CHAPTER THREE

THE CLAREMONT PROFILE METHOD FOR GROUPING MINUSCULE MANUSCRIPTS

New Testament textual critics have always welcomed with enthusi- 27 asm the discovery of a or of each new series of biblical papyri, such as the Chester Beatty or the Bodmer, and with each such discovery they welcome also the accompanying labors of analysis, the difficult reassessment of previously-known material, and the often painful revisions in method and theory that must be faced. In a similar way, textual critics invariably are delighted to find an early versional manuscript or that of a Church Father containing a portion of New Testament text, and they accept with pleasure the riches that are thereby added to the store of materials. But, I dare say, few indeed are the textual scholars who are elated by an addi- tional Greek minuscule manuscript or who view the many hundreds of New Testament minuscules as comprising anything less than a formidable mass of vexing and insoluble problems. Sheer quantity accounts for part of the problem. While there are presently eighty-one Greek papyri of the New Testament and 266 majuscule manuscripts, there are at last count 2754 Greek minus- cules.2 The difficulty of this minuscule problem may be indicated

1 A paper first read before the Society of Biblical Literature, Pacific Coast Section, in May, 1967, with the kind permission of Messrs. Paul R. McReynolds and Frederic Wisse and the other members of the staff of the International Greek New Testament Project at Claremont, where the present writer served as Post-Doctoral Fellow and consultant during the academic year, 1966/1967. The writer’s debt to these staff members and to President Ernest C. Colwell, Chairman of the American Executive Committee of the Project, will be obvious to all. 2 These figures are the latest given by Kurt Aland, “Die Konsequenzen der neueren Handschriftenfunde für die neutestamentliche Textkritik,” in K. Aland, Studien zur Überlieferung des Neuen Testaments und seines Textes (ANTF 2; : De Gruyter, 1967) 183. The figures below for the year 1909 are from Frederic G. Kenyon, Handbook to the of the New Testament (London: Macmillan, 19121) 57, 128–29 [19262]. [For current figures, see K. Aland, Kurzgefasste Liste der griechischen Handschriften des Neuen Testaments (ed. Kurt Aland; ANTF 1; Berlin: De Gruyter, 19942); for P100–P115, majuscules 0307–0309, minuscules 2857–2862, and lectionaries ll 2404–2412, see H. Kunst, Bericht der Hermann Kunst-Stiftung zur Förderung der neutestamentliche Textforschung für die Jahre 1995 bis 1998 (ed. Hermann Kunst; 42 chapter three also in the following comparative figures: in 1909, only fourteen papyri were known, but these have increased in number nearly 600%, and the extensive energy devoted to their analysis in recent years is not surprising; likewise, majuscule manuscripts have increased by nearly 60%. This means that textual critics have for generations been confronted by this burdensome mass of manuscripts, and yet—with one notable exception—they have failed or been unable to prose- cute a broad scale methodological effort directed toward the sorting and classification of this massive and intractable complex.3 The one exception, of course, was the work of Hermann von

Münster/W.: Hermann Kunst-Stiftung 1998) 14–18; for P116, majuscules 0310–0316; minuscules 2863–2877; and lectionaries ll 2413–2432, see Bericht der Hermann Kunst- Stiftung zur Förderung der neutestamentliche Textforschung für die Jahre 1998 bis 2003 (Münster/W.: Hermann Kunst-Stiftung 2003) 74–79.] 3 The current work on “1000 minuscules examined in 1000 passages” at the Münster Institut für neutestamentliche Textforschung can hardly qualify as classification of the minuscules, for its aim is to show which manuscripts belong to the Byzantine text so that they “may be henceforth neglected” in establishing the original text: see K. Aland, “The Significance of the Papyri for Progress in New Testament Research,” The Bible in Modern Scholarship: Papers Read at the 100th Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature, December 28–30, 1964 (ed., J. Philip Hyatt; Nashville/New York: Abingdon, 1965) 342–44; K. Aland, “Konsequenzen der neueren Handschriftenfunde,” 194–96. The publication of these data could aid a later process of classification, but it may be that the variants chosen will be unsuitable for the detailed analysis demanded. [The preceding statement was, in retrospect, overly pessimistic. The Münster Institut, over the past thirty-five or more years has pursued the analysis of New Testament by the use of test passages, not only to exclude those manuscripts deemed “of no value for reconstructing the original text and its early history,” but also to examine “the remaining manuscripts for their interrelationships, establishing fami- lies and groups among them where possible” (Kurt Aland and , The Text of the New Testament: An Introduction to the Critical Editions and to the Theory and Practice of Modern Textual Criticism [tr. Erroll F. Rhodes; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans; Leiden: Brill, 19892] 318; see the description of their method, by B. Aland, ibid., 317–37). In the process, the Alands, through the Münster Institut für neutesta- mentliche Textforschung, have produced an enormous amount of valuable data: Text und Textwert der griechischen Handschriften des Neuen Testaments (ed. K. Aland; ANTF 9–11 [Catholic Epistles, 3 vols. in 4, 1987]; 16–19 [, 4 vols., 1991]; 20–21 [Acts, 2 vols., 1993]; 26–27 [Mark, 2 vols., 1998]; 28–29 [Matthew, 2 vols., 2003]; 30–31 [Luke, 2 vols., 2003]; Berlin/New York: de Gruyter, 1987–2003). For assessment, see Bart D. Ehrman, “A Problem of Textual Circularity: The Alands on the Classification of New Testament Manuscripts,” Bib 70 (1989) 381–88; W. Larry Richards, “Test Passages or Profiles: A Comparison of Two Text-critical Methods,” JBL 115 (1996) 251–69; idem, “A Closer Look: Text und Textwert der griechischen Handschriften des Neuen Testaments: Die Katholischen Briefe,” AUSS 34 (1996) 37–46; and idem, “An Analysis of Aland’s Teststellen in 1 John,” NTS 44 (1998) 26–44.]