The Women Behind Your Critical Editions

Today, in cooperation with the INTF in Münster, we co-publish an important post written by Greg Paulson and Katie Leggett in order to highlight some of the women behind the critical editions in wide use today. Paulson and Legett have interviewed five women currently working on the editions, talking about their background, qualifications, and unique contributions to the editions. (Dora Panella in the picture is not currently working on the editions but might get something in later on.)

The staff at the INTF is half female and has more female NT text critics than any other institution in the field. Therefore we are happy to highlight these amazing women here!

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By Greg Paulson with Katie Leggett

From left to right: Katrin Landefeld, Megan Burnett, Marie-Luise Lakmann, Annette Hüffmeier, Dora Panella, Katharina Sandmeier

It's well known that the critical editions produced at the INTF in Münster—the Nestle-Aland, the UBS Greek New Testament, and the Editio Critica Maior (ECM)—are renowned worldwide and provide the basis for almost all modern New Testament translations around the globe. Most will also know that Barbara Aland was the first female director of the INTF, serving from 1983-2004, and leaving an indelible legacy on the institute and the wider field of New Testament textual criticism. A lesser-known fact, however, and one that we are also very proud of, is that half of the INTF's current staff working on these acclaimed critical editions is female.

In this blogpost we would like to introduce you to some of the highly qualified women behind your critical editions. Through these short interviews we hope you get to know them better and see how each of their contributions has a direct impact on the most widely used Greek New Testaments in the world.

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Dr. Marie-Luise Lakmann

Tell us about your academic background and what brought you to the INTF:

After studying Classical Philology (Greek, Latin, Pedagogy) at the University of Münster, I began a project called Platonism in Antiquity in 1985 led by Matthias Baltes, which was a comprehensive study of the history of Plato's philosophy in texts and commentaries. As part of this project, I wrote my doctoral thesis called "Der Platoniker Tauros in der Darstellung des Aulus Gellius" (Leiden 1993). In 2002, the INTF advertised a position to collaborate in developing a digital edition with the most important manuscripts of the New Testament, called "Digitale Edition der überlieferungsgeschichtlich wichtigsten Handschriften des Neuen Testaments mit kritischem Apparat auf einer Website," better known as NT Transcripts (http://nttranscripts.uni-muenster.de/). 

Peterson: A Recounting of My Accounting of the Difficulty of Counting

Having blogged about the discrepancy between the number of manuscripts in Myths and Mistakes and the number recently given by INTF, I asked Jacob Peterson, the author of the chapter in question, to weigh in. I’m happy to share his thoughts here. —ed.

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I had several people send me the INTF blog post by Katie Leggett and Greg Paulson in the days after it was posted and now I’ve been asked to write a short addendum here about Peter’s posts (here and here). Having been out of the field essentially since my chapter in Myths and Mistakes was published, this feels a bit like I’ve been granted some lasting and undue authority as an adjudicator on the issue at hand. At best, I have some thoughts for your continued consideration.

Preliminarily, I want to reiterate an overriding theme from my chapter—as Peter did in his most recent piece—that at the level of disagreement we have between my count and INTF’s the stakes are incredibly low and inconsequential, no matter how interesting the issue might be as an intellectual exercise. As I’ll show below, we are arguing over around 100 manuscripts out of over 5000. Beyond that, I have only a couple things to contribute that I think bring my numbers and theirs much closer. And, of course, I’ll offer updated guidance at the end.

If I have an actual qualm with the blog from INTF, it is in the conclusion to use the maximal count of 5700 as the total number of manuscripts when just two sentences earlier it was stated that “you can add together all destroyed manuscripts with ones presumed missing, and subtract this number from the total number of manuscripts, which results in 5,541 manuscripts.” I spent a fair amount of space in my chapter dealing with these categories and problematising issues around lost/destroyed/missing manuscripts, especially those for which we do not have images or the images are illegible (see especially p. 58). If the question is how many manuscripts are there and not how many were there, then surely a “destroyed” manuscript ain’t there (pardon my mostly suppressed Texas grammatical heritage).

Moving forward with their 5,541 number, we also need to account for the passage of time since I wrote my chapter. I submitted the draft in December 2017 with a limited subsequent edit in April 2019 to include the famed “First Century Mark” into my various charts, especially since I had a chart on the preservation of Mark in the first four centuries. In the nearly 5 years since that edit, the last issued numbers in the Liste have changed as follows. 

Category	M&M Count	INTF Blog count	Additions
Papyri	139	141	2
Majuscules	323	326	3
Minuscules	2940	3019	79
Lectionaries	2483	2555	72

That’s a total of 156 newly utilised numbers in the Liste, which roughly aligns with the 167 stated in the INTF blog to have been added since January 2019 (they indicate that some lectionaries were assigned to previously vacated numbers). If we subtract those 167 newly catalogued manuscripts from INTF’s 2023 number of 5541, we arrive at a count of 5,374 manuscripts. That is more than close enough to my approximation of 5300 to make me happy and justify the extrapolations I was doing.

In trying to explain the difference between my count and INTF’s, Peter points out that I got it correct for majuscules but says that “since minuscule and lectionaries turn out to have a far smaller rate of difference [from the Liste numbers due to loss], Peterson’s extrapolation undershot the total by hundreds.” I don’t contest what the Liste records as the state of things today, and certainly do not in any way malign them for an inability to perfectly reflect an ever-changing landscape of manuscripts spread around the world. Rather, as I contend in the chapter and its footnotes (especially p.68 fns. 44 and 45), minuscules and lectionaries probably do experience a rate of loss not too dissimilar to the majuscules but keeping track of them is much more difficult and the payoff is not worth the effort. 

Thus, my count relies on the Liste being, justifiably, out of sync with the real-world conditions of the much larger and harder to monitor class of minuscules and lectionaries. This is certainly a theoretical point—and a bit anecdotal from working in, visiting, and contacting dozens of monasteries—and it was made in the broader service of my point to use prudent and round numbers rather than sensational ones. 

Thus, we might say INTF and I were offering two different types of counts. My extrapolation was an approximation based on a readily ascertainable (and might I say accurate!) rate of loss within the majuscules to give a likely total of how many manuscripts there actually are, whereas INTF is offering a “state of the Liste” count that indicates how many manuscripts are currently catalogued and maybe still survive.

Whatever the case may be for this last point, I’m glad to see that my now-outdated numbers were not far off the mark. I’m similarly pleased to see that some of my comments have now been incorporated into the Liste, although doubtfully under the influence of my chapter. I have in mind here the de-listing of P99 and recognition that 0229 was not destroyed, among others. We should all be thankful for INTF’s ongoing work to maintain the Liste, not least so that I can pop in every once in a while to say a few things. 

In conclusion, with the updated catalogue and in view of my own advice about numbers, I’m happy to update my own guidance regarding how we should answer the question of how many manuscripts there are of the New Testament: 5500.

Explaining a Discrepancy in the Number of Greek NT Manuscripts

In my post last week, I pointed to a blog by the folks at INTF giving the number of known Greek NT manuscripts. Their number was 5,700. But some eagle-eyed readers may remember reading in Jacob Peterson’s chapter in Myths and Mistakes that there are more like 5,100–5,300. 

Why the discrepancy?

The short answer, I believe, is that Peterson used an extrapolation that turned out not to hold true across all categories. To get his total, Peterson went through the majuscules carefully to note places where manuscripts had been counted twice or added without warrant. From the original number of 323 (the highest majuscule number assigned when he wrote his chapter), he found 41 had been stricken from the Liste (p. 58). 

He further noted cases where the actual manuscript’s whereabouts are lost or unknown and that brought the number down from 282 to 261. From there it was a simple extrapolation to the other categories (see p. 68, esp. n. 44). From a total of 5885 numbers in the Liste, the result would be 5138. Given that minuscules and lectionaries might not suffer as much from the problem of double counting, he was happy to say it might be closer to 5,300.

As it turns out from INTF’s recent work, that number is not steady and the minuscules and lectionaries have suffered far less than the majuscules from the problems of mis-cataloguing. By comparing Peterson’s numbers to INTF’s, we can see the difference clearly.

	Highest Number in Liste	MSS Removed from Liste	Rate of difference
Papyri	141	6	4%
Majuscule	326	43	13%
Majuscule (Peterson)	323	41	13%
Minuscule	3019	159	5%
Lectionary	2555	133	5%

As you can see from this, Peterson and INTF got the same 13% rate of difference for majuscules. But since minuscule and lectionaries turn out to have a far smaller rate of difference, Peterson’s extrapolation undershot the total by hundreds. 

So, that’s the why. What about the so what?

Two things. First, Peterson notes 21 majuscules whose whereabouts are unknown. Incorporating them would have taken him below 5,100. I don’t see that category factored into INTF’s numbers. We could have a good debate about whether those should be counted or not. But part of Peterson’s goal was to question the usefulness of trying to attain an exact number.

That leads to the second point. The reason Peterson didn’t go through the minuscule and lectionary data is because there’s no point apologetically. As he says, “Arriving at a range this precise for the thousands of minuscules and lectionaries would be a monumental task and one that, as will hopefully become clear in what follows is not worth undertaking—at least not for apologetic purposes” (p. 58). Why? Because, as he says in his conclusion, “finding one more minuscule is not going to convince someone Christianity is true” (p. 68). 

Personally, I’m happy to use INFT’s numbers going forward. Perhaps a future edition of M&M could be updated to note all this. Which brings me to the conclusion of Peter Rodgers’s very nice review of M&M in the latest Filologia Neotestamentaria, “It is clear from my last few paragraphs that a wider audience should be in view than simply apologists for this fine collection of essays by upcoming scholars in New Testament textual research. It is hoped that periodic updates in further editions will address a broader range of issues for a more diverse readership.”

How Many Greek NT Manuscripts Are There Really?

That’s a question I get asked a lot. It’s a question many Christian apologists and skeptics of Christianity ask. And, it’s the question that Katie Leggett and Greg Paulson answered very carefully and very helpfully last month at the INTF blog. I’m tempted not to give you their answer here so that you have to read their entire post. 

But first, why is answering this so hard? Isn’t it just a matter of tallying up the highest manuscript number assigned in each of the four categories of papyri, majuscule, minuscule, and lectionary in the official list of manuscripts (known as the K-Liste)? It’s not. For at least three reasons. 

The first is the difficult question of what counts as a manuscript. Do amulets count? Should they count? What the Liste has included over the years has changed. 

Second, manuscripts can go missing, change hands without the list-keepers knowledge, or they can be lost or destroyed. If they were once on the list but are now unaccounted for, do they count? 

Third, what do we do when the same physical artifact contains portions of the New Testament in different hands from different centuries? Are we counting the resulting artifact or the varying copying events (for lack of a better term) that led to the one artifact? 

The point is not that these questions can’t be answered but that they must be answered before we can answer the original question. (By the way, these issues are all helpfully addressed in Jacob Peterson’s chapter in Myths and Mistakes.)

With all that said, what number do Leggett and Paulson arrive at? Drum roll, please... 5,700.

This is the number I will now be giving to people when they ask and it’s the number I would encourage you to use. Whenever you do, let me encourage you give the necessary caveats about the wide range in date, quality, and size of these 5,700 manuscripts. They are not all created equal! Furthermore, the number is not stable given new discoveries, the movement of manuscripts, and the ongoing identification of duplicates and the like. Still, it is very helpful to have a count from the same source that makes the official list we all use. Kudos to Leggett and Paulson!

Update (1/11/24): see the follow up posts on this here and here.

ECM of Mark: Thirty-three Changes to the Initial Text

The Novum Testamentum Graecum. Editio Critica Maior (ECM) of the Gospel of Mark has just arrived in Sweden in a shoebox size 43. First of all I want to warmly congratulate the team of the INTF in Münster for this splendid achievement, in particular for doing the finish during a long pandemic.

 There are of course many things to say, but here below I simply list the thirty-three changes to the initial text from NA28 to the ECM of Mark, indicating where how the Byzantine text aligns where it is not split itself (ECM Mark I:2,1, p. 20*). Apparently, in twenty twenty-five places the initial text moves towards the Byzantine text, and in six five places it moves away from it. In this context, however, it should be noted that there are thousands and thousands of variation-units (I have not checked how many).

A pdf of the list of changes as it appears printed in vol. 1 can be downloaded from the INTF, here. 

Further, there are 126 places where the editors print a split guiding line, i.e., where the decision between two competing variants is left open. This list can be downloaded from here. 

As for the accompanying digital tools, I wrote some years ago: “A desideratum for the future is an interactive interface that will enable users to pursue the complete critical process: to create their own local steammata of variants, build up a genalogical database, and successively evaluate the consequences of their textual choices” (Tommy Wasserman, “Criteria for Evaluating Readings in NT Textual Criticism,” in The Text of the New Testament in Contemporary Research, ed. Ehrman and Holmes [Brill, 2013], p. 607).  Well, the future is now here; to cite Klaus Wachtel, “Every user may now install the CBGM locally, make textual decisions, construct local stemmata, and make these the basis for their own genealogical evaluation” (ECM Mark I:2,3, p. 6). 

Thus, the CBGM toolbox (formerly called “Genealogical Queries”) for Mark is found here.

If you want to know more about how you can use the tools on your own, go here.

Again, congratulations to the editors and all contributors to this milestone in New Testament textual criticism! Now we look forward to the next volume.

Changes to the Initial Text of Mark

ECM / NA28 

• 1:1/12-16
  υιου του θεου Byz / [υιου θεου] 
• 1:2/18
  εγω Byz / om.  
• 1:4/5
  om. Byz / [ο] 
• 2:12/18
  εναντιον Byz / εμπροσθεν
• 3:11/18-26
  προσεπιπτον αυτω και εκραζον λεγοντα / προσεπιπτον αυτω και εκραζον λεγοντες 
• 3:14/6-14
  δωδεκα ινα ωσιν μετ αυτου Byz / δωδεκα [ους και αποστολους ωνομασεν] ινα ωσιν μετ αυτου
• 3:16/1
  om. Byz / [και εποιησεν τους δωδεκα] 
• 3:20/12-16
  συνερχεται παλιν οχλος Byz / συνερχεται παλιν [ο] οχλος 
• 3:32/34-40
  om. / [και αι αδελφαι σου] Byz
• 4:15/50-52
  εν αυτοις / εις αυτους 
• 4:16/2-6
  και ουτοι εισιν ομοιως Byz / και ουτοι εισιν 
• 4:31/4
  κοκκον Byz / κοκκω 
• 6:22/30-40
  ο δε βασιλευς ειπεν τω κορασιω / ειπεν ο βασιλευς τω κορασιω Byz
• 6:23/6
  αυτη Byz / αυτη [πολλα] 
• 6:40/10-16
  ανα εκατον και ανα Byz / κατα εκατον και κατα 
• 7:6/24-26
  ως γεγραπται Byz / ως γεγραπται [οτι] 
• 7:9/28
  τηρησητε Byz / στησητε 
• 7:12/2-10
  και ουκετι αφιετε αυτον ουδεν ποιησαι Byz / ουκετι αφιετε αυτον ουδεν ποιησαι 
• 7:35/3
  om. / [ευθεως] Byz 
• 7:37/22-30
  ποιει ακουειν και αλαλους λαλειν / ποιει ακουειν και [τους] αλαλους λαλειν Byz 
• 8:35/28
  απολεση Byz / απολεσει 
• 9:1/20-24
  των ωδε εστηκοτων Byz / ωδε των εστηκοτων 
• 10:25/18
  εισελθειν Byz / διελθειν 
• 10:28/22
  ηκολουθησαμεν / ηκολουθηκαμεν 
• 11:3/20
  οτι Byz / om. 
• 11:23/4
  γαρ Byz / om. 
• 11:32/12-14
  τον λαον Byz / τον οχλον 
• 12:36/20
  ο Byz / om. 
• 14:31/12-18
  με δεη συναποθανειν σοι Byz / δεη με συναποθανειν σοι 
• 14:44/34
  απαγαγετε Byz / απαγετε 
• 15:12/19
  om. / [θελετε] Byz 
• 16:14/4 
  om. Byz / [δε] 
• 16:19/8
  κυριος Byz / κυριος ιησους 

Update: After I published this blogpost, Maurice Robinson asked me why the Byz was not indicated in a few additional passages, and in one case (16:19/8) it was indicated in the wrong place. When I looked at these passages I realized that the Byz had been dropped from the passages because the sign is not indicated where there is only a negative apparatus, but it certainly ought to be in the list on p. 20*. Greg Paulson of the INTF confirms that this is the case and will add them in the online PDF of textual changes (see link above). (I will ask him to check also the list with split guiding line.) In the last passage there was a printing error (the Byz sign was placed before κυριος ιησους too far to the right which created confusion; this has also been rectified).

The CBGM of Acts for Download

Greg Paulson of the INTF in Münster has notified me that the CBGM for Acts can now be downloaded here. 

Greg has also made a tutorial how to install it and a brief introduction to how the CBGM works (very nice red circle in the image, just like the ones I use in my powerpoints, but no speech bubbles though).

 

In this connection, I would also like to mention Joey McCollum's crash course on the CBGM here and his own “Open CBGM” resource page here. 

 

Finally, my and Peter Gurry’s fuller introduction to the CBGM is now available with a 30% discount (code AM2020 at checkout, good to 31 Dec), in paperback ($15.40) or hardback ($25.90).

Congrats to Klaus Wachtel

Congratulations to Klaus Wachtel on his retirement!

Source of un-doctored image: Hugh Houghton's Twitter

Yesterday, the INTF posted the following:

Klaus has been a constant presence in textual criticism for many years now. I've personally benefitted much from his writings on the Byzantine text, and more recently, his textual commentary of Acts in the ECM Acts: Studies volume. May he have a happy retirement!

Congrats also to Greg Paulson as he steps into his new position within the INTF!

BREAKING: Andrew Stimer’s Pieces of P129 and P131 and Their Fake Provenance

Earlier this summer we reported on two new papyri which accidentally were made public on the webpage of he Institute for New Testament Textual Research. They turned out to be pieces of P129 (1 Cor) and P131 (Romans), respectively. It was the owner, Andrew Stimer, who had sent in documentation and requested that they be registered. With it, he also submitted documentation and a provenance story. In case our readers did not know it, the same Stimer sold a couple of fake Dead Sea Scrolls fragment to the Museum of the Bible (full list of un-provenanced post-2002 Dead Sea Scrolls-like fragments at the Lying Pen).

Just minutes ago, an announcement was made by Greg Paulson on the Institute for New Testament Textual Research (INTF) Blog, Münster, concerning P129 and P131. Note in particular the part in italics which is the provenance story that Andrew Stimer provided for his pieces (which is obviously fake, but who faked it? Stimer or the person who sold it to him – Obbink?):

There’s been a lot of discussion and speculation in the past few months about two new 2nd/3rd century papyrus fragments, first mentioned by Brent Nongbri as papyri being displayed by Scott Carroll in 2018. We were contacted earlier this year by Andrew Stimer, a private collector in California, who wanted to obtain G-A numbers for two papyrus fragments that he acquired in 2015. The fragments are of 1 Corinthians and Romans. Stimer provided us with unpublished scholar’s reports, which he received in 2016 and 2017: the report for 1 Corinthians was done by Dirk Obbink (who dates the fragment to mid-2nd cent.) and the report on Romans was done by Jeffery Fish (who dates the fragment to the first half of the 3rd cent.).

Through Nongbri’s blog, the INTF was already alerted to the possibility that the papyri in Stimer’s possession were parts of other papyri already registered in the Liste, P129 (1 Cor) and P131 (Romans), which are currently at the Museum of the Bible (MOTB). These numbers, P129 and P131, were assigned to the papyri at MOTB in 2015 so they could include this information in a planned publication with Brill, although this has not been published.

Over the past few months, we’ve been working to (a) verify the authenticity of Stimer’s fragments and (b) decide whether they belong to P129 and P131. The MOTB kindly provided us with images of P129 and P131 so we could make comparisons. We shared images of Stimer’s two fragments with Michael Holmes, and scholars at the Museum of the Bible Scholar’s Initiative were of the opinion that the fragments did indeed belong together. The pieces were analyzed by a number of INTF staff but we still had some lingering questions. We requested expert advice from papyrologist Panagiota Sarischouli at the University of Thessaloniki so we could get an external opinion.

A few weeks ago, Sarischouli graciously provided us with an extensive report confirming the authenticity of the fragments. She noted, “I can say that I have no reason to believe that Stimer’s fragments are fakes; if they are forgeries, they are masterly done!!!” Sarischouli stated, “There can be little doubt that the two fragments (Stimer’s 1 Cor. + P129) belong to the same codex page. Although there are some slight differences between the two handwritings, the hand is identical.” She also agreed with the dates proposed by Obbink and Fish. We are very grateful to her for providing such extensive information about these fragments.
We have now assigned Stimer’s 1 Corinthians fragment to the already registered P129, and have assigned his Romans fragment to the already registered P131 fragment. We can now update the contents of these papyri:

Stimer’s portion of P129 is: 1 Cor 7:32-37; 9:10-16
MOTB’s portion of P129 is: 1 Cor 8:10-9:3, 27-10:6
Stimer’s portion of P131 is: Rom 9:21-23; 10:3-4
MOTB’s portion of P131 is: Rom 9:18-21, 33-10:2

With regard to provenance, Stimer provided us with the following report for his pieces:

I acquired both of the manuscripts in the summer of 2015 from Mr. M. Elder of Dearborn, Michigan. He bought them the previous year, in April 2014, via a private treaty sale executed by Christie’s London. The fragments were part of a collection of texts that had been in the Pruitt family since the 1950s. Dr. Rodman Pruitt was an industrialist and inventor in southern Indiana who was known as a collector of manuscripts, books and artifacts of various kinds. He acquired his papyri from Harold Maker, a well-known dealer in manuscripts who was based in Irvington, New Jersey. I am told that the Trismegistos database lists numerous published papyri originally sold by Harold Maker. [Coincidentally, I have another manuscript in my collection that also came through Harold Maker, and with it are copies of sales materials he issued in the early 1950s.] I contacted Christie’s London to confirm that they had indeed conducted the private treaty sale of manuscripts that had passed by descent through the Pruitt family. I communicated with Dr. Eugenio Donadoni, Director of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts. He confirmed that the consignor of the collection that was sold in April 2014 was a relative of Dr. Rodman Pruitt, though he was of course restricted in the amount of information he was at liberty to provide to me. The sale included various papyri, in Coptic, Greek and Syriac. I was satisfied that the information I had been given at the time of the acquisition was correct.

We recently learned, however, that the two fragments belonging to the MOTB previously belonged to the Egypt Exploration Society (EES), see here and were sold without their permission. While many questions still remain regarding Stimer’s papyri, it seems highly probable that his pieces were also once part of the EES collection and were sold without their permission (see here). We have notified Stimer of this and updated the Liste entries in the NT.VMR (P129 and P131) to reflect this. We hope to upload images of Stimer’s papyri and the MOTB papyri on the NT.VMR for public viewing after the issue of provenance has been resolved.
In light of this problematic provenance and so many open questions, we have debated whether to register these two papyri. We are aware that the designation of a G-A number may have the unfortunate side effect of inflating the value of a manuscript on the antiquities market. However, our primary focus when deciding whether to include a new manuscript in the Kurzgefasste Liste has been verifying its authenticity and collecting key data so these manuscripts can be made known to the wider scholarly community. Our hope is that registering these manuscripts in the Liste, where all information is made publically available on the NT.VMR, will enable any unprovenanced manuscripts to be located (or re-located) as effectively as possible.

Update 1: More on “Mr. Elder” and his connection to Dirk Obbink over at Brent Nongbri’s blog here.

Update 2: Note Mike Holmes comments over at Brent Nongbri’s blog:

Re the following: “It seems almost certain, then, that these two fragments were also Oxyrhynchus Papyri taken from the Egypt Exploration Society and sold by Dirk Obbink to Christie’s, then bought from Christie’s by his business partner.”

1. It is certain that these two fragments are Oxyrhynchus Papyri (EES documentation leaves no doubt in that regard).
2. There is no evidence that these “Stimer fragments” were sold through Christie’s–only Stimer’s claim about a claim allegedly made by M. Elder. Why should these claims be given any more credence than the claims in the rest of the paragraph? They are likely additional “red herrings.” You have documented a connection between Stimer and Scott Carroll, who in turn is closely associated with Obbink, and there is also the Obbink-Elder connection. Rather than jumping to a conclusion re the alleged Christie’s sale, let’s wait for some evidence and see where it may lead.

New Printed Liste Coming from INTF

The most recent printed K-Liste

Greg Paulson has good news out of Münster today: a new printed K-Liste is in the works. This is very good news in my view. The work of tidying up the Liste for this may be the most obvious benefit but I think there is an even greater one in having a list that is, shall we say, frozen in time for comparison’s sake. The online K-Liste is wonderful but it can be easily changed frequently and without notice, something not true of a printed edition. From the announcement:

The Hermann Kunst-Stiftung has generously funded a short-term position at the INTF solely focused on preparing the Liste for publication. This has enabled a new concerted effort to verify the data in the VMR and update incorrect or outdated information in preparation for publication. The Liste will always be a work in progress. While it may not be possible to double-check every detail about every manuscript that is already in the Liste, our goal is to carefully and thoroughly verify as much information as possible based on the resources available to us.

These resources include printed catalogues, recent scholarship, and notifications from individuals. Through the VMR Forum we have been alerted to a number of location changes and new digital images available. We’ve also been making many direct inquiries to holding institutions to stay up to date with manuscript location changes, inquire about manuscript details, and request images to help us check our information in the VMR.

Please note Greg’s request for help. If you know of updates, send them his way.

One particular challenge is keeping up with manuscripts that have changed locations. Currently there are 137 manuscripts in the Liste where the owner/institution is unknown (listed as “besitzer unbekannt”). In addition, a number of manuscripts have been auctioned on Sotheby’s, Christies, Heritage Auctions, etc. While we have been able to ascertain the new locations of many of these auctioned manuscripts, we are asking for your help in tracking down the current location of five manuscripts in particular.

Read the whole post here.

HT: PJW

Historic Editions Digitized in Münster

The Bible Museum in Münster digitized a number of important historical editions of the Bible from Erasmus’s first edition to the Luther Bible. Other important figures include Estienne, Bengel, Wettstein, Griesbach, and Nestle. Here is the full list with downloadable PDFs. Press release is here. At some point, we should cross reference this with Pete Head’s list of Historic Editions of the GNT.

History and Development of the Nestle-Aland Editions Funded

Good news out of Münster today. Greg Paulson has received funding to study the history and development of the Novum Testamentum Graece editions. Congrats, Greg! Now, how do I apply to be a research assistant for this?

Here’s the announcement:

INTF’s New Blog

Against Pete Head’s advice, the INTF has started a blog. Here is the first post from Greg Paulson:

The INTF has set up a new blog! Although we have featured blogs on our site before (as “Personal Blogs”), our newly implemented Liferay portlet called “Blog” aims to create a centralized portal for offering regular updates on the happenings of the institute and its projects as well as other things that are related (at least tangentially) to New Testament textual criticism.

Just to offer one tidbit before our next post, in case you were unaware, there is a paleography database (compiled by Marie-Luise Lakmann) that may be useful for those of you who are transcribing Greek manuscripts: http://intf.uni-muenster.de/NT_PALAEO/. To get started, click on “Suche” on the left-hand column.

Welcome to the blogosphere! I have added them to our blogroll in the sidebar. 

ECM and CBGM for Acts Now Available

Back in May, Pete Head noted that the ECM Acts would be out soon and I am happy to report that it has now been released. This marks another major milestone for the team in Münster. Along with the ECM, of course, there is the CBGM and I am happy to say that the new Genealogical Queries for Acts are now online. For Acts, we have data from all four phases of the team’s work. This gives unprecedented access to the development of the data over the last 4+ years. As the guide says, the data for phase four is still being checked and may be corrected still. So be aware of that.

Perhaps most importantly, the fourth phase now comes with a completely refreshed interface, one which I have found to be a significant improvement over the previous one which is now almost a decade old. Besides the responsiveness, one thing I really like about the new interface is that you can use the CBGM queries without having the print ECM in hand. Just pick a chapter and verse and then you will get a list of the variants in that verse. Once you pick one, you now get a full apparatus right on the same page. This is extremely useful and roughly gives us a digital version of the ECM at least for the Greek evidence.

Well done to Marcello Perathoner who did the programming for the new interface. And a big congratulations to the whole team in Münster. I hope you all get a nice rest before starting the next phase of the project!

The new interface for the Acts CBGM

50 Years of INTF’s Reports Online

For the past 50 years, INTF, the institute that produces the NA and now UBS editions, has published “reports” (Berichte) on their text-critical work. I came across these by accident one day at Tyndale House and discovered that they are a treasure trove of information about the Institute’s work. For those interested in the recent history of our discipline, they are often essentially reading.

The Institute always gave these away free, but sadly they couldn’t find any extra copies when I was last there. I had actually hoped to scan all these before leaving Cambridge, but I ran out of time. Now someone else has done it for me. Klaus Wachtel has just send word that the full set is now online at INTF’s website.

Many, many thanks to whoever was responsible for scanning these!

How long will it take to completely revise the Nestle edition?

We all know that the revisions to the Catholic Epistles were printed in the NA28 and that the revisions for Acts, John, and Revelation are underway as I write. But how long will it take to have a completely revised edition of Nestle? Writing in 2000, here is what Klaus Wachtel said:

A simple calculation shows how important this aspect [of collaboration] is. The first instalment of the Editio Critica Maior comprising the Letter of James was published in 1997. We sent the second instalment (the Letters of Peter, sixteen of 670 pages in the Nestle-Aland pocket edition, without the ten pages of James) to the publisher in 1999. This means that 654 Nestle-Aland pages remain to be edited and that would take another 82 years for the edition to be completed, if we keep working on our own, provided that funding will be available to about the same extent overt whole time. One does not have to be a prophet to see that it is unlikely that we will reach our goal under these condition. This means that it is an urgent task to establish an effective infrastructure for cooperation with editors and other collaborators from outside the Münster institute.*

So we need more places like Münster, Birmingham (UK), and Wuppertal. Perhaps it’s time that a US institute joined the labor force.

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*From Klaus Wachtel, “Editing the Greek New Testament on the Threshold of the Twenty-First Century,” Literary and Linguistic Computing 15, no. 1 (2000): 43–50 (48 n. 2).

New (and Old) INTF Website

The website for the Institut für Neutestamentliche Textforschung (INTF) is being updated. The new URL is uni-muenster.de/EvTheol/intf and not all the old content is available there yet. But they’ve just put up a link to the old website which is available at egora.uni-muenster.de/intf.

Moving websites can be tricky. So it’s worth keeping an eye out to make sure everything gets moved safely.

UPDATE:

The NTVMR website has also just been updated with a new design and updated backend. Troy Griffitts explains, “You should notice many new things on the NTVMR starting this week. We’ve upgraded to a newer version of our portal framework, and many new features are available for you to use.” If you look at Troy’s own page you’ll notice some interesting new items like Matthew Transcriptions, Coptic Collations, and Apparatus Builder etc. Not all of these seem to be working at the moment, but lots to look forward to.

Video of the Opening of the Bible Museum in Münster

I found this in an old draft post which I never posted. In addition to the general interest, it contains a very full and frank interview with Kurt Aland which is worth listening to.

Report from the Digital Collation Conference in Münster

The following is a report from Peter Gurry who attended the Research Summit on Collation of Ancient and Medieval Texts in Münster on 3-4 October.

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A few weeks ago I attended the Research Summit on Collation of Ancient and Medieval Texts in Münster, Germany and I thought I would offer a brief summary of some of the papers. The conference was designed to introduce textual scholars to the ins and outs of electronic collation in general and CollateX in particular. The first day was primarily focused on papers from invited speakers and the second day was set up to be more hands-on with CollateX. Readers of this blog will be interested to know that versions of Collate have been used for the Editio Critica Maior (ECM) since 1 John (published in 2003).

The first presentation was from Caroline Macé of the Universität Frankfurt who spoke about her experience editing Gregory of Nazianzus. She spoke about the choice between collating and transcribing and suggested that the right choice depends on the purpose of the edition being made. For Gregory, she had around 140 manuscripts and decided that transcribing these would have been too much work with too little benefit. Her own preference, in fact, would be to have automated transcriptions from digital collations rather than automated collations from digital transcriptions.

Next up was Peter Robinson whose pioneering work as a student at Oxford in the 1980s led to the first version of Collate (history here). Robinson spoke about misconceptions of digital collation, the main one being the belief that the computer does all the work. In actual fact, Robinson wrote Collate only after becoming dissatisfied with other collation software because he felt it was too mechanical; he wanted something that required editorial input during the collation process itself. He went on to argue that the purpose of a digital collation should not simply be to record differences but to use those differences to understand the relationships of witnesses. Like the CBGM, Robinson wants to use all textual variants for genealogy rather than just a selection. The use of complete collations is what led to a revision in previous genealogies in the recent electronic edition of Dante’s Commedia. 

The third presentation was offered by Klaus Wachtel and David Parker about their use of Collate for the ECM. For John’s Gospel, the team in Birmingham has incorporated Collate into their own editing software (mentioned here) which allows them to move from transcriptions, to regularization of spelling, to construction of the apparatus, all in one place. It was impressive. In all, Parker said that the new software has made constructing the apparatus faster and more accurate. If my notes are right, he said it took them about 6 months to construct a full apparatus for the Greek witnesses of John.

Barbara Bordalejo presented next on the praxis of collation and gave some fun examples of how hard but also important it can be to electronically encode the complexities encountered in a manuscript. She showed examples of the change in the first draft of the Declaration of Independence including the change discovered in 2010 from “our fellow subjects” to “our fellow citizens”—a small change that makes a big difference! (But given my current home I shall say no more about that.) At the end of her talk there was a brief but lively back-and-forth over whether an expunction dot should be marked in a transcription as a “deletion” or as “marked for deletion” in order to distinguish it from the ways other scribes in the same manuscript deleted text.

The final talk was offered by Ronald Dekker, one of the programmers behind CollateX, who talked about some of the principles behind the software’s collation algorithms. The hardest part, as any human collator knows, is deciding how to segment the texts for comparison; the actual comparison is the easy part. Peter Robinson told us at one point that only about 1–2 percent of his original code was actually for comparing the texts; most of the rest was used to identify which parts of each text to compare with each other (a process known as “alignment”). Dekker illustrated the complexity of programming these decisions by showing that two witnesses with 100 segments (or “tokens”) could potentially produce as many as 10,201 possible points of disagreement (or “nodes”).

Unfortunately I had to catch a train the next morning so I wasn’t able to attend the second day of the conference. But the first day provided a good sense of where digital collation is and how it is being used. And as always, it was good to meet and talk with scholars editing a variety of other texts. The only real disappointment for me was learning that the location had originally been set for Iceland. I guess there’s always next time.

Finally, my thanks to Joris van Zundert and Klaus Wachtel for all their behind the scenes work in organizing the conference for us.

Online Bible Tool with Eusebian Canon Data

Troy Griffitts at the Institute for New Testament Textual Research (INTF) in Münster, who has been involved in the CrossWire Bible Society for many years in order to provide free, open-source resources such as the free Bible software project SWORD project, has now done us another great service. In collaboration with Ulrich Schmid of the INTF, he has integrated the Eusebian Canon data into The Bible Tool. Here is a general description:

Welcome to The Bible Tool— a free, evolving open source tool for exploring the Bible and related texts online. Created by CrossWire Bible Society, the Society of Biblical Literature and the American Bible Society as the first in a number of coming Bible engagement tools using an XML standard called OSIS, we provide power searching capabilities and cutting edge tools to help you engage the Bible at a deeper leve

Just open the Bible Tool and start clicking on the Eusebian canon numbers in the left margin of the text and see what happens.

Nestle-Aland 28 in Press

The long awaited 28th edition of Nestle-Aland's Novum Testamentum Graece will likely appear some time later this year. It has been preliminary announced by various booksellers. Thus, CBD gives the publication date 26/12 2012, whereas Amazon has 31/12 2012.

The fullest description I have found so far is in a new catalogue from the German Bible Society (in my translation) where the publication date is September 2012:

After years of preparation the new edition of Novum Testamentum Graece ("Nestle-Aland") is now published. Thus, the world-wide standard edition of the Greek New Testament has become available in a fundamentally revised and improved edition.

A main focus of this revision is on the textcritical apparatus, which has become better structured for increased clarity. For example, the reference to variants with sed or et and the differentiation between consistently cited witnesses of the first and second order, respectively, has now been abandoned. In addition, this edition for the first time includes the readings of the newly discovered papyri, registered as P117-127, which especially in Acts open up interesting perspectives.

A [another] main focus of the revision has been on the Catholic Letters, whereby the adaptation to the Editio Critica Major edition (ISBN 978-3-438-05605-4) has entailed over 30 changes [to the critical text; cf. an overview by W. Willker here]. The reference passages in the margin have been systematically verified and extended, especially with references to early Jewish literature.

Publisher: Institut für Neutestamentliche Textforschung, Münster / Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, Stuttgart

NA28 will be available in the following variants, all in the format 13,3 x 18,7 cm:

Blue hardcover (1008 pp.), ISBN 978-3-438-05140-0: €28
Black leather imitation, ISBN 978-3-438-05155-4: €38
Blue leather imitation, ISBN 978-3-438-05156-1: €38 
With Greek English dictionary (1239 pp.), ISBN: 978-3-438-05160-8: ca €36
With Greek-German dictionary (1219 pp.), ISBN: 978-3-438-05159-2: ca €36
Greek-English edition (1728 pp.) with New Revised Standard Version and Revised English Bible, ISBN: 978-3-438-05162-2: ca €45 EUR

I have no information about the planned CD-Rom which would link the text and apparatus of the digital Nestle-Aland with additional transcripts and apparatus published on the internet.