Text of Galatians and Its History

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Text of Galatians and Its History The Text of Galatians and Its History by Stephen C. Carlson Graduate Program in Religion Duke University Date:_______________________ Approved: ___________________________ Mark Goodacre, Co-Supervisor ___________________________ Bart D. Ehrman, Co-Supervisor ___________________________ Joel Marcus ___________________________ Douglas A. Campbell ___________________________ Michael W. Holmes Dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate Program in Religion in the Graduate School of Duke University 2012 i v ABSTRACT The Text of Galatians and Its History by Stephen C. Carlson Graduate Program in Religion Duke University Date:_______________________ Approved: ___________________________ Mark Goodacre, Co-Supervisor ___________________________ Bart D. Ehrman, Co-Supervisor ___________________________ Joel Marcus ___________________________ Douglas A. Campbell ___________________________ Michael W. Holmes An abstract of a dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate Program in Religion in the Graduate School of Duke University 2012 i v Copyright by Stephen C. Carlson 2012 Abstract This dissertation investigates the text of Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians and its history, how it changed over time. This dissertation performs a stemmatic analysis of 92 witnesses to the text of Galatians, using cladistic methods developed by computational biologists, to construct an unoriented stemma of the textual tradition. The stemma is then oriented based on the internal evidence of textual variants. After the stemma is oriented, the textual variants near the base of the stemma are examined and the text of Galatians is established based on stemmatic and eclectic principles. In addition, two branches of the textual tradition, the Western and the Eastern-Byzantine, are studied to assess the nature of textual variation in their history. This study reaches the conclusion that a modified stemmatic approach is an effective way to study both the text of a New Testament book and its history. iv Dedication This dissertation is dedicated to my family who have sacrificed so much for me. v Contents Abstract........................................................................................................................................................ iv List of Tables ............................................................................................................................................... ix List of Figures ............................................................................................................................................... x List of Abbreviations ................................................................................................................................. xii Acknowledgments .................................................................................................................................... xiv 1. Theories of New Testament Textual Criticism .................................................................................... 1 1.1 Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 1 1.2 A Textual Transmission Scenario for Evaluating Modern Text-Critical Methods .............11 1.3 Notions of Textual Evidence .......................................................................................................16 1.4 Methods of Textual Criticism ......................................................................................................23 1.4.1 Copy-Text Method ...................................................................................................................23 1.4.2 Majority-Text Method ............................................................................................................28 1.4.3 Stemmatics ...............................................................................................................................34 1.4.4 Reasoned and Thoroughgoing Eclectic Methods ...............................................................45 1.4.5 Coherence-Based Genealogical Method ...............................................................................53 1.5 Proposals and Road Map ..............................................................................................................58 2. Materials and Methods ..........................................................................................................................62 2.1 Materials and Manuscripts ..........................................................................................................62 2.2 Computational Stemmatics: Cladistics ......................................................................................72 2.3 Cladistics in Action: A Simplified Example ...............................................................................81 2.3 Contamination ...............................................................................................................................98 2.4 A Proposed, Unoriented Stemma for Galatians .................................................................... 104 vi 3. Orienting the Stemma of Galatians .................................................................................................. 117 3.1 Introduction ................................................................................................................................ 117 3.2 Examination of Variants for Inner Branch Oppositions ...................................................... 122 3.2.1 Inner Branch a ....................................................................................................................... 122 3.2.2 Inner Branch b ...................................................................................................................... 137 3.2.3 Inner Branch c ....................................................................................................................... 156 3.2.4 Inner Branch d ...................................................................................................................... 174 3.3 Orienting the Stemma ............................................................................................................... 182 4. Examining and Establishing the Text of Galatians ........................................................................ 188 4.1 Introduction ................................................................................................................................ 188 4.2 Examination of Variation Units with Early, Split Support .................................................. 191 4.3 A Critical Text of Galatians ....................................................................................................... 231 5. A History of Textual Variation in Galatians .................................................................................... 237 5.1 Introduction ................................................................................................................................ 237 5.2 The Western Branch and Prototype ....................................................................................... 239 5.2.1 Assessment of Scribal Tendencies for the Western Prototype ..................................... 272 5.3 The Eastern Branch and the Road to the Byzantine Text ................................................... 274 5.3.1 Stage α .................................................................................................................................... 276 5.3.2 Stage γ .................................................................................................................................... 281 5.3.3 Stage ψ .................................................................................................................................... 289 5.3.4 Stage σ .................................................................................................................................... 301 5.3.5 Stage κ: The Byzantine Text and Prototype ..................................................................... 308 5.4 Conclusions ................................................................................................................................. 316 6. Contrasts and Conclusions ................................................................................................................ 318 vii 6.1 An External History of the Text of Galatians ......................................................................... 318 6.2 Zuntz and Hort ........................................................................................................................... 321 6.3 Contrasts with the Critical Texts of the Galatians ................................................................ 330 6.4 Suggestions for Further Study ................................................................................................. 333 Appendix A: Errata for Swanson ........................................................................................................... 335 Appendix B: Critical Text of the Byzantine Prototype ...................................................................... 344 Bibliography ............................................................................................................................................
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