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CHAPTER SIX

METHOD IN THE STUDY OF 1

Do the majority of the Greek lectionaries of the agree with one another so consistently that it is possible to speak of their text as "the text" ? It has generally been assumed that the text of lectionaries does not merit serious attention, and that even if they should agree in text, the quality of that text would not justify its study.2 But the discussion of the quality and significance of this text may reasonably be postponed until its existence has been established.3 The complete proof that there is a distinct lectionary text must await the collation of a considerable number of manuscripts, but enough evidence can be advanced to show that the existence of such a distinct text is highly probable, if not certain.4 This evidence was obtained by sampling the text of a fair number of lectionaries­ twenty-sixlections 5 in from five to fifty-six manuscripts having been

1 Originally published as "Is There a Lectionary Text of the Gospels?" Harvard Theological Review, XXV (1932), 73-84. 2 This is the position, for instance, of von Soden (Die Schriften des Neuen Testaments, I, i, 19 f.), who excluded lectionaries from his studies. 3 The Department of and Early Christian Literature of the University of Chicago inaugurated an investigation of the text of the lectionaries. In 1933 preliminary studies were published in the volume, Prolegomena to the Study of the Lectionary Text of the Gospels ("Studies in the Lectionary Text of the Greek New Testament"), edited by Ernest Cadman Colwell and Donald W. Riddle (University of Chicago Press). Professor Allen P. Wikgren replaced the original editors, and in 1963 published a review and summary of a dozen publications and papers that have carried this study further. See Allen P. Wikgren, "Chicago Studies in the Greek Lectionary of the New Testament," in Biblical and Patristic Studies in Memory of Robert Pierce Casey, ed. by J. Neville Birdsall and Robert W. Thompson (Freiburg, 1963), pp. 96-121. Wikgren concludes that the method expounded in the present chapter has been shown to be sound by these subsequent studies. 4 A large part of the evidence which follows was collected in the summer of 1930 during a three-months' study of the lectionaries in the Bodleian Library, the British Museum, the John Rylands Library, and the Biblio­ theque Nationale. 6 By "lection" is meant the section of the gospels read at one service; thus, the "lection" for Sunday is John 1: 1-17. GOSPEL LECTIONARIES 85

collated against Charles Lloyd's edition of the Textus Receptus (Oxford, 1894). These twenty-six passages fall into three groups on the basis of the extent of their difference from Stephanus. (r) In seven of these sample lections the variants from Stephanus are neither considerable enough nor consistent enough to imply the existenceofalectionarytext except insofar as that text is practically identical with Stephanus. (2) In fourteen lections the variants are not very numerous or decisive, and yet occur regularly enough to suggest a lectionary text distinct from Stephanus. (3) In five lections the variants are so numerous and consistent as to demon­ strate the existence of a lectionary text distinct from that of Stephanus. (r) The rather neutral evidence of the first group of seven lections must be interpreted in the light of the evidence of the two following groups. When so interpreted, it plainly indicates the existence of the lectionary text here also, but shows that it practically coincides with the text of Stephanus in these lections. Three 1 of these lections are from the Synaxarion (for the movable year), and four 2 are from the Menologion (for the fixed year). In each of these lections the agreement of the lectionaries with each other is too close to be accidental, and the number of variants from Stephanus is trifling. Almost any one of the manuscripts which contain the text of Stephanus would be found to differ more from the printed text than do the forty lectionaries here used. This can easily be illustrated from the collations published by Scrivener (20 manuscripts), which, for the lections in question, show an aver­ age departure of three readings each from the printed text. As is well known, the printed text of Stephanus as a whole is not a perfect reproduction of the readings of any New Testament codex.

TABLE I W of y' !~,l of John (4 : 46-54) in 40 lectionaries Total number of variants 57 Average number of variants per lectionary 1t No variant from Stephanus in 12 lectionaries One variant from Stephanus in 12 lectionaries

1 W of y' !~8. of John (4:46-54); aix~~ixTov y' of John (15:17-16:2); acx~~ixTov y' of Matthew (7: 24-8 :4). 2 KuptlXK"lj rtpo Twv cpwTwv (Mark 1:1-8); September 3 (John rn:9-16); June 24 (Luke 1 :1-15); and ew(hvov y' (Mark 16:9-20).