RP Byzantine Text in Free Digital Formats

This may be old news to some of you but I pass the info along anyway. Norman Simón Rodríguez maintains the public domain repository for the Robinson-Pierpont Greek Byzantine text. The following info is from him.

The repository includes the following resources:

• The beta code files of the Robinson-Pierpont 2018 text, including Byzantine variants and the Byz vs. critical text apparatuses. There are both accented and unaccented versions, and one version has grammatical parsing data. These files are the official source files created by professor Robinson for his edition.
• Converted Unicode files in CSV (Excel) format.
• TEI-XML files of the Unicode text. This format is especially convenient for creating collations against the transcriptions made by the INTF, as those transcriptions also follow the TEI-XML standard.
• The code used to convert the beta files into Unicode and XML. The code is written in the Python programming language and is open source.
• Plain-text versions of the 'The case for Byzantine priority' essay in both English and Spanish.

The repository can be found at https://github.com/byztxt/byzantine-majority-text. More information about the Byzantine text can be consulted at https://byzantinetext.com/study/editions/robinson-pierpont/

Another manuscript to strike from the Liste? Greg. 724

Because we have been discussing the difficulty of counting manuscripts lately, I decided to jump in with my own way of making things worse minor contribution: It might be the case that Gregory 724 should be removed from the Liste.

Gregory 724—the note in the front

Details:

Gregory 724 is a Greek manuscript of the Gospels on paper+parchment and dated 1520. A note in the front of the manuscript even claims that it was copied from an edition of the New Testament ("scriptus fuit ex aeditione noui testamenti"). We know the copyist from this note, Levinus Ammonius, a Carthusian monk. There's an entry for him on pp. 50–51 of Bietenholz, ed., Contemporaries of Erasmus: A Biographical Register of the Renaissance and Reformation, vol. 1. A–E. According to Bietenholz, Ammonius lived from 13 April 1488–19 March 1557, and "...joined the Carthusian order, making his profession on 18 August 1506 in the monastery of St Maartensbos near Geraardsbergen, 30 kilometers west of Brussels."

Ammonius also had a bit of correspondence with Erasmus, and some of those letters have been published. Their first interaction (to my knowledge) occurred when Ammonius wrote to Erasmus on 4 July 1525 (Ep 1463, available in CWE 10), which the editor describes as "his first attempt to open a continuing correspondence with Erasmus." The editor continues: "His second attempt was successful (Epp 2016, 2062), and five of the letters in their subsequent correspondence survive (Epp 2082, 2197, 2258, 2483, 2817). The beginning of Ep 1463 shows the respect he had for Erasmus (my second-favorite Dutch scholar to live in Cambridge and edit a Greek New Testament): "For a long time I was full of misgivings, Erasmus most incorruptible of theologians, whether my action would be inexcusable if I were to interrupt you with a letter, I being a monk living obscurely in solitude and you the most distinguished of our whole generation for your outstanding gifts, and if I who enjoy the blessings of leisure were to inflict this tedium on a man who labours for the common good of Christendom."

In Ep 2016 (available in CWE 14), Ammonius mentions that he had once copied out a Greek Psalter that Erasmus had even seen. Gamillscheg and Harlfinger (1981; Repertorium I a no. 10; p. 28) identify him as the copyist of Cambridge, Corpus Christi College ms 448, though the data at the Parker Library on the Web suggests that the copyist may have been Johannes Olivarius. This alternative identification seems to go back at least to K.A. de Meyier in 1964. That is all to say that by his own testimony, we can conclude that he copied at least one other Greek manuscript (and a Biblical text at that), and there may be at least one other manuscript copied by him that is now in the Parker Library at Corpus Christi, Cambridge. Here are samples of each below. I am not familiar enough with handwriting in this era to say anything about them worth taking too seriously, but I do see a lot of similarities. One thing that jumps out to me is that in the color images of CCC ms 248, the capital letters seem to have yellow 'around' them (or something that has faded to yellow), and I see the exact same pattern of 'discoloration' (for lack of a better word) in the microfilm of Greg. 724.

Writing sample from Greg. 724

Writing sample from Cambridge, CCC ms 248.

Checks:

Pinakes mentions a few references for Greg. 724 that I haven't been able to check. 

The first and second editions of the Liste are identical, save that it's on p. 100 in the 1st ed. and on p. 90 in the 2nd ed. (and the line break is at a different place in the location section). Here it is in the 2nd ed.:

 

724 is ε530 in von Soden's edition; here is his entry on vol. 1, p. 208:

So far, despite the obvious note in the beginning, almost nobody seems to have noticed that it's most likely a copy of a printed edition. Obviously, I could be missing something, but I don't see any indications that it's been stricken from the Liste as a copy of a printed work. Since it's not a manuscript of Revelation, it wouldn't appear in Darius Müller's "Abscriften des Erasmischen Textes im Handschriftenmaterial der Johannesapokalypse."

Notice, however, that I mentioned that almost nobody seems to have noticed that it was probably copied from a printed text. Once again, the Wizard of Byz comes to the rescue. In his (still!) unpublished collation data for the pericope adulterae, Maurice Robinson observed (though I have inserted my own transcription of the Latin for his, so if there are mistakes there, it's my fault not his):

"GA 724 has a Latin colophon that suggests it may have been copied from a printed edition in 1520: [[Libellus hic quatuor Euangeliorum scriptus fuit ex aeditione noui testamenti pr[ ... ] & postea ad tertiam eiusdem  etc.]] In fact, except for not reproducing the spelling error 8:6 κατηγωρειν, the text agrees exactly with that of Erasmus 1516 (even Ιησους is written plene throughout; although my collation fails to note such for 8:1, this is almost certainly the case). The top margins appear like a printed book as well: ¶ ευαγγελιον || κατα ιωαννην. At 8:1 the margin has ¢ 8 sic. At 7:52 a corrector changed one form of abbreviation for και into another, without otherwise affecting the text."

How I found it:

I was reading an article about Erasmus and chased a rabbit trail. There's more to the story, but in short, the only manuscript I could find (at first) with the lives of the four evangelists by Dorotheus of Tyre (which Erasmus included in his 1516 edition, and only the 1516 edition) is 724. So obviously I looked into 724. I did end up finding the content elsewhere, so I can be confident that it's not another patristic forgery by Erasmus.

Conclusions:

1. Getting curious and chasing rabbits can lead to interesting things.

2. Robinson's collation data needs to be published! Where else do we get to see the work of someone who examined ~3,000 manuscripts and made notes about them.

3. Jacob Peterson might not have been wrong to extrapolate a level of error in counting manuscripts back into the minuscules and lectionaries. I wasn't looking for mistakes and, unless I am making one myself (which is certainly possible), I seemed to have happened upon one.

4. Even if 724 should be removed from the Liste, it could still be very interesting. Are there changes from Erasmus' 1516 edition? Do any changes represent textual decisions (or, dare we say it, conjectures?) of Levinus Ammonius? It may be just a boring copy of Erasmus 1516 with the usual sorts of scribal errors, but if we don't look, we won't know.

Robinson’s Defense of Byzantine Priority in Spanish

Norman Simón Rodríguez has translated Maurice Robinson’s essay defending the Byzantine priority position into Spanish. You can read it free online.

Robinson Reviews Stanojević’s Orthodox New Testament Textual Scholarship

In the latest issue of the Southeastern Theological Review, Maurice Robinson has a review of Jovan Stanojević’s recent book Orthodox New Testament Textual Scholarship: Antoniades, Lectionaries, and the Catholic Epistles, Texts and Studies (Third Series) 26 (Piscataway NJ: Gorgias Press, 2021). 

The review is interesting because Stanojević is Eastern Orthodox himself and argues for a revision to the Antoniades edition, the standard form of the Greek NT text in the Orthodox church, as I understand it. Robinson, of course, has coedited a Byzantine edition which is not the Orthodox standard. No one in this situation is apparently happy. The review is online (p. 97ff).

Where the Priority Lies in Byzantine Priority

Last Saturday was the textual criticism conference at Clearview Church with myself, Maurice Robinson, Dave Black, and Abidan Shah. You can read Dave’s recap here. I can add my thanks to our hosts for taking such good care of us and to my fellow speakers for sharing with us. 

I was grateful for the opportunity to explain why I’m a reasoned eclectic in a forum like this. I haven’t ever done that and it was a good exercise. What made it especially fun is that none of the other presenters agreed with my position! (Although, by my definition, Dave Black’s Sturzian approach is still a form of reasoned eclecticism; he just has a different approach to external evidence than mine but that’s for another day.) This meant that I not only got to hear how others perceived my view, but I also got to hear their reaction to my perception of their view. That is always a helpful diagnostic and, in this case, I learned something from Maurice that I want to explain here.

The speakers. Photo from Dave Black

In my talk, I argued that the Byzantine Priority view could accurately be called Byzantine Exclusivism since there is never a place where the Byzantine prioritist thinks that the clear majority of manuscripts is flat wrong and the minority is right (e.g.). Even where the majority is split, their choice will always be within the split, never outside it. It is this consistent preference for one group of manuscripts over all others (where they disagree, of course) that sets it apart from all forms of eclecticism—reasoned or thoroughgoing or even Sturzian. This is where the clarification came in.

In his presentation, which followed mine, Maurice pointed out that the priority in “Byzantine Priority” does not mean the Byzantine reading gets priority at each point of variation, but rather that the Byzantine textform existed prior to the other textforms. This may seem like a trivial distinction, but I think it is important for two reasons.

First, it is a reminder that the Byzantine Priority position, as held by Maurice, is based fundamentally on a view of the text’s history not on some preconceived preference for pet readings. What that means is that, if the method is right, it’s right because of its view of history. If it’s wrong—as I think it is—it’s wrong for the same reason. I happen to think this is what all methods share in common, actually. But it was helpful to see it afresh.

Second, I think this should mean that there is no reason, in principle, why a Byzantine prioritist should be unwilling to reject Byzantine readings. The fact that this textform is earliest does not logically entail that it is always right anymore than thinking the Alexandrian text is earliest requires one to think it is always right. 

Now, I say it should mean this because in practice, as I noted, Byzantine prioritists are unwilling to accept any reading that is in the clear minority against the Byzantine majority. So, we are back to the question of whether or not it is really a method of prioritization or of exclusivism. I would be happy to be educated further on this and would love to hear from any Byzantine prioritists who think the Byzantine textform is sometimes wrong even when it’s unified (in which case they would be akin to James Snapp’s view).

One final observation, this experience was a fresh reminder of the danger of misinterpreting other people’s views because we have unwittingly filtered them in some way through our own starting assumptions. In my case, I was hearing the term “priority” through the lenses of my own reasoned eclecticism. What I heard was something like “the Byzantine reading is always prior at every place of variation” when what is meant is “the Byzantine textform is historically prior to the other text forms.” The first does follow from the second, but the order is important. I should have been more careful.

And for anyone wondering, Maurice and I had a grand time together. We have sparred many times over these things at various conferences, over meals, and even at his Smokey Mountain chalet. I always appreciate our conversations and leave them thankful for his sharp mind and his careful work.

Pierpont: Requisites and Basics for Textual Criticism of the Greek New Testament

Here is another installment in the series of unpublished papers by Williams G. Pierpont, scanned from the Maurice Robinson Collection. This two-page essay is undated. I don't know when we'll be able to put it on CSNTM, so I am making it available here.

REQUISITES AND BASICS FOR TEXTUAL CRITICISM OF THE GREEK NEW TESTAMENT

[By William G. Pierpont, undated]

1. NECESSITY. Scarcely any two of the many hundreds of manuscripts of the Greek New Testament agree exactly with each other-- even after ignoring the obvious and easily corrected simple scribal errors. Nor is there any divinely established or humanly agreed-upon standard against which all others may be corrected. Therefore textual criticism is necessary to establish, where there are sig­nificant differences, which readings are to be considered those of the autographs.

2. REVERENCE. The New Testament is no ordinary book: it is part of the Holy Word of God, and dare not be approached without a spirit of reverence and the utmost of respect. It is the Word of the Omnipotent Creator and Sovereign Lord of all. He Himself does not view it lightly: "for Thou hast magnified Thy Word above all Thy Name." (Ps. 138:2) It partakes of His Divine Nature, of His holi­ness and perfection. We recognize that it was Divinely inspired-- that holy men of God were led along and guided in their writing by its Holy Author. We must tremble to tamper with it in any way. How we "handle" it is vital. We may well recognize that God is Himself most intimately concerned with what we do with it. We ought to approach it, as it were, on our knees. Anything less dishonors its Author.

Who are those who would dare to go hunting for "discrepancies" in a gleeful mood? Who are those who would presume to tell God what He has caused to have written? How do men dare to choose among alternate readings on the basis of what they "prefer"? Where is their sense of reverence for the Holy? Do such men indeed hold to the God-given apostolic faith, or are they merely toying with what is inherently holy?

For some, whatever is "interesting" or novel attracts them-- and unless it is strange they have no concern or interest. For others the "various readings" merely serve as opportunities to exercise their ingenuity, to see if they can puzzle out an answer to their own satisfaction. Often this merely serves as fodder for the grist mill of their desire to lecture or write.

Such a spirit of levity, "game playing", ill befits God’s Holy Word. The man of God is grieved and distressed when he finds seriously competing alternate readings, knowing that only one of them can be from the autograph. He earnestly and reverently seeks an answer.

Video Interviews with Text Critics

Dwayne Green is a pastor up in Canada who’s been putting out a steady stream of video interviews on textual criticism and Bible translation lately. As a pastor, he’s especially interested in theology and methodology and likes the KJV himself but isn’t KJV-only. He seems genuinely open to views he doesn’t hold and has a lighthearted style about his videos. He’s been nothing but a nice chap in all my interactions with him. So far he’s interviewed Hixson and myself, Dirk Jongkind, Maurice Robinson, Mark Ward, Timothy Berg, Jeff Riddle, James Snapp, and several others. Go check out his YouTube channel. I especially recommend the most recent one with Maurice Robinson if you’ve ever wondered who the Pierpont in Robinson-Pierpont was.

“Guest Post” from the Grave: William G. Pierpont on E.F. Hills

With the permission of Maurice Robinson, I am making available one of Pierpont’s unpublished papers, an evaluation of E.F. Hills’ defense of the textus receptus. Some formatting may have changed a bit, but I include here both text (to make it searchable) and images of the paper itself (for transparency).

Edward F. Hills’ Views on the N.T. Text

[by William G. Pierpont]

Dr. Hills’ agenda is openly and clearly expressed in the title of the four editions of his book “THE KING JAMES VERSION DEFENDED,” of which this reviewer used the first (1956) and the second (1973), together with several items of personal correspondence (the last dated 10 June 1981, shortly before his death). During this period his basic premises and conclusions remained resolutely unaltered, although expressed in somewhat different ways.

His reverence, sincerity, integrity and scholarship are unquestioned. His presentation of facts is balanced, fair and precise, and often interestingly made. It is his interpretation and use of the facts, as well as certain presuppositions which we must examine.

Starting from the confidence that God is the God of truth, he lays out his two primary principles as:

a) the autographs of the NT were Divinely inspired, and therefore in­fallible, and that

b) because of this God must see that they were providentially preser­ved. (The logic for this step rests on Mt. 5:17+, 24:35, etc.)

Therefore, textual criticism of the Scriptures is different from that of other books. Its principles must be drawn from Scripture itself—and from creeds and other Church writings which are in agreement with Scripture—and used in constructing theories for criticism itself.

Providential Preservation (PP) forms the center about which his further presentation revolves. Summarizing his "axioms", he declares that:-

1) The purpose of PP is to preserve the infallibility of the autograph­ic text, and that God must have done so in a public way, i.e., so that all may know where and what it is-- not hidden somewhere among the MSS and requiring to be searched out.

2) It is the Greek text which is thus preserved, not a translated ver­sion of it. (God never promised that a translation would be kept free of errors, great or small.) Further, there may not be competing authorities.

3) During the long centuries of hand copying, PP operated through the Greek-speaking Christian community, who understood and used the language.

4) PP operated through the testimony of the Holy Spirit: only through Bible-believing universal Christian preiesthood [sic], those who have taken a supernatural view of the text, applying to it standards of judgment di­rected by the Holy Spirit, and were thus enabled to distinguish the true from the false. This was not only through the Spirit’s testimony to the individual’s soul, but also in the collective priesthood of believers through the ages (continuing onward into the Protestant period). Thus errors entering were weeded out by Divine Providence and guidance.

5) From the very first, PP supplied a multitude of trustworthy copies which were read and recopied, while faulty and untrustworthy ones fell out of use and passed into oblivion. Thus the genuine text was kept safe in the vast majority of MSS.

6) Thus the consensus agreement of this vast majority of copies forms the Traditional Text (TT), which accurately represents the originals and is the Standard Text.

This vast majority of MSS thus contains an essentially uniform text, al­though hardly any two MSS agree exactly throughout by reason of little individual variations and errors. Their differences are often hard to detect, being rare and small. This verifies that each descended indepen­dently from its own ancient ancestor, and therefore the text itself is ancient and not medieval in origin.

Pierpont’s unpublished papers

Thanks to the generosity of Maurice Robinson, one of my recent projects at CSNTM (where I have been a full-time Research Fellow since August 2020) has been scanning the unpublished papers of William G. Pierpont (1915–2003; see his obituary by Robinson in the TC Journal, here). Robinson is now the custodian of the papers, which include many short studies, remarks, letters, etc. It is a fascinating group of papers, and it seems like there’s a little bit of everything in there (there is even a very interesting one-pager in which Pierpont [who knew something like 20+ languages] analyzes a 13-second recording of an instance of glossolalia, transcribing it, breaking it down into syllables, making observations on frequency of sounds, etc. It’s remarkable!).

William G. Pierpont (photo c. 1980)

Eventually, I hope to put much of the material online at CSNTM. We’re working on adding a section to our website for materials relevant to the text and textual history of the New Testament that aren’t Greek manuscripts or printed editions (e.g. the manuscript of Legg’s unpublished edition of Luke’s Gospel, which J.K. Elliott allowed us to digitize a couple months ago).

While I am not a Byzantine prioritist myself, I have the greatest respect for both Robinson and Pierpont and have deeply enjoyed reading much of the material. The reverence for God’s Word these men had while preparing their edition (2018 edition available here) is both convicting and encouraging. In his unpublished papers, Pierpont is thoroughly Christian in everything he writes, and I can’t express how much I appreciate that.

With Robinson’s permission, I am preparing a “guest post” by Pierpont (assuming they don’t kick me off the blog first for stirring the pot too much!). In the next few days, I’ll post here one of Pierpont’s unpublished papers. They are almost all very short—this one is one of the longer ones at about 4 pages long. I hope Pierpont's writings are as edifying to you as they have been to me.

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.

---

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?

Festschrift for Maurice A. Robinson On-line

In 2014, Mark Billington and Peter Streitenberger edited a volume of essays, Digging for the Truth: Collected Essays Regarding the Byzantine Text of the Greek New Testament, to honor Maurice A. Robinson, Professor Emeritus of New Testament at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary (SEBTS).

One of the contributors to the volume, Abidan Paul Shah, former PhD student of Robinson, introduced the Festschrift at SEBTS and made available this videoclip of the presentation. At 4.20 you can see the honoree enter the stage to receive his book.

Since the book is now out of print, one of the editors, Peter Streitenberger, has now made it freely available here.

As readers will notice, the volume is written mainly from a pro-Byzantine text perspective, which is understandable since Robinson, in my opinion, is the most respected proponent of this school, which represent a very small minority of scholars in the discipline today. Read more about this perspective in Robinson’s own article, “The Case for Byzantine Priority,” in TC: A Journal of Biblical Textual Criticism.

Neverthelesss, it is a pity that there has not been another Festschrift for our co-blogger Maurice reflecting a wider perspective. I would have liked to contribute to that. On the other hand, I did participate in a symposium at SEBTS in 2014, invited by Maurice, to discuss the pericope adulterae, the text to which he has devoted much of his career (read my reports here and here with more links to summaries). The result of this consultation was published in The Pericope of the Adulteress in Contemporary Research, LNTS 551, ed. by D. A. Black and J. N. Cerone (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2016). See my announcement here.

Let me conclude this blogpost by citing from the preface of my recent book To Cast the First Stone (co-authored with Jennifer Knust) where I express my gratitude to Maurice as he reached out to a Swedish new-comer to the field:

Tommy would first like to thank Maurice Robinson, who was willing to suggest a topic for his bachelor’s thesis at Örebro School of Theology on a particularly interesting variant in the pericope adulterae, which led to his first research visit to the INTF in Münster and eventually resulted in his first academic publication [here]. In spite of different views regarding the history of the New Testament text, Maurice has always been gracious and helpful to both of us.

Maurice Robinson: The source of the Pericope Adulterae insertion in GA 1333

PA in GA 1333. View in NT.VMR

Maurice Robinson sends the following email which he has asked me to post here.

James Snapp happened to ask me about MS 1333, where a later scribe inserted the PA on a blank page between Luke and John (the only MS known to do so).

Since obviously the insertion was lectionary-based (the PA begins at 8.3 with the heading εκ του κατα ιω (below the designation for Pelagia, 8 Oct), this provoked a search between my continuous-text database and my lectionary PA database to see whether a source lectionary MS for the 1333 insertion might be determined.

As it turns out, the mystery of the source lectionary for the insertion into continuous-text MS 1333 appears to be solved! Although MS 1333 (11th century) is now at Saba in Jerusalem, the later PA insertion apparently was copied directly from the 12th century lectionary L-1755, now at St Catherine’s in Sinai.

This identification is established not only by their otherwise common text (which generally follows a typical lectionary line of transmission, with only minor orthographic issues), but primarily from one glaring (and problematic) reading in 8:9 — και υπο της οικειας συνειδησεως— which otherwise appears in only one other continuous-text MS (GA 1082), and that one with an extremely different text from what otherwise is shared by MS 1333 and L-1755.

Closely related to L-1755, however, is L-1804 (now at Athens, Natl. Lib., 14th century). I suspect that L-1804 either may have been copied from L-1755 or from some common lectionary archetype.

I like solving mysteries, especially when the solution was far simpler than might have been imagined!

Given that 1333 is dated 11th century and lectionary 1755 is from the 12th, Tommy Wasserman asked how this can be. Maurice’s response:

The PA insertion in 1333 was added on a totally blank page, so this was ex post facto from the original copying.

In other words, the insertion must be later than the 11th century.

For more on 1333 and the PA, see Snapp’s recent post.

Matt 18.11 as a Test of the ‘Internal’ Consistency of the Byzantine Priority Position

NOT the Silver-haired Assassin

Matt 18.11 It is one of a dozen or so verses that are completely missing (relative to the KJV) from modern English Bibles. It follows precedes Matthew’s version of the parable of the lost sheep and fits quite well in that role. It reads thus in the KJV: “For the Son of man is come to save that which was lost.”

This verse is demoted to the apparatus in eclectic texts and the explanation usually given is that it was brought over from Luke 19.10 almost verbatim. That “almost” is what I want to address here. Compare:

1. omit — 01, 03, 019* f1, f13, 33, e, ff, syr.sin, etc.
2. ἦλθεν γὰρ ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου σῶσαι τὸ ἀπολωλός — 05, 032, Byz, lat, syr.cur.pesh.hk, etc.
3. ἦλθεν γὰρ ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου ζητῆσαι καὶ σῶσαι τὸ ἀπολωλός — 019mg, 579, 892c, etc.
4. ἦλθεν γὰρ ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου ζητῆσαι καὶ σῶσαι τὸ ἀπολωλός — Luke 19.10 (no vll. in NA)

On external grounds, the external argument from the Byzantine prioritist is straightforward. There is no serious split in the Byz manuscripts at this point and therefore reading 2 is original at Matt 18.11.

But how does the same Byz prioritist explain the corruption that is reading 3 on internal grounds without appeal to harmonization and thus showing an inconsistency? After all, if ζητῆσαι καί is an addition due to Luke 19.10 then surely the whole verse can (and should) be explained the the same way. 

It seems to me that this shows an “internal” inconsistency on the part of the Byzantine priority position. Internal evidence is accepted when it supports the conclusion made from external evidence. But the same evidence is rejected when it does not.

As always when I talk about the Byz text, I shall wait to be corrected by our resident Byzantinist, the Silver-haired Assassin himself!

Maurice Robinson and Chris Keith on 284 and the PA

Over at the Jesus Blog, Chris Keith has posted comments from Maurice Robinson on 284 and the PA. More importantly, Chris Keith has christened him the the “Silver-Haired Assassin,” a perfectly fitting title in my view. Henceforth, I require all blog commentators to address Dr. Robinson by this title! Now, go read the Assassin’s blog post.

Here is the link to the page in 284 under discussion.

On the ‘idle boast’ of having so many New Testament manuscripts

My post on the topic of the comparative argument for trusting our modern texts of the New Testament produced some good discussion. But one issue that got passed over in the ensuing comments deserves more attention and that is what I want to give it here.

A slide from Wallace’s presentation at Biola

The issue is whether apologists like James White or Dan Wallace, for example, are being inconsistent for practicing reasoned eclecticism and for appealing to the vast number of Greek NT manuscripts. Wallace, for example, likes to refer to our “embarrassment of riches” for recovering the original text of the New Testament. But his practice of reasoned eclecticism seems to suggest that he is “embarrassed” in quite a different way by these riches because he doesn’t actually use them (see, e.g., the NET Bible). Apologetically he wants to have his embarrassingly-rich cake, but text-critically he has already eaten it. That is the charge anyway and it is one I have heard Bart Ehrman use in debate against Wallace.

But Ehrman is not the only one to use it. He finds himself a strange bedfellow with Maurice Robinson on this who puts the problem this way:

The resources of the pre-fourth century era unfortunately remain meager, restricted to a limited body of witnesses. Even if the text-critical evidence is extended through the eighth century, there would be only 424 documents, mostly fragmentary. In contrast to this meager total,the oft-repeated apologetic appeal to the value and restorative significance of the 5000+ remaining Greek NT MSS becomes an idle boast in the writings of modern eclectics when those numerous MSS are not utilized to restore the original text.*

Robinson again:

Granting that a working presumption of most eclectic scholars (including Ehrman) is that the vast bulk of NT MSS basically should be excluded as irrelevant for the primary establishment of the text, Ehrman’s statement [against the comparative argument] makes perfect sense. Rather than claiming some sort of text-critical superiority to the classics based on the sheer quantity of extant MSS, modern eclectics perhaps should acknowledge that their actual preferred witnesses for establishing the best approximation to the “original” NT text number only in the few dozens, as opposed to the several thousands otherwise set aside from serious consideration.

I’d like to open this up to discussion again. Can reasoned eclectics make any apologetic appeal to the abundance of our NT witnesses without being inconsistent? If so, how?

———
* “Appendix: The Case for Byzantine Priority” in The New Testament in the Original Greek: Byzantine Textform 2005, p. 568.

Update: see Dan’s response here.

A Similarity between Reasoned Eclecticism & Byzantine Priority

Here’s something that two otherwise competing methods of New Testament textual criticism agree on, at least according to their two main proponents. Both reasoned eclecticism and the Byzantine priority position have in common that external evidence should be considered prior to internal evidence.

A helpful little book.

Here’s Mike Holmes:

To put the matter more briefly and abstractly, it is by means of external evidence that we identify the oldest surviving reading(s), which we then further evaluate by means of internal considerations.

Here’s Maurice Robinson:

In this system, final judgment on readings requires the strong application of internal evidence after an initial evaluation of the external data has been made.

I would be interested to know if Mike thinks this priority is fundamental to reasoned eclecticism. I wouldn’t think so since a consideration of transcriptional probabilities may influence the weight one gives to a manuscript’s text, a weight which subsequently informs which readings deserve further evaluation on internal grounds. There is, obviously, a circularity here, but a “fruitful” one as some have described it rather than a viscious one.

This is not unlike a suggestion made—to bring thoroughgoing eclecticism into the discussion—by J. K. Elliott. He says,

To be really thorough I suggest that we do our textual criticism eclectically without bowing to preconceived theories about the alleged superiority of certain witnesses. Then, having done our work, I suggest that we review the behavior of individual witnesses—in effect, rate them. Those that fall below a certain level of accuracy would in the future be regarded with some suspicion. 

Oddly, he then says that “I cannot claim that that is an overriding interest or concern of thoroughgoing eclecticism” which seems to undermine his suggestion.

Sources

• Michael W. Holmes, “The Case for Reasoned Eclecticism,” in Rethinking New Testament Textual Criticism, ed. David Alan Black (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2002), p. 78.
• Maurice A. Robinson, “Appendix: The Case for Byzantine Priority,” in The New Testament in the Original Greek: Byzantine Textform, ed. Maurice A. Robinson and William G. Pierpont (Southborough, MA: Chilton, 2005), p. 545.
• J. K. Elliott, “The Case for Thoroughgoing Eclecticism,” in Rethinking New Testament Textual Criticism, ed. David Alan Black (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2002), p. 123.

New Book: The Pericope of the Adulteress in Contemporary Research

Finally, the book from the Pericope of the Adulteress Symposium is out (see here), and I am happy to have contributed with a chapter, “The Strange Case of the Missing Adulteress.” This is an expensive book, but a more affordable paperbook will be published in due course.

Publisher’s description: 

The contributors to this volume (J.D. Punch, Jennifer Knust, Tommy Wasserman, Chris Keith, Maurice Robinson, and Larry Hurtado) re-examine the Pericope Adulterae (John 7.53-8.11) asking afresh the question of the paragraph’s authenticity. Each contributor not only presents the reader with arguments for or against the pericope’s authenticity but also with viable theories on how and why the earliest extant manuscripts omit the passage.

Readers are encouraged to evaluate manuscript witnesses, scribal tendencies, patristic witnesses, and internal evidence to assess the plausibility of each contributor’s proposal. Readers are presented with cutting-edge research on the pericope from both scholarly camps: those who argue for its originality, and those who regard it as a later scribal interpolation. In so doing, the volume brings readers face-to-face with the most recent evidence and arguments (several of which are made here for the first time, with new evidence is brought to the table), allowing readers to engage in the controversy and weigh the evidence for themselves.

Read more about the book on Larry Hurtado’s blog. On behalf of the editors, I asked Larry to write a response chapter and I am glad that he accepted to do it.

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.

A Pro-Byzantine Textual Commentary

A textual commentary on passages that differs between the Nestle-Aland Novum Testamentum Graece (28th ed.) and the Robinson-Pierpont The New Testament in the Original Greek: Byzantine Textform (2005) is in the making.

The editors are Jonathan Borland and Mike Arcieri. According to Borland, "the commentary intends to supplement Metzger's by offering alternative views of the manuscript evidence held by various major editors of or commentators on the GNT over the last three centuries."

Thus far passages in Matt 1-7 have been treated.

Update: Maurice Robinson have explained that he is not contributing to the commentary so I removed his name.