A textual criticism thought

if you follow the harder readings, you will end up with an unintelligible text; if you follow the shorter readings, you will end up with no text at all.—Edward Hobbs, “Introduction to Methods of Textual Criticism,” in The Critical Study of Sacred Texts, ed. Wendy Doniger, Berkeley Religious Studies Series 2 (Berkeley: Graduate Theological Union, 1979), 19.

Where does the punctuation go?

In John 1:3–4, that is. Is there a stop at the end of verse 3? Or does it come at the end of the phrase, with the relative pronoun and participle going with verse 4?

Here's the Greek:
3 πάντα δι᾿ αὐτοῦ ἐγένετο, καὶ χωρὶς αὐτοῦ ἐγένετο οὐδὲ ἕν. ὃ γέγονεν 4 ἐν αὐτῷ ζωὴ ἦν, καὶ ἡ ζωὴ ἦν τὸ φῶς τῶν ἀνθρώπων·

I had never noticed it before, but NA27 (and I assume NA28) have the stop before the relative pronoun. Here's what Metzger says:

1.3-4 οὐδὲ ἕν. ὃ γέγονεν {B}

Should the words ὃ γέγονεν be joined with what goes before or with what follows? The oldest manuscripts (P66, 75* א* A B) have no punctuation here, and in any case the presence of punctuation in Greek manuscripts, as well as in versional and patristic sources, cannot be regarded as more than the reflection of current exegetical understanding of the meaning of the passage.

A majority of the Committee was impressed by the consensus of ante-Nicene writers (orthodox and heretical alike) who took ὃ γέγονεν with what follows. When, however, in the fourth century Arians and the Macedonian heretics began to appeal to the passage to prove that the Holy Spirit is to be regarded as one of the created things, orthodox writers preferred to take ὃ γέγονεν with the preceding sentence, thus removing the possibility of heretical use of the passage.

Interestingly, Metzger disagreed with the Committee

[On the other hand, however, none of these arguments is conclusive and other considerations favor taking ὃ γέγονεν with the preceding sentence. Thus, against the consideration of the so-called Page 168 rhythmical balance (which after all is present in only a portion of the Prologue, and may not necessarily involve ὃ γέγονεν) must be set John’s fondness for beginning a sentence or clause with ἐν and a demonstrative pronoun (cf. 13.35; 15.8; 16.26; 1 Jn 2.3, 4, 5; 3.10, 16, 19, 24; 4.2, etc.). It was natural for Gnostics, who sought support from the Fourth Gospel for their doctrine of the origin of the Ogdoad, to take ὃ γέγονεν with the following sentence (“That which has been made in him was life” – whatever that may be supposed to mean). It is more consistent with the Johannine repetitive style, as well as with Johannine doctrine (cf. 5.26, 39; 6.53), to say nothing concerning the sense of the passage, to punctuate with a full stop after ὃ γέγονεν. B.M.M.]

So, the CEB translates it thus:

3 Everything came into being through the Word,
and without the Word
nothing came into being.
What came into being
4 through the Word was life,
and the life was the light for all people.

Not sure which I prefer, but it does make one pause to think...

Textual transmission and authority

The biblical manuscripts from the Dead Sea afford us a unique view into textual transmission during the Greco-Roman period. The habits and customs of the ancient scribes testify to their absolute fidelity to the text. Nevertheless, there was no single standard text, and alterations such as the one we have described were quite possible. Indeed, the manuscripts from the Dead Sea give the impression of considerable diversity. Thus, for example, the great Isaiah scroll (1QIsa^a) represents its own text type in comparison to the version preserved in the Masoretic Text. Fragments have been preserved of the Book of Jeremiah, some of which follow the Masoretic version (4QJer^{a, c, e}), while some attest to the short, divergent text of the Greek translation of the Septuagint (4QJer^{b, d}). At the same time, there are also harmonizing and standardizing revisions, to which the Hebrew and Greek manuscripts of the Twelve Prophets from Wadi Murabaʾat (Mur 88) and Nahal Hever (8Hev^l) testify.

How to explain this diversity is a much-discussed problem. Some postulate an original text, or one as close as we can get to it, from which the diversity developed. Others, however, argue for textual traditions that originated independently of each other. Given the high percentage of agreement among the texts, the first possibility seems to be more likely. At any rate, it is clear that the diversity did not alter the authority of the text and the esteem in which it was held. There was anything but a slavish word-for-word fidelity. Even if readings differed, for the scribes and readers of the biblical books, the same text always contained the word of God for all time, and consequently for them and their time.—The Prophets of Israel, page 94

<idle musing>
I'm reminded of a snippet from a forthcoming book from Augsburg/Fortress, Isaiah Old and New: Exegesis, Intertextuality, and Hermeneutics:

…however uncomfortable it may make some modern interpreters of the Bible, in the NT era there was assumed to be a fluidity to these scriptural texts such that even the paraphrastic Greek versions of the MT could still be assumed to be the Word of God, and one was free to go with the version which more nearly made one’s point, in this case a christological point. The canon of the OT was relatively fixed and closed in the NT era for most books, such as Isaiah, but the text itself was not absolutely fixed at that juncture.

For some this is indeed a problem, isn't it? But my faith is built on Christ and his faithfulness, not on the Bible. Yes, the Bible reveals Christ, but I know enough about textual transmission to question inerrancy and its straightjacket approach to the text. As the hymn says:

My hope is built on nothing less than Zondervan and Moody Press..

No, that's wrong; let's try again:

My hope is built on nothing less than Scofield's Notes and Moody Press...

Still wrong! How about this:

My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus' blood and righteousness

And the scripture bears witness to that, so I guess you would have to classify my hermeneutic as Christocentric.

Here's what Ron Hendel says in his recent collection of essays, Steps to a New Edition of the Hebrew Bible (from chapter 11, I don't have the page number handy):

As Roland Bainton observes, for Luther “inspiration did not insure inerrancy in all details. Luther recognized mistakes and inconsistencies in Scripture and treated them with lofty indifference because they did not touch the heart of the Gospel.” [Roland H. Bainton, “The Bible in the Reformation,” in The Cambridge History of the Bible. Volume 3: The West from the Reformation to the Present Day, ed. Stanley L. Greenslade (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1963), 12] Where minor errors occur, as when Matthew 27:9 mistakenly cites Jeremiah instead of Zechariah, Luther responds: “Such points do not bother me particularly.” [ibid., 13] Similarly, in his commentaries Calvin is not bothered by errors in the text where they are unrelated to matters of faith and salvation. [See Brian A. Gerrish, “The Word of God and the Words of Scripture: Luther and Calvin on Biblical Authority,” in The Old Protestantism and the New: Essays on the Reformation Heritage (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), 62–63] He acknowledges minor errors without anxiety, as in the contradictions among the Gospels: “It is well known that the Evangelists were not very concerned with observing the time sequences.” [John Calvin, Commentaires sur le Nouveau Testament. Tome premier: Sur la concordance ou harmonie composée de trois évangélistes (Paris, Meyrueis, 1854), 319 (at Luke 8:19): “on sçait bien que les Evangélistes ne se sont pas guères arrestez à observer l’ordre des temps.” Cited in William J. Bouwsma, John Calvin: A Sixteenth Century Portrait (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 121–22]

So I stand in the finest tradition, lest you be tempted to paint me as a heretic : )

Just an
</idle musing>

Give me more!

While we seek to master the plethora of manuscripts, we also savor their very unmanageability. The textual critic’s heart yearns for even more abundance and leaps at the discovery of new manuscripts. It doesn’t matter whether they were moldering in caves or a synagogue genizah or miscataloged in an air-conditioned library. We crave new texts, even as they drive us to distraction. The superabundance of texts is our joy and our burden.—Ron Hendel in teps to a New Edition of the Hebrew Bible, forthcoming from SBL Press

It ain't inerrant!

A perfect text-critical procedure is not at hand. Like all historical inquiry, we see the past indirectly through our (always fallible) evaluation of its present traces.—Ronald Hendel in Steps to a New Edition of the Hebrew Bible, forthcoming from SBL Press

But I want it to mean this!

In the face of insufficient data, any judgment is weakly founded. Since the Qumran texts are the very epitome of incomplete data, caution is necessary.—Ronald Hendel in Steps to a New Edition of the Hebrew Bible, forthcoming from SBL Press

<idle musing>
Wise words! Many have ignored the perils and gone beyond the data...
</idle musing>

What is text criticism?

Textual criticism aims for a history of readings, extending from the archetype to the extant manuscripts. A historically sophisticated critical edition must present each step of a book’s textual history, to the extent that it is recoverable, and not rest on one step alone.—Ronald Hendel, Steps to a New Edition of the Hebrew Bible, forthcoming from SBL Press

What happened to that promised early NT papyrus?

For the last few years, we've been hearing about a forthcoming publication (from Brill about a first century fragment from Mark.

The problem is that no one has seen it. Everything seems to revolve around a video of Josh McDowell explaining how he extracted the papyrus fragments from a mummy mask.

Well, on April 30, PARSE, a web site that is part of the Christianity Today family, published an interview with McDowell. In it he mentions early manuscripts, finding two fragments from Matthew in a codex. He refers to them as being from around AD 300. Apparently they were in the binding of the codex (that's inferred by me based on the wording; he doesn't say where in the codex).

But, this is interesting, he makes no mention of anything older. What happened to the supposed first century Mark fragment? He's talking about the early manuscripts and the importance of early manuscripts for the fidelity of the New Testament. But why no mention of the Mark fragment? The context would have been perfect for it. In the following paragraph he says:

In fact, a top Greek scholar of biblical artifacts recently said that in all these manuscripts that are being discovered today, you could now intellectually say that we possess the exact wording of Jesus in the New Testament, though we don’t know exactly what that is yet. With current technology, maybe in five to six years, we could possibly reconstruct a New Testament of the original wording stated by Jesus. I never dreamed this could happen in my lifetime.

Leaving aside the hyperbole of that statement for now, this would have been the perfect spot to mention early Mark! Why didn't he? Has it disappeared? Did it turn out to be something else? Enquiring minds want to know...

Just an
</idle musing> on a Saturday morning as I procrastinate finishing repairs on the cabins...

Update:
Tommy Wasserman tells me that the Brill book is about the Green Collection and doesn't include the Mark fragment. He also informed me that the fragments that McDowell is talking about are Coptic, not Greek! (see here)

And, this is encouraging, Tommy really does believe that the fragment exists, but he doesn't believe it is first century. I hope it gets published!

Textual Criticism

Textual criticism traffics in critical analysis, not in claims of authority. Cappel [Critica Sacra, 1650] made a distinction between the content of Scripture, which in his view was divinely inspired, and its textual transmission, which was a wholly human phenomenon. The accumulated errors in the texts are the product of human hands. The necessary remedy is textual criticism, a rational procedure whereby one can repair these accumulated errors and restore the text closer to its pristine state.—Ron Hendel, "The Idea of a Critical Edition of the Hebrew Bible: A Genealogy" in Hebrew Bible and Ancient Israel 4 (2014), 400

It's official!

Just announced, on Jack Sasson's Agade e-list:

Proverbs: An Eclectic Edition with Introduction and Textual Commentary
Michael V. Fox
Hardcover $69.95 ISBN 9781628370201
500 pages The Hebrew Bible: A Critical Edition 1
https://secure.aidcvt.com/sbl/ProdDetails.asp?ID=062401C&PG=1&Type=BL&PCS=SBL

It's nice to see it in print after spending so many hours poring over it in PDF and print outs. I just hope nobody finds any especially egregious errors!

There's a textual variant

The way things are going, I thought maybe I had misread James 1:27:
θρησκεία ⸆ καθαρὰ καὶ ἀμίαντος παρὰ °τῷ θεῷ καὶ πατρὶ αὕτη ἐστίν, ⌜ἐπισκέπτεσθαι ὀρφανοὺς καὶ χήρας ἐν τῇ θλίψει αὐτῶν, ⸂ἄσπιλον ἑαυτὸν τηρεῖν⸃ ἀπὸ τοῦ κόσμου.

True devotion, the kind that is pure and faultless before God the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their difficulties and to keep the world from contaminating us. (CEB)

And maybe I did—after all there is a textual variant—see the ⌜ in the middle of the verse? Maybe the variant says ἀποκτείνειν (to kill)! Or maybe ποιεῖν (to make)! Wouldn't that be something! To think we might have been missing a variant that would justify our actions all these years!

So what does the variant say?

επισκεπτεσθε et ⸂υπερασπιζειν αυτους 𝔓74; Lact

OK, what does that mean? Well, it changed the infinitive into an imperative with the same verb and added an infinitive that means "to hold a shield over them (as protection)." So we should translate the verse as

True devotion, the kind that is pure and faultless before God the Father, is this: Care for orphans and widows in their difficulties to hold a shield over them as protection and to keep the world from contaminating us."

So much for the vain hope of being justified in violence...the variant holds you to an even stricter account. No wonder it wasn't adopted! : )

Grammar does matter

Is the presence of the volitive yiqtol in Samuel a coincidence, or should we suspect a scribal tradition in which the volitive functions of the yiqtol (< yaqtula) were well known? Could the scribes of Samuel have been familiar with the Hebrew volitive yaqtula while the scribes of other books expressed volition strictly through the jussive, imperative, and cohortative? Since a concentration of “volitive followed by yiqtol” is found in Samuel, I advocate for a literary style peculiar to a specific scribal tradition rather than suggesting emendations for all the passages traditionally interpreted as textual errors. The scribes of Samuel, who were certainly familiar with the Canaanite volitive yaqtula, give us a glimpse into their understanding of the modal system of Hebrew.—The Syntax of Volitives in Biblical Hebrew and Amarna Canaanite Prose, page 141

<idle musing>
See, grammar really can make a difference! Now, we'll see if BHQ takes note of it whenever they finally get around to Samuel. As an aside, is there significance in the fact that the home page of the project itself is blank? I hope not!

And, by extension, will HBCE take note of it?
</idle musing>

Let's be honest about it

So in this case [the letters of Ignatius] one is actually dealing with eleventh-century manuscripts witnessing to a second-century writing which often loosely cites the text of the NT in the (vain?) hope of trying to glean insights into the state of the text of various NT writings prior to, or contemporary with, the earliest hard evidence of actual texts of these writings. From the outset the potential of this approach to yield decisive results should be judged for what it really is—extremely limited. Rather, at best, the quotations in these writings, if cited accurately rather than loosely, if transmitted faithfully rather than freely, if randomly preserving units of text that are known to preserve variation units that allow a differentiation between text forms, may then at best provide corroborative evidence to supplement observations about the state of the text in the second century. The probability that anything decisive may be adduced is incredibly low.—The Early Text of the New Testament, page 283

<idle musing>
It makes looking for the proverbial needle in the haystack seem easy! Interesting book, by the way. It certainly doesn't lend itself to excerpting, though—too many charts and tables. But, you really should read the fourteenth chapter: "'In These Very Words': Methods and Standards of Literary Borrowing in the Second Century" by Charles E. Hill (available here). Well worth the effort. I was trained as a Classicist, so nothing he said was new, but if you are unsure about the stability of the text of the New Testament in the second century, this article will reassure you. Check it out!
</idle musing>

The Internet really is great

Wow! The Internet is great, isn't it? You can see all the cat videos you want or waste your time on Facebook. Or, you can view some of the greatest manuscripts in the world. In fact, the Vatican just put one of the most important ones for the New Testament (and Septuagint) on line—named, appropriately enough, Vaticanus. Enjoy!

You can see another great manuscript, Sinaiticus, here.

Enjoy! Oh, and you can still watch those cat videos if you want. Me, I'd rather lose myself in a bit of wandering through the manuscripts...
</idle musing>

Inconsistent

It is one of the peculiarities of biblical text criticism that we will emend the ancient level of the text while holding the medieval level sacrosanct.—HBCE Proverbs, page 21

<idle musing>
I dunno; it struck me as funny...
</idle musing>

Proverbs 26:2 and the Hebrew text

In a comment the other day, David pointed out that there is a qere/ketiv in Prov 26:2. For those of you who don't what that means, it means that the Hebrew text has the consonants of one word but a "footnote" that says it really should be a different word. Ketiv means "written" and qere means "spoken", so you say what the footnote says even though the text is different. The Masoretes were not willing to change the text, even when it was obviously wrong, so they developed this system. But the ketiv isn't always wrong, so each one has to be evaluated separately...

I checked the two most recent versions of the Hebrew Bible that I have, Biblia Hebraica Quinta and SBL's new Hebrew Bible Critical Edition.

BHQ didn't comment on it in the textual commentary, so I looked at the HBCE—I realize that most of you can't do that yet, but being the copyeditor does have a few advantages! : ) Here's what Michael Fox says:

לא 26:2 M^K MK G (οὐδενί) ≈ S (ܦܗܝܐ) T (לא) ]
לוֹ M^Q ≈ V (in quempiam) (aur)
G οὐκ ... οὐδενί is a double translation of the ketiv. V in quempiam (“on someone”) = M^Q. S’s ܦܗܝܐ (“go astray”) ≈ לא תבא = M^K. The ketiv is correct, since the analogies (a wandering bird, a flying sparrow) exemplify not coming (to a particular goal) rather than coming to someone. Also, לו has no relevant antecedent. However, a scribe may have thought that the noun “curse” implies an actant (a curser), and it is to him that the curse would return (as in Ps 109:17).

So what exactly does all that gobble de gook mean? : )

The ketiv, which is what the Septuagint (LXX) followed—as do most modern translations—says that an undeserved curse will not come to rest. In fact, the LXX goes so far as to make it emphatic by using a double negative, which Fox calls a double translation; personally, I think it is an intentional over-translation : ) The qere, on the other hand, is saying that an undeserved curse will return to the one who sent it forth! That is, it will come to rest on him where him is the implied originator. Grammatically shaky, at best, which is why Fox and most modern translations go with the ketiv. But, it does point out that the ancients were aware of the dangers of a thoughtless curse...witness Enkidu's worries from yesterday's post.

Isn't knowing all these languages fun!?

The alleged first century Mark

There's been a good bit of stir of late about a supposed papyrus fragment containing the Gospel of Mark. It actually is an old story from 2012 that got resurrected of late. I'm skeptical—I always am when it comes to sensational finds...but in this case, I'm not the only one. I just saw this over at Evangelical Textual Criticism:

I have had correspondence with Craig Evans and have his permission to confirm that he has not seen the alleged first-century manuscript of Mark and does not know the identity of the scholar or scholars to whom it has (presumably) been assigned for publication.

I also believe that Dan Wallace had not seen the alleged manuscript at the time he debated Ehrman. I do not know whether he has seen it since then.

There may have been more eyewitnesses to the Secret Gospel of Mark than to 'FCM'.

Based on current evidence I would conclude that, although 'FCM' may exist, we currently have no reason to believe that it exists or will be published in the coming years. Of course, a historical kernel might exist to the stories of 'FCM', but I personally have very limited enthusiasm for source criticism.

Agreed. And here's what Larry Hurtado has to say:

So, what we can ask in the case of this putative fragment of Mark is that the owner(s) enable the scholarly world to access it, so that a critical and measured analysis can be done. Until then, there is no need to ask what I think of the claim that it is a first-century fragment of Mark. No data, no opinion.

Yep...

You've already chosen

I've been busy the last few weeks—and not just with the cabins. As most of you know, we get our house and utilities paid by working as cabin caretakers/maintenance. But we still have to eat (and the garden doesn't supply everything we eat! At least not yet...) and pay other bills. In order to do that, I do copyediting and proofreading for various publishers. One of the publishers I work for is the Society of Biblical Literature. I've done several books for them, but this summer I started working on a project that I am really enjoying and hope to for a long time to come: The Hebrew Bible: A Critical Edition. Right now I'm working on Proverbs. I was reading through the introduction when I ran across this little gem:

It should be stressed that those who prefer a Masoretic reading or an entire Masoretic edition are in effect participating in this construction of meaning, albeit passively, by aligning themselves with one text state, a medieval one.

That's right, not to decide is actually to decide. And you've probably chosen a version that is further from the original than an eclectic text. Think about that for a while before deeming the HBCE a useless exercise.

Just an
</idle musing>

Exciting new project

SBL just announced an exciting new project today. Here's the announcement:

Too cool! I'm looking forward to seeing it...

Update:
As was pointed out in the comments, this is the Oxford Hebrew Bible Project, but now under the auspices of SBL. I have it on good authority that they are anticipating 1–2 volumes a year, with Proverbs by Michael Fox being the first one.