Recent Developments in the Textual Criticism of the New Testament a Brief Survey of Research, 1937-1967

CHAPTER FOURTEEN RECENT DEVELOPMENTS IN THE TEXTUAL CRITICISM OF THE NEW TESTAMENT A BRIEF SURVEY OF RESEARCH, 1937-1967 During the years which have elapsed since the publication of F. G. Kenyon's useful volume, The Text of the Greek Bible, A Stu dents Handbook (London, 1937), many significant advances have been made in the textual criticism of the New Testament. In the following pages the author has attempted to present a selective and concise report concerning several of the more notable (I) manuscript discoveries, (II) textual studies, and (III) editions of the Greek New Testament that fall within the third of a century extending from 1937 to 1967. I. MANUSCRIPT DISCOVERIES Greek manuscripts The past thirty years have seen the acquisition and cataloguing of a considerable number of Greek witnesses to the text of the New Testament. The list of Greek papyri has gone from S))62 to S))81 ; the uncial manuscripts from 0208 to 0266; the minuscule manuscripts from 2401 to 2754; and the Greek lectionaries from l 1609 to l 2135. 1 Of the two dozen Greek papyri that have come to light the most important are those now in the possession of the Swiss bibliophile and humanist, M. Martin Bodmer, founder of the Bodmer Library of World Literature at Cologny-Geneva. The Bodmer Papyrus II, assigned the siglum S)) 66, preserves most of the first fourteen chapters of the Gospel of John and small fragments of the remaining chap ters. 2 According to its editor, Victor Martin, Professor of Classical Philology at the University of Geneva, the manuscript dates from 1 See Kurt Aland, Studien zur Vberlieferung des Neuen Testaments und seines Textes (Berlin, 1967), p. 207. 2 Victor Martin, Papyrus Bodmer II: Evangile de Jean, chs. 1-14 (Cologny Geneva, 1956); Supplement, Evangile de Jean, chs. 14-21 (1958), new ed. by V. Martin and J. W. B. Barns (1962). The 1962 edition of the Supplement is accompanied by a photographic reproduction of the entire manuscript. New Testament Tools and Studies VIII 10 146 DEVELOPMENTS IN THE TEXTUAL CRITICISM OF THE NT about A.D. 200, 1 and is thus one of the earliest witnesses to the Gospel of John (the oldest still seems to be the tiny scrap at the John Rylands Library, S))62, preserving a few verses from John 18, and usually dated A.D. 100-150). The text ofS))66 contains elements which are typically Alexandrian and Western. 2 One of the notable features of S))66 is the presence of approximately 440 alterations and corrections entered between the lines or in the margins. About two-thirds of these (approximately 260 instances) involve corrections made by the scribe of his own careless blunders.3 Of the other alterations, in a few cases the scribe changed the text from an Alexandrian to a Western reading, in several more cases he changed from a Western to an Alexandrian reading, but in most cases it is difficult to ascertain any characteristic tendency, other than the evident desire to produce a smoother and more readily intelligible form of text.4 In several passages S))66 preserves unique readings not previously known from any other witness. In John 13.5 a picturesque word is used in the account of the Foot Washing scene; according to S))66 Jesus took not a "basin" (vmnjpix) but a "foot-basin" (1to8ovL1tnjpix). In 7.52 the presence of the definite article in a difficult passage now provides added support for what some scholars had long thought was the required sense; namely, "Search [the Scriptures] and you will see that the Prophet does not arise from Galilee." 6 1 According to Herbert Hunger, however, who is the curator of the papyro logical collections in the National Library at Vienna, 1})88 should be dated earlier, in the middle if not even in the first half of the second century; see his article "Zur Datierung des Papyrus Bodmer II (P66)," Anzeiger der osterreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, phil.-hist. Kl., 1960, No. 4, pp. 12-33. 1 K. Aland, "Papyrus Bodmer II. Ein erster Bericht," Theologische Litera turzeitung, 1957, cols. 1-24. 8 According to E. C. Colwell, "Wildness in copying is the outstanding characteristic of 1})88 " ("Scribal Habits in Early Papyri; a Study in the Corruption of the Text," The Bible in Modern Scholarship, ed. by J. P. Hyatt [Nashville, 1965), p. 386). ' See G. D. Fee, "The Corrections of Papyrus Bodmer II and Early Textual Transmission," Novum Testamentum, vn (1965), 247-257. Colwell concludes that "the relationship of 1})88 to established text-types should be reconsidered with the nature and extent of 1})88 corruption kept vividly in mind.1})88 might then look like a corruption of the Beta Text-type rather than like a mixed text" (op. cit., p. 388). 6 For other analyses of 1})88 see J. Neville Birdsall, The Bodmer Papyrus of the Gospel of John (London, 1960), M.-E. Boismard in Revue Biblique, LXX (1962), 120-133, and E. F. Rhodes, "The Corrections of Papyrus Bodmer II," New Testament Studies, xiv (1967-68), 271-281. .

Load more