“Understandest thou what thou
readest?”
That was Philip’s question to the
Ethiopian eunuch in Acts 8:30, as rendered in the KJV.
Every field of scientific study involves some
specialized terms, or jargon, which might initially be difficult to understand, and New Testament textual criticism is no exception.
It is easier when you know the jargon.
Gary Dykes has made a very thorough dictionary of terms that pertain to textual criticism and manuscript-production that can be read at http://www.biblical-data.org/TC_stuf/definitions.html . (You might have to cut-and-past the address in your browser.) The
website
of the Hill Museum & Manuscript Library offers a helpful multi-part
review of terminology relevant to the study of Latin manuscripts.
The
British Library’s online glossary of terms used in its descriptions of
illuminated manuscripts is also informative.
Robert Waltz’s
Encyclopedia of New Testament Textual
Criticism includes a very thorough review of the terminology used in this
field. Here is the first of several parts of a concise introductory list of some of the technical terms used in New Testament textual criticism, with their definitions.
Alexandrian Text: The form of New Testament text which was
dominant in Egypt
in the early church, displayed most accurately by Codex Vaticanus and the early
Sahidic version. Since papyrus tends to
naturally rot away except in low-humidity climates such as the climate of Egypt, almost all surviving papyrus manuscripts
– especially the ones found as the result of excavations in or near Oxyrhynchus, Egypt – support the Alexandrian
Text. Where Alexandrian readings deviate
from the Byzantine Text, the Alexandrian reading frequently has internal
characteristics that commend it as original.
In some cases, however, Alexandrian variants can be plausibly attrributed to scribal carelessness and conscious editing. The Nestle-Aland compilation of the Greek New Testament, the primary basis for most modern English versions (the ESV, CSB, NIV, NLT, etc.) is mainly based on the Alexandrian Text.
Ammonian Sections:
The segments into which the text of the
Gospels was divided for identification in the cross-reference system developed
by Eusebius of Caesarea.
There are 355
sections in Matthew, 234 in Mark, 343 in Luke, and 232 in John – at least,
these are typical.
This system of
text-segmentation is named after Ammonius of Alexandria, who, according to
Eusebius in his letter
Ad
Carpianus (which often precedes the Canon-Tables), developed a cross-referencing
method in which the text of Matthew was supplemented by the parallel-passages,
or the numbers of parallel-passages, in the other Gospels.
It was Eusebius, however, who developed the
Sections as we know them, for they cover passages in Mark, Luke, and John that
are not paralleled in Matthew.
In very
many Gospels-manuscripts, the Section-numbers appear in the margin alongside
the text, accompanied by the canon-number (written below it, separated by a
horizontal line). The numerals are
typically written in red. It is not
unusual to see that in the text itself, the first letter on the first line
after the beginning of a Section is given special treatment – either by being
written larger, or by being written in different ink (often red) slightly to
the left of the left margin, or both.
Bifolio:
A sheet of writing-material (whether
parchment, or papyrus, or paper), vertically folded in the middle so as to form
four pages upon which text could be written.
Typically, groups of four bifolium were combined – picture a stack of
four flat sheets; then picture them vertically folded, all at once, so as to
form a small blank 16-page book.
Such a
16-page book is called a
quire,
or quaternion.
(Quires could take
other forms –
consisting of different numbers of sheets – and could be supplemented and
repaired in a variety of ways.)
Another way to picture a quire is
as a booklet consisting of eight
leaves,
or
folios, each leaf consisting of
the front (
recto) and back (
verso) of half of a bifolio.
To prepare books large enough to contain all
four Gospels, or large enough to contain the book of Acts and the Epistles, or
even the entire New Testament, quires were sewn together to make a
multi-quire
codex.
Not all quires consisted of
only four sheets – for example, Papyrus 45 is a
single-quire
codex; all its sheets were laid flat in a single stack before being sewn
together.
Breves:
chapter-summaries, especially those that
appear in Latin manuscripts.
Some forms
of breves appear to have originated very early in the Old Latin
transmission-line, including one form – developed in the mid-200s or slightly
thereafter – that includes a reference to the
pericope
adulterae (John 7:53-8:11, which is absent from most early Greek
manuscripts of the Gospel of John) in its usual location in the text of
John.
Byzantine Text:
The Greek text of the New Testament that is
supported by a strong majority of manuscripts, as represented in the Byzantine
Textform compiled by Robinson and Pierpont.
This form of the text was dominant in Constantinople and its environs
(i.e.,
Byzantium)
from the 400s onward.
Many Byzantine
readings are supported by patristic testimony from the 300s and earlier; the
Gothic version and the Peshitta version also provide strong (but not uniform)
support for the Byzantine Text. Compared to the Alexandrian Text, the Byzantine
Text tends to be longer and easier to understand.
This is, however, a general description;
there are variant-units in which the Alexandrian reading is longer.
When
Westcott and Hort issued the 1881
Revised
Text, Hort maintained that all distinctly Byzantine readings (which he
described as “Syrian,” reckoning that the core of the Byzantine Text had
previously been developed at Antioch, in Syria) should be rejected, on the
grounds that the Byzantine Text as a whole was the product of a recension, that
is, a carefully edited form of the text made by someone – perhaps Lucian of
Antioch – whose editorial work consisted of selecting variants from exemplars
drawn from Alexandrian and Western transmission-lines.
Readings
that deviated from the Alexandrian and Western variants, Hort theorized, must
have originated in the mind of the editor who produced the Antiochan text.
Since Hort proceeded to reject the Western
Text as having been thoroughly contaminated by expansions, the 1881 Revised
Text was almost 100% Alexandrian at points where these three major forms of the
text disagree – and distinctly Byzantine readings, despite being supported by
almost all surviving Greek manuscripts, were very few and far between.
Hort’s
theory, however, was greatly weakened by the discovery – in papyrus manuscripts
which had been excavated in Egypt,
and which appeared to have been produced before or during the lifetime of
Lucian of Antioch – of readings which did not agree with the flagship
manuscripts of the Alexandrian Text, nor with the Western Text. This implied that whatever the origins of every
distinctive Byzantine reading might be, they could not all have originated
during the undertaking of a recension made in the late 200s or early 300s, because
at least some distinctive Byzantine readings already existed at that time. If the Lucianic recension ever happened, it
had to involve the consultation of not only Alexandrian and Western exemplars,
but also exemplars containing at least some Byzantine readings – in which case,
Hort’s basis for rejecting all distinctive Byzantine readings falls to the
ground.
Nevertheless,
even after the discovery of distinctive Byzantine readings in Egyptian papyri,
the heavily Alexandrian Revised Text continued to be promoted, especially in
Nestle’s Novum Testamentum Graece, and
in the United Bible Societies’ Greek New
Testament, which are the primary base-texts currently used by most
translators. In A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, author Bruce Metzger
– a member of the UBS compilation-committee – defended over 1,000 rejections of
Byzantine readings that have an impact on translation.
Caesarean Text:
The form of the text of the Gospels displayed
in manuscripts 1582, 1, and some Armenian and Georgian manuscripts.
The testimony of manuscripts 1 and 1582 is
augmented by support from an assortment of other manuscripts including 118,
131, and 209).
Researcher Kirsopp
Lake established that the
distinct readings shared by 1, 118, 131, and 209 descend from a shared ancestor
in 1901 in the volume
Codex 1 of the Gospels and
Its Allies.
(The recognition of
1582 as a member of the same family – and as its best Greek representative –
came later).
This cluster of Greek
manuscripts is called
family 1,
and is generally (but not always)
characterized by its members’ unusual treatment of the
pericope adulterae:
the
passage is put after the end of John 21, having been uprooted and transplanted
as the note in 1 and 1582 explains:
“The chapter about
the adulteress: in the Gospel according
to John, this does not appear in the majority of copies; nor is it commented
upon by the divine fathers whose interpretations have been preserved – specifically,
by John Chrysostom and Cyril of Alexandria; nor is it taken up by Theodore of
Mopsuestia and the others. For this
reason, it was not kept in the place where it is found in a few copies, at the
beginning of the 86th chapter [that
is, the 86th Eusebian Section],
following, ‘Search and see that a prophet does not arise out of Galilee.’”
The
Caesarean Text is also notable for referring to “Jesus Barabbas” in Matthew
27:16-17. Advocates of the genuineness of this reading
argue that early Christians suppressed it, considering it to be embarrassing
that a criminal such as Barabbas had the same name as the Messiah. Others have noted that appearance of the name
“Jesus in this passage may have originated when an early scribe accidentally
repeated the letters ΙΝ at the end of the word ϒΜΙΝ in verse 17, and this was
misunderstood as the contraction for the word Ιησους (that is, “Jesus”).
It is
evident that a Caesarean Text exists for all four Gospels. It is less evident that there is a Caesarean
Text of Acts and the Epistles; however, minuscule 1739 represents a distinct
transmission-line, and it was copied by the same copyist who made minuscule
1582, so this should not be ruled out.
Cancel-sheet:
a parchment sheet, folded in the middle and
written on both sides, so as to constitute four pages of a manuscript, made to
replace the work of the main copyist.
The most well-known examples of cancel-sheets are in
Codex
Sinaiticus, including the bifolium that contains Mark 14:54-Luke 1:76
(without Mark 16:9-20).
Catena:
A commentary consisting of a series of
comments by patristic authors who accompanies the Biblical text.
Unlike commentaries written by a single
author, a catena combines extracts from the writings of several authors,
forming a chain (Latin:
catena) of comments.
The identity of the writer being quoted is sometimes,
but not always, written in the vicinity of his comments.
The earliest known Greek catena is in
Codex Zacynthius (040, Ξ), an incomplete copy of the Gospel of Luke.
Codex (plural:
Codices):
A handmade book.
Colophon: a note added to the text of a
manuscript. The contents of such notes
can vary; the most useful colophons are those which mention the year and
location where the manuscript was produced.
They may also convey the name of the scribe, the name of the patron who
sponsored the manuscript’s production, and even declare a curse against whoever
might think about taking the manuscript away from the library to which it was
entrusted.
Commentary
manuscripts:
A manuscript in which
the text of a commentary by one individual accompanies the Biblical text.
Such material is similar to a catena,
especially since although a commentary may be written by a single individual,
that individual may make free and generous use of the works of other
commentators, sometimes acknowledging his source and sometimes not.
As Robert Waltz mentions in his
article on
Commentaries in the online Encyclopedia of New Testament Textual Criticism,
manuscripts with commentaries tended to have one of two forms:
one in which the commentary frames the text,
and one in which segments of the text and segments of the commentary alternate.
Frame-commentaries were capable of
accompanying texts unrelated to the commentary itself;
alternating-commentaries, meanwhile, were always copied at the same time as the
Scripture-text they accompany.
For this
reason, whenever the same alternating-commentaries accompany the same text,
their testimony should be “boiled down,” so to speak, to the testimony of their
shared ancestor.
Some
commentaries were more popular than others.
For the Gospel of Matthew,
John Chrysostom’s commentary was most
popular; for Mark, the Catena-Commentary of Victor of Antioch (a.k.a. the
Catena
in Marcum) was widely disseminated (and sometimes wrongly attributed to
other authors/compilers such as Cyril of Alexandria or Peter of Laodicea).
The commentary of Titus of Bostra was the
dominant commentary on Luke.
And for the
Gospel of John, copies of both the commentary by John Chrysostom and the
commentary by
Theophylact are abundant; the latter appears mainly in the
alternating format.
Among the other
commentators whose work accompanies the New Testament text in some manuscripts
are Andreas of Caesarea (in specially formatted copies of Revelation), Andreas
the Presbyter (in some copies of Acts and the Epistles),
Oecumenius, and
Euthymius Zigabenus.
Conflation: a reading which is a combination of two
earlier readings. The presence of
conflations implies that the text containing them emerged later than the text
that contains its component-parts. Eight
apparent conflations in the Byzantine Text of the Gospels, comprised of
component-parts that appear to be combinations of component-parts consisting of
Alexandrian and Western readings, were a major part of Hort’s case against the
Byzantine Text.
However,
conflations appear in major representatives of all text-types, not just in the
Byzantine Text. In Codex Sinaiticus, in
John 13:24, where the Alexandrian Text reads και λεγει αυτω ειπε τις εστιν and the Byzantine Text reads
πυθεσθαι τις αν ειη, Sinaiticus’ text appears to combine those two phrases,
reading πυθεσθαι τις αν ειη περι ου ελεγεν, και λεγει αυτω ειπε τις
εστιν. A conflation also appears in Codex Vaticanus at Colossians 1:12: the Western Text reads καλεσαντι, the
Byzantine Text reads ικανωσαντι, and Vaticanus reads καλεσαντι και ικανωσαντι,
a combination of the Western and Byzantine readings. And in Codex D, a
conflation appears in John 5:37: the
Alexandrian Text (supported by Papyrus 75) reads has εκεινος μεμαρτυρηκεν, and
the the Byzantine Text (supported by Papyrus 66) reads αυτος μεμαρτυρηκεν; the
reading in Codex Bezae is εκεινος αυτος μεμαρτυρηκεν and this is precisely what
would be produced by a copyist wishing to preserve two different readings in
two different exemplars.
Researcher Wilbur Pickering, in Appendix
D of his book The Identity of the New
Testament Text, investigates several more cases of apparent conflation
in non-Byzantine manuscripts; while some of his examples are capable of more
than one explanation, it seems sufficiently clear that the appearance of
conflations in a manuscript or text-type cannot validly condemn the entire
text-type as late or as posterior to other text-types.
Conjectural
emendation: A reading which is
proposed as original but is not supported in any extant Greek manuscript. The apparatus of the 27th edition
of the Nestle-Aland Novum Testamentum
Graece mentioned many of these from a wide variety of sources, but only one
was adopted in the text (in Acts 16:12).
In the 28th edition, all mentions of conjectural emendations
were removed from the apparatus – and one conjectural emendation was adopted
into the text of Second Peter 3:10, altering the meaning of the sentence.
[Continued]
