THE TEXT and TRANSMISSION of 2 THESSALONIANS by GRANT G
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THE TEXT AND TRANSMISSION OF 2 THESSALONIANS by GRANT G. EDWARDS A thesis submitted to the University of Birmingham for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Department of Theology and Religion School of Philosophy, Theology, and Religion College of Arts and Law University of Birmingham December 2019 University of Birmingham Research Archive e-theses repository This unpublished thesis/dissertation is copyright of the author and/or third parties. The intellectual property rights of the author or third parties in respect of this work are as defined by The Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 or as modified by any successor legislation. Any use made of information contained in this thesis/dissertation must be in accordance with that legislation and must be properly acknowledged. Further distribution or reproduction in any format is prohibited without the permission of the copyright holder. ABSTRACT The text and transmission of 2 Thessalonians has not received serious scholarly attention in more than a century. This ancient Christian letter survives in Greek in more than 600 manuscripts, but prior editions have not been based on a comprehensive and systematic selection of the extant evidence. This thesis examines the Greek manuscript tradition of 2 Thessalonians using the Teststellen method to identify the manuscripts most important for the early history of the text. Based on these manuscripts, a critical text and apparatus is presented in Chapter 2. Chapter 3 offers a textual commentary which details the rationale for the selected readings and discusses the most relevant textual variants. In Chapter 4, the genealogical relationships between the manuscripts are analyzed to ascertain what can be detected about the textual transmission of 2 Thessalonians. Chapter 5 catalogues and examines the various paratextual features of the manuscripts included in this study. This thesis provides, to date, the most comprehensive account of the most significant manuscripts of 2 Thessalonians. It also includes the most extensive genealogical data available for the epistle’s textual tradition. Its new assessment of the data results in five differences from the standard critical edition (NA28). In addition to numerous genealogical and paratextual findings, the thesis demonstrates the stability of the extant tradition of 2 Thessalonians. ii Homo timens Deum, voluntatem eius in Scripturis sanctis diligenter inquirit. Et ne amet certamina, pietate mansuetus; praemunitus etiam scientia linguarum, ne in verbis locutionibusque ignotis haereat, praemunitus etiam cognitione quarumdam rerum necessariarum, ne vim naturamve earum quae propter similitudinem adhibentur, ignoret; adiuvante etiam codicum veritate, quam sollers emendationis diligentia procuravit; veniat ita instructus ad ambigua Scripturarum discutienda atque solvenda. – Augustine, De doctrina Christiana 3.1 iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my gratitude to several individuals whose generosity and support helped make this thesis possible. At an early stage, Bruce Morrill generously met with me more than once to discuss my project. His guidance and encouragement were timely and invaluable. He also kindly shared some of his research with me and helped me track down the latest images of manuscripts. Along these lines, the staff at the INTF and CSNTM were also very responsive to my requests to access images and digitized microfilm. I am grateful for the work of these institutions and their eagerness to support researchers. This thesis quite literally would not have been possible without the technological support of my Co-Supervisor, Catherine Smith. She helped me gain facility with the tools available at the Workspace for Collaborative Editing. She also created the scripts which enabled the analysis of the genealogical relationships between the manuscripts in the textual history chapter. I am also thankful for how accessible she was over email and for her patience in answering all of my questions. I could not be more grateful for my Lead Supervisor, Hugh Houghton. He has been an exemplary Doktorvater. His enthusiasm for my project never waned and his input and expertise have made this thesis immeasurably better. I am also grateful for the genuine care and concern which he has for his students and which is so evident in his approach to advising. I looked forward to our supervision sessions knowing I would be encouraged, challenged, and sharpened. Finally, I would like to thank my family for their encouragement and especially the time they allowed me to work on the thesis away from home. I undertook this project while also working full-time—such an endeavor could not have happened without their support and sacrifice. The love and faith of my wife, Christy, and my daughters, Allie and Lydia, helped sustain me from beginning to end. iv Given the nature of this thesis with its countless text-critical details and calculations, I am keenly aware of the possibility of errata. Indeed, having undertaken this type of research, I am now much more sympathetic to the copyists who produced the manuscripts of 2 Thessalonians and the challenges they faced in striving to reproduce their exemplars error- free. Nevertheless, any errors or other shortcomings that remain in this thesis are my own. v CONTENTS LIST OF TABLES ...................................................................................................................... viii LIST OF FIGURES ........................................................................................................................x ABBREVIATIONS ...................................................................................................................... xi 1. INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................................1 1.1 Manuscript Selection ...........................................................................................................5 1.2 The Original Text .................................................................................................................9 1.3 Text-Critical Methods ........................................................................................................13 1.4 The Authorship of 2 Thessalonians ...................................................................................27 1.5 Chapter Summary and Thesis Preview ..............................................................................29 2. CRITICAL TEXT AND APPARATUS ....................................................................................31 2.1 Digital Editing: Tools and Process ...................................................................................31 2.2 Manuscripts in this Critical Edition ...................................................................................32 2.3 Guide to the Text and Critical Apparatus ..........................................................................36 2.4 Critical Text and Apparatus ...............................................................................................39 3. TEXTUAL COMMENTARY ...................................................................................................99 4. A TEXTUAL HISTORY OF 2 THESSALONIANS ..............................................................161 4.1 Limitations, Preview, Method ..........................................................................................163 4.2 Previous Textual Histories of the Pauline Epistles ..........................................................165 4.3 Previous Textual Histories and 2 Thessalonians .............................................................171 4.4 The Byzantine Text ..........................................................................................................184 4.5 Closely Related Manuscripts and Groups of Manuscripts ...............................................198 4.6 Excursus: Testing the Teststellen Method .......................................................................202 4.7 Summary of Genealogical Findings .................................................................................208 5. THE PARATEXTUAL FEATURES OF THE MANUSCRIPTS ..........................................213 5.1 The Euthalian Apparatus ..................................................................................................215 5.2 Hypotheses .......................................................................................................................216 vi 5.3 Kephalaia Lists .................................................................................................................222 5.4 Stichometry ......................................................................................................................229 5.5 Book Order .......................................................................................................................233 5.6 Lection Identifiers ............................................................................................................235 5.7 Summary of Findings .......................................................................................................241 5.8 Bringing It All Together: The Anatomy of a Pauline Manuscript ...................................243 6. CONCLUSION ........................................................................................................................251 6.1 Thesis Summary and Suggestions for Future Research ...................................................251