CHAPTER SIXTEEN WHAT TEXT CAN NEW TESTAMENT TEXTUAL CRITICISM ULTIMATELY REACH?* The question posed in the title1 of this paper is daunting for many rea- sons, but for one above all: in my opinion it strikes to the heart of the dilemma upon which New Testament textual criticism is caught. Our study begins by sketching the problems which led to the dilemma. Next, three exhibits which illustrate the dilemma will be presented; they will be glossed with remarks from other scholars. The final section uses the insights gained from the exhibits to answer the question “What text can New Testament textual criticism ultimately reach?” I. Prologue The classicist Paul Maas observed that “The business of textual crit- icism is to produce a text as close as possible to the original.”2 Few would disagree with Maas’ noble-sounding dictum, but applying it to the text of the New Testament is especially difficult. First and fore- most among the problems is the difficulty of defining “original.” The * Reproduced by kind permission of Uitgeverij Kok (http://www.kok.nl). 1 The title was suggested by the convener of the section and our host in Münster, Prof. Dr. Barbara Aland. It stems from a series of discussions between us on this sub- ject, conducted both informally and in the Textual Criticism Seminar of the Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas. 2 P. Maas, Textual Criticism (translated from the 3rd German edition [1957]: Oxford 1958), 3. Maas was, of course, a proponent of “stemmatics,” the school of textual criti- cism associated with the name of Karl Lachmann (1793-1851). While still ubiquitous in handbooks of New Testament textual criticism, classicists now recognize that Lach- mann’s approach is beset with problems. M. D. Reeve summed up the position of clas- sicists by asserting that “establishing the exclusive derivation of one manuscript from another is not merely difficult but impossible” Eliminatio(“ codicum descriptorum: A Methodological Problem,” in Editing Greek and Latin Texts, ed. J. N. Grant [New York 1989], 1). See also J. Willis, Latin Textual Criticism, Illinois Studies in Language and Lit- erature 61 (Urbana/Chicago/London 1972), who remarks that “Lachmannian methods would fail every time that they were applied” (30), because the practical difficulties are too great: “between the sixth and ninth centuries the lives of classical manuscripts were liable to be of short continuance and full of trouble.” Willis goes on to observe that “a stemma can sometimes tell us which is the reading best attested, never which is the best” (32, italics added). 220 Chapter Sixteen Gospel of Mark illustrates the point. Is the “original” Mark the “Mark” found in our fourth-century and later manuscripts? Or is it the “Mark” recovered from the so-called “minor agreements” between Matthew and Luke? And which—if any—of the four extant endings of “Mark” is “original”? 137 And how does the “Secret Gospel of Mark”—apparently known to and cited by Clement of Alexandria—relate to the “original” Mark? It is clear that, without even having to consider individual variants, de- termining which “Mark” is “original” is a difficult—and perhaps even impossible—task. Another obstacle is the sheer number of sources now available to the textual critic. When Erasmus set out to produce his edition of the New Testament in 1516, he employed only six manuscripts all dating from the eleventh century and later; with one exception (MS 1), all were of the Byzantine text-type.3 He also relied heavily on the Vulgate; Patristic evidence was ignored. Today, however, one must reckon not only with thousands of manuscripts, but also with hundreds of Patristic texts, as well as a growing miscellany of apocryphal and liturgical odds and ends. It should be pointed out, however, that this surfeit of evidence is not a new problem; it was already evident in 1720, when Richard Bentley rather modestly proposed not to recover a text “as close as pos- sible to the original,” but only to produce “an edition of the Gr. Test. [= Greek Testament] exactly as it was in the best exemplars at the time of the Council of Nice [= Nicaea]” (i.e., in 325 ce).4 Bentley’s lead manu- script (which he described as “the oldest and best in the world”5) was Codex Alexandrinus (MS A, fifth century). Bentley assumed that by supplementing this “oldest and best” manuscript with readings from other manuscripts—all of which he presumed were later than Codex Alexandrinus—and from the Latin Vulgate, he could triangulate back to the single recension which he presumed existed at the time of the Council of Nicaea. His project, however, led to unexpected discoveries, especially in one of the earliest collations of Codex Vaticanus (MS B, 3 He used MSS 1eap 1r 2e 2ap 4ap 7p. Their dates are, respectively: XII, XII, XII, XII, XV, and XI. Note that for the gospels, Erasmus had 2 MSS, for Acts 3 MSS, for the corpus paulinum 4 MSS, and for Revelations, only 1 defective MS. Cp. C. C. Tarelli, “Erasmus’ Manuscripts of the Gospels,” JThS 44 (1943), 155-62. 4 “Dr. Bentley’s Proposals for Printing A New Edition of the Greek Testament and St. Hierom’s Latin Version,” in The Works of Richard Bentley, D.D., ed. A. Dyce, Vol. III (London 1838; reprinted New York 1966), 487. Also reproduced in J. H. Monk, The Life of Richard Bentley, D.D., Vol. I (London 18332), 398. 5 Quoted by R. C. Jebb, Richard Bentley (New York 1882), 163..