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 , 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. , founder of the of World Literature at -. 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.