Anderson Textual Criticism of the Bible

Revised Edition
1. Auflage 2018
ISBN: 978-1-57799-704-7
Verlag: Lexham Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 264 Seiten

Reihe: Lexham Methods Series

Textual Criticism of the Bible provides a starting point for the study of both Old and New Testament textual criticism. In this book, you will be introduced to the world of biblical manuscripts and learn how scholars analyze and evaluate all of that textual data to bring us copies of the Bible in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek that can be used for translating the Bible into modern languages. Textual Criticism of the Bible surveys the field, explains technical terminology, and demonstrates in numerous examples how various textual questions are evaluated. Complicated concepts are clearly explained and illustrated to prepare readers for further study with either more advanced texts on textual criticism or scholarly commentaries with detailed discussions of textual issues. You may not become a textual critic after reading this book, but you will be well prepared to make use of a wide variety of text--critical resources.

Amy Anderson (PhD, University of Birmingham) is Professor of New Testament and Ancient Greek at North Central University in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She is the founder of The Center for Ancient Texts and Languages, an organization devoted to promoting the study of ancient languages, teaching students to read and analyze ancient manuscripts, and advancing research in textual criticism. Wendy Widder (PhD, University of the Free State) is the author of Daniel in the Story of God commentary series (Zondervan) and 'To Teach' in Ancient Israel: A Cognitive Linguistic Study of a Biblical Hebrew Lexical Set (deGruyter). She lives in the Twin Cities, where she teaches Old Testament courses as an adjunct professor and does freelance writing and editing. Douglas Mangum is a PhD candidate in Hebrew at the University of the Free State; he holds an MA in Hebrew and Semitic Studies from the University Wisconsin--Madison. He is a Lexham English Bible editor, a Faithlife Study Bible academic editor, the academic editor of Bible Study Magazine, and an associate editor for the Lexham Bible Dictionary.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Anderson, Amy

Leseproben

2

AN OVERVIEW OF TEXTUAL CRITICISM

2.1 WHY IS TEXTUAL CRITICISM NECESSARY?

The Bible was written at a time when the means for sharing documents were far different from the technology we have today. When the church in Thessaloniki received a letter from the Apostle Paul in the mid-first century, the believers there would have read it aloud in their gatherings, and then devoted followers who recognized the value of Paul’s words would have produced handwritten copies of the letter to pass around to a wider audience. By the end of the first century, Paul’s letters were being copied as a collection. Hand-copying of the Pauline corpus continued through the centuries, until Johannes Gutenberg invented movable type in fifteenth-century Germany. With some variation, this process of repeated hand-copying happened with every book in the Bible—the New Testament books in Greek, and the Old Testament books in Hebrew and Aramaic.

In addition to these original language manuscripts, Christians translated their sacred texts into other languages. The Old Testament documents were translated into Greek, Latin, Coptic, and Syriac, and the New Testament documents were translated into Latin, Coptic, and Syriac, followed later by Gothic, Armenian, Georgian, Ethiopic, Slavonic, and Arabic. The Bible was repeatedly recopied within each of these languages. Further, Jewish and Christian scholars quoted the sacred texts in their own writings, which others also copied and translated to dispense and preserve.

This proliferation of hand-copied texts resulted in thousands of manuscripts, no two exactly alike. Textual criticism is the discipline that guides scholars in establishing what the authors of the Bible wrote. This is especially important for those who value the Bible as God’s Word. While most Christians may never study the original languages or engage in advanced textual criticism, the work of textual critics enables us to know with confidence what God has said through the human authors.

Familiarity with the process of textual criticism can also help make sense of marginal notes that appear in many English versions—such as the footnote for Romans 8:1 in the ESV: “Some manuscripts add who walk not according to the flesh (but according to the Spirit).” This footnote points out a place in the text where there is variation in the wording of the ancient manuscripts. In textual criticism, this is called a variation unit, and each different reading at that point is called a variant.

Though there are thousands of variation units in the text of the Bible, the text is remarkably reliable. Old Testament scholar Bruce Waltke says the most recent critical edition of the entire Old Testament (BHS) has no significant variation in 90 percent of the text.1 Of the thousands of instances of variation in the Bible, nearly all of them concern spelling, word order, synonyms, and other elements that do not affect meaning at all. Those variation units that affect the meaning of a biblical text are found in the footnotes of any good English Bible. Even these variants do not affect doctrine or theology.2

2.1.1 DIFFERENCES AMONG TEXTUAL WITNESSES

The types of variation that appear in biblical manuscripts share important similiarities, regardless of which Testament the textual critic is working in (see §2.1.2 Errors and Changes in Transmission). Thus, both Old Testament (OT) and New Testament (NT) textual critics can follow the same general process when determining which variant readings are the most accurate. The present chapter discusses this process, and later chapters deal more specifically with textual criticism in the OT (see chapter 3 on OT textual criticism) and the NT (see chapter 4 on NT textual criticism).

However, the textual evidence for each Testament is quite different. Basic knowledge of these differences establishes the groundwork for understanding the task of the textual critic. The OT developed over a long period and is largely silent on issues of authorship, audience, purpose, and time of writing. By contrast, the documents of the NT were written during a period of less than one hundred years, and many books explicitly identify authors, audiences, and even the reason for composition. Based on historical knowledge of the first and second centuries AD, scholars can also make reasonable assumptions about the date of most NT books. Another significant difference between the Testaments that affects the textual critic is the quantity and quality of manuscripts available. Many of the available biblical manuscripts are in codex form. The codex is the predecessor of the modern book—sheets of papyrus or parchment were folded in half and sewn together along the fold. Both sides of the page were used for writing. The codex format is known to have existed by the late first century AD (from a reference by the Roman poet Martial, c. AD 85), but it was not widely used until the fourth century.3 The other usual format for ancient biblical manuscripts was the scroll, a long roll of papyrus or parchment with text written in columns. A scroll could be quite long and had to be read by unrolling the next column and rolling up the finished column.4 For these reasons (and others), scrolls usually had text on only one side. This distinction between manuscripts with writing on both sides and writing on one side is important for understanding the textual evidence. A fragment of a manuscript may only represent part of a page from a codex, so the text on one side may be near the beginning of a chapter, while the text on the other may be later in the same chapter or come from a later chapter altogether. The issues surrounding the quality and quantity of biblical manuscripts are discussed further below.

2.1.1.a Old Testament Witnesses

If some OT writings date as far back as Moses, then parts of it were copied by hand for almost three thousand years before the printing press appeared. One challenge for OT textual critics is that few fragments of any early writings have survived. Two small scrolls dating to the sixth or seventh century BC contain a version of the priestly blessing found in Numbers 6:24–26, but this provides limited material for textual critics.5 A second challenge for OT textual critics is that the few available manuscripts are a considerable distance from the original writing. For most of the history of biblical scholarship, the oldest and best available manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible dated to the tenth and eleventh centuries AD—far removed from the original writing. The Leningrad Codex (AD 1009) is the only complete manuscript of the Hebrew Bible, but the Aleppo Codex (AD 925), the Cairo Codex of the Prophets (AD 896), and others contain significant portions. In 1947 the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls revolutionized the study of OT textual criticism when Hebrew manuscripts from as early as the first century BC surfaced. However, even these manuscripts are a considerable distance from the original writing of the OT books.

Table 2.1: Important Hebrew Manuscripts

BHS Sigla

BHQ Sigla

Name

Date

Q

Biblical texts from Qumran (Dead Sea Scrolls)

c. 100 BC

C

MC

Cairo Codex of the Prophets

AD 896

MA

Aleppo Codex

AD 925

L

ML

Leningrad Codex

AD 1009

2.1.1.b New Testament Witnesses

Unlike the OT manuscript evidence, which is meager and far removed from the actual composition of the books, the NT has thousands of surviving manuscripts, many of which were copied within three centuries of when the books were written.6 A few can even be safely dated as early as the mid-second century.7 The NT manuscripts also exhibit greater textual variation than their OT counterparts, in part because of the historical setting of their transmission. Bruce Metzger explains, “In the early years of the Christian Church, marked by rapid expansion and consequent increased demand...