7. How many years? - Grotius on Gal 2:1

We would be far worse informed on Paul’s life without his letter to the Galatians. However the accuracy of some of the details mentioned in the letter is disputed. A nice example is found in Gal 2:1, where Paul writes: ‘Then after fourteen years I went up again to Jerusalem with Barnabas, taking Titus along with me’ (RSV). On this verse, the Nestle editions of the Greek New Testament (from N¹³ (1927) to NA²⁷ (1993-...) mention a conjecture by Grotius, according to which the fourteen years are to be reduced to a mere four.
NA²⁷ presents the conjecture as τεσσάρων being read instead of δεκατεσσάρων. But do Greek numerals work that way? And why did Grotius propose the conjecture in the first place? And why is such a conjecture mentioned in the Nestle edition anyway? And what does min. 1241^s add to the picture?
Ad fontes, then.

Grotius (1583-1645)
In the case of conjectures attributed to Grotius, the source is never difficult to guess: one has to consult his Annotationes. There, we read on Gal 2:1 (in my provisional translation):

I accept the manuscripts if there are that have τεσσάρων [four] instead of δεκατεσσάρων. Indeed, as numbers were written with abbreviations, it could easily occur that through error ἰ was added before δ΄; and we pointed out at Lk 4:26 and elsewhere how from one copy of scripture faults often have flown into many others. Moreover, copyists made many errors in numbers, as we have shown for many Old Testament places. I find nothing more plausible than that here the same journey by Paul is recorded as the one mentioned in Acts 15:2, which cannot have been a whole fourteen years after either Paul’s conversion or, if one prefers, the end of his stay in Arabia.¹

I used the 19th-century edition by Petrus Hofstede de Groot; Grotius’ annotations on Acts and the Epistles were first published in 1646, just after his death in 1645. Thus the conjecture can be dated to 1646 (but see below).
The main reason for the conjecture is obvious: if one tries to establish a chronology of Paul’s life by combining somehow Galatians and Acts, and the most obvious option is taken, namely to identify this journey to Jerusalem and Acts 15, then the fourteen years mentioned in Gal 2:1 are bound to become problematic.

H.J. de Jonge takes a rather harsh view of Grotius’ effort here; he writes:

Sometimes ... Grotius’ critical faculty is to be found wanting in his Annotationes. One example of this is that he shares with his contemporaries the deeply-rooted inclination to impose harmony upon the contradictions between parallel reports in the Gospels, and between Paul and the Acts of the Apostles. His conjecture of ‘four’ instead of ‘fourteen’ in Gal. 2:1 is an example of this: it strives to identify the journey mentioned here with that in Acts 15:2.²

Perhaps the example of Gal 2:1 does not entirely support de Jonge’s point. Every scholar of the New Testament will have to answer the question of the relationship between the Paul of the (authentic) letters and the Paul of Acts. There may just be a subtle difference between a genuinely historical approach and potentially bibliolatric harmonisation. In any case, there is more at stake than just the ‘reconciliation’ of two texts.

Cappellus (1585-1658)
Following a lead in Bowyer’s collection of conjectures,³ I discovered that probably Grotius was not the first to propose this conjecture. In 1634, a book was published by Ludovicus Cappellus (Louis Cappel, a French Huguenot theologian), known as Historia Apostolica. It is one of the first thorough efforts to establish once and for all the chronology of early Christianity, especially of Paul’s life and letters. And, of course, the main sources are Paul’s letters and Acts combined.

Its full title is Historia Apostolica illustrata, ex Actis Apostolorum et Epistolis Paulinis, studiose inter se collatis, collecta, ordineque, secundum annorum numerum, accurate digesta, et in compendium contracta, eiusque cum historia exotica connexio certis κριτηρίοις demonstrata. Una cum verae Epistolarum Paulinarum (juxta temporis, quo singulae sunt scriptae, ordinem) seriei historica demonstratione. (‘The apostolic history illustrated on the basis of a diligent comparison of Acts of the Apostles and the Pauline epistles, inferred and accurately arranged according to the order, counted in years, with an abstract, and the demonstration of its connection with the external history according to reliable criteria. Together with a historical demonstration of the true sequence of the Pauline epistles. with the order of time in which the individual epistles were written.’) The advantage of such long titles, of course, is that they serve as introduction as well.

For the conjecture, everyone refers to the ‘appendix’ of the book, but ‘appendix’ is simply the name used for the explanations of the rather short chronological table at its beginning, the commentary being far longer than the table. The discussion can be found on pp. 53-57, especially pp. 56-57.
Cappellus as well identifies Gal 2 and Acts 15, and then offers two explanations of the ‘fourteen years’. The first is that the fourteen years actually count from Easter and Pentecost. The second, which he seems to prefer, is the conjecture. He shows how the computation of the years becomes smooth and easy when one reads ‘four’. Interestingly, his explanation of the origin of ‘fourteen’ differs from Grotius’; he assumes that διά was through error copied as δέκα and then supplied to give διὰ δεκα[τεσσάρων].

Who was first?
The chronology of the conjecture, just as Paul’s own time-keeping, is somewhat complicated. The notes by Grotius and Cappellus do not betray any relation between the two, in either direction, and perhaps Grotius had already worked out the idea far earlier than Cappellus. It can be established, however, that Grotius did not work on parts of the NT other than the Gospels until later in his life; and anyway, in case of doubt, the publication of an idea establishes its primogeniture.

Thus the authorship of the conjecture should be attributed to Cappellus. Why then is Grotius found in the Nestle editions, and not Cappellus? The cause may be found in Baljon’s edition,⁴ in which Cappellus is not mentioned. Or did for some reason (Erwin) Nestle or one of his informers think that Grotius was earlier than Cappellus? In general, though the Nestle editions purport to indicate the first author of a conjecture, the impression prevails that the matter of authorship was not seen as particularly important.

Reception history
The conjecture can only be understood in the context of the chronological study of Paul’s life and letters. As this subject was to be part of all nineteenth-century introductions to the New Testament, the conjecture was intensely discussed (and accepted by many). Baljon, who also accepts the conjecture (though he does not adopt it in the text of his own Greek New Testament), refers to Reiche’s 1859 commentary.⁵ Part of Reiche’s long discussion is indeed an impressive list of (German) scholars who accepted the conjecture since Grotius’ and Cappellus’ days.

The Chronicon Paschale
An interesting but complicated aspect of the discussion, according to Reiche first indicated by Semler, is the so-called Chronicon Paschale, a seventh-century Byzantine chronology. (Indeed, the ‘computation of the years’ is not a (post-)Enlightenment invention, but a far older form of scholarship.) The Chronicon states that the period of fourteen years must be counted from the Jesus’ ascension in order to make sense. But then we read a puzzling sentence: καὶ εἰ μὴ τοῦτο δῶμεν, εὑρεθήσεται ὁ χρόνος ἀφ’ οὗ ἐβαπτίσθη καὶ ἀνέβλεψεν, ὡς περιέχουσιν αἱ Πράξεις, ἔτη δʹ.⁶ (‘If we do not accept that, the time from which he was baptised and regained sight will be found to be, as Acts says, four years.’)
The discussion on this text sometimes turns a little nasty, as to whether or not the Chronicon is, contains, or suggests some kind of attestation of the reading τεσσάρων in Gal 2:1. My impression is that the brevity of the explanation, its lack of context, and the reference to Acts preclude any firm conclusions. It remains interesting, however, that some problem transpires in the number ‘fourteen’, and that in that context the number ‘four’ is mentioned. Intriguing as well is the comparison with Cappellus’ discussion, which betrays a parallel structure. Perhaps Cappellus was inspired by the Chronicon, though he does not mention it (the Chronicon had already been published in his days).

Min. 1241
NA²⁷ mentions 1241^s for the reading τεσσάρων. The supplement of 1241 seems to be rather good, and its having the conjectured reading would mean that the conjecture is anticipated (or confirmed?). Without some more information on the manuscript, however, I prefer not to draw any conclusions. For instance, it can be imagined that it is just an error in the manuscript, which in this case happens to agree with a scholarly conjecture.

Conclusion
As much as I like the fact that the great Dutch scholar Grotius is mentioned in the Nestle apparatus - though H.J. de Jonge rightly points out that this conjecture is not Grotius’ greatest achievement -, Grotius’ name should be replaced by Cappellus’ in future editions, if the conjecture is mentioned at all. In view of its important reception history, it still seems ‘noteworthy’.

Notes
¹Grotius: Annotationes VI, Groningen, Zuidema, 1828), p. 555: ‘Assentior Codicibus si qui pro δεκατεσσάρων habent τεσσάρων [quatuor]. Cum enim numeri per notas scriberentur, facile fieri potuit ut ante δ΄ per errorem ἰ adderetur: et ex uno saepe exemplari scripturae vitia in multa fluxisse alia, ostendimus ad Luc. 4: 26 et alibi. In numeris autem plurimos admissos errores ab exscribentibus apertum fecimus ad multa Veteris Testamenti loca. Nihil autem credibilius reperio quam notari hic illud ipsum Pauli iter cuius mentio Act. 15: 2, quod non potest totis quatuordecim annis posterius fuisse aut conversione Pauli, aut etiam, si quid id malit, fine Arabicae peregrinationis.’
²Henk Jan de Jonge, ‘Grotius as an Interpreter of the Bible, Particularly the New Testament,’ in Robert Feenstra e.a, Hugo Grotius: A Great European 1583-1645. Contributions Concerning his Activities as a Humanist Scholar, Delft, Meinema, 1983, pp. 59-65 (ET of ‘Grotius als uitlegger van de bijbel, speciaal het Nieuwe Testament’, in Het Delfts orakel. Hugo de Groot 1583-1645, Delft, Het Prinsenhof, 1983, pp. 121-128), p. 64.
³Wiliiam Bowyer, Critical Conjectures, ⁴1812, p. 508.
⁴Johannes Marinus Simon Baljon, Novum Testamentum Graece, Groningen, Wolters, 1898.
⁵Johann Georg Reiche, Commentarius Criticus in N.T. quo loca graviora et difficiliora lectionis dubiae accurate recensentur et explicantur. Tomus II. Epistolas Apostoli Pauli minores continens, Göttingen, Vandenhoeck et Ruprecht, 1859, pp. 1-10.
⁶Ludwig Dindorf, Chronicon Paschale ad exemplar Vaticanum recensuit ... (Corpus scriptorum historiae Byzantinae (ed. B.G. Niebuhr)), Vol. I, Bonn, Weber, 1832, p. 436 ll. 16-18.

6. What now? - Cramer on Gal 1:10

This is the sixth instalment of the series on conjectures in the Nestle editions (see the sidebar).
The current Nestle-Aland edition (NA²⁷) of the Greek New Testament mentions a conjecture by ‘J. Cramer’ on the text of Gal 1:10; according to the apparatus, Cramer proposes to read τί instead of ἄρτι. One understands immediately that the conjecture is more than just the omission of αρ-. The text as it stands is ἄρτι γὰρ ἀνθρώπους πείθω ἢ τὸν θεόν; - ‘Am I now seeking the favor of men, or of God?’ (RSV). With the conjecture, the text becomes: τί γάρ; ἀνθρώπους πείθω ἢ τὸν θεόν; - ‘What then? Am I seeking the favor of men, or of God?’
As usual in this series, the source of the conjecture comes first, then the discussion and subsequent history.
The conjecture can be found in a book by the Utrecht professor Jacob Cramer (1833-1895): De brief van Paulus aan de Galatiërs in zijn oorsponkelijken vorm hersteld, en verklaard (‘Paul’s letter to the Galatians restored in its original form, and explained’), Utrecht, Breijer, 1890. The book is actually part VI of the series or journal Nieuwe bijdragen op het gebied van godgeleerdheid en wijsbegeerte (‘New contributions on theology and philosophy’). The conjecture itself is discussed in the commentary on pp. 23-27 and can also be found in the restored text on p. 292 and the Dutch translation on p. 311.
The surprise, almost usual in conjecture studies, is that Cramer’s conjecture on this verse is actually larger than just the change from ἄρτι γάρ ... to  τί γάρ; ... Cramer uses ‘thorough-going’ conjectural criticism and rewrites the entire first halve of the verse. In his hands, ἄρτι γὰρ ἀνθρώπους πείθω ἢ τὸν θεόν; ἢ ζητῶ ἀνθρώποις ἀρέσκειν; becomes τί γάρ; εἰ ἀνθρώπους πείθω, μὴ ζητῶ ἀνθρώποις ἀρέσκειν; - ‘For what? If I try to win people [for the gospel], I do not try to please people, do I?’
I will not burden this post with Cramer’s complicated four-step reasoning in support of his conjecture. Instead, let us see how it arrived in the Nestle editions in such a ‘reduced’ form.
What we find in the Nestle apparatus is actually the part of Cramer’s conjecture accepted by Schmiedel, one of the Nestles (father and son) most important advisors. In his article on Galatians in Cheyne and Black’s Encyclopaedia Biblica, Schmiedel writes (Vol. 2 (1901), c. 1618):

In 1 10 the conjectural emendation τί γάρ, with the mark of interrogation instead of the present ἄρτι γάρ, has much to recommend it (as in Rom 3 3; in Gal. ἄρτι occurs immediately before, in 1 9); ...

In this short form, the conjecture was included in the Nestle apparatus, from N¹³ onwards (1927). As it stands there, its most striking aspect to me is a complete lack of context. Cramer, the author who is mentioned, wanted to apply rigorous conjectural criticism in order to maintain the Pauline authorship of Galatians against those ‘hypercritics’ who regard the letter as a bad effort of Pauline letter-writing by someone who knew Romans. Schmiedel, the one responsible for the conjecture in its current form, wanted to do the same, but without assuming, as Cramer apparently did, that Paul expresses himself clearly at all points. Therefore, Schmiedel had far less need of conjectural emendation, but applied it nevertheless. Gal 1:10 provides a nice example of Cramer and Schmiedel’s respective positions.


Remarks:
1. Cramer’s book can nowadays be found on Google Books (yet another reason to learn Dutch), just as Vol. 2 of the Encyclopaedia Biblica. However access to full-text versions may be limited outside the US.

2. As usual, more conjectures addressing the same problem can be found, e.g. by Owen, Baljon, and Naber.

4. Hyssop or Spear: Camerarius on John 19:29

This is the fourth instalment of a series on conjectures in the Nestle editions. See the sidebar for other posts.

In John 19:29 we read: "... they put a sponge full of the vinegar on hyssop and held it to his mouth" (RSV). The meaning of "put ... on hyssop" (ὑσσώπῳ περιθέντες) is so problematic that a popular conjecture exists, namely to read ὑσσῷ περιθέντες ("put ... on a spear"). Before presenting the conjecture itself, let me first elaborate the exegetical issue somewhat. It is twofold here.

In the first place, there is a notable difference with Mark 15:36 (and Matthew 27:48), where ‘hyssop’ is not mentioned, but a ‘reed’ (κάλαμος). Perhaps this is not much of a problem, for we can simply assume, as in many other cases, that John, being familiar with the synoptic traditions, changed a detail in order to put his own ‘spin’ on the story.

In the second place, however, comes a more serious problem. Doesn’t the presence of ‘hyssop’ render an essential detail of the scene unimaginable and inconceivable? Hyssop, after all, is a rather small plant, completely unsuited for the function described by John. Please note that I am not interested in "what really happened" and the like, but simply ask whether John's contemporaries would have accepted this part as coherent story-telling.

This second issue is addressed by the conjecture mentioned in the Nestle apparatus, according to which Camerarius proposed υσσω instead of υσσωπω. Let me quote from the source, Joachim Camerarius the Elder’s notes published in 1572. In my provisional translation:

‘Hyssop’ is the name of a herb. What mentioning it here may mean, others have inferred elsewhere through guessing; Matthew mentions a reed. It is perhaps permitted to suspect that to this reed that herb as well had been attached; Nonnus asserts that the vinegar presented to Jesus was mixed with hyssop, for he calls it ὑσσώπῳ κεκερασμένον [mixed with hyssop]. But if there is room left for conjectures, what if it would be permitted to suspect that the archetype had ὑσσῷ προπεριθέντες, so that on top of a spear a sponge, put around there, was presented to Jesus? For the spear of the Roman army, in particular the (throwing) javelin was called ὑσσός by the Greek. From which Matthew perhaps used the common name of spears, ‘reed’. Although also someone else could have taken a reed, drench a sponge with vinegar, and bring it mockingly to Jesus’ mouth. But that I leave undecided, and in my view it cannot be known thus far, notwithstanding the inquiry into the essential truth.¹

Remarks

1. Camerarius is not very explicit on the problem; perhaps the lack of agreement with Matthew (and Mark) is just as important to him.

2. Camerarius' conjecture differs from what is found in the Nestle apparatus, for he lets -ΠΩ of ὑσσώπῳ be the visible trace of ΠΡΟ in προπεριθέντες (instead of περιθέντες). It transpires that the omission of this element is due to Beza, who simply mentions only the first part of the conjecture in his NT editions of 1582 and later. Beza’s form may actually be better than the original proposal by Camerarius, as one can imagine dittography (ΥΣΣΩΠΕΡΙ becoming ΥΣΣΩΠΩΠΕΡΙ), or perhaps even a scribe who nilly-willy introduced hyssop into the text.

3. Some Old Latin manuscripts (to wit b ff² n v) read ‘perticae’, which means a ‘pole’ or ‘long staff’ (Lewis & Short).² This reading is alluded to in NA²⁷, where the conjecture comes with the comment ‘cf it’. In my view, however, the origin of this reading is translational; it does not reflect a lost reading in Greek, and ‘pertica’ does not stand for κάλαμος or another word, let alone ὑσσός.

4. Some late minuscules (476* and 1242) have ὑσσῷ. If a scholarly conjecture is found in such a late manuscript, I would not state that the conjecture has ceased to be a conjecture. In this case, the coincidence cannot even be called a confirmation. One would of course have to study the manuscripts themselves, but Metzger’s idea that the reading (in 476*) "seems to have arisen accidentally through haplography" is attractive.³ In short, the agreement between the conjecture and these manuscripts is probably accidental itself.

5. The conjecture has an impressive reception history, more so than almost any other conjecture on the text of the New Testament. A few examples out of an admittedly very complex history: ὑσσῷ was printed by Baljon and Lagrange, and accepted in Moffatt’s translation and the NEB; David Parker supports it (at least, he did so in 1997).⁴ Many other conjectures on the same problem have been proposed and forgotten, but this one (in Beza’s version) still stands out as a good test case for the viability of the application of conjectural emendation on the NT text. Rest assured, however, that this post merely scratches the surface of the issue of John 19:29.

[6. Update 29 July 2010: Camerarius’ book can be consulted online. The link takes you directy to p. 297.]

Notes
1. "Notae herbae nomen est hyssopus. Cuius quid hoc loco mentio sibi velit, alii aliter divinando coniecerunt, Matthaeus arundinis facit mentionem, cui et applicatam herbam illam fuisse fortasse liceat suspicari Nonnus fecit, acetum illud oblatum Iesu mistum fuisse hyssopo, vocat enim ὑσσώπῳ κεκερασμένον. Quod si coniecturis locus relinquitur, quid si liceat suspicari? in archetypo fuisse: ὑσσῷ προπεριθέντες, ut sit supra pilum spongiam ibi circumdatam Iesu fuisse oblatam. Nam pilum Romanae militiae peculiare telum Graeci appellarunt ὑσσόν. De quo fortasse Matthaeus arundinis nomine usus est telorum generali. Cum alius quoque arreptam arundinem madefactamque aceto spongiam, per ludibrium admovere ori Iesu potuerit. Sed haec in medio relinqui, atque adeo, illabefactata veritatis necessariae cognitione, ignorari posse existimo." Cited from Joachim Camerarius (1500-1574), Notatio Figurarum Sermonis in Libris Quatuor Evangeliorum, Leipzig, Vögelin, 1572, pp. 297-298. Camerarius' notes are also printed as part of the 1642 Cambridge edition of Beza's NT. The reference to Nonnus concerns his paraphrase of John's gospel; see e.g. Nonni Panopolitani Paraphrasis S. Evangelii Ioannei (ed. Scheindler), Leipzig, Teubner, 1881, p. 206 l. 154 (ὤρεγεν ὑσσώπῳ κεκερασμένον ὄξος ὀλέθρου).
2. See the ITSEE edition; there two-digit numbers are used, in this case 04 08 16 25.
3. Metzger, Textual Commentary, ²1994, p. 217.
4. D.C. Parker, The Living Text of the Gospels, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1997, pp. 176-177. Parker writes: "Here is a conjecture which would have been accepted in such a narrative in any other kind of text. It should be accepted here."

3. How to Track Down a Conjecture - A Note on Method

This is the third instalment of a series on conjectures in the Nestle editions. See the sidebar for other posts.

In a comment on my posting on 1 Thes 2:16, Peter Head asks whether there are any short-cuts in tracking down the source of a given conjecture in the NA apparatus, compared to the following steps:

1. get a basic idea of the era of the person;
2. check the older detailed commentaries that are likely to discuss this sort of thing;
3. locate the original source in a good library.

The discussion is important enough to be given a separate posting. The general problem is the following. The Nestle editions indicate numerous conjectures in their critical apparatus, but the information consists of only two elements: a reading and a name. How does one proceed to find out which author is meant, and what the original source for the conjecture is (assuming that the author proposed it in a written source)?

Well, I agree with Peter’s method, but I do have some preferences and some short-cuts. Most of the following, by the way, applies just as well to conjectures that did not make it into the Nestle apparatus, but which are mentioned without proper references in commentaries and articles.

To begin with, I already have a detailed list of any conjecture’s first appearance in any Nestle edition, which gives me a first terminus ante quem. Besides, in many cases it is not very hard to guess the author (‘Erasmus’; but try e.g. John 20:17 ‘Lepsius’/‘Lipsius’ or 2 Tim 3:10 ‘v. Wyss'), and for many authors, the source is not hard to guess. In the case of Erasmus, for instance, his Annotationes are the obvious place to go, and there indeed his opinion on Col 1:15 (see NA²⁵) and Jas 4:2 is found.

The key term for the most important short-cut is ‘collections’. It may be true that especially older German commentaries (KEK (Meyer), KNT (Zahn), HNT (Holtzmann)) discuss many conjectures, but one fares much better with special sources of collected conjectures.

The first collection to mention is Wettstein. If the conjecture occurs in Wettstein’s 1750-1751 edition (or in the list found in the 1730 Prolegomena), the possible period becomes much shorter, of course, and in most cases, the author can be identified with confidence. The second collection is from the same century, namely Bowyer’s Critical Conjectures (various editions up to 1812), as important as Wettstein, with even the advantage that Bowyer regularly gives a - rudimentary - reference (he actually gives one if he happens to have one).

The other collections are found in the second half of the nineteenth century. Monographs, dissertations, and articles by scholars in the ‘Dutch School’ are very useful. First came the general books by van Manen and van de Sande Bakhuyzen. Later, dissertations by Franssen, van de Beke Callenfels, de Koe and Baljon gave more detailed discussions of conjectures on individual books of the NT. Together with a series of articles by Baljon, these detailed discussions eventually formed a collection covering the entire NT (except Acts and Revelation).

Needless to say, one would have to have some command of the beautiful Dutch language in order to use these sources (just as Latin for Wettstein and English (and German!) for Bowyer). And we all know that references in those times were not always very clear, but in many cases they are just sufficient to track down the source.

For 1 Thes 2:16, for instance, I now notice that I could have used one of the articles by Baljon (or van Manen’s book) as well, but I had already noted Lünemann’s reference in my files.

A good library is indeed essential, or actually several good ones. Luckily, the Netherlands is a small country. The Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung turned out to be available in microform at the Nijmegen Radboud University. Sometimes nowadays one can be even more lucky and find books and articles on Google Books or archive.org, to name just the two most important sites. The future may be bright for this type of research.

Now that the short-cuts are discussed, the necessary roundabout routes should be mentioned as well. The most important problem is that the information on conjectures and their authors in the Nestle editions is not always reliable. Conjectures can have earlier authors (but how could one possibly know that?), they can have been withdrawn, or proposed quite differently by the authors that are mentioned, etc. Besides that, the Nestle editions often mention only one conjecture for a given textual problem, whereas the nature of conjectural emendation (and the scholars’ indépendance d'esprit) more often than not leads to several efforts worthy of attention. Historical research of NT conjectural emendation is intricate, to say the least.

In the end, one of the remarkable results in tracking down conjectures is that most riddles remain for the period after, say, 1890. More recent books and articles are of course easier to find, but the manner in which the conjectures found their way into the Nestle apparatus can at times be very obscure. I sometimes speculate about someone simply writing a letter to Eberhard Nestle, or to Paul Wilhelm Schmiedel who then informed Nestle. In any case, there is still a lot of work to be done here.