Summer Project: Beza’s Latin New Testament

These days, I am working very hard on collecting all the data for a critical edition of Beza’s Latin New Testament. This involves analysing the five major editions (1556 (Latin only); 1565; 1582; 1589; 1598 (Latin-Greek diglots)) published during his lifetime, and also the corrected Cambridge 1642 edition.
Here at the left p. 1 of the first part (f. A i^r) of the 1589 edition, containing Mt 1:1-6.
Beza called his own translation the "nova interpretatio", the Vulgate of course being the "vetus" one. His "New Version", however, was revised over the decades, though rather unevenly, I must say. Anyhow, it is fascinating to see the changes in Beza's latinity, and his translation choices, at times switching back and forth between the Vulgate and Erasmus. Exegetically remarkable choices can be seen as well, and text-critically the work is important for the history of the Textus Receptus, for close reading of the Latin text shows quite a few instances in which Beza adopted a Greek reading that however was not printed in the Greek column of his diglot.
Stay posted if you want to know how this work will eventually become available to the scholarly community...

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SNTC

Today, June 16th 2008, was the meeting of a very important society, the Studiosorum Novi Testamenti Conventus (SNTC), not to be confounded with the also famous SNTS. Each year, in June, Dutch-speaking New Testament scholars come together.
This year we had two interesting longer lectures. In the first one, dr. Rieuwerd Buitenwerf used Acts 9:1-25 to demonstrate that Luke (or better: "the author of Acts") knew and used at least a sample of Paul's letters and composed maximum stories based on this minimal information, together with some other traditional elements.
In the second lecture, dr. Istvan Czachesz explored the early christian traditions of Jesus' death and resurrection by using methods developed in cognition sciences.
It was also noticed that for some strange reason, the society's website is not found by Google. It can be found at sntc.nl. Some knowledge of Dutch may come in handy there.

SBL San Diego 2007 III - IGNTP

Over at ETC Tommy Wasserman already blogged about the IGNTP Presentation. It was fascinating to hear all the reports on the various aspects of the work in progress. The presentation, and the way it was scheduled, showed an organisation bristling with activity. These are good times for textual criticism...
I do have a few minor complaints on the session, however. There was almost too much information in such a short time; the room was far too small for the audience (this happened more often at SBL; the inverse occurred as well); and there was hardly any possibility to ask questions.
Something that also came by very fast was the schedule for ECM (Editio Critica Maior), Nestle-Aland and the UBS Greek New Testament. As Tommy noted, I took a picture of one of Wachtel's sheets, and was thus able to capture the research and publication schedule, preliminary as it may be, of course.
The grand idea is the following: ECM will be the central project, carried out by INTF (Münster) and IGNTP together. INTF will do Acts (scheduled for 2013), Mark (2018), Matthew (2024) and Luke (2030), and IGNTP will do John (2013), Pauline Epistles (2026) and Revelation (2030).
As for the hand editions, NA28 is planned for 2009, and it will follow the parts of ECM that have been published already (i.e. the Catholic Epistles), both in text and information in the apparatus. The same will be the case for all subsequent editions of NA and GNT (2014: NA29 and GNT5; 2019: NA30 and GNT6; 2025: NA31 and GNT7; 2031: NA32 and GNT8). Until the completion of ECM in 2031, there will thus be a certain unevenness in the editions, but that is inevitable.
One of the questions I would have asked if time had been given would be the following: the NA26/GNT3 text was accepted by the UBS as the standard text for bible translation worldwide, and it was established by an international and oecumenical committee. If ECM is to be followed, will the UBS automatically accept and adopt the new Greek text? Presumably most changes from the NA26 text will be minor, but nevertheless, changes there will be, as the Catholic Epistles already show.

SBL San Diego 2007 II - Mark

Monday morning, I attended a session of the Mark group, if only because (1) it was to be focussed more on textual criticism than usual, and (2) we were supposed to assemble for the ETC lunch there.
The first paper was given by Peter Head, who guided us through the particularities of the presentation of Mark's gospel in Codex Sinaiticus. Though he admitted that his contribution contained more observations than conclusions/interpretations of the findings, I liked it very much, especially the way Peter uses PowerPoint to highlight the points he is making (you had to be there to know what I mean).
A nice example of an observation in search of a fitting explanation is the remarkable use of ekthesis in Mk 9: the many instances of καί with which the paragraphs start are pushed more to the left than usual. One can even observe this phenomenon in Tischendorf's pseudo-facsimile (here - enter "any"/"any" when prompted for a login), but why was it done?
After a short discussion, Nicholas Perrin discussed a well-known variant reading in Mk 1:41: should it read that Jesus was σπλαγχνισθείς ("moved with compassion") or ὀργισθείς ("angered") when a leper said to him; "If you choose, you can make me clean"? Against Ehrman (and others) he defended the first reading.
Vicki Cass Phillips took a different approach to the issue; if the two readings existed, and were scripture for some early communities, what meaning may they have had for these communities?
In my view, Perrin's paper was not really text-critical. The only thing he did was mounting a case for σπλαγχνισθείς as a reading that actually makes a lot of sense in the gospel of Mark. How strong his appeal to the "exodus motive" really is I am not able to judge, but no textual critic ever suggested that Jesus' being moved here would not make sense. The rub lies elsewhere.
Only in the discussion afterwards one of the important questions was raised: if the reading σπλαγχνισθείς is original, how can one explain the origin of the reading ὀργισθείς? There were some confused allusions to the tendency of either the Western text or the scribe of Codex Bezae, but really, this question should have been addressed in the paper. The lectio difficilior argument for ὀργισθείς is too important to be dealt with in a footnote.
The other important question was not even mentioned: part of Ehrman's case - if I remember correctly - is the observation that Luke and Matthew take over Mark's story, but each in a different way, as if they took offense to Mark presenting Jesus as "angered". Here too, thus, a kind of lectio difficilior reasoning: one can better explain the way Mark is used by the other evangelists if one assumes that they read ὀργισθείς. In order to counter Ehrman's case, Perrin should address this issue as well.
After the time for discussion, I quietly left the room, not for lack of interest in the other papers, but because I had to rehearse my own presentation with Geert van Oyen for the TC session in the afternoon (more on this session in a following posting).

SBL San Diego 2007 I - UBSGNT5

Already on my way back I finally find some time to write something about at least one of the sessions I attended, the first one actually. On saterday morning there was an extra session (not found in the program book) on the next edition of the UBS Greek New Testament. It will be the fifth edition.
As Tommy Wasserman already blogged on the session over at ETC, I will just add some personal points of view and some stunning announcements.
To commence with the latter, and with the most important point of all: the font will certainly be changed, and probably more towards the font of the third edition, but maybe a move towards the NA27 font (is that Hellenica?) will be considered. Please contact Florian Foss (German Bible Society) with all your brilliant ideas on the appearance of the book as a book.
I have always been puzzled about the lack of balance in the GNT editions: on the one hand, there are actually very few variant readings in the apparatus, but on the other, those that are included are treated with an amount of detail that seems way beyond the purpose of the edition. David Parker pointed out to me that there are - of course! - historical reasons for this oddness: for the first editions, the Committee could provide - at least for these variants - something far better that the Nestle-Aland editions. The point remains however that translators, for whom the editions is primarily intended, are not well served with large lists of minuscules and bracketed church fathers. And even more: the criteria for including a variant reading are (1) its importance for the meaning of the passage and (2) the variant having at least some possible claim to being original (that word should be between quotation marks nowadays); but should one then include variants that are certainly conflations or scribal corrections, or should one only mention the two or three competing variants? The issue goes deeper: should the apparatus allow competent textual critics with all the material for a complete local stemma and all the other niceties for a textcritical discussion? My take would be that the limited choice of variant readings eo ipso excludes this: one has to see what is going on in other verses with a similar problem, or what the manuscripts you are interested in do in cases that do not affect the meaning in present-day languages.
And what about the (in)famous rating system? Despite the customary reference to Griesbach, it still is in my view a non-sensical part of the edition. More interesting than my point of view, perhaps, is how it actually functions. As we were told, apparently the degrees of certainty expressed by A to D are "translated" thusly by translators in the field: A: if you diverge, be ready to split the church; B: only if a major language translation around you follows it you may choose the variant; C: there are diverging opinions: look around the major translations and do what suits you (i.e. what will probably upset the fewest number of people); D: the text is a mess, do whatever you like.
Just another point before my flight starts boarding: we were shown one of Klaus Wachtel's sheets (whose contribution was presented by Ulrich Schmid) with a time schedule of GNT, NA and ECM, and even more, on which I will hopefully blog later. Be prepared to buy your GNT5 in 2014, and GNT8 (yes, the eighth edition!) around 2031. NA and GNT will be closely following the Edition Critica Maior project, which will accelerate and be finished by then. Exciting times!

Off to SBL - San Diego

Tomorrow morning, I will be on my way to San Diego. I hope to attend as many sessions on (New Testament) Textual Criticism as possible, and even to blog about them if time and means permit.
In one of my previous posts, I ventured the idea that a presentation on the Codex Boreelianus might be given at the SBL. And so it will be: Geert Van Oyen and I spent quit some time looking closely at the manuscript in the past few months, and we will present our findings - as well as the riddles that remain. And we do have some announcements to make on the manuscript, so keep posted. For now, let me just quote the abstract of our contribution as found in the SBL Program Book:

Codex Boreelianus Revisited: A Fresh Look at Codex F (09) after 160 years
Codex Boreelianus is one of the rare examples of an uncial manuscript from around the turn of the first to the second millennium. Brought to the Netherlands around 1600 by Johannes Boreel, the codex which is kept since 1830 in the library of Utrecht University contains in its present state the four gospels starting with Matthew chapter nine. It has probably not been seen by anyone since that time and certainly no research has been done on it since 1845. A handout with a summary of some data about the codex and its trajectory will be distributed. Finally, through digital pictures the codex can now be made accessible to a larger public.

A riddle

Textual critics have an unhealthy relation with the phenomenon ‘error’. They find errors in texts just as easily as other people breathe, and consider it their main task to explain the origin of the errors they spot. Nothing brings greater frustration to them than an error they fail to understand.
Here is a nice one. Just take a look at your Nestle-Aland (27th ed.) at Romans 4:20.

It is rather obvious what happened to the word ἐπαγγελίαν here: there are some ink spatters above the ί, even extending to the word τὴν in the line above.
Such errors (of the press) just happen, and there is nothing much to explain about them. My surprise, however, came with SESB, the Stuttgart Electronic Study Bible. SESB is the only electronic edition of NA²⁷ with the apparatus. One would suppose that the SESB publishers/editors received and used an electronic text of the edition. But what does SESB read here? Believe it or not, it is ἐπαγγελῒαν.
Or take 3 John 14. On the printed page, something went wrong just above the word λαλήσομεν.

Just a loose spot, definitely not an accent or a breathing. Still, in SESB, this becomes λἁλήσομεν. Hence my question: how on earth is this possible?