mark 9:29; Acts 10:30) than NA27, but I doubt that this would increase (or decrease) the practice of fasting among ordinary Christians. A person’s theological beliefs or denomination would probably have more influence on one’s practice of fasting than which biblical text was used. 

Johannes Karavidopoulos, the only Eastern Orthodox scholar on the UBS4/NA27 editorial committee, said during committee meetings: “I fought especially for New Testament verses which are very familiar to the Greek Orthodox audience because of their liturgical use (e.g., Mark 9:29) . . . But I did not succeed in many cases.” (see Peter J. Gurry, “ETC Interview with John Karavidopoulos,” Evangelical Textual Criticism (blog), September 22, 2015, http://evangelicaltextualcriticism.blogspot.com/2015/09/etc-interview-with-john-karavidopoulos.html). Karavidopoulos has passed away, but he would probably be pleased to see the THGNT and ECM Mark (and therefore NA29) adopting the Byzantine reading with fasting in Mark 9:29.

Other examples – the doctrine of the Trinity does not need the Johannine Comma to be supported and believed. Without the Pericope of the Adulteress, we do lose a beautiful story about Jesus’s mercy towards a marginalized woman and his critique of the religious leaders – but such themes are prevalent throughout the rest of the Gospels. Without Luke 23:34a (“Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing”), we do lose a magnificent saying of Jesus from the cross. But other passages in the New Testament teach about loving our enemies (Matt 5:44; Luke 6:35) and about the ignorance of the Jews in condemning Jesus to death (Acts 3:17; 13:27), so the essential teaching of Luke 23:34a is still found elsewhere in the New Testament, even if the text is judged to be a later interpolation.

Q:  The conjectural emendation in NA28 in Second Peter 3:10 that effectively reverses the meaning of the sentence printed in previous edition: do you support it?

Hsieh: No, I disagree with the NA28’s conjecture – although I suppose it hinges more on the meaning of εὑρεθήσεται (can it mean “exposed” in ESV or “laid bare” in NIV-1984?). Metzger and others cannot make sense of εὑρεθήσεται – how can the earth “be found” after the eschatological burning up of all things? 

But an intelligible meaning is possible: Jörg Frey suggests that in the context of apocalyptic literature, the verb can have the sense of “being brought to judgment,” so that there is no need for a conjecture (what Frey calls “an act of desperation” on the part of the ECM). See Jörg Frey, The Letter of Jude and the Second Letter of Peter, trans. Kathleen Ess (Baylor University Press, 2018), 409-11. 

And there is an additional argument in favor of viewing εὑρεθήσεται as judgment: it’s not only the physical earth (γῆ) being exposed, but the earth and its works (τὰ ἐν αὐτῇ ἔργα) being exposed, so that mankind is in view and not just the physical earth.

NA27 / THGNT’s reading εὑρεθήσεται seems to best represent the original text. The external evidence is early and good (01, 03, 025, 1739txt; P72 indirectly) and it’s easier to understand a change from εὑρεθήσεται to κατακαήσεται based on harmonization than the other way around. In other words, I think that the Byzantine reading κατακαήσεται (“be burned up”) is probably a harmonization to earlier in the verse: στοιχεῖα δὲ καυσούμενα λυθήσεται (“the elements being burned up will be dissolved”) and verse 12 also: στοιχεῖα καυσούμενα τήκεται (“the elements being burned up will melt”).

However, I do look forward to hearing Peter Gurry’s paper on this issue at SBL in November 2026, where he still insists that conjecture is still necessary. In his SBL paper abstract, he says: “a near consensus has developed among modern commentators and translators that the original text is εὑρεθήσεται (“will be found”). This shift relies on a lexical interpretation where the verb means “laid bare” (NIV) or “disclosed” (NRSVue). This paper challenges this consensus based on a survey of over 850 uses of the verb, demonstrating that it cannot sustain such a meaning in this context. Consequently, conjectural emendation remains a legitimate and even necessary solution.”

Q:  Michael Holmes’ benign conjectural emendation in the SBL-GNT in First Corinthians 6:5:  do you support it?

Hsieh: On principle, I am against conjectural emendations, but they are certainly interesting in revealing exegetical difficulties and attempts to solve such difficulties. Erasmus (in his Annotations on 1 Corinthians) noticed the grammatical difficulty in 1 Cor 6:5 (διακρῖναι ἀνὰ μέσον τοῦ ἀδελφοῦ αὐτοῦ) – how is it possible to judge between one brother? We would either expect the plural ἀδελφῶν (“judge between brothers”), or an additional phrase like καὶ ἀδελφοῦ αὐτοῦ (“judge between a brother and a brother”), but no Greek manuscript attests to either possibility. According to the INTF’s Database of Conjectures, Theodore Beza conjectures the plural ἀδελφῶν, while Zuntz, Weiss, and Grotius conjecture various additional phrases that add a second individual. Also see Jan Krans, Beyond What Is Written: Erasmus and Beza as Conjectural Critics of the New Testament, ed. Bruce M. Metzger and Bart D. Ehrman, NTTS 35 (Brill, 2006), 180-81, and Jeffrey Kloha, “1 Corinthians 6:5: A Proposal,” NovT 46 (2004): 132-42.

The Latin Book of Armagh (Vetus Latina 61; Oxford Vulgate D) supports Beza’s conjecture of the plural “brothers.” [“Ad verecundiam vestram dico. Sic non est inter vos sapiens quisquam qui possit iudicare inter fratrem suum?” - JSJ]  The second type of conjecture adding an additional phrase is supported by the Syriac Peshitta and five Latin manuscripts – Codices Augiensis, Boernerianus, Sarisburiensis, a recent addition to Toletanus, and a correction to Ulmensis, but the evidence is not so easy to interpret; see the discussion of these Latin manuscripts in Gunther Zuntz, “The Critic Correcting the Author,” Philologus 99 (1955): 295-303. On patristic evidence for either the plural or a longer reading, see Kloha, 139-41.

Holmes and the SBLGNT’s conjecture at 1 Cor 6:5 are almost certainly dependent on Zuntz, who suggests that these versional witnesses do not go back to the original text of 1 Corinthians, but are conjectures/variants arising within the Syriac and Latin tradition, demonstrating attempts to make the text more clear and “correct.” Zuntz also suggests that the omission of an additional phrase (καὶ ἀδελφοῦ αὐτοῦ) arose in Paul’s autograph since no Greek manuscript attests to an addition, and the omission was not a scribal error in copying.

To avoid conjecture, one could also better explain the grammar of 1 Cor 6:5. Johannes Weiss (Der erste Korintherbrief [Ruprecht: 1910], 150) and BDAG, 57, provide some examples to alleviate the grammatical difficulty by suggesting Paul is using an abbreviated expression (Gen 16:5, ἀνὰμέσον ἐμοῦ καὶ σοῦ; Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum (SEG) IX.8.64, ἀνὰμέσον Ἑλλήνων; JosAs 28:6, ἀνὰμέσον ἐμοῦ καὶ ὑμῶν; Sir 25:18). But only Sirach 25:18 is a true parallel to 1 Cor 6:5 with a singular object of the preposition: ἀνὰ μέσον τῶν (v.l. τοῦ) πλησίον αὐτοῦ, although there is a variant with the article τῶν. If τῶν is the original text (as adopted in the Göttingen Septuagint), then it is not a true parallel to 1 Cor 6:5. The other examples demonstrate that two objects are needed (Gen 16:5; JosAs 28:6), or a plural (SEG IX.8.64).

On the whole – I would agree with Zuntz that the Latin and Syriac readings were probably conjectures/variants that arose within those versions rather than witnesses to a Greek variant or to the original Greek text. It is especially revealing that Codices Boernerianus and Augiensis are both Greek-Latin diglots, yet the Greek sides do not match the additional text on the Latin sides in 1 Cor 6:5. However, I’m not so comfortable with Zuntz’s conjecture and explanation; perhaps additional grammatical study will yield more and better examples that can alleviate the grammatical difficulty in 1 Cor 6:5.

 

Continued soon in Part Two!

 

Second Peter 3:10 - A Step Backwards in NA28

 

            Has the church lost the original text of Second Peter 3:10?

            “Doubtless” was Hort’s answer in 1881.    His note is a bit torpid but his verdict is clear:

“iii.10 (†) εὑρεθήσεται] οὐχ εὐρεθήσεται syr.bod[= an obscure Syriac version of the three Catholic Epistles not in the Syriac canon] theb :  κατακαήσεται (? Alexandrian and) Constantinopolitan (Gr. Lat. Syr. Eg. Æth.) ; incl. A L₂ lat. vg. codd Cyr.al Aug:  ἀφανισθήσονται C: , ni: , the whole clause (καὶ γῆ … κατακ.) lat. vg pp^scr pp^lat.scr.  Text ﬡBK₂P₂27 29 66** syr.hl.mg. arm :  cf. bod the.  The great difficulty of text has evidently given rise to all these variations (Introd. § 365).  It is doubtless itself a corruption of ῾ρυήσεται (῾ρεήσεται) or of one of its compounds.”

Second Peter 3:10 in Codex Alexandrinus

            The Byzantine text of II Peter 3:10 is:   Ἥξει δὲ ἡ ἡμέρα κυ ὡς κλέπτης ἐν νυκτί ἐν ᾗ οἱ οὐρανοὶ ҅ροιζηδον παρελεύσονται στοιχεῖα δὲ καυσούμενα λυθήσονται καὶ γῆ καὶ τὰ ἐν αὐτῇ ἔργα κατακήσεται – diverging from the text of NA27 at five points, two of which are detectable in translation:  the simple presence or absence of ἐν νυκτί and the final word of the sentence.     

            While the shorter reading is explainable as a loss due to parablepsis from the ἐν before νυκτί to the ἐν after it, and its longer rival is supported by C K L 049 104 629 1751 Byz, the Byzantine reading was assumed so readily by the editors of UBS4 to be a harmonization to First Thessalonians 5:2 that it didn’t even receive a listing in the apparatus.  The array of external against it is indeed very impressive – P72 ﬡ A B P Ψ 048^vid 0156 33 323 945 1739 Vulgate Coptic. 

      
      It is the textual contest at the end of the verse that has attracted the most attention recently, because the editors of Novum Testamentum Graece decided to print in the text a reading which is not found in any Greek manuscript of Second Peter.   The textual contest in the last word of Second Peter 3:10 has been an issue for a long time.   Not only Westcott & Hort but also (according to NA27’s apparatus) Naber, Olivier, Mayor, and Eberhard Nestle each proposed different conjectural emendations here – swept away, conflagrated, removed, and judged, respectively).  Normal people might imagine that an “embarrassment of riches,” would naturally preclude such guesses, but, no, the NET’s annotator candidly admits that this is “one of the most difficult textual problems in the NT.” 

            The NET’s annotator firmly endorsed εὑρεθήσται as the original reading, arguing that the opacity of the meaning of εὑρεθήσται provoked scribes to substitute a word that seemed easier to understand.  This is perfectly lucid.  In addition, the meaning of the text in the smattering of non-Greek witnesses enlisted to support ουχ is accounted for as a harmonization to the meaning of Revelation 20:11 (οὐχ εὐρέθη in the majority text).  The conjectural emendation that currently is printed in NA28 cannot be recommended as superior – but it does serve as an interesting and obvious admission that the editors do not believe that the original text of Second Peter 3:10 has survived in any extant Greek witness.  Some onlookers have assumed that the C.B.G.M. had something to do with the editors’ decision, but that seems impossible, inasmuch as there is no coherence to consider.

Lecture 24: Conjectural Emendation

Lecture 24 

 The ongoing series of lectures "Introduction to New Testament Textual Criticism" continues with Lecture 24, at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHYcBlwAqzc , about conjectural emendations.  I had a stroke on June 14, and you may notice in this video that I am speaking more slowly than before.  Also for some reason I repeatedly didn't say "chi" correctly.  Oh well; hopefully improvement will continue.  I covered some of the passages mentioned in this lecture back in 2017 (in the "Cracks in the Text posts, part 1 and part 2).  Here is a transcript of the video!

Welcome to the twenty-fourth lecture in the series, Introduction to New Testament Textual Criticism.  Let’s begin with prayer.

Heavenly Father,

          Thank You for giving Your people the fruit of Your Spirit.  Influence us to long to be more loving, modeling your love.  Make us more joyful as we remember Your promises to us.  Make us peaceful, in light of the peace you have provided.  Make us patient, kind, and good, seeking to conform to the image of your Son.  Make us gentle, seeking to represent Your kingdom in every circumstance.  And give us self-control, that all our actions may be guided by our awareness of Your presence. Through Your Son Christ our Lord, Amen.

          Today we are investigating one of the most controversial areas in the field of New Testament textual criticism:  the creation and adoption of conjectural  emendations.  A conjectural emendation is a reading that is not directly supported by any witnesses.  Conjectural emendations are driven by the premise that on some rare occasions, the reading that accounts for all other readings is a reading that is not extant.

          Even in the earliest days of the printed text of the Greek New Testament, some conjectural emendations were proposed:   in James 4:2, Erasmus did not think that it was plausible that the readers of James’ letter would kill, so he introduced the idea that James originally wrote that his letters’ recipients were envious.  Erasmus’ conjecture influenced some future translations, including Martin Luther’s translation, and the 1557 Geneva Translation.

          By the late 1700s, so many conjectural emendations had been proposed that a printer named William Bowyer collected them in a book in 1772 that was over 600 pages long, titled Critical Conjectures and Observations on the New Testament.  Many of the conjectures were apologetically driven and resolved historical questions rather than textual ones, and many others implied a magical stupidity on the part of copyists. 

          But in 1881, when Westcott and Hort printed their Greek New Testament, they were willing to grant the possibility that 60 passages in the New Testament contain a primitive corruption, where only by conjecture could the original reading be recovered.  Other scholars have seriously argued for the adoption of non-extant readings in a few other places.

          We’re not going to look into each and every one of those 60 passages today, but we will look into some of them, especially the ones that have affected some English translations.         

Mark 15:25 – One of the earliest conjectural emendations is from Ammonius of Alexandria, from the 200s, whose proposal was passed along by Eusebius of Caesarea and others.  Ammonius suggested a conjectural emendation that could harmonize Mark’s statement (in Mark 15:25) that Jesus was crucified at the third hour, and John’s statement (in John 19:14) that Jesus was being sentenced by Pilate at the sixth hour.  Rather than imagine that different methods of hour-reckoning are involved, Ammonius proposed that the text of John 19:14 contains an ancient error, and that the Greek numeral Γ,  which stands for “3,” was misread as if it was the obsolete letter digamma, which stands for “6”).   Some copyists apparently thought that this idea must be correct, and wrote the Greek equivalent of “sixth” in Mark 15:25; a few others (including the copyists of Codex L and Codex Δ) wrote the equivalent of “third” in John 19:14.  

 John 1:13 – Another early church writer, Tertullian, proposed that the extant reading of John 1:13 is not the original reading.  In chapter 19 of his composition On the Flesh of Christ, he insisted that the reading that is found in our New Testaments is the result of heretical tampering, and that the verse initially referred specifically to Christ.  Not only Tertullian but also Irenaeus and the author of the little-known Epistula Apostolorum appear to cite John 1:13  with a singular subject rather than a plural one.          

John 7:52 – No reading that is supported exclusively by papyri has been adopted in place of readings that were already extant.  But a reading of Papyrus 66 comes very close to doing so.   William Bowyer’s 1772 book included a theory that had been expressed by Dr. Henry Owen about John 7:52:  Owen had written, “The Greek text, I apprehend, is not perfectly right:  and our English Version has carried it still farther from the true meaning.  Is it possible the Jews could say, “that out of Galilee hath arisen no prophet;” when several (no less perhaps than six) of their own prophets were natives of that country?  . . . I conclude, that what they really said, and what the reading ought to be, was … That the prophet is not to arise out of Galilee:  from whence they supposed Jesus to have sprung.”   

            The key component of Owen’s proposal was vindicated by the discovery of Papyrus 66, which has the Greek equivalent of “the” before the word “prophet” – just what Owen thought was the original reading. 

Some commentators have considered it implausible that John would report, in John 19:29, that the soldiers at the crucifixion would offer to Jesus a sponge filled with sour wine upon a stick of hyssop.  In 1572, Joachim Camerarius the Elder proposed that originally John had written about  a javelin, or spear, and that after this had been expressed by the words ὑσσῷ προπεριθέντες, scribes mangled the text so as to produce the reference to hyssop.  This conjecture, which was modified by Beza, was adopted by the scholars who made the New English Bible New Testament in 1961.

In Acts 7:46, textual critics have to choose between the reading of most manuscripts, which is the statement that David asked to be allowed to find a dwelling-place for the God of Jacob, and the statement that David asked to be allowed to find a dwelling-place for the house of Jacob (which is the reading in the Nestle-Aland compilation). 

            The second reading is more difficult, because it seems to say that David asked to build a house for a house.  Even when the second “house” is understood to refer to the nation descended from Jacob, the problem does not go away, since the temple was for God, not for the people, who were not looking for a new place to reside in the days of David.  In 1881, Hort proposed that “οἴκω can hardly be genuine,” but instead of accepting the Byzantine reading, he conjectured that neither reading is original, and that the original text was τω Κυριω (“the Lord”), which was contracted, and then inattentive copyists misread it as ΤΩ ΟΙΚΩ.         

In Acts 16:12, Bruce Metzger was overruled by the other editors of the United Bible Societies’ Committee, and an imaginary reading was adopted into the UBS compilation:  πρώτης was adopted, instead of πρώτης της μερίδος, so as to mean that Philippi was a “first city” of the district of Macedonia.  Metzger insisted that the extant text was capable of being translated as “a leading city of the district of Macedonia.”   

● Acts 20:28 – Bruce Metzger dedicated two full pages of his Textual Commentary to consider the variants in Acts 20:28.  Did the original text refer to “the church of God,” or to “the church of the Lord,” or to “the church of the Lord and God”?  The contest between “God” and “Lord” amounts to the difference of a single letter:  if we set  aside the Byzantine reading, once the sacred names are contracted, it’s a contest between ΘΥ, and ΚΥ.    If the contest is decided in favor of ΘΥ, then a second question arises:  did Luke report that Paul stated that God purchased the church with His own blood? 

           Many apologists have used this verse to demonstrate Paul’s advocacy of the divinity of Christ.  Hort, however, expressed echoed the suspicion of an earlier scholar, Georg Christian Knapp, that at the end of the verse, after the words “through His own blood”, there was originally the word υἱοῦ (“Son”).      

            The Contemporary English Version, advertised as “an accurate and faithful translation of the original manuscripts,” seems to adopt this conjecture.  It has the word “Son” in its text of Acts 20:28b:  “Be like shepherds to God’s church.  It is the flock that he bought with the blood of his own Son.” 

The Greek evidence is in agreement about how First Corinthians 6:5 ends.  But the Peshitta disagrees.  The reading in the Peshitta implies that its Greek base-text included the phrase καὶ τοῦ ἀδελφοῦ (“and a brother”). 

           The first part of Paul’s statement in this verse is something to the effect of, “Is there not even one person among you – just one! – who shall be able to judge between” – and that’s where the difficulty appears.  The Greek text just mentions one brother, whereas the idea of judgment between two parties seems to demand that more than one brother should be mentioned. 

            Although the Textus Receptus has the equivalent of between his brother” – which is clearly singular – the KJV’s translators concluded the verse with “between his brethren” (which is clearly plural).  The CSB, the NIV, and the NASB likewise render the text as if the verse ends with a plural word rather than a singular one.  All such treatments of the text make the problem all the obvious:  the first part of the sentence, in Greek, anticipates two brothers, while the second part of the sentence mentions only one.          

            In light of such strong internal evidence, Michael Holmes, the compiler of the SBLGNT, recommended the adoption of a conjectural emendation at this point, so that καὶ τοῦ ἀδελφοῦ (“and the brother”) appears at the very end of the verse. 

             A fairly recent development in textual criticism is the tendency to regard First Corinthians 14:34-35 as non-original even though the words are in every manuscript of First Corinthians.  In a few copies they appear after verse 40.  The usual form of this conjecture is that the words began as a marginal note and were gradually adopted into the text.  

          Gordon Fee advocated this view in his commentary on First Corinthians and it has grown in popularity since then, especially among interpreters who favor an egalitarian view on the question of gender roles in the church.  One of the interesting aspects of this  issue is the impact of the double-dots, or distigme, that appear in the margin of Codex Vaticanus to signify a variation between the text of that manuscript and the text in another document.

 ● A much older scholarly debate has orbited the phrase “Now this Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia” in Galatians 4:25.  This sentence is included the Nestle-Aland compilation; however, it has been proposed that the entire phrase originated as a marginal note.  This conjecture goes back at least to the early 1700s, with Richard Bentley.  More recently, Stephen Carlson has argued in favor of the same idea. 

● In Hebrews 11:37, as the sufferings endured by spiritual heroes are listed, one of those things is not like the others:  they are all somewhat unusual experiences, except for “they were tempted.”  Some textual critics have suspected that the word ἐπειράσθησαν originated when a copyist committed dittography – writing twice what should be written once; in this case, the preceding word the means “they were sawn in two” – and that subsequent copyists changed it into something meaningful.  Others have thought that this relatively common term replaced one that was less common – perhaps another word that meant “they were pierced,” or “they were sold”. 

            Presently the Nestle-Aland compilation, deviating from the 25th edition, simply does not include ἐπειράσθησαν  in the text, following Papyrus 46.  But Papyrus 13  appears to support the inclusion of ἐπειράσθησαν and it has a very impressive array of allies.  I would advise readers to not get used to the current form of this verse in the critical text, for it seems to be merely a place-holder that might be blown away by the appearance of new evidence or slightly different analysis.    

● First Peter 3:19 – The most popular conjectural emendation of all time was favored by the textual expert J. Rendel Harris, who encountered a very brief form of it in William Bowyer’s book.  The extant text of First Peter 3:19 says, “in which he went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison.”  Verse 18 refers to Christ, and nobody else is introduced into the text, so verse 19 has been understood to mean that during the time between Jesus’ death and resurrection, He visited the realm of the dead, and visited the spirits of those who had been disobedient in the days of Noah, prior to the great flood – and delivered a message to them. 

            However, Harris, proposed that the original text was different.  He thought that Peter had in mind a scene that is related in the pseudepigraphical Book of Enoch. In this text, Enoch is depicted delivering a message of condemnation to the fallen spirits who corrupted human beings so thoroughly that the great flood was introduced as the means of amputating the moral infection they had induced.

            Harris proposed that the opening words of the original text of 3:19 were ἐν ᾧ καὶ Ἐνώχ (“in which also Enoch”), assigning the subsequent action not to Christ, but to Enoch.   There are two ways in which the name “Enoch” could have fallen out of the sentence.              

          1.  If the original text were simply Ἐνώχ (without ἐν ᾧ καὶ), then, in majuscule script, the chi was susceptible to being misread as an abbreviation for the word και (“and”) [a kai-compendium].  A copyist could easily decide to write the whole word instead of the abbreviation, and thus Enoch’s name would become ἐν ᾧ καὶ.

            2.  Or, if the original text were ἐν ᾧ καὶ Ἐνώχ, a copyist could read the chi as an abbreviation for και [again, a kai-compendium], and assume that the scribe who made his exemplar had inadvertently repeated three words. Attempting a correction, he would remove “Ἐνώχ.”

            Against the charge that the introduction of Enoch’s name “disturbs the otherwise smooth context,” the answer is that a reference to Enoch is not out of place, inasmuch as Enoch’s story sets the stage for the story of Noah and his family, whose deliverance through water Peter frames as a pattern of salvation.

            If this conjectural emendation were adopted, it would have at least a little doctrinal impact, by diminishing the Biblical basis for the phrase “He descended into hell” found in the Apostles’ Creed. 

Finally, in First Peter 3:10, we encounter an imaginary Greek reading that has been adopted into the text of the 28^th edition of the Nestle-Aland Greek New Testament.  Rejecting the assortment of contending variant offered by the Greek manuscripts, the editors have preferred the reading that is implied by a reading for which the external support is only extant in Coptic and Syriac.  However, the judgment of the scholars who gave up on the extant Greek readings may have been premature.

 The text is sufficiently clear with the reading, “will be found,” while it is also puzzling enough to provoke attempts at simplification.

         Only two of these conjectural emendations are mentioned in the 28^th edition of the Nestle-Aland Greek New Testament; the 27^th edition was the last one to list include conjectural emendations in its textual apparatus.   

          Some readers may be taken aback by the idea that some of the inspired words in the Word of God can only be reconstructed in the imaginations of scholars.  A realistic pushback against the idea of adopting any conjectural emendation is the question, “Does it really seem feasible that every scribe in every transmission-stream got it wrong?”  If scholars reject singular readings simply because they are singular, then non-existent readings should be even more disqualified, as a point of consistency.  It also seems very inconsistent to criticize advocates of poorly attested readings only to turn around and advocate readings with zero external support.

              It has been said by some very influential textual critics that New Testament textual criticism is both an art and a science.  But it should be all science, and not art, because it is an enterprise of reconstruction, not construction.  Its methods may validly be creative and inventive, and even intuitive, but not its product.  Conjectural emendation is the only aspect of textual criticism that potentially involves the researcher’s artistic or creative skill. 

            In my view, no conjectural emendation should ever be placed in a compilation of the text of the Greek New Testament.  At the same time, the task of proposing conjectural emendations as possible readings which account for their rivals serves a valuable purpose:  to demonstrate the heavy weight of the internal evidence in favor of such readings in the event that they are discovered in an actual Greek manuscript. 

            Thank you.           

 

 

 

Video Lecture: How To Use the Nestle-Aland Apparatus

            Now on YouTube:  the seventh lecture in the series Introduction to NT Textual Criticism!  In this 23-minute lecture, I discuss the textual apparatus in the 27th edition of the Nestle-Aland Novum Testamentum Graece and the United Bible Societies Greek New Testament, and explain many of the symbols and features found therein. 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQQr2DeeTl4

(At around the 5:43 mark, the slide that refers to letters should refer instead to numbers.)

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.

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.