The Case of the Extra Verse in John 1

The verse numbering of John 1 may differ according to the edition one uses. The description of the problem is straightforward: in a number of older editions, the current verse 38 is divided over two verses, making it into verses 38 and 39, and then of course the rest of the chapter has verse numbers one higher than today. Hence those older editions have 52 verses in John 1, one more than the 51 in others, including present-day editions and translations. It is the most striking example of diverging verse numbers in the New Testament,^[1] though still nothing compared to the variation in chapter (= Psalm) numbers observed in the Old Testament Psalms.

Two simple questions arise: (1) who decided to put the two verses together? and (2) why was this done?

The second question turns out to be more easy than the first: compared to those older editions, the verses would actually seem to have been put back together. The very first edition with the still current system of New Testament verse numbers, Robertus Stephanus’s 1551 diglot, had 51 verses in John 1, just as today, and John 1:38-51 exactly divided as it is now.^[2]

This observation raises two additional questions: (3) when was verse 38 first split in two? and (4) why was this done?

To start with the third question: Stephanus’s 1555 Latin Bible, and Beza’s first major New Testament edition of 1556/1557 did not split the verse. The first edition with 52 verses in John 1 that I was able to find is Beza’s second major edition of 1565. It is hard to say whether the change reflects a decision by the typesetters or by Beza. In any case, the split verse on p. 362 (of part 1) is not an error or accident. Indeed, just as all the other verses, verses 38 and 39 are formatted as separate paragraphs; moreover, Beza’s annotations to John 1:34-44, printed on the same page, follow the new numbering.

It is very likely that this 1565 edition was indeed the first with the split verse, for surprisingly enough the remaining portion of John 1 on its next page (p. 363) is still numbered as verses 44 to 51, instead of 45 to 52, and the annotations again follow suit.
Beza’s 1565 minor edition^[3] has the new numbering of John 1, but now without flaws or hesitations, and so it remains in Beza’s editions, albeit with some oddities here and there.^[4] The fact that Greek New Testaments such as the famous Elzevir editions follow Beza’s numbering may be an additional indication that these editions are closer to Beza than to Stephanus.

A reason for Beza or his typesetters to change the numbering, my fourth question, is not easily found. The old verse 38 may seem rather long, but its length is not excessive. In any case, names can now be attached to the two systems: a version of John 1 with 51 verses follows Stephanic numbering, whereas it having 52 verses points to Bezan numbering.

Apparently then, these two numbering systems happily (?) coexisted for some centuries. It seems a case of England against the continent, but not entirely so.^[5] Their coexistence finally leads to the answers to my first question: why is the Stephanic numbering of John 1 the only one used today? It turns out it was chosen by Eberhard Nestle for his important 1898 edition, which he based on those of Westcott-Hort, Weymouth, Tischendorf, and Weiss. Confronted with the divergences in numbering, he opted expressly for the oldest, original one:

Verses … are numbered as found in Westcott-Hort and Weymouth, according to the 1550 [sic] Stephanus edition in which they were first introduced; from which regrettably later editions, among which Tischendorf and Weiss, sometimes diverge.^[6]

Indeed, a large amount of confusion, as well as this small contribution, would have been unnecessary, had not Beza’s 1565 edition introduced an extra verse in John’s first chapter.^[7]

In sum: (a) in 1565 Beza introduced an extra verse in John 1, by splitting verse 38 in two; (b) for centuries, two differently numbered versions of John 1 coexisted; (c) in 1898 Eberhard Nestle took the influential decision to adopt the original, Stephanic numbering.

Notes
[1] See below for Acts 20. There must be many more cases, isolated to a few editions only. E.g. the Dutch 1562 Deux-Aes Bible, followed by the 1637 Statenvertaling, splits Rom 7:25 in two; Whittingham NT 1557 and GB 1560, followed by KJV 1611, split Acts 19:40 in two. KJV 1611 splits 2 Cor 13:12 and thus has a verse 14 in this chapter (I guess because the split coincides with the beginning of a new column).
[2] There is however an error in verse numbering on p. 280^v: verses 26-30 are numbered 27-31, and there is no verse 26; the first verse on the following page is again 31. Of course this error has no bearing on the rest of the chapter.
[3] The 1565 minor edition is later than the 1565 major edition: the former’s dedicatory letter to Louis I de Bourbon is dated “x. Calendas Martias” (February 20th) of 1565 (p. ¶¶ iiii^v), whereas the latter’s dedicatory letter to Queen Elizabeth is dated earlier, namely December 19th, 1564 (p. * v^v).
[4] Such as a missing verse number for the annotation on verse 40 in the 1582 major edition; or, in the same edition, verse 52 suddenly numbered as 51.
[5] Stephanic (51) numbering of John 1 is found in (just a selection): Stephanus NT 1551; Beza NT 1556; Whittingham NT 1557; Geneva Bible 1560; Bieskensbijbel 1560; Deux-Aesbijbel 1562; Bishop’s Bible 1568; Rheims NT 1582; Hutter NT 1559 and 1602; KJV 1611; Amelote NT 1686; Simon NT 1702; Tregelles GNT; Westcott-Hort NT ¹1881; Nestle NTG ¹1898.
Bezan (52) numbering is found in (again just a selection): Beza NT ²1565 ³1582 ⁴1589 ⁵1598; Elzevir NTG ¹1624 ²1633; Statenvertaling 1637; Whittaker GNT 1633; Curcellaeus NT 1658; Schmidt Versio 1658 (though John 1:38-39 is printed as a single paragraph); Fell GNT 1675; Mill NTG 1707; Wettstein NTG 1751; Harwood NT 1768; Griesbach NTG ¹1777; Lachmann NTG ¹1831; Tischendorf NTG ⁸1869; Baljon NTG 1898.
[6] “Versus … Numerantur ut apud HR [Westcott-Hort and Weymouth] secundum editionem Stephanicam anni 1550 [sic], i. e. primam, in quam introducti sunt; dolendum, posteriores, TW [Tischendorf and Weiss] quoque, interdum ab illa recessisse” (p. 660; my translation).
[7] Or to put it differently: … had the entire world adopted Beza’s numbering. Indeed, in Acts 24, the same 1565 edition takes verse 18 and 19 together, thus producing a chapter with 27 verses instead of the 28 verses found in Stephanus’s 1551 edition and Beza’s own 1556/1557 edition. In this case, the Bezan numbering won the day and the Stephanic numbering quickly disappeared from the scene. It is perhaps a matter of luck that Nestle was not aware of the Stephanic numbering at this point …

New Marginalia to Minuscule 69

The 5th of March, 2013, the participants of the Eighth Birmingham Colloquium on the Textual Criticism of the New Testament visited the Leicester Record Office in order to take a look at the famous Leicester Codex, minuscule 69.

David Parker lecturing on the Leicester Codex

The manuscript is very interesting. As a member of family 13 (the so-called Ferrar group, or φ), it links Britain to Southern Italy in mysterious ways. The manuscript was studied by Erasmus during his stay in Cambridge (1510-1515), in the years that Erasmus’ New Testament project still consisted of hardly more than critically collating and annotating the text of the Latin Vulgate with whatever Greek sources he could find. Some of the particular readings of min. 69 subsequently found their way into Erasmus’ Annotationes.

During our visit, we were drawn into yet another interesting aspect of the manuscript’s history, namely a set of marginal notes to the word Ἀντιπᾶς in Revelation 2:13 (f. 203^r).
First, an unknown annotator, in the decades before 1844, wrote the following (in ink!):

Originally written Αντειπας and the erasure and alteration of τιπ in blacker ink is obvious.

Tregelles, who studied the manuscript while preparing his own edition of the text of Revelation (published in 1844), reacted sharply:

There is no erasure or alteration. S.P. Tregelles.

One easily senses some irritation in the double underlining of “no”. In any case, O. T. Dobbin (did we already know that he studied this manuscript?) found the case important enough to add his own two cents:

Dr. Tregelles is certainly correct – O. T. Dobbin.

Scholarship in the margins?

After careful study of the passage, we (Tommy Wasserman and Jan Krans) could not but fully agree with Tregelles’ and Dobbin’s judgment. In fact, it is amazing to see with what ease people then and now cover the margins of manuscripts with such trifles

NB: This post is published on both the Amsterdam New Testament Weblog and Evangelical Textual Criticism.

Paul, John, and Apocalypic Eschatology

Last Friday (February 15th, 2013), our Professor of New Testament Studies, Martin de Boer, retired from his academic duties. We, as his colleagues, took up the good academic tradition of offering him a Festschrift. And in just as good an academic tradition, he was indeed surprised and honoured when Bert Jan Lietaert Peerbolte, his successor, presented the book:

We managed, as the title shows, a certain degree of thematic unity, which is a Good Thing, not only according to the publisher. The book contains <blurb>important contributions by leading New Testament scholars</blurb>, which were at least for us as editors a pleasure to read and see through publication.

My own small article, which closes the book, is admittedly rather loosely connected to the theme, as it deals with the Pauline commentator "Ambrosiaster", and then only with the question who coined the name "Ambrosiaster". (If you think you already knew the answer, you will have to read the article.)

The book can be previewed at Google Books. It is available from Brill, both in electronic and old-fashioned format; the latter, fittingly, is not yet listed in the series Supplements to Novum Testamentum. But it exists, for <eyewitness testimony>it was offered to Martin de Boer last Friday</eyewitness testimony>. Ad multos annos!

Jesus Traditions and the Construction of Masculinities in World Christianity

"Jesus traditions" have an afterlife as well. This also applies to the use of Jesus tradition in the construction of (ideal) masculinities around the globe. With Dr. Adriaan van Klinken (Leeds University), Dr. Peter-Ben Smit co-edited a special volume of the journal Exchange dedicated to this subject. Its contents can be found here: http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/content/1572543x/42/1

SBL International Meeting

Today was to be the last day for paper proposals for the upcoming Meeting of SBL International, to be held in St. Andrews (July 7-11, 2013), but I just received notice that the deadline has been extended to February 11th. (Lucky you ...)
There is a program unit on (Biblical) Textual Criticism called ”Working With Biblical Manuscripts”, which already has quite some interesting papers coming, but which can of course use some more ...
[JK; updated 31 January 2013 (also changing “Aberdeen” to “St. Andrews” (lucky me)]

Plagiarism in 1880

Those old German journals can be fascinating, once you are used to the language and the script. What about this one:

Source: Literarisches Centralblatt für Deutschland 32 (1881), cols. 811-812 (via GB; two parts put together in Photoshop).

The nice sentence is, of course, “Besonders der letzte Umstand veranlaßt uns zu folgender Erklärung ...” It would seem to me that the plagiarism was not done very intelligently.

Sloppy Scholarship?

The Dutch academic world is still in shock over the immense fraud by Diederik Stapel. One week ago, the term “slodderwetenschap” was introduced to the Dutch language as translation of “sloppy science”. Science and scholarship should be exact and meticulous. Scholars and scientists should stick to the rules and be fully transparent on their findings and the ways in which they have obtained them.

Of course, we all know examples where scholars are less than exact in their references and in the way they treat their sources. Only today, we have come across a striking example of this type of scholarship. The dissertation of José M. Jané Coca, “Ser hallado en Él.” La reciprocidad intersubjetiva entre Pablo y Cristo. Un estudio exegético-teológico de Flp 3 (Tesi Gregoriana Serie Teologica 157; Rome: Editrice Pontificia Università Gregoriana, 2008), contains at least one case of plagiarism.

In chapter 1 the author deals with “Mysticism in Paul”. Footnote 53 of this chapter contains a typo that is no doubt due to parablepsis (and perhaps a not fully active command of the beautiful German language). It quotes Rudolf Bultmann as follows: “Gerade das, was die Mystik macht, kann man nicht übernehmen, ohne den Glauben preiszugeben.” The correct quote, however, would have added the words “zur Mystik”: “Gerade das, was die Mystik zur Mystik macht, ...”

A search in various libraries eventually disclosed the source of the typo. It is also found in Daniel Marguerat, “La mystique de l’apôtre Paul”, in: Jacques Schlosser (ed.), Paul de Tarse. Congrès de l’ACFEB (Strasbourg, 1995), 307-329. Footnote 2 on page 310 corresponds exactly with the text of Jané Coca’s note 53 (p. 28).

This observation made us aware that there might be more at stake here. And yes, there is more at stake. Let us mention a couple of examples by giving the Spanish text first (Jané Coca), followed by the French original (Marguerat):

• “Pero ¿cómo el cristianismo ha superado la aporía que constituía la muerte del Maestro y la no realización de su profecía apocalíptica? Schweitzer responde: por la mística” (Jané Coca, p. 26).
• “Mais alors, comment le christianisme a-t-il surmonté l’aporie que constituaient la mort du Maître et la non-réalisation de sa prophétie apocalyptique? Schweitzer répond: par la mystique” (Marguerat, p. 309).

(Note the singular “constituía” against the plural “constituaient”. Is this sloppy translation as well?)

• “Esta es la continuidad que presenta A. Schweitzer: el mundo nuevo esperado por Jesús no se ha disuelto como un sueño en la cruz; la resurrección, vector del mundo nuevo, ha introducido en el mundo una dinámica de muerte y de vida en la que se encuentra el creyente que vive ‘en Cristo’” (Jané Coca, p. 26).
• “On perçoit la continuité que pose Albert Schweitzer: le monde nouveau attendu par Jésus ne s’est pas dissous comme un rêve à la croix; la résurrection, vecteur du monde nouveau, a introduit ici-bas une dynamique de mort et de vie, où se trouve entraîné le croyant qui vit ‘en Christ’” (Marguerat, p. 310).

• “La genialidad de Pablo, pues, sería esta conversión de la concepción apocalíptica de Jesús en un programa de pertenencia mística a Cristo, que realiza desde el interior la redención esperada por el hombre de Nazaret” (Jané Coca, p. 26).
• “Le coup de génie de Paul aurait donc été cette conversion du scénario apocalyptique de Jésus en un programme d’appartenance mystique au Christ, qui réalise par l’intérieur la rédemption espérée par l’homme de Nazareth” (Marguerat, p. 310)

• “Se oponen a la tesis los que rechazan la escatología consecuente del Jesús histórico, pero también los que se indignan viendo degradado al rango subalterno el debate paulino sobre la justificación por la fe, sin hablar del anatema lanzado por la teología dialéctica contra la idea misma de una mística neotestamentaria, considerada como el apogeo de la tentativa religiosa de captar a Dios” (Jané Coca, p. 28).
• “Car la thèse fail l’unanimité contre elle: s’y opposent ceux qui rejettent l’eschatologie conséquente du Jésus historique, mais aussi ceux qui s’indignent (avec raison) de voir dégradé au rang subalterne le débat paulinien sur la justification par la foi, sans parler de l’anathème lancé par la théologie dialectique contre l’idée même d’une mystique néotestamentaire, considérée comme l’apogée de la tentative religieuse de capter Dieu” (Marguerat, p. 310).

To this last passage, Jané Coca attaches his footnote 53 mentioned above, which contains a citation by Barth (in French!), a citation by Bultmann (in German!), and a reference to a book by Van Cangh. All this comes directly from Marguerat’s footnote 2; only the reference system is adapted.

The very fact that the author (?) quotes Barth in French (“Le mysticisme est un athéisme larvé, ésotérique”, with the source: “Dogmatique I/2/2, 111”), just as Marguerat had done, is another tell-tale sign of plagiarism. One would expect the original German or a Spanish translation ...

Admittedly (and ironically), Jané Coca refers to Marguerat in his next footnote, no. 54 (“Cfr. D. Marguerat, La Mystique, 310-311”), but this reference is of course not nearly enough. The entire preceding passage contains neither blockquotes nor quotation marks. Therefore no reader without exact knowledge of Marguerat’s work would suspect the origin of what amounts to more than a full page of faithful translation.

We did not check the rest of this dissertation, but this (mis)use of the work of Daniel Marguerat makes us fear that the book may contain more of this. Who knows what would happen if the author were a German politician?

Conclusion: by translating, without proper attribution and marking-up, important passages from Marguerat’s article, Jané Coca obviously commits an act of plagiarism. That is sloppy scholarship, in one of its manifestations. By copying also Marguerat’s error, and leaving a Barth quote untranslated, it becomes even more than sloppy scholarship. It is sloppy plagiarism.

Jan Krans
Bert Jan Lietaert Peerbolte