Bodmer Papyri, Scribal Culture, and Textual Transmission


Book Description

Bodmer Papyri, Scribal Culture, and Textual Transmission presents a collection of Gordon Fee’s seminal works on New Testament textual criticism. His meticulous and thorough examination of New Testament papyrus Bodmer P66 (1968) insightfully describes its textual character and significant relationship to P75 and other early manuscripts. P66 and P75, among our most important and earliest papyri, were published only a half-dozen years before Fee’s volume, which has been heavily used and influential ever since. Prominent is his discovery of scribal activity in P66 that tended to correct its text toward the Byzantine. Fee’s ten successive, often quoted articles contribute substantially to our understanding of textual transmission and text-critical methodology, with an emphasis also on patristic citations. Completed with ample bibliographical resources, this volume is an indispensable resource for future research. Distinguished book reviewers wrote about Fee (1968): “full scale study” (Kilpatrick); “definitive analysis” (Metzger); “a most valuable work, ... which greatly advances the discipline of textual criticism in knowledge and method” (Birdsall).




Perspectives on New Testament Textual Criticism, Volume 2


Book Description

Perspectives on New Testament Textual Criticism, Volume 2, with articles published during 2006-2017, treats many aspects of New Testament textual criticism, emphasizing the criteria for constructing the earliest attainable text, and extracting stories told by “rejected” variants that illuminate issues in the early Christian churches.




Scribal Habits in Early Greek New Testament Papyri


Book Description

This book investigates the scribal habits of P45, P46, P47, P66, P72, and P75, the six most extensive early New Testament manuscripts. All the singular readings in these six papyri are studied along with all the corrections.




The Chester Beatty Biblical Papyri at Ninety


Book Description

Die Reihe Manuscripta Biblica befasst sich mit Handschriften der jüdischen oder christlichen Bibel. Sie ist offen für alle Fächer und Methoden, die das historische Objekt in seiner Vielfalt in den Blick nehmen: Text und Paratext, die Art der Präsentation und Organisation des "heiligen Textes" sowie die Struktur des Artefakts, seine künstlerische Ausgestaltung, Produktion, Verbreitung, Benutzung und Rezeption.




The Early Text of the New Testament


Book Description

This book is about the transmission of the New Testament text in the second and third centuries of early Christianity. It explores the world of manuscripts, scribes, and early Christian textual culture.




Christian Origins and Greco-Roman Culture


Book Description

In "Christian Origins and Greco-Roman Culture," Stanley Porter and Andrew Pitts assemble an international team of scholars whose work has focused on reconstructing the social matrix for earliest Christianity through the use of Greco-Roman materials and literary forms. Each essay moves forward the current understanding of how primitive Christianity situated itself in relation to evolving Hellenistic culture. Some essays focus on configuring the social context for the origins of the Jesus movement and beyond, while others assess the literary relation between early Christian and Greco-Roman texts.




Scribal Harmonization in the Synoptic Gospels


Book Description

In Scribal Harmonization Cambry G. Pardee examines the earliest Greek manuscripts of the Synoptic Gospels for evidence that scribes altered the text of the Gospels—either deliberately or inadvertently—in ways that eliminated discrepancies between them. The phenomenon of harmonization demonstrates that a scribe’s memories of previous experiences with gospel traditions could have a powerful effect on the manuscripts that they produced. This book assembles for the first time a catalogue of harmonizing variants from every manuscript of Matthew, Mark, and Luke from the fourth century and earlier. Far from reducing the unique voices of the individual evangelists to a single melody, the earliest scribes contributed new tones, innovative strains, and fascinating harmonies to the four-fold gospel tradition.




One-Volume Libraries: Composite and Multiple-Text Manuscripts


Book Description

Composite and multiple-text manuscripts are traditionally studied for their individual texts, but recent trends in codicology have paved the way for a more comprehensive approach: Manuscripts are unique artefacts which reveal how they were produced and used as physical objects. While multiple-text manuscripts codicologically are to be considered as production units, i.e. they were originally planned and realized in order to carry more than one text, composites consist of formerly independent codicological units and were put together at a later stage with intentions that might be completely different from those of its original parts. Both sub-types of manuscripts are still sometimes called "miscellanies", a term relating to the texts only. The codicological difference is important for reconstructing why and how these manuscripts which in many cases resemble (or contain) a small library were produced and used. Contributions on the manuscript cultures of China, India, Africa, the Islamic world and European traditions lead not only to the conclusion that "one-volume libraries" have been produced in many manuscript cultures, but allow also for the identification of certain types of uses.




The Text of the New Testament in Contemporary Research


Book Description

The Text of the New Testament in Contemporary Research: Essays on the Status Quaestionis provides a thoroughly up-to-date assessment of every major aspect of New Testament textual criticism. The twenty-four essays in the volume, all written by internationally acknowledged experts in the field, cover every major aspect of the discipline, discussing the advances that have been made since the mid twentieth century. With full and informative bibliographies, these contributions will be essential reading for anyone interested in moving beyond the standard handbooks in order to see where the discipline now stands, a vade mecum for all students and text-critical scholars for a generation to come.




Jesus and the Manuscripts


Book Description

Jesus and the Manuscripts, by popular author and Bible scholar Craig A. Evans, introduces readers to the diversity and complexity of the ancient literature that records the words and deeds of Jesus. This diverse literature includes the familiar Gospels of the New Testament, the much less familiar literature of the Rabbis and of the Qur’an, and the extracanonical narratives and brief snippets of material found in fragments and inscriptions. This book critically analyzes important texts and quotations in their original languages and engages the current scholarly discussion. Evans argues that the Gospel of Thomas is not early or independent of the New Testament Gospels but that it should be dated to the late second century. He also argues that Secret Mark, like the recently published Gospel of Jesus’ Wife, is probably a modern forgery. Of special interest is the question of how long the autographs of New Testament writings remained in circulation. Evans argues that the evidence suggests that most of these autographs remained available for copying and study for more than one hundred years and thus stabilized the text. Key points and features:Written by popular author and Bible scholar Craig A. EvansIncludes 20+ pages of high-quality color photosWalks readers through the various works of ancient literature, both biblical and non-biblical, that mention JesusCritically analyzes important texts and quotations in their original languages and engages the current scholarly discussion