Luke Timothy Johnson on Scholarship

Nijay Gupta has just published a short interview with the prolific NT scholar Luke Timothy Johnson. It follows on the publication of his new memoir. It is well worth reading. There is quite a bit of wisdom here and I especially appreciated this part about how he views the place of scholarship in the light of eternity.

First, I have always considered only one thing essential — to become (or better, to allow God to make one) a certain kind of person. Everything else I have considered as secondary and non-essential. The judgment of other humans is trivial compared to the absolute judgment of God. Such a conviction enables one to speak boldly and without fear. 

Second, I have considered scholarship as a serious enterprise, but one without ultimate importance. It is, indeed, a game that, like all games, must be played seriously if it is to be played well. But it is played best when it is played with the freedom that authentic faith gives and is not erected into an idolatrous project. 

Third, if scholarship is non-ultimate, then an academic career is even more nugatory. The academy should be regarded as a social arrangement whose importance is measured solely by the way it serves the ends for which it was designed. Do students learn? Do teachers grow in knowledge? Is the church and society made better by these processes? To the degree that “the academy” becomes absolute and self-serving, to that degree it has lost its way.

Read the whole thing here.

Two Interviews with Peter Head

Ferdie Mulder recently sat down with Peter Head for a recorded interview and he has now posted the video. The geese get a bit excited at points, but don’t let that spoil it for you. The second video is more focused on textual criticism and papyrology, but do not miss the point in the first video where there is a soft giggle at the suggestion that Dr. Head has supervised some excellent PhD students. Aside from that, I quite enjoyed these. Thanks, Ferdie!

Part 1 Part 2

An Interview between Kenneth Clark and Maurice Robinson from 1977

The following interview from the 1970s is courtesy of Maurice Robinson shared here with his permission.

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During the time I was studying NT textual criticism under Kenneth W. Clark, and just before beginning my doctoral studies in Fort Worth, I asked Clark if he would answer a number of questions in an interview format. He agreed, under condition that such would not be for general publication until long after he had died. As a result, my manually typed transcript of the taped interview (3 May 1977) lay buried among my papers for the past 43 years, and was frankly forgotten until it was rediscovered in a long-unpacked box this Fall. Sufficient time now having passed (Clark died in 1979, at age 81), it seems wise to electronically retype the transcript for full release. 

The approximately two-hour interview occurred at Clark’s home in Durham, North Carolina, on 3 May 1977, when he was 79 years old. He had been quite ill that previous winter, but was in reasonably good health at the point of the interview, although at times talking about other subjects and often repeating previous statements. However, the following transcribed excerpts are interesting and perhaps pertinent to NTTC theory and method even today:

MAR:        It seems that in your earlier articles you basically accepted the Westcott-Hort theory, but that this view had modified as time went by; first, to the status of “questioning” its validity, and most recently of “doubting” its general correctness.

 

CLARK:   My views really have never changed. I never had been quite convinced of the acceptability of the Westcott-Hort theory; there are too many unproven historical claims, and it relies too much upon subjective factors in its basic reliance upon internal evidence. As you know, I have always been strongly opposed to eclecticism; yet the idea that we are capable of picking and choosing the readings which best suit the context, and are therefore textual critics (whether or not we need utilize the documents which contain that very text) — this is our current “critical” stance, and we are much the worse for it. Again, Westcott-Hort were far more than the eclectics of today: they were document partisans — the nemesis of all poor text-critical theory. Far too attached to Vaticanus as an “infallible” standard.

 

As to why an increasing criticism of the Westcott-Hort theory seems to develop in my writings, I believe I was just further developing that which I have always held. It is true that much of my critique had been delayed, but that was for an entirely different reason: every new discovery of papyri had to be analyzed, because many of my criticisms would be affected thereby; in fact, many of the building-blocks of the Westcott-Hort theory were severely weakened, without a word from me; the papyri had toppled their theoretical building-blocks. However, had the papyri been known to Westcott and Hort, their text would still have been essentially the same. In fact, had they been in possession of Papyrus 66, the Bodmer MS, and knew nothing whatsoever about Papyrus 75, the close relative of Vaticanus, they would have rejected the evidence of P66 out of hand — and why? Because the text of P66 did not sufficiently parallel B. On the other hand, had they been in possession of P75, without P66, they would have praised it out of hand. And why? Because its text was so like B. You recall that Colwell wrote about Hort having put “blinders on our eyes”? Well, Hort had them on as well!

 

MAR:        You have stated that we are now working with and are in fact bound to a new “Textus Receptus”, in the form of an Alexandrian text rather than the old TR of the Byzantine type. It has been quite disturbing to Eldon J. Epp and Gordon Fee that you have so characterized our current critical texts as though they were somehow thereby “inferior”. Is that what you intend by your statements, or have Epp and Fee misinterpreted your point?

 

CLARK:   I should not say we should call the current critical texts “inferior” by any means. However, I have made it quite clear that all current critical texts have not moved far from the Westcott-Hort text, despite all the new discoveries such as the Koridethi Gospels (Θ), the papyri, and the increased studies into the lectionaries, versions, and fathers — none of which had been accomplished in the days of Westcott-Hort. Yet it should be clear to any unprejudiced mind that the Alexandrian texttype — though excellent in many respects — is not and cannot be regarded as the original text of the autograph MSS. Yet what do we see? In every critical edition since Westcott-Hort we have a reproduction, more or less, of their Alexandrian-based text — an exception being the work of A. C. Clark in Acts, who deliberately followed the Western text (if such can in fact be called a “text”), thinking it to be original.

 

MAR:        In regard to Souter, a while back you mentioned to me something to the effect that you felt Souter’s text to in fact be the closest we currently have available to the autograph text: does this not conflict somewhat with your statement regarding the new “Textus Receptus” of the Alexandrian type, since Souter’s text was basically a reprint of Palmer’s reconstruction of the Greek text presumed to underlie the Revised Version of 1881, and closely followed Westcott-Hort?

Interview at Ian Paul’s Blog

Over at his award winning blog (it’s true), Ian Paul has interviewed me about Myths & Mistakes, why skepticism sells, and whether textual criticism is the geekiest of the NT subdisciplines. Thanks to Ian for having me.

ETC Interview with Caio Peres

In this installment of the ETC interview series, we diverge from our normal practice of interviewing established text critics to interview a (recent) student. I met Caio Peres through my wife and we have corresponded for a few years online. Some of that correspondence was about textual criticism  during his class on the subject with the good folks at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam where he received his Master (Research) in Theology and Religious Studies in 2018. He currently works as a social worker for a missionary NGO in the south part of São Paulo and in this interview I wanted to hear his perspective on theological training in his native Brazil and what it was like to study abroad. Enjoy!

Peter: Caio, tell us a little bit about your background and what got you interested in the Bible? What’s your primary area of research interest?

Caio: I am married to Dorothee and have a four year old son, Mikael. I am Brazilian and grew up in one of the largest cities of the world, São Paulo. When I was very young my mom went through a process of conversion, so I would go to an evangelical church on Sundays since I can remember. However, there were no religious disciplines in my household. In part because my father is not a Christian, nor religious in any sense, and in part because common Brazilian evangelicals, like my mom, do not integrate their faith with everyday routines. Nonetheless, I remember that at a certain age, my mom would read a Bible verse for me in the morning at breakfast, before I would go to school.

Two experiences in my life, roughly at the same period, got me interested in the Bible. The first was attending a Bible study service at my former church. The guest pastor, who is well known in the Brazilian evangelical context, was the first I saw to include some aspects of textual interpretation and theological implications. At the time this was very different from all the spiritual and life-lesson kind of approach to the Bible that I have known for a long time. It was more rational, organized and intellectually stimulating. The second was meeting my wife. She is Dutch and I met her in Brazil, when she was doing a short-term mission work at a children’s shelter near São Paulo. She comes from a family of several Christian generations. Her household dynamic was very different than mine. Christianity really formed how they lived and saw the world around them. And this was very clear in their strong missionary commitment. That made me realize how much the Bible could penetrate our own lives, but for that to happen I had to become familiar with it. These two experiences led me to commit to the study of the Bible and to missions in social ministries for children at risk in Brazil.

This last development also guided my research interests. After a couple of years flirting with Reformed theology, I got hooked by Biblical Theology during seminary, and the Bible was never the same again for me. I started seeing interesting possibilities of integrating my studies of the Bible and my interest in social issues. Thus, I started to research the Latter Prophets, especially the Book of the Twelve. For reasons that I do not recall clearly, I got interested in Temple and cultic matters. So, at the moment, my primary area of research is the theology of the cult in ancient Israel, including ritual analysis from an anthropological perspective. I am especially interested in commensality and family relations in the context of the ancient Israelite cult. From a broader perspective, my aim is to understand how household dynamics and practices inform the religious conceptions of ancient Israel. Looking at these matters from my missionary perspective, this is highly important in the Brazilian context. To look at cultic practices and religious conceptualizations with an eye on family dynamics and table fellowship might be fruitful for people living in shanty towns, where broken families abound and basic human necessities, like food, are scarce. Especially because in this exact context is where we can find the highest numbers of small Pentecostal churches.

ETC Interview with Paolo Trovato: Part 2

Here is Part 2 of my interview with Paolo Trovato. Read Part 1 here.

For someone who isn’t an editor or working on an edition of a text, what do think is the main value of your book for them?

Being able to easily detect the typos in a newspaper or a brand-new book. I am not kidding. This means realizing that, even in our time, any work hides or can hide within its pages a number of textual problems, born during the transmission, that is, the journey of the text from the author (via printing house or Xerox copies or internet) to the reader.

Can you tell us what you are working on at the moment?

Well, it is a rather long “moment”. Since 2007 I am working with a small team on a critical edition of Dante’s Commedia. The classification of the 600 extant MSS not reduced to small fragments took almost ten years, but now, thank God, we find ourselves in the more amusing and creative phase of fixing the text, for which we use 12 MSS only, the highest and most conservative in our stemma. In these very days I am working on Inferno, IV, but I already published provisional editions of Inferno, XXIII and Inferno, XXXIV on the web where I am getting precious feedback (see here and here). I have also completed some other cantos.

ETC Interview with Paolo Trovato: Part 1

It’s a pleasure for me to introduce our next interviewee in our ETC interviews series. Today I am speaking with Paolo Trovato who is a professor at the Università degli Studi di Ferrara in Italy. Prof. Trovato is best known for his work on Italian philology and particularly his work on Dante. He publishes widely on range of topics. I first encountered his work through his wonderful book on Lachmann’s method (reviewed here). That book has just been released in a revised edition and that provided a good opportunity for an interview. Enjoy!

Textual criticism is not typically a popular pursuit in my experience. What led you to it in your own work? How did you come to it?

When I was a university student in the seventies, I wanted to became a literary critic and I thought that textual criticism was quite boring stuff. Aging, I went sick with all the silly hypotheses that we continuously utter and read about texts of the past and I decided that the most useful thing I could do for the sake of my studies was to repair the damages of the textual transmission or at least try to do so.

ETC Interview with Thomas Hudgins

I’m happy to present another installment of our ETC interview series. Today’s interview is with Thomas W. Hudgins who is Assistant Professor of Biblical and Theological Studies at Capital Seminary and Graduate School. I first spoke with Thomas a little over a year go when he had just completed his doctoral thesis on the Complutensian polyglot and I thought readers here would be interested in that work. His most recent publication is a Festschrift for David Alan Black which includes a number of essays on text criticism from our own Tommy Wasserman and Maurice Robinson and others. You can learn more about Thomas at his blog or read his list of publications.

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PG: I understand you have two doctorates, the first one in education (EdD) and the second in New Testament (PhD). Most people who teach New Testament in U.S. seminaries only have the second, so what led you to do both?

TH: Explaining the PhD at the Complutense is a little easier since the PhD is the norm. I love the New Testament and wanted to study it for the rest of my life and help others do so as well. But why an EdD and a PhD? The easy answer is I am a glutton for punishment—or so people often say when they hear I did two. But there’s actually a better answer. An opportunity arose for me to enter the EdD program at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary and at the same time assist a seminary start-up in Central America. I had taken plenty of classes on the biblical languages, book studies (e.g., Isaiah, Mark), and theology, but despite having an undergrad degree in biblical studies and an MDiv, I had never taken a single course on education (and homiletics courses don’t count). That’s pretty remarkable if you ask me, especially considering the church is in part an educational institution (“teaching them...” Matt. 28:20).

I don’t know how many hours the average PhD program (for biblical studies) requires of instruction in the field of education, but I know it’s not a lot. The opportunity to study in the education department at Southeastern really changed my life—personally and professionally. It was the first time I was ever challenged to think about education. Even though I entered the Doctor of Education program, I was able to work with a faculty member outside of the department. I knew I wanted to do something different from what you would generally find with an EdD dissertation. I wanted to study the New Testament and education. So, I applied to study with David Alan Black (yes, Dave has a separate application to work with him). Working with him was one of the best experiences of my life.

A few months after I started teaching New Testament and Greek full-time at Capital Seminary, another opportunity arose for me to study in the PhD program at the Complutense University in Madrid, Spain and work with another world-renowned New Testament scholar, Antonio Piñero, on a topic that few had engaged in recent years (even though the subject’s quincentennial was rapidly approaching). Who could resist, right?

ETC Interview with Chuck Hill: Part 2

This is part 2 of our interview with Chuck Hill. Part 1 is here.

In The Early Text of the NT, you suggest that David Parker “gives the impression that concern for the original text is simply a religious phenomenon, driven by pressure from churches who desire an ‘authoritative text’” (p. 4). You point out, rightly in my opinion, that religious belief is hardly the only motivation for seeking a work’s original text. But what is the relationship between a high view of Scripture (as found, say, in the Westminster Confession) and the quest for the original text? Is such a view of scripture viable without the concept of a single original text?

Having a high view of Scripture, as you pointed out, is not the only motivation for seeking an original text. I don’t know why anyone would make that assumption. But is a high view of Scripture viable without ‘the concept of a single original text’? The short answer, I suppose, has to be ‘yes’, but it depends, of course, on what is meant by ‘the concept of a single original text.’ You can, of course, make a distinction between the original text (let’s just define it as the text as it left the author’s hands for the last time, with the author’s intent for release) and the ‘Initial text’ or Ausgangstext (the text we reconstruct as the source of all the known readings). But even the ‘Initial text’ is a form of the text that originated with the author. Different compositional stages of a book (e.g., a book before the author added a prologue, or decided to insert new material, etc.) are not different editions of the book, and it just seems like obfuscation to bring them into the picture.

The main, possible complication, I suppose, would be if the author did make a second edition (as some people have argued for the text of Acts). Let’s say (for the sake of argument) Paul sent a letter to the Roman church and kept his own personal copy, then later modified his copy in some way, intending to make this revised copy the basis for copies that would be more widely distributed to the churches, perhaps along with a collection of his letters. In this case you could say there are two ‘original’, authorial texts of Romans, essentially two editions.

Each of these would have originated with the author with his intention to be ‘released’ or published. Each one, I think we would have to say, was inspired, written by Paul in the exercise of his apostolic ministry. So here we would have two ‘originals’. In my opinion, the natural standard we would be seeking (if we could tell the difference) would be the final version that left Paul’s control, as representing the author’s final, intended ‘original’, even if it was not the ‘original’ original.

Or, let’s say that the ‘release’ of a book like Revelation, or even one of the Gospels, for that matter, was marked by the sending out of several ‘initial’ copies as part of the release. What if there were minor scribal differences between them? In this case, presumably there was still one single master copy from which other copies were made, which would be the logical ‘original’. But what if this, or any other, first exemplar itself contained errors that were made and somehow not corrected, in the inscription process? Then the ‘original’ text, or the normative text, would presumably go back to the author’s intention, no matter what happened between thought and words appearing on a page. This is why Warfield, in his book on NT textual criticism, identified the original text as the text intended by the author.

You teach in an institution that holds the Bible to be “absolutely and finally authoritative as the inerrant Word of God.” How do you respond to critics who say that such a belief is necessarily restrictive and even incompatible with the academic study of the Bible? Does belief in inerrancy restrict your scholarship in any way?

Yes, I’m sure it has restricted the number of stupid things I would otherwise have said. I can’t say I feel restricted in a negative way. Inerrancy can be defined in unhelpful ways but I see it not as ‘a thing in itself’ so much as simply a corollary of a couple of very basic articles of the Christian faith: that God is true and cannot lie, and that Scripture is his word. If we were starting over today, perhaps we would have found another word besides ‘inerrancy’ because it seems so prone to misunderstanding. But it has entered the theological vocabulary and it does have its value – and not to affirm it sounds a lot like not affirming God’s truthfulness. God speaks in a way that is ultimately true, not false. For me, that doesn’t predetermine very much about what the text must say or look like; God might speak, and speak truly, in ways and in forms I don’t expect. Human language (which God seems happy to employ, thankfully, because we are humans) is full of surprises.

It’s true that my convictions about God and Scripture will make me loathe to declare historical or theological problems in Scripture to be real errors or material contradictions, preferring instead to lay out options and sometimes withhold judgment until more evidence is in. But I don’t know why that should be judged to be incompatible with academic study. The ability to jump to conclusions should not be considered an essential attribute of academic scholarship. (I know that might be controversial.)

I think those who have a high appreciation for the divinity of Scripture will often look at a text much more carefully and insightfully than those who don’t, who might be satisfied with (or even eager to take) a shallower and less sympathetic treatment. And, of course, I think we would have much, much deeper problems without such a God who has spoken to us in Scripture.

If you had a particularly gifted student who wanted to pursue graduate work in textual criticism or canonicity (or both!), are there any particular issues you might want to steer them toward? Any you would advise them to avoid?

Studies of particular manuscripts are now starting to come into their own, and this is a good thing that should be encouraged in every way. I think the study of textual division is one area that holds a lot of potential (see on next question).

Sorting out the issues behind what has been called the ‘Western’ textual tradition, in my view, would be helpful, particularly the relationship between the early Latin and Syriac translations and their presumed Greek Vorlagen. How much of what has been attributed to a Greek Vorlage is really a result of translation technique? I don’t think the Greek fragments of Irenaeus that contain Biblical citations have been adequately analyzed and compared with the Greek manuscripts and the Old Latin translation(s).

More work is being done on early patristic appropriations of Scriptural texts, and that is a welcome sign, but more can still be done. More attention could be given to early Christian book collections, of churches or of individuals. There are a number of signs that Christians in the second half of the second century already believed that Scripture consisted of a ‘closed collection’ of books. These could be explored further.

I can’t think of any to avoid, except anything that won’t hold your interest for years of study.

2016 Academic Lecture  |  Listen here

Dr. Charles E. Hill, delivers the Spring 2016 Academic Lecture at RTS Orlando on the theory of the early development of the NT text. Offering an alternative solution to long held views.

Can you share any of your current research projects with us?

Of most interest to readers of this blog might be the work I’m doing on textual divisions in early manuscripts. For the Michael Holmes FS I did an investigation of early manuscripts of John, focusing on what appears to be a very early template for textual division, best preserved in P75 and in B. Among other things, I think it indicates that the scribes of Vaticanus probably had access to a very early copy, or copies, of John. My paper at SBL last November (2015) carried the study through to the other three Gospels, and I’m hoping to take this research further.

Following up on the work begun in ETNT, I’m working on updating the prevailing theoretical model for the early development of the NT text. Extending work on the Johannine Corpus (The Johannine Corpus in the Early Church) I’m also working on a book on the composition of John, in which I’m revisiting theories of multiple editions of the Gospel. Also I’m writing something on the socio-theological context of 1–3 John. If I should live long enough, I’m hoping to write a commentary on John.

Dr. Hill, thank you so much for your time and experience.

Thank you for your interest!

ETC Interview with Chuck Hill: Part 1

I am pleased to introduce our next interviewee in our ETC interviews series. Dr. Charles E. Hill completed his PhD on eschatology in the early Church at the University of Cambridge under Lord Rowan Williams of Oystermouth (yes, they still use such fantastic titles in England). More recently Dr. Hill has turned his attention to issues of NT text and canon in his Who Chose the Gospels? Probing the Great Gospel Conspiracy (2010) and The Early Text of the New Testament (2012) which includes several contributions from our ETC bloggers. He is also a member of the Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas and is currently the John R. Richardson Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at Reformed Theological Seminary in Florida. Thanks to Pete Head for some of these questions.

PG: Few people probably know that your first degree was in fine art and you worked for a period as a graphic artist (a fine job to have, if I may say so). Is there any particular piece of art that you find yourself coming back to again and again?

CH: Not really, though I would say that I find myself being more and more fascinated by the beauty of creation. I can stare at trees and clouds for a long time (hopefully this is not just a sign of aging). I still have favorite artists: Michelangelo, Rembrandt, Dürer, Caravaggio, and now, my kids. Somebody else who heard of my art background and didn’t realize that I’ve been out of it for the past several decades actually invited to give a lecture this spring on Salvador Dali before leading a tour through the Dali Museum in St. Petersburg, FL. That ought to be an interesting experience.

Readers of this blog will probably be familiar with your more recent text critical work, but your Cambridge dissertation was on the topic of eschatology in early Christian thought. Having worked on that topic, what led to your interest in textual criticism?

In the early nineties I was given a book on the Muratorian Fragment to review. At the time, I didn’t know very much about the formation of the NT canon per se. But having spent a great deal of time in the second century for my dissertation, I found several of this author’s conceptions about the second-century writers to be at odds with those I had developed. The experience of writing that review, along with some other things that were happing in scholarship at about that time (Bart Ehrman’s The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture, for example), convinced me that the issues of canon and text were ones where there might be a real need for scholarship.

Shortly after that, I came to RTS, where teaching both NT textual criticism and the NT canon happened to fall to my lot. From very early on I also had an interest in manuscripts. I think the art background was certainly part of that, not only because of the aesthetics of the manuscripts, but also the artefactual, material-culture aspect. Maybe for all these reasons, and because I was not trained as a textual critic, my particular interest has not been so much on what you might call textual criticism in the traditional sense, the art/science and methods of establishing the text. I’ve been most interested in what happened with the text in the process of transmission, in how Christians were using the text, and in what the NT manuscripts as material objects can tell us about those things. We live in very exciting times, as you know, with more and more discoveries and with the wonderful increased access to digitized images. I hope this will lead to a real renaissance of manuscript and textual scholarship.

ETC Interview with Hugh Houghton: Part 2

Congratulations to Drew Longacre for winning our book giveaway! Thanks to all who participated. I have taken note of your many suggestions for future interviewees. Now here is part 2 of our interview with Hugh Houghton in which we learn of his secret life as a Disney star! Part 1 is here.

You work at the Institute for Textual Scholarship and Electronic Editing (ITSEE) where “computer methods are now fundamental to every stage of the editorial process.” The emergence of digital texts has been hailed as “revolutionary,” something that frees “writing from the frozen structure of the page” (source). From your vantage, how important are electronic texts to how we conceive of texts, how we use them, and how we edit them?

It has become something of a truism, but I do agree with those who say that the advent of digital media is likely to have an even greater impact on our approach to texts than the invention of printing. Of course, in textual criticism, one of the principal benefits of digitisation has been the imaging of primary sources, meaning that we can read the pages of manuscripts from across the world without even travelling to the nearest library.

But electronic text itself offers an even more powerful research tool in terms of the questions we can ask, from examining a particular copyist’s spelling habits or use of abbreviations to reconstructing phylogenetic relationships for an entire textual tradition. First of all, though, we have to encode texts in such a way that we can use them to answer these questions, and no doubt others which we haven’t yet thought of.

The adoption of editing software such as Peter Robinson’s COLLATE has completely changed the way we approach the task of editing the New Testament: no longer is the focus on the painstaking assembly of a critical apparatus, summarising as much information as economically as possible. Instead, the software allows us to generate a collation automatically from transcription files, and the emphasis is now on preparing an accurate full-text electronic transcription of each witness which can then be explored and re-used in the ways I mentioned.

ETC Interview with Hugh Houghton: Part 1

It is a real pleasure to continue our ETC Blog interview series with someone who is no stranger to our regular readers. Dr. Hugh Houghton is Reader in New Testament Textual Scholarship at the University of Birmingham (UK) and Deputy Director of the Institute for Textual Scholarship and Electronic Editing (ITSEE) there. He is currently working on the volume of John as part of the IGNTP/ECM collaboration as well as the letters of Paul. This month he has a new book out on the Latin NT which we’re giving away thanks to OUP. Without further ado, here’s Hugh.

PG: First things first. Can you tell us how to pronounce your name? Is it HOW-ton or HOE-ton?

HH: Thank you for asking. It’s HOW-ton, although HOR-ton is a very common pronunciation too in the UK, and I sometimes also hear HUFF-ton. As this is a blog on textual criticism, we could explore the relationship of the different pronunciations to textual variation: when my surname is misspelt – which is fairly common – is that because the copyist voiced it in their head and substituted a different spelling for the text of their exemplar? Is it just replacement by a simpler or more common form? Were they copying to dictation? And then what about the visual or orthographic influence of my first name, with the potential for interference, haplography...? You’d better ask the next question or we’ll never finish this interview!

Can you tell us about what led to your current interests in the text of the New Testament and specifically the Latin and Patristic evidence for it?

I’ve always enjoyed languages, particularly the historical relationship between them. I was fortunate to study both Latin and Ancient Greek at school, and then read Classics at university. In my final year, my courses included Medieval Latin, when I first visited the university library to see a manuscript (the Cambridge Songs), and the history of the Greek language up to the fall of Byzantium. I wrote an undergraduate dissertation on the Acts of the Christian Martyrs as linguistic documents.

My Master’s degree, although still in Classical Linguistics, involved studies of Tertullian’s language and the Greek Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles. A few years later, I took a second undergraduate degree in Theology as part of my ministerial training, which included a module on the Gospel according to Mark with Keith Elliott. So when Philip Burton (who had taught me as an undergraduate, while he was completing his doctorate) and David Parker contacted me to see if I would be interested in joining them to work on the Vetus Latina Iohannes (an edition of the Old Latin versions of John’s Gospel), I jumped at the opportunity.

Podcast Interviews with Larry Hurtado and Bill Warren

Two new interviews in the podcast series on iTunesU "Pioneers of the Trade" from Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts (CSNTM) have appeared recently:

Bill Warren describes the current state of textual criticism, especially related manuscript discoveries, and how his Center for New Testament Textual Studies (CNTTS) contributes to the field.



Larry Hurtado speaks about the early Christian use of codices, nomina sacra and the staurogram.


Earlier interviews of Tommy Wasserman and Ekaterini Tsalampouni.

Pioneers of the Trade: Famous Text-Critical Scholars (CSNTM)

Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts (CSNTM) offers a number of interviews in a series called "Pioneers of the Trade: Famous Text-Critical Scholars" which is freely available on iTunes-U.

A few days ago, a new interview appeared with Dr. Ekaterini Tsalampouni, lecturer in NT at the Aristotle University in Thessaloniki, in which she describes her research on New Testament inscriptions, the Byzantine text, and how the digitization of New Testament manuscripts is revolutionizing the field of New Testament textual criticism.

I was interviewed at the recent SBL in San Diego for this series, so that might appear too some time in the future.

ETC Interview with John Karavidopoulos

It is a pleasure for me to introduce our next interview. John (Ioannis) Karavidopoulos (1937–) is Emeritus Professor of the Theological School of Aristotle and is best known among English-speaking scholarship for his membership on the editorial committee of the UBS Greek New Testament. He has written numerous articles and books during his career and it is a real honor to interview him here.

Peter Gurry: Can you tell us about how you came to the academic study of the Bible and, in particular, what led you to textual criticism?

John Karavidopoulos: As you know the Bible is the basis of Christian belief and life. All the other disciplines of Christian theology are based on the Bible. So the academic study of the Bible gives you the opportunity to get into the heart of theology. Personally, as a Greek theologian, I was attracted to textual criticism because I think that the different readings of the manuscripts prove the richness of Christian tradition.

[PG] What is the academic study of the New Testament like in Greek Universities both in your experience and now in view of the current financial situation?

[JK] In both Greek university theological faculties (in Athens and Thessaloniki) as well as in all the ecclesiastical high schools, the academic study of the Bible is a fundamental discipline in which the support of the Orthodox Tradition (Fathers of the Church, liturgical life etc). And, of course, with the knowledge of modern international Biblical scholarship, Greek biblical scholars can be in contact and in dialogue with their colleagues all over the World. Especially in the current difficult financial situation, the Bible gives comfort and support to the Greek people.

Do you have a favorite edition of the Greek New Testament? Do you use a critical text in your study and an ecclesiastical text in church and in prayer? How does that work out?

The academic teaching and the scholarly work are based, of course, on the critical editions of the New Testament (NA28/UBS5) although in the Church and in prayer we use the patriarchal edition of the byzantine text. This causes no problem at all. All modern Greek translations of the New Testament are based on the Byzantine Text because people are familiar with this type of text. The Greek people know the byzantine text type and cite it from memory in everyday speech.

If I’m not mistaken, you joined the UBS editorial committee in 1981 along with Barbara Aland. How did you come to join the committee?

I was invited by the late professor Kurt Aland to join the committee because he and the rest of the editorial committee wanted an Orthodox member. So I accepted, not without some hesitation. In the end, I do think that I contributed to the enrichment of the critical apparatus with many byzantine reading which, in limited cases, were also adopted in the text.

Greek Lecture on Jesus

Dr. Karavidopoulos speaking at the 2nd General Pastoral Assembly of the Holy Metropolis of Demetrias on “What can we really know about the earthly presence of Jesus Christ historically?”

Can you give us any sense for what the committee meetings were like? How long they lasted, how frequently they met, the personalities involved, particular passages you fought over, etc.?

This is a difficult question to answer. The committee did not meet very frequently, but I was given the financial possibility to set up a group of collaborators in the University of Thessaloniki with the purpose of collating a select number of byzantine manuscripts. I fought especially for New Testament verses which are very familiar to the Greek Orthodox audience because of their liturgical use (e.g., Mark 9.29: “This kind can come out only by prayer and fasting”). But I did not succeed in many cases.

A few years ago, you met with a team from CSNTM digitizing manuscripts in Zagora, Greece. How do you think such easy access to so many manuscript images will change the discipline of NT textual criticism?

I appreciate very much the work of CSNTM and of professor Dan Wallace and I helped as much as I could to facilitate their task in photographing manuscripts in Greece in spite of the understandable negation of some Greek institutions. I hope that their work will contribute to the discipline of New Testament textual criticism.

Last year, a new UBS committee was announced. Having been part of the previous committee, is there any advice you would give the new members as they begin their work?

The only thing I can say is that some short byzantine Readings could be adopted by the committee of which I am no longer a member.

From your vantage point, what aspects of the NT’s transmission are most in need of serious investigation?

The byzantine text type must be more seriously investigated.

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Many thanks to Dr. Karavidopoulos for his time!

ETC Interview with Maurice Robinson: Part 2

Posted below is the second part of my interview with Maurice Robinson. You can read part one here.

[PG] In a previous interview you said that, within a normal transmission process, we should expect to find the autographic text preserved “within a single dominant branch of the transmissional tradition.” What makes a branch “dominant” in your view and does this risk counting what should be weighed?

[MAR] Probably no greater conceptual misuse exists concerning the phrase “manuscripts should be weighed rather than counted” than when applied repeatedly to critique a presumed “majority text” type position, the obvious intent being to disparage such by a reductionist caricature of mere “nose-counting”. In reality, one first must define what constitutes “weight” and then determine the procedure for measurement and evaluation of such in the accompanying “weighing process”. Only then can one inquire as to what extent the constituent elements of such determined weight have actually been applied to each of the various MSS under consideration.

ETC Interview with Maurice Robinson: Part 1

If you’re still wondering, the answer to my quiz of last week is none other than that Byzantine Beatle, Maurice A. Robinson. Maurice also happens to be the first participant in what I hope will be an ongoing series of interviews with text critics. In the past, we have interviewed Bart Ehrman, Dan Wallace, and Stanley Porter and these were well received. So I thought we should continue the tradition. I don’t have any detailed criteria by which to pick our interviewees (suggestions welcome), but I can say I am quite pleased with those who have already agreed to be interviewed. There are many familiar names on the list, but also some lesser-known or younger scholars that I am excited to introduce to our readers. So without further ado, I present our first interview.

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As a regular commentator and sometime contributor at the ETC blog, Maurice Robinson is no stranger to regular readers. But despite the blog’s great fame, he is most well-known for his work editing and defending the Byzantine textform. He teaches at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, NC where he was recently named research professor of New Testament studies. He’s been interviewed a number of times before, but I thought there were a few things those interviews didn’t cover, especially the final question of part 2. Enjoy!

Peter Gurry: Many readers might be surprised to learn that you worked with Kenneth W. Clark during your master’s work. Can you tell us how that relationship has (or hasn’t) influenced your own view of textual criticism?

[Maurice A. Robinson] I began studying with Clark (1898–1979) in 1971 during my MDiv program at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary (where I currently serve as Research Professor); this was arranged by the then text-critical professor here, since he said I already knew more about the subject from previous self-study than did he. Clark at that time was already emeritus from Duke, having retired from teaching in 1967, but he genuinely was excited about my interest in the field, since at that time very few students anywhere were becoming interested or involved in the subject. As a result, Clark and I began and maintained a very good relationship from 1971–1977 (when I moved to Texas for my PhD studies), despite our evangelical versus liberal theological differences.

My position at that time was one of reasoned eclecticism, basically following the Metzger-style theory and praxis; Clark, however, in various of his publications had already raised serious questions as to whether that or any type of eclectic method really represented a solution rather than a symptom (a theme later discussed by Epp in 1976). Clark therefore strongly encouraged me to study, heavily read, and critically examine various alternative views, including those favoring a primarily external and transmissional approach to the text as opposed to those theories that placed a more subjective emphasis on internal criteria (including both thoroughgoing and reasoned eclecticism). In essence, what Clark strongly suggested was a return back to primarily external principles such as espoused by Westcott and Hort, but without their unsupported speculative historical baggage regarding a “Syrian recension” being the creative cause of the Byzantine Textform.

“Don’t Do it!”: Peter Head on Academic Blogging

How did Peter Head get involved in this blog? What benefits does he see in blogging? Should more scholars start blogging?

If you want to hear Pete’s take on these issues, read Joshua Mann’s interview with Peter Head – one part of a series of interviews with academic bloggers.

I won’t give anything away, except this final advice Peter gives (in his characteristic way) to an academic who is thinking of starting to blog: Don’t do it. 

Interview with Dan Wallace

Dan Wallace is interviewed at The Gospel Coalition about NT textual criticism. A basic overview of NT TC, apologetically oriented, but lots of nice diagrams and pictures.

Interview with Maurice Robinson

Bob Hayton of the KJV Only Debate Blog tells me there is a three part interview with Maurice Robinson being posted this week.

Here is the link to the first part of the interview.

Here is the link that by Wednesday will show all three parts of the interview.

Bob also told me that it was in the comments on this blog that he and Maurice met up and from that planned this interview – everything we blog makes circles on the water.