It took some time, but now, thanks to the Göttinger Digitalisierungszentrum, the first edition of William Bowyer’s collection of New Testament conjectures is available online (or here). It is part of the second volume of Bowyer’s (very rare) 1763 Greek New Testament (the first part of this second volume is found here or here). Thus far we could had to go to the Library of the Leiden University to consult it.
For our project here at VU University this edition is important, even though it contains far fewer conjectures than later editions (1772; 1782; 1812). For a number of New Testament conjectures, it is simply the earliest source there is.
Update 17 May 2013: added some links, as the GDZ ones do not seem to work.
Showing posts with label conjectural emendation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label conjectural emendation. Show all posts
Thursday, March 29, 2012
Monday, January 30, 2012
SBL International, Amsterdam 2012: papers accepted
Members of our research group will present some important papers at the coming SBL International meeting in Amsterdam, in July.
Silvia Castelli will present on Wettstein’s Greek New Testament:
Or perhaps one final presentation can tip the scales for you. Even though the 2012 SBL International meeting will be in my hometown, and I did not really have to submit a paper in order to justify my presence (financially, that is), I could not refrain from the following proposal, which – to my great relief – my co-chair Tommy Wasserman accepted without much ado.
Silvia Castelli will present on Wettstein’s Greek New Testament:
Beyond the Received Text? Discerning Patterns in Wettstein’s Textual DecisionsBart Kamphuis will present on conjectural emendation proper (beware: rather long abstract ahead):
In his Novum Testamentum Graecum 1751-1752, Johann Jakob Wettstein reprints the received text, yet indicating very clearly his proposed omissions, additions, and substitutions. Are there patterns to be discerned in Wettstein’s decision in favour of certain variant readings? And does he somehow motivate his choices? Through a systematic analysis of Wettstein’s changes to the received text, some answers to these questions will be provided.
Problems and Causes: A Classification of New Testament ConjecturesIf this all does not convince you that you should come to Amsterdam and visit the “Working with Biblical Manuscripts” sessions, or even submit a proposal yourself, while you still can (today, January 30, and tomorrow), I throw my hands up in despair.
The reflection upon conjectural emendation of the text of the New Testament has generally been limited to the question to which degree such emendation can be permitted. Little attention has been paid, by contrast, to the corpus of literally thousands of conjectures that have actually been made since Origen. This gap is currently being filled in Amsterdam by the VU University research project New Testament Conjectural Emendation: A Comprehensive Enquiry.
In any research into a large set of data, classifications are made for the purpose of analysis. My study of the conjectures discussed and made in Holland from 1846 to 1906 (what I call the Dutch Movement of Conjectural Criticism) has led to the classification of New Testament conjectures proposed in this paper.
The key to this classification is the idea that, in principle, the reasoning behind every conjecture concerns both the problem as perceived in the transmitted text and the cause of the supposed textual corruption. It turns out that all problems and causes mentioned in the analysed argumentations can be classified into a limited number of types. The classification of conjectures can thus be projected onto a two-dimensional table, with types of problems on the one axis, and types of causes on the other. Every sufficiently substantiated conjecture occupies at least one cell in this table.
This classification makes it possible to discern patterns in the conjectural criticism of particular scholars and even in the history of New Testament conjectural criticism in general.
Or perhaps one final presentation can tip the scales for you. Even though the 2012 SBL International meeting will be in my hometown, and I did not really have to submit a paper in order to justify my presence (financially, that is), I could not refrain from the following proposal, which – to my great relief – my co-chair Tommy Wasserman accepted without much ado.
Who coined the name “Ambrosiaster”?See you in Amsterdam!
Traditionally, the coinage of the name “Ambrosiaster” for the author of an important commentary on the Pauline epistles has been attributed to Erasmus. (“Ambst” is mentioned more than 400 times in the current Nestle-Aland apparatus.) As demonstrated by René Hoven in 1969 already, the attribution to Erasmus cannot be sustained. A recent attempt by Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe (2007) mentions the 1686–90 edition of Ambrose’s works by the Benedictines of St Maur, but their use of the name “Ambrosiaster” can be shown to depend on earlier sources. This paper will establish that Jülicher, in 1894, was pointing in the right direction when he mentioned “around 1600” for the first use of the name “Ambrosiaster”, and solve the riddle of its coinage once and for all.
Monday, September 20, 2010
Who needs conjectural emendation?
I do. Right now, actually, because I am editing a text by Bill Petersen, and just came across a sentence that is simply wrong. Bill writes:
Strutwolf went on to say that the Nestle-Aland text cannot and does not attempt to reconstruct an earlier (that is, pre-180) text, for that text was pluriform, and might called a “school-text,” under for teaching and preaching, but which was not fixed (hence the Alands’ description of the pre-180 text as “freischwebend”).A nice citation, but that is not the point. Let us correct ‘might called’ to ‘might be called’. That one is easy enough. But what about ‘under for teaching and preaching’? Something went wrong here, but just what? Should I leave ‘under’ out? Should I write ‘used’? Or ‘undertaken’? All suggestions are welcome, especially good ones.
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
Conjectural Emendation Quiz
In collaboration with Evangelical Textual Criticism, a small quotation quiz was organized. Here are the answers in chronological order, with some remarks.
#2 is indeed by Scrivener, in 1861:
Note the typical term ‘resorting to’. In later editions the quotation continues as follows:
This complex sentence - to me at least - seems to mean that conjectures are unacceptable because they are conjectures. The interesting point is that Scrivener maintains all this, knowing about William Linwood’s support of conjectural emendation of the New Testament. By implication, Linwood would not belong to the select class of ‘competent judges’.
#1 is indeed by Eb. Nestle, in 1901, at least in the English translation:
The German original is from 1899, and sounds even better:
The Nestle quotation continues, however, on a more positive note:
#5 is by Kenyon:
Kenyon’s position becomes even clearer if the quotation is taken a bit larger:
BTW, the particular use of the semicolon in Kenyon’s prose was once common even in British English, but has been abolished from civilised writing ever since; presumably it survives in certain areas of Australia only.
#3 is indeed by me (thanks Christian), in 2006:
It is my short formula for the ‘historical turn’ in the study of NT conjectural emendation. HT to Hort, of course; he was the one who was ‘clever with words’ (PH).
#4 is by Georg Luck, in 2009:
The entire article is not (yet) very well known, but it nicely shows a current-day classical scholar’s take on NT conjectural emendation. For members of the Textual Criticism Group, a scan of it is available under ‘files’.
The context of this remark is actually Kilpatrick’s defence of the transmitted reading ὑσσώπῳ (‘on hyssop’) against the conjecture ὑσσῷ (‘on a javelin’) in John 19:29.
Peter Head (in the comments on the ETC post) deduced an 18th-century date for the quotation, because it reflects a period in which biblical scholars were still remembered to discuss (and reject) specific conjectures, instead of them simply rejecting conjectural emendation in principle. Perhaps then, in the eyes of Luck, Kilpatrick becomes a biblical scholar instead of a textual critic, just because he deals with conjectures the way he does.
This concludes the quiz; there could easily be made a second one, with quotations just as interesting. Maybe next year.
#2 is indeed by Scrivener, in 1861:
It is now agreed among competent judges that Conjectural Emendation must never be resorted to, even in passages of acknowledged difficulty, ...Frederick Henry Ambrose Scrivener, A Plain Introduction to the Criticism of the New Testament for the Use of Biblical Students, Cambridge etc.: Deighton, Bell, and Co etc., 11861, 369.
Note the typical term ‘resorting to’. In later editions the quotation continues as follows:
... difficulty; the absence of proof that a reading proposed to be substituted for the common one is actually supported by some trustworthy document being of itself a fatal objection to our receiving it.Frederick Henry Ambrose Scrivener, A Plain Introduction to the Criticism of the New Testament for the Use of Biblical Students, 2 vols, London etc.: Bell, 41894, II p. 244 (already 21874, p. 433).
This complex sentence - to me at least - seems to mean that conjectures are unacceptable because they are conjectures. The interesting point is that Scrivener maintains all this, knowing about William Linwood’s support of conjectural emendation of the New Testament. By implication, Linwood would not belong to the select class of ‘competent judges’.
#1 is indeed by Eb. Nestle, in 1901, at least in the English translation:
Not long ago philologists evinced such a fondness for conjectural emendation that the question might not unreasonably be asked why they did not rather themselves write the text that they took in hand to explain.Eberhard Nestle, Introduction to the Textual Criticism of the Greek New Testament. London: Williams and Norgate, 1901, p. 167.
The German original is from 1899, and sounds even better:
Für’s Konjekturen-machen hatten viele Philologen vor noch nicht langer Zeit eine so grosse Vorliebe, dass man nicht ohne Grund fragen konnte, warum sie die Texte, die sie zu erklären vorgaben, nicht lieber selbst schrieben; ...Eberhard Nestle, Einführung in das Griechische Neue Testament. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 21899, p. 134 (not in 11897). (The title of the English translation makes explicit what Nestle took for granted ...)
The Nestle quotation continues, however, on a more positive note:
At the same time, the aversion to this method of criticism which till recently prevailed and still to some extent prevails, especially in the matter of the New Testament text, is just as unreasonable.In German:
... ebenso unbegründet aber war und ist die Abneigung, die namentlich auf dem Gebiet der nt.lichen Textkritik bis in die jüngste Zeit gegen sie herrschte, zum Teil noch herrscht.Perhaps ‘unfounded’ would have been a better translation of ‘unbegründet’ than ‘unreasonable’, but the idea is clear. Did Nestle have Scrivener (et al.) in mind? In any case, Nestle himself is known for a number of conjectures on the NT text.
#5 is by Kenyon:
No authority could be attached to words which rested upon conjecture; and a critic who should devote himself to editing the Scriptures on conjectural lines would be merely wasting his time.Frederic G. Kenyon, Handbook to the Textual Criticism of the New Testament. London: Macmillan11901, 15 (21926), p. 17.
Kenyon’s position becomes even clearer if the quotation is taken a bit larger:
It is universally agreed ... that the sphere of conjecture in the case of the New Testament is infinitesimal; and it may further be added that for practical purposes it must be treated as non-existent. No authority could be attached to words which rested upon conjecture; and a critic who should devote himself to editing the Scriptures on conjectural lines would be merely wasting his time. Where nothing but questions of literary style are involved, we may be willing to accept a reading upon conjecture, if no better evidence is to be had; but where it is a question of the Word of Life, some surer foundation is required.The same agreement, now even universal, as found with Scrivener. To me, Kenyon exemplifies two aspects: (1) the opinion that the wealth of evidence in manuscripts, versions, and citations, almost precludes conjectural emendation, and (2) a theology-driven protest against it; hence ‘authority’, and the need of ‘some surer foundation’.
BTW, the particular use of the semicolon in Kenyon’s prose was once common even in British English, but has been abolished from civilised writing ever since; presumably it survives in certain areas of Australia only.
#3 is indeed by me (thanks Christian), in 2006:
Knowledge of authors should precede judgement of their conjectures.Jan Krans, Beyond What Is Written. Erasmus and Beza as Conjectural Critics of the New Testament (NTTS 35), Leiden etc.: Brill, 2006, p. 3 (cf. p. 333).
It is my short formula for the ‘historical turn’ in the study of NT conjectural emendation. HT to Hort, of course; he was the one who was ‘clever with words’ (PH).
#4 is by Georg Luck, in 2009:
It is a sobering experience to observe what flights of fancy Biblical scholars indulge in order to discredit a conjecture.Georg Luck, ‘Conjectural Emendation in the Greek New Testament’. In Verae Lectiones. Estudios de Crítica Textual y Edición de Textos Griegos. Eds. M. Sanz Morales and M. Librán Moreno. Cáceres: Huelva, 2009, 169-202, 183.
The entire article is not (yet) very well known, but it nicely shows a current-day classical scholar’s take on NT conjectural emendation. For members of the Textual Criticism Group, a scan of it is available under ‘files’.
The context of this remark is actually Kilpatrick’s defence of the transmitted reading ὑσσώπῳ (‘on hyssop’) against the conjecture ὑσσῷ (‘on a javelin’) in John 19:29.
Peter Head (in the comments on the ETC post) deduced an 18th-century date for the quotation, because it reflects a period in which biblical scholars were still remembered to discuss (and reject) specific conjectures, instead of them simply rejecting conjectural emendation in principle. Perhaps then, in the eyes of Luck, Kilpatrick becomes a biblical scholar instead of a textual critic, just because he deals with conjectures the way he does.
This concludes the quiz; there could easily be made a second one, with quotations just as interesting. Maybe next year.
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
The scribal blunder in the Codex Corsendoncensis (min. 3)
As I was given access to the expert mode of the INTF Virtual Manuscript Room (thanks Martin), I decided to finally see for myself what the famous scribal blunder in min. 3 (VMR no. 30003) looks like. The example was discussed briefly last year on the Evangelical Textual Criticism blog.
Minuscule 3 (Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Suppl. gr. 52) contains the entire Greek New Testament except Revelation. It is named Codex Corsendoncensis , because it was one of two manuscripts from Corsendonk used by Erasmus when he was working on the second edition of his New Testament (published in 1519). Its date is given as twelfth-century. [The other Corsendonk manuscript is a Latin Gospel manuscript, now in the Berlin Staatsbibliothek (Ms. theol. lat. qu. 4)].
The manuscript has not yet been indexed for the VMR (any volunteers?), so it took me some time to find the correct page. It turns out to be f. 376v; the VMR number is 8110.
The blunder itself concerns 2 Cor 8:4. The normal Greek text of 2 Cor 8:4-5a runs as follows: ... 4 μετὰ πολλῆς παρακλήσεως δεόμενοι ἡμῶν, τὴν χάριν καὶ τὴν κοινωνίαν τῆς διακονίας τῆς εἰς τοὺς ἁγίους· 5 καὶ οὐ καθὼς ἠλπίσαμεν, ... (‘... 4 begging us earnestly for the favor of taking part in the relief of the saints -- 5 and this, not as we expected, ... - RSV, taking τὴν χάριν καὶ τὴν κοινωνίαν together). As indicated in NA27, some manuscripts add δέξασθαι ἡμᾶς at the end of verse 4, thereby having an AcI depending from δεόμενοι: ‘that we accept the favor and the community ...’
Min. 3 also has this addition. Its text, however, is as follows: ... 4 μετὰ πολλῆς παρακλήσεως δεόμενοι ἡμῶν τὴν χάριν καὶ τὴν κοινωνίαν τῆς εἰς τοὺς ἁγίους, δέξασθαι ἡμᾶς ἐν πολλοῖς τῶν ἀντιφράφων οὕτως εὕρηται 5 καὶ οὐ καθὼς ἠλπίσαμεν, ...
Note the omission of τῆς διακονίας after τὴν κοινωνίαν, which could already qualify as a scribal blunder (due to homoeoarchton), for the following τῆς can no longer be understood. The real blunder, however, is found in the words just after δέξασθαι ἡμᾶς: ἐν πολλοῖς τῶν ἀντιφράφων οὕτως εὕρηται (‘thus it is found in many copies’). This simply has to be a marginal note, mistaken for a correction, and put into the text by a scribe who was apparently thinking of quite other matters than the relief of the saints.
One can surmise that the original note included (began with) δέξασθαι ἡμᾶς. Thus, the scribe’s exemplar signalled the variant reading δέξασθαι ἡμᾶς and even added some information on it.
With the kind permission of the VMR team, I can now show the image on this blog (taken from the VMR jpg, which represents the INTF microfilm; slightly enhanced for b/w contrast; f. 376v; VMR no. 8110). As can be seen, someone marked the blunder in the text and even put a mark in the left margin to draw attention to it.
The reception history of the scribal blunder itself is interesting as well. It was mentioned for the first time by none other than Erasmus. In his 1519 edition, he added a long note to his annotation on these verses. The example must have been very welcome to him, for it is clear proof that even the sacred texts are not free from ridiculous scribal errors and that textual criticism is necessary, whatever theologians may say. He concluded the note by saying that ‘we found innumerable places corrupted for this same cause'. Even before the 1519 edition, he had already mentioned the case in his apology against Faber Stapulensis. There, the point made was somewhat more specific. He warned his colleague to not naively trust (Greek) manuscripts. Keep thinking critically.
I would not be surprised if Erasmus were the one responsible for the underlining and marginal note in the manuscript. However the microfilm image cannot be conclusive in this respect. What we do know is that Erasmus did not hesitate to put a personal note in the manuscript he used. In this case, he did so even twice, once in Latin, on f. 1r (VMR no. 80), and once in Greek, on f. 181v (VMR no. 3970). Let me show you an enhanced image of the latter:
Well, at least he wanted the manuscript to be kept safe ...
In subsequent centuries, the blunder was frequently mentioned in text-critical books. Bengel, in his 1734 Greek New Testament, refers to Erasmus. Metzger also mentions the case in his Text of the New Testament (3-1992, p. 194; see also Metzger/Ehrman 4-2005, pp. 258-259), referring to Bengel. Perhaps in a future edition, Erasmus himself could be mentioned as well.
The example itself may indeed have some importance for text-critical reasoning in general and conjectural emendation in particular. It shows that marginal annotations which were mistakenly adopted into the text did occur. The question remains, however, how widespread the phenomenon actually is, and how it can be demonstrated in cases that are less clear than the one in min. 3.
Minuscule 3 (Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Suppl. gr. 52) contains the entire Greek New Testament except Revelation. It is named Codex Corsendoncensis , because it was one of two manuscripts from Corsendonk used by Erasmus when he was working on the second edition of his New Testament (published in 1519). Its date is given as twelfth-century. [The other Corsendonk manuscript is a Latin Gospel manuscript, now in the Berlin Staatsbibliothek (Ms. theol. lat. qu. 4)].
The manuscript has not yet been indexed for the VMR (any volunteers?), so it took me some time to find the correct page. It turns out to be f. 376v; the VMR number is 8110.
The blunder itself concerns 2 Cor 8:4. The normal Greek text of 2 Cor 8:4-5a runs as follows: ... 4 μετὰ πολλῆς παρακλήσεως δεόμενοι ἡμῶν, τὴν χάριν καὶ τὴν κοινωνίαν τῆς διακονίας τῆς εἰς τοὺς ἁγίους· 5 καὶ οὐ καθὼς ἠλπίσαμεν, ... (‘... 4 begging us earnestly for the favor of taking part in the relief of the saints -- 5 and this, not as we expected, ... - RSV, taking τὴν χάριν καὶ τὴν κοινωνίαν together). As indicated in NA27, some manuscripts add δέξασθαι ἡμᾶς at the end of verse 4, thereby having an AcI depending from δεόμενοι: ‘that we accept the favor and the community ...’
Min. 3 also has this addition. Its text, however, is as follows: ... 4 μετὰ πολλῆς παρακλήσεως δεόμενοι ἡμῶν τὴν χάριν καὶ τὴν κοινωνίαν τῆς εἰς τοὺς ἁγίους, δέξασθαι ἡμᾶς ἐν πολλοῖς τῶν ἀντιφράφων οὕτως εὕρηται 5 καὶ οὐ καθὼς ἠλπίσαμεν, ...
Note the omission of τῆς διακονίας after τὴν κοινωνίαν, which could already qualify as a scribal blunder (due to homoeoarchton), for the following τῆς can no longer be understood. The real blunder, however, is found in the words just after δέξασθαι ἡμᾶς: ἐν πολλοῖς τῶν ἀντιφράφων οὕτως εὕρηται (‘thus it is found in many copies’). This simply has to be a marginal note, mistaken for a correction, and put into the text by a scribe who was apparently thinking of quite other matters than the relief of the saints.
One can surmise that the original note included (began with) δέξασθαι ἡμᾶς. Thus, the scribe’s exemplar signalled the variant reading δέξασθαι ἡμᾶς and even added some information on it.
With the kind permission of the VMR team, I can now show the image on this blog (taken from the VMR jpg, which represents the INTF microfilm; slightly enhanced for b/w contrast; f. 376v; VMR no. 8110). As can be seen, someone marked the blunder in the text and even put a mark in the left margin to draw attention to it.
The reception history of the scribal blunder itself is interesting as well. It was mentioned for the first time by none other than Erasmus. In his 1519 edition, he added a long note to his annotation on these verses. The example must have been very welcome to him, for it is clear proof that even the sacred texts are not free from ridiculous scribal errors and that textual criticism is necessary, whatever theologians may say. He concluded the note by saying that ‘we found innumerable places corrupted for this same cause'. Even before the 1519 edition, he had already mentioned the case in his apology against Faber Stapulensis. There, the point made was somewhat more specific. He warned his colleague to not naively trust (Greek) manuscripts. Keep thinking critically.
I would not be surprised if Erasmus were the one responsible for the underlining and marginal note in the manuscript. However the microfilm image cannot be conclusive in this respect. What we do know is that Erasmus did not hesitate to put a personal note in the manuscript he used. In this case, he did so even twice, once in Latin, on f. 1r (VMR no. 80), and once in Greek, on f. 181v (VMR no. 3970). Let me show you an enhanced image of the latter:
In subsequent centuries, the blunder was frequently mentioned in text-critical books. Bengel, in his 1734 Greek New Testament, refers to Erasmus. Metzger also mentions the case in his Text of the New Testament (3-1992, p. 194; see also Metzger/Ehrman 4-2005, pp. 258-259), referring to Bengel. Perhaps in a future edition, Erasmus himself could be mentioned as well.
The example itself may indeed have some importance for text-critical reasoning in general and conjectural emendation in particular. It shows that marginal annotations which were mistakenly adopted into the text did occur. The question remains, however, how widespread the phenomenon actually is, and how it can be demonstrated in cases that are less clear than the one in min. 3.
Monday, March 22, 2010
Two PhD Positions in New Testament Textual Criticism
It took some time, but the descriptions for the two PhD positions in the New Testament Conjectural Emendation project (on which I blogged earlier) are available now. Ample information can be found at the public part of the team website. For the application, see especially this official PDF file. Feel free to pass on this information, or to ask for more. Applications must be sent before April 12th.
Thursday, December 24, 2009
Breaking News: NWO Grant Approved
Colleagues in the textual critical field will surely forgive us the all too general title and tag line of the following press release, and retain the good news: serious work will be done in the coming years on the important and intricate topic of New Testament conjectural emendation. In the first months of 2010, two PhD positions will become available, so keep posted.
Do we have the original text of the New Testament?
NWO grant for restoring the text of the New Testament
The search for the original text of the New Testament often involves solving intricate puzzles. Which textual reading from the manuscripts seems to be the most authentic, is the oldest, or has the best witnesses in its favour? When the manuscripts do not offer a solution, scholars sometimes conjecture a reading. This step, involving conjectural criticism, is not undisputed, for it seems to involve tampering with a text many regard as sacred. All the same, conjectural criticism has had a long and fruitful history beginning with Erasmus and its value has been proven repeatedly. Conjectural criticism demands a multidisciplinary approach, interfacing with sacred texts and their reception history, church history and cultural studies, as well as scholarly editing. The need for a comprehensive mapping of the field of conjectural criticism of the New Testament text has been felt for decades.
The Humanities Division of NWO approved a 600,000 Euro research proposal called New Testament Conjectural Emendation: A Comprehensive Enquiry, submitted by Bert Jan Lietaert Peerbolte and Jan Krans. Both scholars are employed at the Faculty of Theology, VU University Amsterdam and affiliated with VISOR (VU Institute for the Study of Culture, Religion and Society) and the ACNTS (Amsterdam Centre for New Testament Studies). The research project, which runs from 2010 to 2014, will be carried out in collaboration with the Institut für neutestamentliche Textforschung (INTF) of the Münster University and the Institute for Textual Scholarship and Electronic Editing (ITSEE) of the University of Birmingham.
Two PhD students will participate in the project. The first will investigate the second half of the eighteenth century, when the problem of the New Testament text becomes fully visible for the first time. The second will investigate the second half of the nineteenth century, during which many radical proposals for textual emendations were made, especially in the Netherlands. A post-doc researcher will write a general history of New Testament conjectures and conjectural criticism. A database of thoroughly documented important conjectures will be connected to the standard edition of the Greek New Testament (Editio Critica Maior) which is currently being prepared in Münster and Birmingham.
For more information, please contact Jan Krans (jlh.krans [at] th.vu.nl), or Bert Jan Lietaert Peerbolte (lj.lietaert_peerbolte [at] th.vu.nl].
The Dutch version of this press release is found here on the VU University website and here on the VISOR website.
Do we have the original text of the New Testament?
NWO grant for restoring the text of the New Testament
The search for the original text of the New Testament often involves solving intricate puzzles. Which textual reading from the manuscripts seems to be the most authentic, is the oldest, or has the best witnesses in its favour? When the manuscripts do not offer a solution, scholars sometimes conjecture a reading. This step, involving conjectural criticism, is not undisputed, for it seems to involve tampering with a text many regard as sacred. All the same, conjectural criticism has had a long and fruitful history beginning with Erasmus and its value has been proven repeatedly. Conjectural criticism demands a multidisciplinary approach, interfacing with sacred texts and their reception history, church history and cultural studies, as well as scholarly editing. The need for a comprehensive mapping of the field of conjectural criticism of the New Testament text has been felt for decades.
The Humanities Division of NWO approved a 600,000 Euro research proposal called New Testament Conjectural Emendation: A Comprehensive Enquiry, submitted by Bert Jan Lietaert Peerbolte and Jan Krans. Both scholars are employed at the Faculty of Theology, VU University Amsterdam and affiliated with VISOR (VU Institute for the Study of Culture, Religion and Society) and the ACNTS (Amsterdam Centre for New Testament Studies). The research project, which runs from 2010 to 2014, will be carried out in collaboration with the Institut für neutestamentliche Textforschung (INTF) of the Münster University and the Institute for Textual Scholarship and Electronic Editing (ITSEE) of the University of Birmingham.
Two PhD students will participate in the project. The first will investigate the second half of the eighteenth century, when the problem of the New Testament text becomes fully visible for the first time. The second will investigate the second half of the nineteenth century, during which many radical proposals for textual emendations were made, especially in the Netherlands. A post-doc researcher will write a general history of New Testament conjectures and conjectural criticism. A database of thoroughly documented important conjectures will be connected to the standard edition of the Greek New Testament (Editio Critica Maior) which is currently being prepared in Münster and Birmingham.
For more information, please contact Jan Krans (jlh.krans [at] th.vu.nl), or Bert Jan Lietaert Peerbolte (lj.lietaert_peerbolte [at] th.vu.nl].
The Dutch version of this press release is found here on the VU University website and here on the VISOR website.
Friday, April 17, 2009
Lionel North's article on negatives and NTTC (with an addendum on Beza and Mk 16:2)
A few months ago, I could (not) suppress a smile when I read that something had gone wrong with the so-called ‘Advance Access’ (dated 11 Feb. 2009): ’The originally published version of this paper was incorrect. A corrected version will be uploaded soon.’ Anyhow, the final version is available now:
Addendum on Beza and Mark 16:2
By his own admission, Lionel North mentions ‘very few modern conjectures’ (p. 47 n. 42). It could be interesting to analyse the fifty or so examples of these I find in my files. The author does mention a harmonistic conjecture by Beza on Mk 16:2 (p. 25), which for some reason I did not discuss in my monograph on Erasmus and Beza as conjectural critics, even though I still have extensive notes on it. As there are two aspects of Lionel North’s discussion I do not quite understand, let me first introduce Beza’s conjecture itself.
In order to reconcile Mark’s account of the women visiting Jesus’ grave with the other gospels, Beza proposes to read οὐκέτι ἀνατεἰλαντος (‘when the sun had not yet risen’) in Mk 16:2. The conjecture is already found in the 1556 annotations (and retained in later editions), but never adopted in the Greek text or in Beza’s Latin translation. In his 1582 annotations, Beza mentions the reading of Codex Bezae (ἀνατέλλοντος - ‘when the sun was rising’). He notes the nuance in meaning, but still feels the same problem. For those who regard his conjectural emendation as too ‘dangerous’, he now offers a different explanation: the women set out before sunrise (thus Matthew, Luke, and John are correct), but arrived after it (which is what Mark tells us).
Lionel North asks why Beza chose οὐκέτι for his conjecture, and not the simple οὐ(κ). He wonders whether Beza knew the reading ἔτι from Robertus Stephanus’ edition of Eusebius and his famous 1550 NT edition. The answer is affirmative, as can be seen from the same 1556 annotation a few words of which are cited in the article itself; Beza writes: ‘Germanae autem lectionis vestigia adhuc supererant in tertio codice in quo scriptum erat ἔτι ἀνατείλαντος; quo modo etiam citatur hic locus ab Eusebio ...’ (‘the traces of the true reading still remain in the third book (manuscript), in which is written ἔτι ἀνατείλαντος; in the same way this place is cited by Eusebius ...’). Thus the two links are certain. With the ‘tertius codex’, Beza refers to min. 4, found in Stephanus’ 1550 edition under siglum γ΄. Therefore, Lionel North’s doubt is unnecessary, though Beza probably did not use the 1550 edition directly, but had access to one of its sources, the book of collations that had been used for the composition of its (small) marginal apparatus.
What I also do not understand is how Lionel North can connect the note in the 1560 Geneva Bible (‘Or, not risen.’ - not yet found in Whittingham’s 1557 New Testament) to a 1569 (!) edition of Ticonius's Regulae (p. 25 n. 7). It is far easier to assume that the marginal note resumes in a very succinct way Beza’s conjectural solution, as the link between the Geneva New Testament and Beza's edition is well established in other cases.
James Lionel North, ‘"Thou Shalt Commit Adultery" (EXOD. 20:14, AV 1631): A First Survey of Alteration Involving Negatives in the Transmission of the Greek New Testament and of Early Church Responses to it’, in JTS 60 (2009), pp. 22-69 (doi:10.1093/jts/fln150).The article explores an intriguing class of text-critical cases, namely those in which a negative is involved, not only by it being added or omitted, but through more complicated processes as well. Besides extensive discussion of texts such as 1 Cor 15:51, the article contains 13 pages of lists which exemplify the possibilities.
Addendum on Beza and Mark 16:2
By his own admission, Lionel North mentions ‘very few modern conjectures’ (p. 47 n. 42). It could be interesting to analyse the fifty or so examples of these I find in my files. The author does mention a harmonistic conjecture by Beza on Mk 16:2 (p. 25), which for some reason I did not discuss in my monograph on Erasmus and Beza as conjectural critics, even though I still have extensive notes on it. As there are two aspects of Lionel North’s discussion I do not quite understand, let me first introduce Beza’s conjecture itself.
In order to reconcile Mark’s account of the women visiting Jesus’ grave with the other gospels, Beza proposes to read οὐκέτι ἀνατεἰλαντος (‘when the sun had not yet risen’) in Mk 16:2. The conjecture is already found in the 1556 annotations (and retained in later editions), but never adopted in the Greek text or in Beza’s Latin translation. In his 1582 annotations, Beza mentions the reading of Codex Bezae (ἀνατέλλοντος - ‘when the sun was rising’). He notes the nuance in meaning, but still feels the same problem. For those who regard his conjectural emendation as too ‘dangerous’, he now offers a different explanation: the women set out before sunrise (thus Matthew, Luke, and John are correct), but arrived after it (which is what Mark tells us).
Lionel North asks why Beza chose οὐκέτι for his conjecture, and not the simple οὐ(κ). He wonders whether Beza knew the reading ἔτι from Robertus Stephanus’ edition of Eusebius and his famous 1550 NT edition. The answer is affirmative, as can be seen from the same 1556 annotation a few words of which are cited in the article itself; Beza writes: ‘Germanae autem lectionis vestigia adhuc supererant in tertio codice in quo scriptum erat ἔτι ἀνατείλαντος; quo modo etiam citatur hic locus ab Eusebio ...’ (‘the traces of the true reading still remain in the third book (manuscript), in which is written ἔτι ἀνατείλαντος; in the same way this place is cited by Eusebius ...’). Thus the two links are certain. With the ‘tertius codex’, Beza refers to min. 4, found in Stephanus’ 1550 edition under siglum γ΄. Therefore, Lionel North’s doubt is unnecessary, though Beza probably did not use the 1550 edition directly, but had access to one of its sources, the book of collations that had been used for the composition of its (small) marginal apparatus.
What I also do not understand is how Lionel North can connect the note in the 1560 Geneva Bible (‘Or, not risen.’ - not yet found in Whittingham’s 1557 New Testament) to a 1569 (!) edition of Ticonius's Regulae (p. 25 n. 7). It is far easier to assume that the marginal note resumes in a very succinct way Beza’s conjectural solution, as the link between the Geneva New Testament and Beza's edition is well established in other cases.
Saturday, February 28, 2009
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. 1241s 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):
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:
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 1241s 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.
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. 1241s 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.1I 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 15:2.2Perhaps 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 1241s 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.
Sunday, February 22, 2009
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 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.
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.
Tuesday, December 09, 2008
5. To Touch or Not to Touch: Lepsius on John 20:17
This is the fifth instalment of the series on conjectures in the Nestle editions. See the sidebar for earlier posts.
In the Biblical Studies Carnaval XXXVI, Jim West says that the text-critical matter presented in the previous instalment of this series (Camerarius on John 19:29), is “really fascinating stuff ..., but not for the faint of heart”. Well then, it gets even worse today (for the faint-of-heart, that is), for today’s conjecture, if accepted, would render obsolete beautiful paintings such as this one by Titian. (Not that art ceases to be art when it is discovered to be based on textual misunderstandings - perhaps a nice idea for a new series.)
In John 20:17, the risen Jesus says to Mary Magdalene: “Touch me not (μή μου ἅπτου); for I am not yet ascended to my Father” (KJV). At the surface, the connection between the two phrases seems to be awkward, especially because of the word ‘for’ (γάρ). The current Nestle edition (NA27), as did NA26, records a conjecture by ‘Lipsius’, ἅπτου μου instead of μή μου ἅπτου. That is, Jesus asks (commands) Mary to touch him, apparently while it is still possible!
Somewhat surprisingly, earlier Nestle editions, from N13 to NA25, give ‘Lepsius’, not ‘Lipsius’ as the author of this conjecture, and ‘Lepsius’ turns out to be correct. So, in your copy of NA27, please take a pencil (not a ballpoint pen) and correct the ‘i’ into an ‘e’ (or strike the entire conjecture, see below; or supply a different author, see below). The error was easily made, for there is a conjecture by Lipsius recorded on Luke 16:17.1
As customary in this series, let us go to the sources and ask who Lepsius was and what he proposed.
Lepsius and his conjecture
Johannes Lepsius (1858-1926) was the son of Carl Richard Lepsius, a famous Egyptologist. The son was a missionary; he is especially known for his work for the Armenian cause.
From 1898 to 1911 he edited a journal, Das Reich Christi. It is in this journal that his conjecture can be found, in a series of articles on John’s gospel.2 First some context, therefore, derived from these articles.
In general, Lepsius’ approach must be characterised as harmonistic, that is, he tries to reconcile the differences between the resurrection stories as found in the four New Testament gospels. He follows for instance the idea according to which ‘Galilee’ in the resurrection stories in Mark and Matthew is actually found on the Mount of Olives.
In his remarks on Mary Magdalen in John 20, one also detects an interest related to harmonisation, namely to consider the story not as fiction (or narrative elaboration of a rather vague tradition), but as eyewitness report, with a reasoning that I do not entirely understand:
Perhaps someone can explain what ‘unmittelbare sittliche Empfindung’ is exactly, but I fail to see how such directness can be a criterion for historical authenticity.
The conjecture itself is introduced in rather simple terms, but theses words contain some surprises for those who know the conjecture only from secondary sources (the Nestle apparatus):
The last remark is to the point: the commentators betray many difficulties in explaining the verse in particular and the meaning of ‘Do not touch me’ in particular. All commentators tend to regard their solution as definitive, but the multiplicity of solutions, in this case, is telling.3
Lepsius’ conjecture is a literary one, that is, prompted by the comparison with other texts. Had Lepsius only referred to John 20:20 and 20:27, his would be a valid, if debatable, argument. With the inclusion of Luke 24, however, his harmonistic interest makes itself to be felt again. Such an approach almost automatically disqualifies the resulting conjecture, just as harmonistic variants, other things being equal, are not considered as original.
Even more problematic than the harmonistic approach is another aspect of Lepsius’ method, if it can be called thus. He appeals, albeit between brackets, to an original Aramaic source or version of the Gospel. Such conjectures, however, are not conjectures on the Greek text. Lepsius assumes a dittography in the original Aramaic, not even a dittography in an Aramaic copy or a translation error made when the Greek text was prepared.
There is no reference, and no elaboration on the Aramaic words Lepsius has in mind. If one (unscholarly) takes the Peshitta wording as a starting point, a dittography seems not very likely.
In general, I do not find such translation hypotheses very convincing, and the methods used for them are shaky, but I know that nineteenth- and twentieth-century research is full of such theories. In Lepsius’ case, the Aramaic source theory is not applied in order to better understand linguistic and other idiosyncrasies of John’s gospel, but to take away an inconcinnity as perceived by him.
In any case, Lepsius does not assume an error in the Greek transmission. Therefore, his opinion on this text does not belong to the realm of textual criticism, but to source criticism. Interesting though it may be, with Lepsius’ argumentation it has no place in the Nestle-Aland apparatus.
Gersdorf
Yet the conjecture can perhaps remain in the apparatus, as an apt reminder of the exegetical difficulties of this verse, but if so, a different author should be indicated: Christoph Gotthelf Gersdorf (1763-1834). This German pastor wrote a single influential book (and even only vol. I of it), namely Beiträge zur Sprach-Characteristik der Schriftsteller des Neuen Testaments. Eine Sammlung meist neuer Bemerkungen, Erster Theil, Leipzig, Weidmann, 1816. Gersdorf is mentioned in older German commentaries (though mostly without a proper reference), making it somewhat strange that only Lepsius’ name appears in the Nestle editions.
Moreover, Gersdorf’s proposal clearly differs from Lepsius’, for it really qualifies as a conjecture (found in the long footnote on pp. 79-80 of the xxxvi+579-page book). His reasoning is as follows (in my words). Exegetically, the verse is both strange in itself, and odd compared with John 20:27. Textcritically, the concurrence of the variant readings μή μου ἅπτου, μὴ ἅπτου μου and even the difficult μὴ ἅπτου may suggest that an original μου ἅπτου was miscopied as μὴ ἅπτου, to which subsequently μου was supplied in two different ways, as ἅπτου evidently needs an object. One can also imagine ‘orthodox’ and ‘heterodox’ corruption alike, for a text in which the risen Jesus asks a woman to touch him may not be to everyone’s taste. Finally, from a psychological point of view, one would more readily imagine fear to be the first reaction of someone confronted with a friend who is risen from the dead.4
Other conjectures
There are other conjectures known to the same words, the most popular of which is μὴ πτόου (‘don’t be terrified!’), addressing precisely the psychological point made by Gersdorf. However this post is already getting too long. Once again, it feels like I have only scratched the surface of this intriguing verse.
Notes
1. Lipsius, in this case, is the nineteenth-century theologian Richard Adelbert Lipsius, not the sixteenth-century classical scholar Justus Lipsius.
2. See ‘Das Johannes-Evangelium. I. Der Text’, in Das Reich Christi 5 (1902), issues 2-5 (February-May), and ‘Die Auferstehungsberichte’, in issues 7-8 (July-August). From the latter, a separate publication exists, entitled Reden und Abhandlungen von Johannes Lepsius. 4. Die Auferstehungsberichte, Berlin, Reich Christi-Verlag, 1902, which will be quoted here.
3. Lepsius may have had Bernard Weiss’ commentary (KEK II, 81893) in mind. There, I easily count 12 different opinions mentioned in the footnotes on pp. 611-612, which makes at least 13 together with Weiss’ own solution, and all that more than a century ago.
4. Compare Gersdorf’s own words (pp. 79-80 footnote): ‘Für μη μου ἁπτου hat aber B. (Vat. 1209.) μη ἁπτου μου, und Mt. B. (b. Wetst. auch D. codd. lat.?) bloss μη ἁπτου. Durch diese Weglassung oder Versetzung des μου, das, wenn ἁπτου echt ist, nie gefehlt haben kann, dürfte man vielleicht auf die Vermuthung geführt werden, dass die Negation μη in diesem μου auf eine oder die andere Weise bereits früherhin ihren Ursprung fand, und es anfänglich bloss hiess: ἁπτου μου, oder auch μου ἁπτου, das aber mit der Heiligkeit des Erstandenen nicht ganz verträglich schien, und den Freunden des Docetismus anstössig seyn mochte. Denn wenn gleich v. 16. Μαρια eine freundliche Zusprache des Herrn und sanfte Ankündigung seiner Persönlichkeit war; so wird doch gewiss Maria ihr Ραββουνι jetzt, bei einer so unerwarteten Totenerscheinung (v. 15.), nur mit Graus und Schrecken, gleich einem Angstschrei, erwiedert, und sich wahrscheinlich mehr entfernt als genähert haben. Auch scheint v. 16. στραφεισα, und v. 14. ἐστραφη εἰς τα ὀπισω eher an die Flucht als an eine Annäherung zu erinnern, und v. 5. οὐ μεντοι εἰσηλθεν (vgl. v. 11.) offenbar an ihre Furchtsamkeit, so dass aus dem Munde Jesu zunächst zu erwarten war: “fürchte dich nicht, tritt näher, rühre mich an; ich bin noch derselbe und in eurer Mitte; habe mich noch nicht zu meinem Vater erheben!” (vgl. Luc. 24,37-40.).’ For the reading μὴ ἅπτου, Gersdorf depends on Griesbach's edition; Griesbach in turn refers to Matthaei for it (hence ‘Mt’).
In the Biblical Studies Carnaval XXXVI, Jim West says that the text-critical matter presented in the previous instalment of this series (Camerarius on John 19:29), is “really fascinating stuff ..., but not for the faint of heart”. Well then, it gets even worse today (for the faint-of-heart, that is), for today’s conjecture, if accepted, would render obsolete beautiful paintings such as this one by Titian. (Not that art ceases to be art when it is discovered to be based on textual misunderstandings - perhaps a nice idea for a new series.)
In John 20:17, the risen Jesus says to Mary Magdalene: “Touch me not (μή μου ἅπτου); for I am not yet ascended to my Father” (KJV). At the surface, the connection between the two phrases seems to be awkward, especially because of the word ‘for’ (γάρ). The current Nestle edition (NA27), as did NA26, records a conjecture by ‘Lipsius’, ἅπτου μου instead of μή μου ἅπτου. That is, Jesus asks (commands) Mary to touch him, apparently while it is still possible!
Somewhat surprisingly, earlier Nestle editions, from N13 to NA25, give ‘Lepsius’, not ‘Lipsius’ as the author of this conjecture, and ‘Lepsius’ turns out to be correct. So, in your copy of NA27, please take a pencil (not a ballpoint pen) and correct the ‘i’ into an ‘e’ (or strike the entire conjecture, see below; or supply a different author, see below). The error was easily made, for there is a conjecture by Lipsius recorded on Luke 16:17.1
As customary in this series, let us go to the sources and ask who Lepsius was and what he proposed.
Lepsius and his conjecture
Johannes Lepsius (1858-1926) was the son of Carl Richard Lepsius, a famous Egyptologist. The son was a missionary; he is especially known for his work for the Armenian cause.
From 1898 to 1911 he edited a journal, Das Reich Christi. It is in this journal that his conjecture can be found, in a series of articles on John’s gospel.2 First some context, therefore, derived from these articles.
In general, Lepsius’ approach must be characterised as harmonistic, that is, he tries to reconcile the differences between the resurrection stories as found in the four New Testament gospels. He follows for instance the idea according to which ‘Galilee’ in the resurrection stories in Mark and Matthew is actually found on the Mount of Olives.
In his remarks on Mary Magdalen in John 20, one also detects an interest related to harmonisation, namely to consider the story not as fiction (or narrative elaboration of a rather vague tradition), but as eyewitness report, with a reasoning that I do not entirely understand:
... entweder war der Verfasser Augenzeuge oder ein Romanschriftsteller ersten Ranges. Die unmittelbare sittliche Empfindung entscheidet für das erstere. (p. 31)
Perhaps someone can explain what ‘unmittelbare sittliche Empfindung’ is exactly, but I fail to see how such directness can be a criterion for historical authenticity.
The conjecture itself is introduced in rather simple terms, but theses words contain some surprises for those who know the conjecture only from secondary sources (the Nestle apparatus):
Daß in den Worten: Rühre mich (nicht) an – das “nicht” als Dittographie (im aramäischen Grundtexte des Evangeliums) zu streichen und “Rühre mich an” zu lesen ist, legt schon der Vergleich mit Joh. 20,19 [sic; probably John 20:20 is meant]; 20,27; Luk. 24,39-40 nahe. Alle Gründe, die die Kommentare für das noli me tangere geltend machen, offenbaren nur die Verlegenheit der Ausleger. (p. 31)
The last remark is to the point: the commentators betray many difficulties in explaining the verse in particular and the meaning of ‘Do not touch me’ in particular. All commentators tend to regard their solution as definitive, but the multiplicity of solutions, in this case, is telling.3
Lepsius’ conjecture is a literary one, that is, prompted by the comparison with other texts. Had Lepsius only referred to John 20:20 and 20:27, his would be a valid, if debatable, argument. With the inclusion of Luke 24, however, his harmonistic interest makes itself to be felt again. Such an approach almost automatically disqualifies the resulting conjecture, just as harmonistic variants, other things being equal, are not considered as original.
Even more problematic than the harmonistic approach is another aspect of Lepsius’ method, if it can be called thus. He appeals, albeit between brackets, to an original Aramaic source or version of the Gospel. Such conjectures, however, are not conjectures on the Greek text. Lepsius assumes a dittography in the original Aramaic, not even a dittography in an Aramaic copy or a translation error made when the Greek text was prepared.
There is no reference, and no elaboration on the Aramaic words Lepsius has in mind. If one (unscholarly) takes the Peshitta wording as a starting point, a dittography seems not very likely.
In general, I do not find such translation hypotheses very convincing, and the methods used for them are shaky, but I know that nineteenth- and twentieth-century research is full of such theories. In Lepsius’ case, the Aramaic source theory is not applied in order to better understand linguistic and other idiosyncrasies of John’s gospel, but to take away an inconcinnity as perceived by him.
In any case, Lepsius does not assume an error in the Greek transmission. Therefore, his opinion on this text does not belong to the realm of textual criticism, but to source criticism. Interesting though it may be, with Lepsius’ argumentation it has no place in the Nestle-Aland apparatus.
Gersdorf
Yet the conjecture can perhaps remain in the apparatus, as an apt reminder of the exegetical difficulties of this verse, but if so, a different author should be indicated: Christoph Gotthelf Gersdorf (1763-1834). This German pastor wrote a single influential book (and even only vol. I of it), namely Beiträge zur Sprach-Characteristik der Schriftsteller des Neuen Testaments. Eine Sammlung meist neuer Bemerkungen, Erster Theil, Leipzig, Weidmann, 1816. Gersdorf is mentioned in older German commentaries (though mostly without a proper reference), making it somewhat strange that only Lepsius’ name appears in the Nestle editions.
Moreover, Gersdorf’s proposal clearly differs from Lepsius’, for it really qualifies as a conjecture (found in the long footnote on pp. 79-80 of the xxxvi+579-page book). His reasoning is as follows (in my words). Exegetically, the verse is both strange in itself, and odd compared with John 20:27. Textcritically, the concurrence of the variant readings μή μου ἅπτου, μὴ ἅπτου μου and even the difficult μὴ ἅπτου may suggest that an original μου ἅπτου was miscopied as μὴ ἅπτου, to which subsequently μου was supplied in two different ways, as ἅπτου evidently needs an object. One can also imagine ‘orthodox’ and ‘heterodox’ corruption alike, for a text in which the risen Jesus asks a woman to touch him may not be to everyone’s taste. Finally, from a psychological point of view, one would more readily imagine fear to be the first reaction of someone confronted with a friend who is risen from the dead.4
Other conjectures
There are other conjectures known to the same words, the most popular of which is μὴ πτόου (‘don’t be terrified!’), addressing precisely the psychological point made by Gersdorf. However this post is already getting too long. Once again, it feels like I have only scratched the surface of this intriguing verse.
Notes
1. Lipsius, in this case, is the nineteenth-century theologian Richard Adelbert Lipsius, not the sixteenth-century classical scholar Justus Lipsius.
2. See ‘Das Johannes-Evangelium. I. Der Text’, in Das Reich Christi 5 (1902), issues 2-5 (February-May), and ‘Die Auferstehungsberichte’, in issues 7-8 (July-August). From the latter, a separate publication exists, entitled Reden und Abhandlungen von Johannes Lepsius. 4. Die Auferstehungsberichte, Berlin, Reich Christi-Verlag, 1902, which will be quoted here.
3. Lepsius may have had Bernard Weiss’ commentary (KEK II, 81893) in mind. There, I easily count 12 different opinions mentioned in the footnotes on pp. 611-612, which makes at least 13 together with Weiss’ own solution, and all that more than a century ago.
4. Compare Gersdorf’s own words (pp. 79-80 footnote): ‘Für μη μου ἁπτου hat aber B. (Vat. 1209.) μη ἁπτου μου, und Mt. B. (b. Wetst. auch D. codd. lat.?) bloss μη ἁπτου. Durch diese Weglassung oder Versetzung des μου, das, wenn ἁπτου echt ist, nie gefehlt haben kann, dürfte man vielleicht auf die Vermuthung geführt werden, dass die Negation μη in diesem μου auf eine oder die andere Weise bereits früherhin ihren Ursprung fand, und es anfänglich bloss hiess: ἁπτου μου, oder auch μου ἁπτου, das aber mit der Heiligkeit des Erstandenen nicht ganz verträglich schien, und den Freunden des Docetismus anstössig seyn mochte. Denn wenn gleich v. 16. Μαρια eine freundliche Zusprache des Herrn und sanfte Ankündigung seiner Persönlichkeit war; so wird doch gewiss Maria ihr Ραββουνι jetzt, bei einer so unerwarteten Totenerscheinung (v. 15.), nur mit Graus und Schrecken, gleich einem Angstschrei, erwiedert, und sich wahrscheinlich mehr entfernt als genähert haben. Auch scheint v. 16. στραφεισα, und v. 14. ἐστραφη εἰς τα ὀπισω eher an die Flucht als an eine Annäherung zu erinnern, und v. 5. οὐ μεντοι εἰσηλθεν (vgl. v. 11.) offenbar an ihre Furchtsamkeit, so dass aus dem Munde Jesu zunächst zu erwarten war: “fürchte dich nicht, tritt näher, rühre mich an; ich bin noch derselbe und in eurer Mitte; habe mich noch nicht zu meinem Vater erheben!” (vgl. Luc. 24,37-40.).’ For the reading μὴ ἅπτου, Gersdorf depends on Griesbach's edition; Griesbach in turn refers to Matthaei for it (hence ‘Mt’).
Thursday, November 27, 2008
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:
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."
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."
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
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.
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.
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
2. Did God’s Wrath Come? - Ritschl on 1 Thes 2:16
This is the second instalment of a series on conjectures in the Nestle editions. See the sidebar for other posts.
In 1 Thes 2:14-16 we find Paul uttering very harsh words against ‘the Jews’. He writes about ‘... the Jews, 15 who killed both the Lord Jesus and the prophets, and drove us out, and displease God and oppose all men 16 by hindering us from speaking to the Gentiles that they may be saved – so as always to fill up the measure of their sins. But God’s wrath has come upon them at last!’ (RSV).
An important part of the historical exegesis of these verses is the assumption made by various commentators, or by historians of early Christianity, that the transmitted text contains an interpolation. Their proposals vary from the end of verse 16 only, to 1 Thes 2:15-16, or even 1 Thes 2:13-16 entirely (if for a moment we exclude those who suggest that the entire epistle is not Pauline).
At 1 Thes 2:16 NA27 mentions two conjectures. The second one, by ‘Rodrigues’, will be discussed at another occasion. The first one concerns the omission of ἔφθασεν δὲ ἐπ᾽ αὐτοὺς ἡ ὀργὴ εἰς τέλος in verse 16b, and was proposed, according to Nestle-Aland, by ‘Ritschl’. But which Ritschl is it? The famous theologian Albrecht Ritschl (1822-1889), his son Otto Ritschl (1860-1944), also theologian, or the classical scholar Friedrich Ritschl (1806-1876)? And where did this Ritschl propose the conjecture? Such questions on authors and sources are frequent indeed for anyone interested in the conjectures mentioned in the Nestle editions.
In this case, the author of the conjecture turns out to be Albrecht Ritschl, and its source is his review of Baur’s Paulus (1845)1, in Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung 1847. The extended review is found in no. 124 (June), cc. 985-990; no. 125 (June), 993-100 (the entire issue); no. 126 (June), cc. 1001-1008 (the entire issue); and no. 127 (June), cc. 1015-1016; the conjecture itself occurs on c. 1000.2
Some background is necessary to understand what is going on. Well, Ritschl, in general, finds Baur’s approach to the history of the earliest Christians far too schematic. Baur, says he, has a fixed view of Paul’s opposition against Jewish Christians, and does not distinguish sufficiently between Jews and Jewish Christians. Moreover, in the case of 1 Thessalonians, he denies Paul a really apocalyptic mind-set. Baur declares letters or parts of letters authentic or inauthentic with these criteria only in mind. One by one, Ritschl addresses Baur’s arguments against the authenticity of 1 Thessalonians, such as those derived from 1 Thes 2:15-16:
There remains one problem, that is, one difficulty felt by Ritschl himself, and in this context his conjecture can be found:
So here it is. The method in this case is clear: there is no reason to assume that the epistle itself was not dictated by Paul, except for one obvious anachronism: 2:16b assumes the destruction of Jerusalem, and can for that simple reason not be Pauline. In this respect, and in this respect only, Baur’s observations were correct.4 The simple solution is the assumption of a gloss, which of course depends on the combination of Pauline authorship at the one hand, and the interpretation of 2:16b as alluding to 70 CE. Note also that Ritschl sees no problems in Paul’s other words in 2:15-16. The general context has to be kept in mind: Ritschl’s defence, against Baur, of the epistle as authentically Pauline.
To my knowing, Ritschl did not repeat his conjecture at a later occasion. Once, decades later, he discussed the same words, but, without any reference to his former conjecture, explained them as entirely Pauline.5
The conjecture has an impressive reception history,6 and in my view deserves serious attention. But that is not the scope of this posting.
Notes
1. Ferdinand Christian Baur, Paulus, der Apostel Jesu Christi. Sein Leben und Wirken, seine Briefe und seine Lehre. Ein Beitrag zu einer kritischen Geschichte des Urchristenthums, Stuttgart, Becher & Müller, 11845.
2. The source was found thanks to references in Lünemann’s commentary (KEK 10, 21859, p. 68, referring to ‘Hall. A. Lit. Z. 1847. Nr. 126’) and in Schmiedel’s commentary (HNT 2, 21893, p. 21, referring to ‘Halle’sche allg. Lit.-Ztg. 1847 I 1000’).
3. Ritschl’s reacts to Baur’s ideas on these verses as found in Baur, Paulus, pp. 482-483.
4. Baur, Paulus, p. 483: ‘Und wovon kann, nachdem die Juden fortgehend das Maaß ihrer Sünden voll gemacht haben, ἔφθασε δὲ ἐπ᾽ αὐτοὺς ἡ ὀργὴ εἰς τέλος natürlicher verstanden werden, als von dem durch die Zerstörung Jerusalems über sie gekommenen Strafgericht?’
5. See Albrecht Ritschl, Die christliche Lehre von der Rechtfertigung und Versöhnung, vol. 2, Der biblische Stoff der Lehre, Bonn, Adolph Marcus, 21882, p. 142. Ritschl now sees ἡ ὀργὴ εἰς τέλος as a prophetic utterance imitating some typical Old Testament prophecies. His conclusion, however, remains somewhat forced: ‘Hiedurch ist erklärt, warum Paulus sich ein Urtheil dieses Inhaltes [‘such a judgement’] für die Gegenwart gestattet, und zugleich ist der eschatologische Sinn des göttlichen Zornes bewahrt.’
6. 1 Thes 2:16c is of course the object of an extensive article by Tjitze Baarda (in Dutch), ‘Maar de toorn is over hen gekomen’, in T. Baarda e.a., Paulus en de andere joden. Exegetische bijdragen en discussie, Delft, Meinema, 1984, pp. 15-74. Baarda mentions James Moffatt, Rudolf Knopf, James Parkes and John W. Bailey as supporters of Ritschl’s conjecture. On pp. 22-30 Baarda discusses all kinds of interpolation proposals, far more than those recorded in the Nestle apparatus, and rejects them all. For Ritschl’s conjecture, Baarda refers to various sources that mention the Allgemeine Literaturzeitung, but in the end (p. 62 n. 47 to p. 23) echos van Manen’s words: ‘Ik kon het blad zelf niet inzien’ (‘I was not able to consult the journal itself’).
In 1 Thes 2:14-16 we find Paul uttering very harsh words against ‘the Jews’. He writes about ‘... the Jews, 15 who killed both the Lord Jesus and the prophets, and drove us out, and displease God and oppose all men 16 by hindering us from speaking to the Gentiles that they may be saved – so as always to fill up the measure of their sins. But God’s wrath has come upon them at last!’ (RSV).
An important part of the historical exegesis of these verses is the assumption made by various commentators, or by historians of early Christianity, that the transmitted text contains an interpolation. Their proposals vary from the end of verse 16 only, to 1 Thes 2:15-16, or even 1 Thes 2:13-16 entirely (if for a moment we exclude those who suggest that the entire epistle is not Pauline).
At 1 Thes 2:16 NA27 mentions two conjectures. The second one, by ‘Rodrigues’, will be discussed at another occasion. The first one concerns the omission of ἔφθασεν δὲ ἐπ᾽ αὐτοὺς ἡ ὀργὴ εἰς τέλος in verse 16b, and was proposed, according to Nestle-Aland, by ‘Ritschl’. But which Ritschl is it? The famous theologian Albrecht Ritschl (1822-1889), his son Otto Ritschl (1860-1944), also theologian, or the classical scholar Friedrich Ritschl (1806-1876)? And where did this Ritschl propose the conjecture? Such questions on authors and sources are frequent indeed for anyone interested in the conjectures mentioned in the Nestle editions.
In this case, the author of the conjecture turns out to be Albrecht Ritschl, and its source is his review of Baur’s Paulus (1845)1, in Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung 1847. The extended review is found in no. 124 (June), cc. 985-990; no. 125 (June), 993-100 (the entire issue); no. 126 (June), cc. 1001-1008 (the entire issue); and no. 127 (June), cc. 1015-1016; the conjecture itself occurs on c. 1000.2
Some background is necessary to understand what is going on. Well, Ritschl, in general, finds Baur’s approach to the history of the earliest Christians far too schematic. Baur, says he, has a fixed view of Paul’s opposition against Jewish Christians, and does not distinguish sufficiently between Jews and Jewish Christians. Moreover, in the case of 1 Thessalonians, he denies Paul a really apocalyptic mind-set. Baur declares letters or parts of letters authentic or inauthentic with these criteria only in mind. One by one, Ritschl addresses Baur’s arguments against the authenticity of 1 Thessalonians, such as those derived from 1 Thes 2:15-16:
Dass die folgenden Aeusserungen des Paulus gegen die Juden (V. 15. 16) nicht aus der Apostelgeschichte entnommen sein können, wie der Hr. Vf. [Baur] meint, ist erwähnt, und bei der nachgewiesenen Verschiedenartigkeit der Beurtheilung, welche die Judenchristen von Paulus erfahren, können wir uns über den Ausbruch seines Eifers gegen die Juden nicht wundern, wenn wir bedenken, dass gleichzeitige Erfahrungen in Corinth ihm diese Vorwürfe entlocken konnten. Für den von Hrn. Dr. Bauer [sic] beanstandeten Ausdruck λαλῆσαι ἵνα σωθῶσιν finden sich nicht nur in der Apostelgeschichte, sondern auch 2. Cor. 2, 17; 4, 13; Col. 4, 4 Parallelen.3
There remains one problem, that is, one difficulty felt by Ritschl himself, and in this context his conjecture can be found:
Die einzige Stelle, welche nach meiner Meinung gegen den Ursprung des Briefs Verdacht erwecken könnte, sind die Schlussworte dieses Absatzes, ἔφθασε δὲ ἐπ᾽ αὐτοὺς ἡ ὀργὴ εἰς τέλος, welche kaum eine andre natürliche Erklärung zu finden scheinen, als durch ihre Beziehung auf die Zerstörung Jerusalems. Allein weil von diesem Punkte aus der ganze Brief nicht verstanden werden kann, so will ich lieber annehmen, dass die Worte Glossen seyen, als dass ich ihnen ein Gewicht in der Bestimmung der Abfassungszeit gegenüber allen sonstigen Merkmalen der Echtheit im Briefe einräume.
So here it is. The method in this case is clear: there is no reason to assume that the epistle itself was not dictated by Paul, except for one obvious anachronism: 2:16b assumes the destruction of Jerusalem, and can for that simple reason not be Pauline. In this respect, and in this respect only, Baur’s observations were correct.4 The simple solution is the assumption of a gloss, which of course depends on the combination of Pauline authorship at the one hand, and the interpretation of 2:16b as alluding to 70 CE. Note also that Ritschl sees no problems in Paul’s other words in 2:15-16. The general context has to be kept in mind: Ritschl’s defence, against Baur, of the epistle as authentically Pauline.
To my knowing, Ritschl did not repeat his conjecture at a later occasion. Once, decades later, he discussed the same words, but, without any reference to his former conjecture, explained them as entirely Pauline.5
The conjecture has an impressive reception history,6 and in my view deserves serious attention. But that is not the scope of this posting.
Notes
1. Ferdinand Christian Baur, Paulus, der Apostel Jesu Christi. Sein Leben und Wirken, seine Briefe und seine Lehre. Ein Beitrag zu einer kritischen Geschichte des Urchristenthums, Stuttgart, Becher & Müller, 11845.
2. The source was found thanks to references in Lünemann’s commentary (KEK 10, 21859, p. 68, referring to ‘Hall. A. Lit. Z. 1847. Nr. 126’) and in Schmiedel’s commentary (HNT 2, 21893, p. 21, referring to ‘Halle’sche allg. Lit.-Ztg. 1847 I 1000’).
3. Ritschl’s reacts to Baur’s ideas on these verses as found in Baur, Paulus, pp. 482-483.
4. Baur, Paulus, p. 483: ‘Und wovon kann, nachdem die Juden fortgehend das Maaß ihrer Sünden voll gemacht haben, ἔφθασε δὲ ἐπ᾽ αὐτοὺς ἡ ὀργὴ εἰς τέλος natürlicher verstanden werden, als von dem durch die Zerstörung Jerusalems über sie gekommenen Strafgericht?’
5. See Albrecht Ritschl, Die christliche Lehre von der Rechtfertigung und Versöhnung, vol. 2, Der biblische Stoff der Lehre, Bonn, Adolph Marcus, 21882, p. 142. Ritschl now sees ἡ ὀργὴ εἰς τέλος as a prophetic utterance imitating some typical Old Testament prophecies. His conclusion, however, remains somewhat forced: ‘Hiedurch ist erklärt, warum Paulus sich ein Urtheil dieses Inhaltes [‘such a judgement’] für die Gegenwart gestattet, und zugleich ist der eschatologische Sinn des göttlichen Zornes bewahrt.’
6. 1 Thes 2:16c is of course the object of an extensive article by Tjitze Baarda (in Dutch), ‘Maar de toorn is over hen gekomen’, in T. Baarda e.a., Paulus en de andere joden. Exegetische bijdragen en discussie, Delft, Meinema, 1984, pp. 15-74. Baarda mentions James Moffatt, Rudolf Knopf, James Parkes and John W. Bailey as supporters of Ritschl’s conjecture. On pp. 22-30 Baarda discusses all kinds of interpolation proposals, far more than those recorded in the Nestle apparatus, and rejects them all. For Ritschl’s conjecture, Baarda refers to various sources that mention the Allgemeine Literaturzeitung, but in the end (p. 62 n. 47 to p. 23) echos van Manen’s words: ‘Ik kon het blad zelf niet inzien’ (‘I was not able to consult the journal itself’).
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
1. Seven or Eight Beatitudes: Wellhausen on Mt 5:5
This is the first of a series of short posts on conjectural emendations found in the Nestle editions (mostly in the apparatus only). In each post, I will give the source of the conjecture, and a short evaluation. Some other aspects can be discussed as well, such as its transmission history, within the Nestle editions or elsewhere.
Needless to say, comments, suggestions and questions to the series are welcome.
See the sidebar for other posts in the series.
In its apparatus NA27 mentions a conjecture on Mt 5:5: the omission of the entire verse is proposed by Wellhausen.
Why would Wellhausen want to rob us of the Beatitude of the meek (μακάριοι οἱ πραεῖς, ὅτι αὐτοὶ κληρονομήσουσιν τὴν γῆν)? In order to understand what Wellhausen intended with his conjecture, one has to know where he proposed it. In this case, the source is not hard to find: Julius Wellhausen, Das Evangelium Matthaei übersetzt und erklärt, Berlin, Reimer, 1904. There, on p. 15, he writes:
The reasoning that leads to the conjecture is typical. Wellhausen detects a rule according to which Matthew prefers the number seven in literary composition. This rule is then made so important that it leads to emendation of places where it is not found to be confirmed. Wellhausen’s sample, however, seems to be rather small. One may therefore ask how firm his rule was in the first place, if emendation has to be applied to make it work.
Moreover, the conjecture suggests that the Beatitudes in their current form do not betray a balanced composition, an idea that does not hold water when careful exegesis is done.
In conclusion: Wellhausen’s conjecture is completely unnecessary, and should not even have been mentioned in the Nestle editions. Its only interesting aspect is to remind us that Matthew does not hesitate to recast a line from the Psalms in order to compose the Beatitudes. It reflects a time in which scholars tended to find glosses at the most unexpected places (which of course does not mean that interpolations never occurred ...).
One more aspect of the conjecture deserves some attention: in NA26 it was indicated as to be applied to verse 6. It is hard to see why such an error was made. Perhaps the above-mentioned frequent transposition of verses 4 and 5 played a role. Interestingly, we have here one of the few cases in which NA26 introduced a fresh conjecture in its apparatus, compared to NA25.
The error has been corrected in NA27, though initially not in its Introduction, in which Wellhausen’s conjecture is used as an example (pp. 12*.54*).
Finally, Bowyer (Critical Conjectures, 41812, p. 62) records (Johannes) Piscator’s opinion, according to which verses 5 and 6 should be inverted.
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See the sidebar for other posts in the series.
In its apparatus NA27 mentions a conjecture on Mt 5:5: the omission of the entire verse is proposed by Wellhausen.
Why would Wellhausen want to rob us of the Beatitude of the meek (μακάριοι οἱ πραεῖς, ὅτι αὐτοὶ κληρονομήσουσιν τὴν γῆν)? In order to understand what Wellhausen intended with his conjecture, one has to know where he proposed it. In this case, the source is not hard to find: Julius Wellhausen, Das Evangelium Matthaei übersetzt und erklärt, Berlin, Reimer, 1904. There, on p. 15, he writes:
5,10 wäre die achte Seligpreisung. Mt vermehrt aber die drei Seligpreisungen bei Lc nicht deshalb, um sie auf acht, sondern um sie auf sieben zu bringen; ebenso wie er es bei den Bitten des Vaterunsers macht. Er hat auch sieben Gleichnisse in Kap. 13 und sieben Weherufe in Kap. 23. Eingeschoben ist nun nicht der allerdings inhaltlich leicht wiegende Vers 10; denn er soll den Übergang zu den beiden volgenden Versen machen. Sondern vielmehr Vers 4, denn er ist mit Haut und Haar (τὴν γῆν) aus Ps. 37,11 übernommen, und er hat in den Hss. eine schwankende Stellung – was öfters ein Zeichen der Interpolation ist.It is clear from this citation that verse 4, in Wellhausen’s text, is the Beatitude of the meek, verse 5 in the modern critical text. Wellhausen follows the numbering of the Vulgate, in which verses 4 and 5 are transposed. This already shows the ‘schwankende Stellung’ mentioned by Wellhausen. The verses are also found transposed in D (05) and 33 (see NA27).
The reasoning that leads to the conjecture is typical. Wellhausen detects a rule according to which Matthew prefers the number seven in literary composition. This rule is then made so important that it leads to emendation of places where it is not found to be confirmed. Wellhausen’s sample, however, seems to be rather small. One may therefore ask how firm his rule was in the first place, if emendation has to be applied to make it work.
Moreover, the conjecture suggests that the Beatitudes in their current form do not betray a balanced composition, an idea that does not hold water when careful exegesis is done.
In conclusion: Wellhausen’s conjecture is completely unnecessary, and should not even have been mentioned in the Nestle editions. Its only interesting aspect is to remind us that Matthew does not hesitate to recast a line from the Psalms in order to compose the Beatitudes. It reflects a time in which scholars tended to find glosses at the most unexpected places (which of course does not mean that interpolations never occurred ...).
One more aspect of the conjecture deserves some attention: in NA26 it was indicated as to be applied to verse 6. It is hard to see why such an error was made. Perhaps the above-mentioned frequent transposition of verses 4 and 5 played a role. Interestingly, we have here one of the few cases in which NA26 introduced a fresh conjecture in its apparatus, compared to NA25.
The error has been corrected in NA27, though initially not in its Introduction, in which Wellhausen’s conjecture is used as an example (pp. 12*.54*).
Finally, Bowyer (Critical Conjectures, 41812, p. 62) records (Johannes) Piscator’s opinion, according to which verses 5 and 6 should be inverted.
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