The Multivalence of the Term “Original Text” in New Testament Textual Criticism

1999 ◽  
Vol 92 (3) ◽  
pp. 245-281 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eldon Jay Epp
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Textual Criticism ◽  
Original Text ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
The Church

One hundred and ninety-one years ago, in 1808, Johann Leonhard Hug's Introduction to the New Testament carried statements that, in part, may strike textual critics as being far ahead of their time. Hug laments the loss of all the original manuscripts of the New Testament writings “so important to the church” and wonders: “How shall we explain this singular fact?” Next, he observes that Paul and others employed secretaries, but Hug views the closing salutation, written in the author's own hand, as “sufficient to give them the value of originals.” Then, referring to the further role that scribes and correctors must have played after such a Christian writing had been dictated by its author, he says:Let us now suppose, as it is very natural to do, that the same librarius [copyist] who was employed to make this copy, made copies likewise for opulent individuals and other churches—and there was no original at all, or there were perhaps ten or more [originals] of which none could claim superiority.

It's All about Variants: A Variant-Conscious Approach to New Testament Textual Criticism

2007 ◽  
Vol 100 (3) ◽  
pp. 275-308 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eldon Jay Epp
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Textual Criticism ◽  
Original Text ◽  
Stated Goal ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
Small Collection ◽  
Key Terms

The goal of New Testament textual criticism would appear to be simple enough: to restore the original text written by each author of the New Testament books. Upon examination, however, the notion of simplicity vanishes immediately and each of the key terms here—“restore,” “original,” “text,” and “author”—has its problematic aspects, but more importantly the simply stated goal itself turns out to be inadequate. Grist for the text-critical mill consists of textual readings or variants, which for the relatively small collection of writings called the New Testament are not merely in the hundreds or thousands, or even the tens of thousands, but run to perhaps a third of a million. They stem from the nearly 5,500 Greek manuscripts, some 10,000 versional manuscripts, and innumerable patristic citations of New Testament passages.

The Egyptian Text of the Four Gospels and Acts

1933 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 77-98
Author(s):  
Henry A. Sanders
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Original Text ◽  
Textual Studies ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
New Testament Studies ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Church

During recent years the trend of New Testament textual studies has been toward the identification and establishment of local texts. If these be old, they serve as witnesses to the original text, if late, they are helpful in showing the trends of textual development and add to our knowledge of the history of the Church. We are far removed from the New Testament studies and problems of 1898, when Grenfell and Hunt published the first papyrus fragment of the New Testament, Oxyrhynchus 2 containing Matthew 1, 1–20.

Patristic Evidence and the Textual Criticism of the New Testament

1972 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 379-400 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bruce M. Metzger
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Textual Criticism ◽  
The Other ◽  
Church Fathers ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
The Difference ◽  
The Church

Of the three kinds of evidence which are used in ascertaining the text of the New Testament – namely, evidence supplied by Greek manuscripts, by early versions, and by scriptural quotations preserved in the writings of the Church Fathers - it is the last which involves the greatest diffculties and the most problems. There are difficulties, first of all, in obtaining the evidence, not only because of the labour of combing through the very extensive literary remains of the Fathers in search of quotations from the New Testament, but also because satisfactory editions of the works of many of the Fathers have not yet been produced. More than once in earlier centuries an otherwise well-meaning editor accommodated the biblical quotations contained in a given patristic document to the current text of the New Testament against the authority of the manuscripts of the document.1 Part of the problem, more-over, is that exactly the same thing took place prior to the invention of printing. As Hort pointed out, ‘Whenever a transcriber of a patristic treatise was copying a quotation differing from the text to which he was accustomed, he had virtually two originals before him, one present to his eyes, the other to his mind; and if the difference struck him, he was not unlikely to treat the written examplar as having blundered.’2.

scholarly journals Westerse teks, Alexandrynse teks en die oorspronklike teks van die Nuwe Testament: Is daar ’n oplossing vir die probleem?

1991 ◽  
Vol 47 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
J. H. Petzer
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Textual Criticism ◽  
Original Text ◽  
Text Types ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
History Of

Western text, Alexandrian text and the original text of the New Testament - is there a solution to the problem? This article discusses the debate concerning the problems of the so-called Western text in New Testament textual criticism. Traditional views, such as those of Westcott & Hort, Ropes, Metzger, Blass, Clark, and Boismard & Lamouille, all work with the notion of early local text-types. Because of this none of these ap proaches seems able to solve the problem. In contrast, a fresh approach to the history of the text in general and this problem in particular is developing in Munster. This approach describes the earliest history of the text in terms of ‘qualitative’ text-types and might therefore have the potential to solve the riddle of the Western text.

Can Theological Interpretation Soften the Protestant Problem of Old Testament Textual Plurality? : Jeremiah as a Test Case

2020 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 153-178
Author(s):  
Benjamin D. Giffone
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Old Testament ◽  
Significant Role ◽  
Textual Criticism ◽  
The Self ◽  
Test Case ◽  
Theological Interpretation ◽  
Masoretic Text ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
The Church

Summary Discoveries in the last century which contribute to the field of Old Testament textual criticism raise challenges for Protestant use of the Masoretic Text and canon, and for evangelical doctrines of the authority and perspicuity of Scripture. Protestants maintain that the authority of the New Testament is self-attesting, not derived from the Church. Difficulties arise when Protestants apply this understanding to the Old Testament, particularly to the Masoretic Text and canon used to exclude the Apocrypha. Of particular interest is the Masoretic Text of Jeremiah, which is widely acknowledged by textual critics to represent a later version of the book than the LXX text of Jeremiah. Protestant use of the Masoretic canon (and later text of Jeremiah) in light of the early church’s preference for the LXX (text and canon) entails 1) a recognition that community reception plays a significant role in determining the extent of the canon ‐ and that, through Jerome, Rabbinic Judaism’s Bible served to ‘correct’ the Spirit-filled church’s canon; and 2) that catholicity cannot be an adequate basis for recognizing the Old Testament canon, given that the Church has never been unanimous on this point. Through the lens of the self-attesting witness of the New Testament to Christ, ‘theological interpretation’ of the Old Testament may allow evangelicals to maintain a high view of the Old Testament as Scripture while tolerating some uncertainties concerning the precise text and outer canonical bounds of the Old Testament.

Who Is the Text? The Gendered and Racialized New Testament

2019 ◽  
pp. 135-155
Author(s):  
Yii-Jan Lin
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Textual Criticism ◽  
The Other ◽  
Creative Power ◽  
Clement Of Alexandria ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The New Testament

This chapter contends that the study of gender, sexuality, and the New Testament is not limited to the content of texts or their historical contexts. On the contrary, how we formulate a textual entity and how we approach that entity contribute to the dynamics that constitute identity, and are thus important to the discussion. In the case of the New Testament, Western Christianity has understood the active Word, or Logos, of God as “masculine” in its creative power. The text of the New Testament, on the other hand, requires historical and philological study, and is decidedly “feminine” in its vulnerability to disease and adulteration, especially in the field of textual criticism. Disrupting metaphors and conceptions of text and speech, masculine and feminine, can be found in ancient Judaism’s formulation of the Written and Oral Torah, as well as in Clement of Alexandria, the Odes of Solomon, and in Plato.

Eating with penitence: An essay on the local church eating responsibly

2020 ◽  
Vol 117 (4) ◽  
pp. 453-463
Author(s):  
David W. Priddy
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Holy Spirit ◽  
Local Church ◽  
Industrial Agriculture ◽  
Specific Program ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
The Holy Spirit ◽  
Local Congregations ◽  
Ecological Concern ◽  
The Church

In this essay, I pose the question, “How might local congregations participate in food reform and agricultural renewal?” Given the problems of industrial agriculture and the wider ecological concern, this question is pressing. Instead of advocating a specific program, I focus on how the Church might address this question while keeping its commitment to being a repentant Church. First, I discuss the significance of attention and particularly the habit of attending to the Word and Sacrament. This posture, I argue, maintains the Church’s integrity, preventing it from merely branding itself or relying on its own resources. Second, I briefly explore the association of eating with the mission of the Church in the New Testament, highlighting the repeated theme of judgment and call to humility in the context of eating. Third, I draw out the importance of continual remorse over sin. This attitude is essential to the Church’s vocation and rightly appears in many historic liturgies. I argue that this posture should extend to the question of eating responsibly. Penitence demonstrates the Church’s relationship to the wider world and testifies to the source of the Church’s own life, the Holy Spirit, who does the work of renewal.

scholarly journals Indicators of the church in John’s metaphor of the vine

2013 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Johann Fourie
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Gospel Of John ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
Unity In Diversity ◽  
The Church

This article aims to answer the question of what belongs to the essence of the church, as God intended it to be, by identifying certain indicators of the essence of the church through a study of one of the central metaphors of the New Testament: the vine in the Gospel of John. Through structural analyses, commentary and metaphorical analyses, several indicators of unity as part of the essence of the church emerge in this metaphor. These indicators are the primacy (or authority) of Christ, trinitarian balance, equality, interdependence, inclusivity, growth and unity (in diversity).Hierdie artikel poog om die volgende vraag te beantwoord: Wat behoort tot die essensie van kerkwees soos God dit bedoel het? Dit word gedoen deur sekere aanwysers van die essensie van kerkwees te identifiseer vanuit ’n studie van een van die essensiële metafore vir kerkwees in die Nuwe Testament, naamlik die Wynstok in die Evangelie van Johannes. Deur middel van struktuuranalise, kommentaar en metaforiese analise kom verskeie eenheidsaanwysers as deel van die essensie van kerkwees in hierdie metafoor na vore. Hierdie aanwysers is die hoër gesag (of outoriteit) van Christus, die balans van die Drie-eenheid, gelykheid, interafhanklikheid, inklusiwiteit, groei en eenheid (in diversiteit).

Charismata: Gifts, Enablements, or Ministries?

2002 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-69
Author(s):  
Benny Aker
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Spiritual Gifts ◽  
Biblical Theology ◽  
Church Culture ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
The One ◽  
The Church

AbstractIn the midst of a growing awareness of spiritual gifts in contemporary church culture and in the academy, much confusion exists. The use of the term 'charismata' promotes this confusion and is not an appropriate label for the biblical evidence of such activity. The problem lies in a deficient linguistic and exegetical handling of this term—a problem identified by James Barr long ago and brought to the fore by Kenneth Berding. Proper exegesis overcomes this prevalent exegetical and linguistic fallacy and suggests another term, diakonia. However, a more foundational conception of both the church and ministry is lacking. By analyzing Pauline anthropol ogy in Romans, an enduring and foundational model for gifts and ministries emerges. This model is the Pauline conception of the church as God's tem ple. People who are delivered from sin's power through identifying with Jesus' death, burial, and resurrection and who have the Spirit are free to give themselves both as sacrifice and temple servants in spiritual ministries. One other caution is raised and discussed. One must avoid the charge in practice and theology of Spirit-monism. Basic structures of the New Testament always place Jesus as the One through whom the Spirit comes. Conse quently, all Spirit activity must in some way be christological and sote riological in nature. Some contemporary applications are derived from this biblical theology of Church and ministry.

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