Video Lecture: Kinds of Greek NT Manuscripts

Lecture 02 -
Kinds of Greek NT Manuscripts

            The second video lecture in the series Introduction to New Testament Textual Criticism is online.  This lecture, a little more than 20 minutes long, reviews different kinds of continuous-text Greek manuscripts of books of the New Testament – papyri, uncials (majuscules), and minuscules – and some of their distinctive features. 
            Sub-titles provide a running outline of the lecture.

On YouTube at
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RACT7JaKOXo

Here is an excerpt:

            In our first lecture, I mentioned that there are five kinds of witnesses to the New Testament text:  (1) manuscripts, (2) versions, (3) patristic writings, (4) lectionaries, and (5) talismans and inscriptions.  Today we are taking a closer look into the distinct characteristics of each kind of continuous-text Greek manuscript.

Let me tell you an old story [Jadecarver and Student] . . . 

             Before we do anything else - before we learn the guidelines of how to make text-critical decisions, before we learn about the impact they can have upon the text, and before we investigate controversies in the field - we get to know the materials.

             A New Testament Greek manuscript is a witness that contains the Greek text of one or more New Testament books, initially formatted as one or more New Testament books.  For everything else I’m going to describe, it is probably safe to add the words:   “There are some exceptions.”  Today, we’re not exploring exceptional cases.  They’re out there, but we can look into them later.             

             With some exceptions, every substantial New Testament manuscript in existence was a codex when it was produced.  A codex is a handmade book, as opposed to a scroll.  Some witnesses used to be codices but only a single fragment of a single page has survived. 

            If a fragment has writing on both sides, from the same composition, that’s a giveaway that it was part of a codex. 

            If an early fragment has writing on just one side, and it’s not the end of the composition, that indicates that it was part of a scroll. 

            If an early fragment, such as Papyrus 13, has writing on both sides, but the writing on one side is from a different composition compared to the text on the other side, that indicates that it was part of a scroll, which first had writing on one side, and then someone decided to recycle it, and wrote on the other side.

           Our earliest witnesses were written on papyrus, pages made from the processed fibers of papyrus plants that grew along the Nile River.         

            In the 300s, after Christianity was legalized, books continued to be made out of papyrus, but parchment began to be the preferred material for New Testament manuscript-makers.   Parchment is made out of animal-skin.  At the end of the lecture, I will mention some resources that should give you a good idea of what goes into making papyrus, and what goes into the process of turning the skin of an animal into the pages of a book.

            In the Middle Ages, manuscripts began to be made out of a different material, called paper.  Some manuscripts have portions that are parchment, and portions that are paper, especially in cases where a parchment manuscript was damaged, and paper was used to replace the damaged pages.

          Now let’s consider the different kinds of continuous-text Greek manuscripts.

            First, there are the papyri.                     

            Papyrus-material, by the way, is still produced today; here’s a piece. 

            Papyrus manuscripts of New Testament books have their own catalog-numbers or names in the libraries where they reside, but for general purposes they are known by the letter “P” and a number, which represents the order in which they were found.  So, Papyrus 52 was approximately the 52^nd New Testament papyrus to be found, identified, and catalogued.  

            Papyrus manuscripts are typically the first witnesses mentioned when comparing the support for rival readings.  The earliest papyri echo a period that is earlier than all other manuscripts.  So it is natural to give them a high level of importance.  But there are seven things that should be kept in mind about the papyri.

             ● First, it is not unusual for papyri to be cited for readings that do not appear in the surviving part of the manuscript.  When it comes to papyrus fragments, there is often more to see than just what you can see.  Depending on how much text survives in a fragment, on how many pages, it is sometimes possible to create what is called a codicological reconstruction of part of the non-extant part of the manuscript.  For example, if you have fragments of two pages of a manuscript, you might be able to tell approximately how much text was on each page of the manuscript, and approximately how many pages it had.  The further the reconstruction gets from the extant text, the less useful it is for text-critical purposes.   But if a variant is large, and relatively close to the extant text, codicological reconstruction can serve as the basis on which to form a strong suspicion about whether the variant was present or absent in the manuscript, on the basis of space-considerations.     

            ● Second:  there is nothing magical about papyrus.  Copyists did not suddenly become more accurate just by writing the text on papyrus.  Papyrus 72 was probably made in the 300s, and it is one of the earliest manuscripts of the books that it contains.  But if you compare its text of the Epistle of Jude to the text of Jude in an ordinary late medieval manuscript, the text in the medieval manuscript will be far closer to the original text.    

            ● Third:  while the papyri are very old, many of them are not remarkably old.  Right now, we have about 140 papyrus manuscripts.   Forty of them were produced after the fall of the Roman Empire, in the 500s or later.    

            ● Fourth:  almost all of the papyri are fragmentary, and most of the papyri are very fragmentary.  Less than 30 early papyri – and by “early” I mean, “earlier than Jerome” – before the late 300s – consist of more than two pages. 

            ● Fifth:  the primary value and use of the papyri, by far, has been to confirm readings that were already known from other witnesses.  The number of readings found exclusively in papyri that have been securely adopted in any major edition of the Greek New Testament is zero.  In the late 1800s, textual critics had practically no papyri to work with; now we have 140, and in terms of the contents of the text, they have made very little difference.

            ● Sixth:  almost all of the papyri were found in Egypt.  That is because papyrus tends to gradually decay in climates that are not very dry, and the climate in parts of Egypt is very dry.  So if a textual critic were to say, “Let’s reconstruct the text based on the earliest manuscript,” he would produce a text based on evidence from Egypt, at least in the passages for which there is an early papyri – because that’s where papyrus lasted longer than in other places.  That kind of approach might give us a good look at the texts that were used in Egypt.  But it doesn’t really help us see what the text looked like in other locations, where there was more rain – such as the location of every church mentioned in the New Testament.  Saying, “Let’s depend primarily on the oldest evidence” is like saying, “Let’s depend primarily on the evidence that experienced the best weather.”

            ● Seventh, the production-date assigned to a papyrus manuscript is usually an estimate, with a range of 100 years.  The analysis of ancient writing, called paleography, is used to arrive at these production-dates.  In rare cases, the circumstances in which a New Testament manuscript has been found sets some parameters for its production-date; for example, if a manuscript is found in the ruins of a city that was destroyed in a particular year, we can deduce that it was not produced after that year.  But usually, paleographers assign production-dates according to the Greek script that the copyist used.

             If you look at printed English fonts from 300 years ago, and compare them to fonts in use today, you will see some differences.  The same sort of thing is true of ancient Greek handwriting; different styles of script were dominant at different times.  Paleographers study the script in detail.  But they can’t look at a script and tell you how old a copyist was when he wrote it. 

            If you reckon that a copyist in the ancient world engaged in a peaceful profession that involved copying books, he could copy a book at age 20, or at age 70 – and use the same handwriting he had learned when he had first learned to write.  There’s no way to tell if he was young, and would go on using that handwriting for another 50 years, or if he was old, and had been using that handwriting for 50 years.  So this range of about 50 years in both directions is built-into most paleographically assigned production-dates. 

           Now let’s consider the uncial manuscripts, also called majuscules.  When you read the textual apparatus in a Nestle-Aland or United Bible Societies or Tyndale House Greek New Testament, you can tell when a witness is a papyrus, because it is identified by a number after the letter P.   Similarly, you can tell when a witness is an uncial, because all uncials are numbered with numbers that begin with the numeral 0.  Codex Sinaiticus is 01, Codex Alexandrinus is 02, Codex Vaticanus is 03, and so forth.  Whether an uncial is a massive codex like Codex Sinaiticus, or a Gospels-book like Codex Cyprius, or a small fragment like 0315, every one gets its own number.  These numbers are called the Gregory-Aland numbers, because this kind of identification-system was developed by the scholar C. R. Gregory and expanded by Kurt Aland.  Different identification-systems were used before this became the standard identification-method; a comparison-chart of the obsolete methods and the standard method can be found online at the Encyclopedia of New Testament Textual Criticism.

            That is the first standard way in which uncials are identified.  But there is another method:  some uncials are also represented by letters of the English alphabet, and some uncials are represented by letters of the Greek alphabet.  Codex Alexandrinus is Codex A, Codex Vaticanus is Codex B, and so forth.  Codex Sinaiticus is represented as À, the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet.  Generally, the more important an uncial is, the more likely it is to be better-known by its letter than by its number.

            There are only 26 English letters and 24 Greek letters, and we have a lot more than 50 uncial manuscripts.  Sometimes the same letter is used for different manuscripts in different parts of the New Testament.  For example, “D” is Codex Bezae in the Gospels and Acts, but in the Epistles, “D” represents Codex Claromontanus.  “E” is Codex Basiliensis in the Gospels, but in Acts, “E” is Codex Laudianus. 

            The numerical system is less likely to cause confusion, because each number represents exactly one manuscript.  But the letter-based system is easy to remember and it is used in the printed textual apparatus of the major editions of the Greek New Testament.  The only safe course of action is to learn both identification systems.

             It is not unusual for an uncial manuscript of the four Gospels to contain more than just the text of the four Gospels.  A Gospels-codex may begin with the Eusebian canons before the text of the Gospels begins, introduced by Eusebius’ letter to Carpian explaining how to use the Canons as a cross-reference tool.  Each Gospel may also be preceded by a list of its chapters; these chapter-lists are called Kephalaia.  The chapter-titles may be repeated at the top or bottom of the page of text where they begin; at these locations, they are called the titloi.  And at the end of each Gospel, one usually finds the closing-title.             

            Next come the minuscules – that’s minUscules.  Whereas uncial manuscripts are written in large letters that are usually separated from one another, minuscules are written in small letters that tend to be connected to one another in words.  Minuscule copies of New Testament books go back as early as the early 800s.  Uncial manuscripts continued to be made after that, but by the 1000s, minuscule script became dominant.  It took less time and required less materials to make a minuscule manuscript. 

            Here are a few things to know about minuscules:

            ● Minuscules should not be belittled simply because they are minuscules.  Kirsopp Lake said, “It is neither the date nor the script of a MS which determines its value for the critic, but the textual history of its ancestors.”

             ● Some minuscules are not technically continuous-text manuscripts:  they are commentaries, in which a portion of the New Testament text is written, followed by a portion of commentary, followed by the next portion of New Testament text, followed by a portion of commentary, and so forth.   This is not much different from a truly continuous-text manuscript that has the same commentary-material in the outer margins.  When several copies of the same commentary also share the same form of the New Testament text, divided into the same portions, it is clear that they share the same ancestry, and their weight should be boiled down.

            ● Some minuscules contain a high amount of abbreviation.

            ● Some uncials are partly minuscule.  It is not rare to see uncial letters and minuscule letters on the same page – occasionally, comments are written in minuscule script and the text is written in uncial script, to help prevent readers from getting them confused.

            ● Some minuscules are illustrated.  Minuscule copies of the Gospels may include full-page miniature portraits of each Evangelist before his Gospel begins.  In this context, the term “miniature” does not describe the size of the portrait; a “miniature” is a picture framed in pigment that contains red lead – a pigment called minium. 

             Often each evangelist in these pictures is accompanied by a symbolic representation:  usually for Matthew, it is a man or angel.  For Mark, it is a lion.  For Luke, it is an ox.  And for John, it is an eagle.  The symbolism is based on the visions of the seraphim around God’s throne in the books of Ezekiel and Revelation.

            Also, the initial letter of a book, or in some cases, many of the initial letters at the beginnings of sections of a book, may be artistically stylized.  When an initial is made to resemble an animal, this is called a zoomorphic initial.  In many manuscripts, at the beginning of a book, there is a large ornamental design, called a headpiece, accompanied by the title of the book.

            ● In some minuscules of the Gospels, in addition to the Eusebian Canons and chapter-lists, there are book-introductions, or summaries.  Sometimes there are lists of rare words.  In some copies of Acts, there is an itinerary of the journeys of Paul.  And sometimes, at the end of the book, there is a scribal note, or colophon, which might include information about when and where it was copied. 

           Regarding all other witnesses to the Greek New Testament:  we will hopefully look into them in future lectures.  Representatives of the Greek text of the New Testament tend to take center stage, because everything else does not contain the text that is being reconstructed.  But other witnesses are extremely important when it comes to tracking specific readings and building a history of separate forms of the text.              For example, when you see a rare reading in a Coptic manuscript from Egypt, and it also shows up in a Latin manuscript that was made in Ireland, it raises a question about how the text in these two geographically separated places is connected.  And if you see that the same reading in the same passage was quoted and interpreted by two early writers in two different locations, you can thus observe that the reading was widely distributed – and sometimes this evidence is earlier than any extant evidence from continuous-text Greek manuscripts.

             To learn more about early papyrus manuscripts and parchment manuscripts and how they were made, download Sitterly’s 1898 book Praxis in Manuscripts of the Greek Testament, and read chapters 1, 2, and 3.

            Also, watch the video, 8 minutes and 44 seconds long, that you can find at YouTube by searching there for “Beloved Essences How To Make Papyrus” –

            And another video, 3 minutes and 42 seconds long, that you can find at YouTube by searching there for “Texas Film Studio How To Make Papyrus.”

            And, watch the video about how to make parchment at Mike Rowe’s Dirty Jobs series, Season 4, Episode 26, which is also accessible at YouTube, beginning in the 20^th minute of the video.

            And, watch the video about how paper was made in the late Middle Ages at YouTube; search there for a video 15 minutes and 18 seconds long, called “Papermaking by Hand at Hayle Mill.”

           Also, if you can acquire Larry Stone’s book The Story of the Bible, do so, and read chapters 1 and 3, and be sure to look inside the pouches. 

Matthew 6:13 - How Does the Lord's Prayer End? (Part 2)

          Let’s continue looking into the textual contest at the end of Matthew 6:13:  the basic question is, are the words “For yours is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever, Amen” – ὅτι σοῦ ἐστιν ἡ βασιλεία καὶ ἡ δύναμις καὶ ἡ δόξα εἰς τοὺς αἰῶνας ἀμήν – part of the original text, or not? 

Matthew 6:13b in Codex L.

          As we saw in Part 1, over 98% of the Greek manuscripts that have this verse include these words (including Codex W) – but it is not included in the important manuscripts Vaticanus, Sinaiticus, Bezae, the fifth-century uncial fragment 0171, and the fragmentary palimpsest Codex Z (Dublinensis, 035).  It is not supported by the core representatives of family-1, but it is included in family-13.  The Gothic version and the Armenian version (and others) have it, but most representatives of the Old Latin version, as well as the two most ancient copies of the Middle Egyptian version, do not have it.  The early patristic writers Tertullian, Origen, Cyprian (in Treatise 4), Ambrose, and Cyril of Alexandria (in Catechetical Lecture XXIII) comment on the Lord’s Prayer but do not mention this reading, and several others (Hilary of Poitiers, Caesarius, Gregory of Nyssa) do not mention it when they use this verse – but it was quoted by John Chrysostom (c. 400), and it was quoted in Apostolic Constitutions (380), and it appears to have been utilized by the author of the Didache – an exceptionally early composition (early 100s). 

          The unknown author of the Latin composition Opus Imperfectum in Matthaeum (early 400s) also quoted Matthew 16:13b, in Homily 14, in a way which shows that he read it in his text of Matthew.  This reference is interesting, not only because it gives additional Latin support to the reading, but because it augments the theological range of the support for the reading; while Chrysostom was thoroughly orthodox, the author of Opus Imperfectum was not. 

          With all that in mind, we now turn to some evidence which is not featured in the usual textual apparatuses:  amulets.  The Lord’s Prayer was ubiquitously used in church-services, but it was also applied to a different purpose in some parts of the Roman Empire:  when Christians made small amulets containing snippets of Scripture, one of the most-used passages in such items – after the beginnings of each of the Gospels – was the Lord’s Prayer.  

          Let’s take a look at some of these amulets and the text(s) they contain.

          ● Papyrus Ct.YBR 4600, housed at Yale University, was made sometime in the 500s-700s.  It consists of a single sheet of papyrus, blank on the reverse side.  It contains Matthew 6:9b-13, but is torn down the middle; as a result about half of the text is not extant.  In verse 13, it appears that the word “Lord” was added after “Lead us not into temptation.”  After “But deliver us from evil,” the doxology does not appear, but rather than come to a close, the text continues with one more line, which says, “To our Lord.”  It seems debatable whether “To our Lord” should be regarded as a closing-title, or as a phrase introducing some non-extant continuation.

          ● Papyrus Oxyrhynchus LX 4010 is assigned to the 300s.  It is a liturgical prayer, and instead of beginning with “Our Father” it has an introductory portion (which cannot be confident deciphered due to extensive damage, but which seems to address God as the All-powerful Master and God of all comfort).  In v. 12, this witness reads ωσπερ instead of ως.  It does not have the doxology after “but deliver us from evil.”  After “our debtors” and “into temptation,” the remainders of two lines have been obliterated.  It appears that after writing, “but deliver us from evil,” the writer repeated the words “deliver us.”  It is possible that more text followed on another page.

          ● Á3 (Talisman 3), also known as BGU 3.954, was excavated at Herakleopolis Magna, Egypt, and is assigned to the 500s.  It contains – or contained – an apotropaic prayer (i.e., a prayer for protection and health), and it begins by addressing God as the All-powerful Master. (It is similar in this respect to P. Oxy. LX 4010.)  An individual named Silvanus prays for protection from demons, and from illness, and then introduces “the Gospel-prayer” – Matthew 6:9b-13. The word “Lord” was added after “Lead us not into temptation.”  After that, the document is damaged but enough has survived to show that it contained a doxology that included the words “the glory forever.”  This is followed by snippets from John 1:1 and Matthew 1:1 and a final petition for health.     

          (Unfortunately, as Brice Jones explains in his book New Testament Texts on Greek Amulets from Late Antiquity, this witness was part of the cargo that perished in 1899 when the ship transporting it from Egypt to Europe caught fire in the Hamburg harbor.  Fortunately the document had been meticulously described by researchers Ulrich Wilken and Charles Wessely.)

         

          ● Á6, also known as Papyrus Iandani I.16 is an Egyptian document from the 400s or 500s.  It includes the text of the Lord’s Prayer, and includes a doxology – “for yours is the glory forever and ever.”  It has other material besides the Lord’s Prayer:  it also features the opening lines of Matthew 1:1, part of Matthew 8:1 (or Luke 9:37), part of Luke 11:1-2, snippets from Psalm 90, and more – all rather garbled, but as Brice Jones has noted, Ernest Schäfer helpfully diagnosed the cause of the mix-up and rearranged the text that the novice copyist was attempting to write.   

          ● Á13, also known as Papyrus Duke inv. 778, made in the 500s, is a double-sided amulet; Psalm 91 (in Greek) is on one side and the Lord’s Prayer is on the other side.  A detailed description of this document can be found in an article in the 2004 Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists by Csaba La’da and Amphilochios Papathomas.  (For a picture and transcript, see this link.)  The words “Your will be done” and “as we forgive our debtors” are absent. The word “Lord” appears after “Lead us not into temptation” (a feature also seen in Á3).  After “Deliver us from evil,” there is an expanded doxology:  “Through the only-begotten” – at this point there is a hole in the papyrus which might have contained the contracted word “Son” – “for yours is the glory and the power and the all-holy Spirit, now, always, and forever and ever.  Amen.”  (“Amen” is written as ϘΘ, two Greek letters which have a numerical value of 99, the same as the word ἀμήν (α = 1, μ = 40, η = 8, ν = 50).  In the papyrus, the Θ is only minimally extant.)  This concluding phrase is similar to the way in which Gregory of Nyssa concluded his catechetical lecture on the Lord’s Prayer, and it also resembles a liturgical formula, which we will consider soon.

          Another witness that should not be ignored is the Gnostic composition called the Prayer of the Apostle Paul.  This text is written in Coptic on the flyleaf of Nag Hammadi Codex 1 (the Jung Codex), which is about as old as Codex Sinaiticus.  Like the texts on apotropaic amulets, this brief composition is a request for protection and health.  It contains some phrases strongly reminiscent of Saying 17 in the “Gospel of Thomas” (which, in turn, resembles First Corinthians 2:9, which is mainly an adaptation of Isaiah 64:4) and Philippians 2:9.  The Gnostic (probably Valentinian) author concludes the prayer with, “For yours is the power and the glory and the praise and the greatness, forever and ever, Amen.” 

          The Prayer of the Apostle Paul includes the request, “give healing for my body when I ask you through the Evangelist,” and although this has been interpreted as a reference to Paul, I suggest that “the Evangelist” means the same thing as “the Gospel-prayer” in Á3.

          Isidore of Pelusium (late 300s-450) also quoted the doxology, twice, in the course of commenting on the Lord’s Prayer, in his Fourth Book of Epistles, #14, To Eutonius the Deacon (cf. Migne PG Vol. 78, col. 1073 and 1076).  This is especially interesting since he resided in Alexandria before taking up monastic responsibilities at Pelusium; one would expect him to have used instead a text that agreed with the flagship manuscripts of the Alexandrian Text.

          Other evidence joins Isidore in confirming that the non-inclusion of Matthew 6:13b was not the only reading known in Egyptian transmission-lines.  Codex L and minuscules 33 and 1241 are among the MSS that support inclusion.  Minuscule 892, widely considered the most Alexandrian of all Gospels-minuscules, also includes the doxology.  

          When one considers that Sahidic and Fayummic versions support “For yours is the power and glory forever, Amen,” a case can be made that the non-inclusion of the doxology is essentially a Western reading than has Alexandrian support:  The Alexandrian witnesses À B and 0171 and Cyril have the shorter reading, as does the Middle Egyptian version; however, that seems to be the extent of support for non-inclusion among  Alexandrian witnesses.  Meanwhile, among the Western witnesses for non-inclusion are D, at least seven Old Latin copies, Tertullian, Cyprian, Ambrose, the Vulgate, and Peter Chrysologus.   

          (It may be noted that practically next door in 6:15, À is allied with mainly Western witnesses, favoring another non-inclusion (the non-inclusion of τὰ παραπτώματα αὐτῶν.) 

         

          So:  which reading accounts for the creation of its rival?  Though this question expresses a standard text-critical canon – the paramount text-critical canon – it is in some cases an oversimplification, because some readings created by copyists (especially shorter readings) may arise due to factors that are not suggested by rival readings.  

          In the case at hand, it should be clear to everyone that the use of doxologies was very widespread, not only in the writing of personal prayers, but also in prayers offered in church-services.  The amulets provide examples of the former; the Didache provides examples of the latter.  It should also be clear that the Lord’s Prayer was subject to adaptation – sometimes via expansion, and sometimes via abridgement.  (The prayer in Matthew 6:9-13 was vulnerable to abridgement via harmonization to the prayer in Luke 11:2-4, just as the prayer in Luke was vulnerable to expansion to the prayer in Matthew 6.)  Additional examples of prayers with doxologies being offered in church-services are found in the liturgies that have been handed down from antiquity.  Let’s consider two examples.

          ● In what is known as the Liturgy of Saint James, after the priest recites embellished citations of the first two clauses of Matthew 6:13, he is to say out loud, “For yours is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever,” and then the congregation is to reply with “Amen.” 

          ● In what is known as the Anaphora of Saint Basil, the priest says, “For Yours is the dominion, the kingdom, the power, and the glory of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, now and forever to the age of ages.”  And further along in the service, the recitation of the Lord’s Prayer occurs just before the breaking of the bread in the communion-service:  the congregation is to recite the Lord’s Prayer up to the end of the phrase, “Deliver us from evil,” and then the priest is to  recite the doxology, with an embellishment (or “embolism”), saying, “For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory, of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, now and forever and to the ages of ages.”
          (Additional liturgical examples of prayer-conclusions which ascribe glory to God in one way or another – such as “In the name of Your only-begotten Jesus Christ, through whom to You is the glory and the strength in the Holy Spirit to all the ages of the ages, Amen” and “Through Your only-begotten to Thee is the glory and the strength in Holy Spirit, now and to all the ages of the ages, Amen” – can be found in the Sacramentary of Sarapion of Thmuis, which is generally considered to have been produced in the mid-300s.)

         

Matthew 6:13b in 892.

In the late 1800s, Dean Burgon, conscious of this liturgical custom, proposed that it is so ancient that it accounts for the rival reading in Matthew 6:13.  Several pages of Causes of Corruption are devoted to the exploration of this variant-unit.  Burgon pointed out that if the doxology was added to the text of Matthew after previously existing as a liturgical formula, then instead of seeing, “For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever, Amen,” we would see, “For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory, of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, now and forever and to the ages of ages” – which, although it is what we see in the Anaphora of Basil and the Liturgy of Saint James,  is not what we see, except in two manuscripts (157 and 1253).  The idea that Matthew 6:13b was based on a liturgical formula, Burgon argued, is just the opposite of what ought to be concluded:  instead, a variety of liturgical formulas are based on Matthew 6:13b. 

          Burgon proceeded to propose that the loss of Matthew 6:13b was related to the custom of having the congregation recite the Lord’s Prayer up to the end of “deliver us from evil,” and then having the priest alone recite the doxology.  An early copy with a mark beside it – intended to mean that the doxology was not to be read aloud by the congregation – could easily be misconstrued by a professional copyist to mean that the doxology was not to be written by the scribe.  And thus the whole phrase failed to be perpetuated in a transmission-line that branched out into the base-texts of the Old Latin version(s), and the Alexandrian text-form represented by À B Mae, and the text used by Origen. 

 

Matthew 6:12-13 in Codex K.

         Such an occurrence would have to happen extremely early – sometime in the 100s.  But this is completely feasible.  As evidence that liturgical formulas were in use in liturgies in the 100s, we may turn to Irenaeus’ work Against Heresies, Book One, chapter 3:  remarking on false teachers’ heresies about Aeons, he mentions that “We ourselves, when at the Eucharist, pronounce the words “to aeons of aeons”” – that is, the words “forever and ever.”  We see the same kind of expression in Á3, Á6, Á13, and the Gnostic “Prayer of the Apostle Paul.”

          The words “and ever” in the liturgy are a natural expansion – but an expansion of what?  When we see, in the Didache, a description of the Lord’s Prayer being used at a communion-service in the 100s, and when we see, from Irenaeus, a reference to the phrase “forever and ever” being used at the communion-service in the 100s, it seems reasonable to conclude that Irenaeus is referring to an expansion of the same Matthean doxology described in the Didache.

          Thus the table was set, so to speak, in the 100s for a scribal mechanism that could cause the accidental loss of Matthew 6:13b in exemplars that were in the ancestry of both the Old Latin version, and a significant segment of the Alexandrian text-stream, and a form of Matthew used by Origen.  This accounts for the absence of the doxology in the quotations by Latin writers reading Old Latin copies (such as Tertullian, Cyprian, Ambrose, and Augustine), and for the absence of the doxology in copies used by Origen. 

CONCLUSION

          Since the days of Erasmus, it has been alleged that the doxology in Matthew 6:13 is an accretion that slipped into the text from the liturgy.  In the 1700s, Bengel expressed this idea in his Gnomon (Vol. 1, pages 192-195), pointing out that the medieval writer Euthymius, in the course of criticizing the Bogomils for not using the doxology, claimed that it “the choral conclusion added by those who were the divine illuminators and guides of the church.”  (Without closer study, I cannote tell if Euthymius really criticized the Bogomils for avoiding a reading which he admitted was an accretion, or if Euthymius meant nothing more than that Matthew 6:13b was used as the framework for part of the liturgy by those to whom the liturgies are attributed.)  Bengel’s research on the passage can be consulted in the text-critical appendix of his 1734 Η Καινη Διαθηκη and in his Apparatus Criticus.

          More recently, Bruce Metzger claimed that the evidence “suggests that an ascription, usually in a threefold form, was composed (perhaps on the basis of 1 Chr 29.11-13) in order to adapt the Prayer for liturgical use in the early church.” (Compare Hort’s Notes on Select Readings on this variant-unit.)

          This is a convenient explanation for defenders of the Alexandrian text, but the same thought, in the minds of early scribes, would be an effective impetus for the removal of the doxology from the text of Matthew.  Picture a Christian in the second century attending church-services in which the congregation recites the Lord’s Prayer up to the end of “Deliver us from evil,” and the priest (or elder) proceeds to recite the doxology.  In the mind of some participants, the words recited by the congregation – and only those words – were perceived as the prayer; the doxology being regarded as a liturgical flourish.  If such a participant were to proceed to become a scribe, it would be very easy for him to conclude, when encountering the doxology in Matthew 6:13 in an exemplar, that the scribe of his exemplar had mistakenly included a liturgical flourish in the text – and all the more easily considering that there is no such doxology in Luke 11. 

          Of course no one on earth can demonstrate that this happened in the second century; yet the implication of this theory – that Mt. 6:13b is original – is supported not only by a vast proportion of manuscripts (over 98%), but by the significantly earliest witness (the Didache), and by widespread witnesses (Chrysostom, Isidore of Pelusium, Codex W, L, Δ, 892, 1192, 2812, the Peshitta, the Gothic version, the Armenian version, the Opus Imperfectum, etc.).  The non-inclusion of “For Yours is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever, Amen” should be considered an early Western reading that was adopted in Egypt but which failed to gain wide acceptance in other Greek transmission-lines (not unlike the non-inclusion of τὰ παραπτώματα αὐτῶν in Matthew 6:15).



Readers are encouraged to explore the embedded links for additional resources.

 

Fourth-century Philemon: P139

           This past May, along with the release of the small fragment formerly known as “First Century Mark,” (P137) two other New Testament papyri were released:  a fragment with text from the Gospel of Luke (P138), and a fragment with text from Paul’s Epistle to Philemon (P139).  The Egypt Exploration Society kindly provided interested persons with access to images of the fragment of Mark, and a picture of Oxyrhynchus Papyrus 5347 – the fragment from Philemon – is on the same page.  The images show text from verses 6-8 and 18-20.

             Without consulting the transcription offered by the editor of P139 (Notre Dame professor Dr. David Lincicum), I have attempted a transcription of it.   For the official transcription, made by someone who could study the papyrus directly, you will need to consult Volume 83 of The Oxyrhynchus Papyri – Graeco-Roman Memoirs, a publication of the Egypt Exploration Society.  The script is consistent with a production-date in the 300s, which means that this papyrus is one of our three earliest Greek manuscripts of Philemon (ranking behind P87 and more or less tied with Codex Sinaiticus).

Here are some thoughts and observations about the text of this newly published witness to the text of Philemon that was read in Egypt in the 300s:
    

● v. 6 – υμειν confirms the reading εν υμιν (with an inconsequential spelling-difference), and this might tilt the balance of evidence away from εν ημιν, the reading that is presently read in the Nestle-Aland Novum Testamentum Graece.

● v. 6-7 – My reconstruction of the second line is very tentative.  Somewhere in the non-extant text,  space-considerations seem to support the non-inclusion of Ἰησουν (even contracted as a sacred name). 

● v. 7 – P139 definitely supports πολλην εσχον, not εχομεν πολλην. 

● v. 7 – There may be a raised dot between σου and οτι. 

● v. 8 – Where there should be an ο in πολλην, P139 appears to have an ε.

● v. 18 – τουτο appears to have been written as τοουτο.

● v. 19 – The last visible letter in the fourth line could be an ε or a smudged ι.

● v. 19 – Instead of the usual reading σεαυτόν, P139 reads αυτον, and ε has been added above the α, so as to support εαυτόν. 

● v. 19 – A slight orthographic variant, ι instead of ει in προσοφείλεις, is supported by P139.  This spelling (without the ε) is also supported by Codex Sinaiticus, Codex Alexandrinus, and by Codex Claromontanus (which doesn’t have the ε after the λ, either; a corrector has inserted it).

● v. 20 – A new reading appears to be attested by P139:  after ἐγώ σου, one would expect ὀναίμην ἐν Κω (i.e., Κυρίω) – part of the phrase, “Let me have from you joy in the Lord.”  Instead, only a smidgen of ink has survived where ὀναίμην ἐν would be, and at the beginning of the next, last line, instead of Κω or Κυρίω, we see the letters χρ.  Over these two letters χρ and extending into the left margin there is a paragraphos, a horizontal line that was used by copyists to separate paragraphs.  The letters χρ appear to be followed by the remains of a sloping ω, in which case we have here a three-letter form of a sacred-name contraction (with the paragraphos to be construed as serving a dual purpose); however the last letter could also be a ε, which would imply that the copyist wrote the word χρειστω in full (which would be highly unusual); either way, P139 thus supports a form of the text of the middle of verse 20 which reads “in Christ” rather than “in the Lord.” 

            This is of course only a preliminary reading based on a black-and-white photograph.  After completing my own transcription, I checked it against the transcription in Oxyrhynchus Papyri Volume 83, and although there are some disagreements between my work and that of Dr. Lincicum, I was satisfied with how my transcription turned out.  Readers are encouraged of course to consult the official transcription.

    

N-A in 2018 and W-H in 1881: How Similar?

Eldon Jay Epp

Eldon Jay Epp, in his 1974 essay, The Twentieth Century Interlude in New Testament Textual Criticism (published in the Journal of Biblical Literature), mentioned the result of a comparison made by Kurt Aland between the compilation of the Greek New Testament that was produced by Westcott and Hort in 1881, and the compilation in the 25th edition of the Nestle-Aland Novum Testamentum Graece published in 1963:  Aland detected that the difference between the 1881 text and the 1963 text amounted to 558 variants.  Epp concluded from this that “None of the currently popular hand-editions of the Greek NT takes us beyond Westcott-Hort in any substantive way as far as textual character is concerned.”

Epp observed the differences between the materials used by Westcott and Hort and the materials that subsequently became available.  Westcott and Hort did not use any papyri when making their compilation; they utilized no more than 45 uncial manuscripts; they used only about 150 minuscules; they cited only a small number of lectionaries.  In comparison, the modern textual critic in 1974 had the ability to consult over 80 papyri and 270 uncials.  Almost 2,800 minuscules were catalogued, along with 2,100 lectionaries.  (These quantities have grown significantly since 1974.)  Versional evidence and patristic research has “advanced significantly” – particularly where Syriac, Old Latin, and Armenian studies are concerned.

Yet in 1980, Epp acknowledged – in a sort of sequel-article, A Continuing Interlude in New Testament Textual Criticism? (in Harvard Theological Review) – that the multitude of discoveries made after 1881 have not had much impact on the text, even though they have not vindicated the model of the text’s transmission-history that was assumed by Hort:  “What have our vastly increased manuscript discoveries and analysis done for us?” Epp asked.  “Do they confirm the methods and theories that produced the text of a hundred years ago?  All of us would quickly answer ‘Certainly not!’”

The thing to see is that the text of 100 years ago (i.e., in 1980, the text of 1881, Hort’s compilation) is barely different from the text being published as the 28th edition of Novum Testamentum Graece.  To offer up-to-date evidence of this point, I have made a fresh comparison of the 1881 compilation and the current edition of the Nestle-Aland compilation, in the following way:  first, I noted the 34 changes that were introduced between the 27th and 28th editions in the General Epistles.  (These have already been individually listed and described.)  I then proceeded to sift through Wieland Willker’s online presentation of the Greek New Testament in which he denotes differences between the Nestle-Aland NTG and Hort’s 1881 text.  Throughout the comparison, I noted all disagreements, but also assigned a special category to points in the text where one compilation or the other compilation has bracketed readings – that is, points where the difference between the two compilations is either (a) a matter of adding or subtracting brackets around variants, or (b) a matter of adding a bracketed word or words.

Here are the results, book by book: 

[Book: Disagreements / Disagreements that involve brackets]

Matthew: 188 / 95.  Full disagreements = 93.
Mark: 145 / 86.  Full disagreements = 59.
Luke: 156 / 84.  Full disagreements = 72.
John: 202 / 115.  Full disagreements = 87.
Subtotal:  Gospels: 691 / 380. Full disagreements = 311.

Acts: 204 / 89. Full disagreements = 115.

Romans: 65 / 36. Full disagreements = 29.
First Corinthians: 62 / 33. Full disagreements = 29.
Second Corinthians: 34 / 16. Full disagreements = 18.
Galatians: 23 / 10. Full disagreements = 13.
Ephesians: 16 / 11. Full disagreements = 5.
Philippians: 14 / 6. Full disagreements = 8.
Colossians: 14 / 10. Full disagreements = 4.
First Thessalonians: 17 / 11. Full disagreements = 6.
Second Thessalonians: 7 / 4. Full disagreements = 3.
First Timothy: 6 / 5. Full disagreements = 1.
Second Timothy: 8 / 3. Full disagreements = 5.
Titus: 6 / 2. Full disagreements = 4.
Philemon: 3 / 2. Full disagreements = 1.
Hebrews: 34 / 18. Full disagreements = 16.
Subtotal: Pauline Epistles: 309 / 167. Full disagreements = 142.

Papyri?  Who needs 'em?

James: 20 / 4. Full disagreements: 16.
First Peter: 26 / 13. Full disagreements: 13.
Second Peter: 12 / 5. Full disagreements: 7.
First John: 18 / 11. Full disagreements: 7.
Second John: 2 / 0. Full disagreements: 2.
Third John: 1 / 0. Full disagreements: 1.
Jude: 8 / 4. Full disagreements: 4.
Subtotal:  General Epistles: 87 / 37. Full disagreements = 50.

Revelation: 81 / 38. Full disagreements = 43.

Total Disagreements:  1,372
Total Full Disagreements:  661.

            Adding to this the 34 new readings in NA28, the total number of full disagreements in the 28th edition of Novum Testamentum Graece against WH1881 is 695.

            This is particularly interesting when one turns to the Editionum Differentiae (Appendix III) in the 27th edition of NTG, which lists (among other things) the differences between NA27 and NA25.  (The text was essentially unchanged in the intervening 26th edition, which had essentially the same text as the third edition of the UBS Greek New Testament.)  There one can observe that between NA25 and NA27, there were 397 changes in the Gospels, 119 in Acts, 149 in the Pauline Epistles, 46 in the General Epistles, and 29 in Revelation, for a total of 740.  

            Thus, setting aside cases of bracketed words, it seems that if one were to start with WH1881 and change it until it matched up with NA28, one would need to make 695 changes, whereas using the same approach, if one were to start with the 1963 NA25, and change it until it matched up with NA28, one would need to make 774 changes.  It seems that the compilers of NA28 must think that the WH1881 compilation – made without the benefit of papyri, and based on a transmission-model which no serious textual critics still advocate (at least, none known to Dr. Peter Gurry, as he mentioned in a recent post at the Evangelical Textual Criticism blog) – was closer to the original text than the 1963 compilation was. 

(Readers are invited to double-check the statistics in this post.)