Studies in the Textual Criticism of the New Testament (New Testament Tools and Studies)

417 Pages·2006·2.25 MB·English

by  Bart D. Ehrman

Studies in the Textual Criticism
of the New Testament
New Testament Tools
and Studies
Edited by
Bruce M. Metzger, Ph.D., D.D., L.H.D.,
D. Theol., D. Litt.
Professor of New Testament Language and Literature, Emeritus
Princeton Theological Seminary and
Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy
and
Bart D. Ehrman, Ph.D.
James A. Gray Distinguished Professor
of Religious Studies
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Volume 33
Studies in the Textual Criticism
of the New Testament
by
Bart D. Ehrman
BRILL
LEIDEN • BOSTON
2006
Cover: P52, a fragment of the Gospel of John discovered in a trash heap in the
sands of Egypt. This credit-card sized scrap is the earliest surviving manuscript of
the New Testament, dating from around 125–150 c.e.
This book is printed on acid-free paper.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data
Ehrman, Bart D.
Studies in the textual criticism of the New Testament / by Bart D. Ehrman.
p. cm. — (New Testament tools and studies, ISSN 0077-8842 ; v. 33)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 90-04-15032-3 (alk. paper)
1. Bible. N.T.—Criticism, Textual. I. Title. II. Series.
BS2325.E48 2006
225.4’86—dc22
2005058208
ISSN 0077-8842
ISBN 90 04 15032 3
© Copyright 2006 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden The Netherlands.
Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill Academic
Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated,
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printed in the netherlands
CONTENTS
Foreword .................................................................................... vii
1. The Text of the New Testament ...................................... 1
2. Methodological Developments in the Analysis and
Classification of New Testament Documentary
Evidence .............................................................................. 9
3. The Use of Group Profiles for the Classification of
New Testament Documentary Evidence .......................... 33
4. A Problem of Textual Circularity: The Alands on
the Classification of New Testament Manuscripts .......... 57
5. The Text of the Gospels at the End of the Second
Century ................................................................................ 71
6. The Text as Window: New Testament Manuscripts
and the Social History of Early Christianity .................... 100
7. A Leper in the Hands of an Angry Jesus ........................ 120
8. The Text of Mark in the Hands of the Orthodox ........ 142
9. The Cup, The Bread, and the Salvific Effect of
Jesus’ Death in Luke-Acts .................................................. 156
10. The Angel and the Agony: The Textual Problem of
Luke 22:43–44 (co-authored with Mark A. Plunkett) ...... 178
11. Jesus and the Adulteress .................................................... 196
12. 1 John 4:3 and the Orthodox Corruption of
Scripture .............................................................................. 221
13. The Use and Significance of Patristic Evidence for
Textual Criticism ................................................................ 247
14. Heracleon, Origen, and the Text of the Fourth
Gospel .................................................................................. 267
15. Heracleon and the ‘Western’ Textual Tradition .............. 281
16. The Theodotians as Corruptors of Scripture .................. 300
text and tradition: the role of new testament
manuscripts in early christian studies
17. Text and Interpretation: The Exegetical Significance
of the “Original” Text ........................................................ 307
18. Text and Transmission: The Historical Significance
of the “Altered” Text .......................................................... 325
vi contents
christ in early christian tradition:
texts disputed and apocryphal
19. Texts Disputed and Apocryphal: Christ Come in the
Flesh ...................................................................................... 343
20. Texts Disputed and Apocryphal: Christ as Divine
Man ...................................................................................... 361
21. Texts Disputed and Apocryphal: Christ Against
the Jews ................................................................................ 377
Index ............................................................................................ 395
FOREWORD
Already during my college days, before I learned Greek, I devel-
oped an interest in the textual criticism of the New Testament. I
had discovered that not only do we not have the “original” texts of
the New Testament (we spoke unproblematically of the originals in
those days), we also do not have accurate copies of the originals.
For me this was both a problem to contemplate and a puzzle to
solve, and I was interested in learning all that I could about it. In
the late 1970s I went to Princeton Theological Seminary to study
with Bruce Metzger, then the dean of the discipline in America.
After completing my MDiv, I stayed on to do my PhD under Prof.
Metzger’s guidance (he retired at the age of 70 while I was com-
pleting my dissertation; David R. Adams then took over as the official
chair of my committee, although Prof. Metzger continued to guide
me as well).
While still a PhD student I began publishing articles in the field
of New Testament textual criticism, and have continued doing so,
intermittently, in the twenty years since receiving my degree. The
present volume, in the Brill series New Testament Tools and Studies,
which Prof. Metzger himself started and which we now co-edit, con-
tains a number of the articles that I have published in the field—
several introductory pieces for beginners, some highly technical pieces
for fellow textual critics, and some articles for scholars of early
Christianity who are interested in seeing how textual criticism can
be important for exegesis and for understanding the formation of
Christian doctrine and the social history of the early church. The
volume also includes two sets of lectures on text-critical themes, one
delivered at Duke University in 1997 (and previously published in
electronic form), and the other at Yale University in 2004 (previ-
ously unpublished).
A lot has happened in the field of New Testament textual criti-
cism in the twenty-two years covered by these essays and lectures.
Developments can be seen in particular (a) in the progress made by
the Institut für neutestamentliche Textforschung in Münster, until
this past year under the direction of Barbara Aland, as it has begun
to publish its editio critica maior of the Greek New Testament; (b)
viii foreword
in the work of the British and North American Committees of the
International Greek New Testament Project, with David M. Parker
of the University of Birmingham leading the way, as they produce
an apparatus of the Fourth Gospel, and (c) in the offshoots of both
projects, both in terms of publications and in advances in our meth-
ods—especially as these have involved the use of computers and the
presentation of a critical apparatus. Although I do not describe these
recent advances in detail, many of them will be recognized as rele-
vant to the chapters found here, as I attempt to grapple with sev-
eral of the key issues in the field.
Given the nature of this collection—which includes essays written
for different occasions and different contexts, but sometimes on sim-
ilar themes—there will necessarily be overlap among the chapters.
As a collection, they explore several important matters that have
occupied me in the course of my career so far: the relationship of
textual criticism to exegesis, the interconnections between the trans-
mission of the text on the one hand and the social and theological
development of early Christianity on the other, the role of the church
fathers in understanding early scribal practices, and certain issues of
method.
I have organized the essays, roughly, by topic. After an essay orig-
inally designed as a general introduction to the field there are sev-
eral articles written early in my career on aspects of text-critical
method (especially in the classification of manuscripts); there then
follow two articles on the history of the text, several articles on
specific textual problems (the solution of which involves significant
aspects of the history of early Christianity and the transmission of
its texts), three articles on the importance and use of patristic evi-
dence for text-critical purposes, and finally the two sets of lectures
mentioned above, the Kenneth W. Clark Lectures delivered at Duke
University in 1997 (“Text and Transmission: The Role of New
Testament Manuscripts in Early Christian Studies”); and the Shaffer
Lectures delivered at Yale University in 2004 (“Christ in the Early
Christian Tradition: Texts Disputed and Apocryphal”). I am grate-
ful to both institutions for their generous invitations to deliver these
lectures and the hospitality they provided me while I was with them.
I would like to thank several people who have made this volume
possible: my teacher, Bruce M. Metzger, who accepted the volume
in the series; Loes Schouten of E. J. Brill Publishers who handled
foreword ix
editorial duties connected with its publication; and Carl Cosaert, my
graduate student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill,
who went to inordinate lengths to prepare the manuscript for the
press. Thanks are also due to Jared Anderson, also a graduate stu-
dent at Chapel Hill, for preparing the indexes.
Bart D. Ehrman
June, 2005