Featured Festshrift for Maurice Robinson

I'm in a layover in Atlanta, so I have a few minutes.

Can you imagine reading that rascal?? But it's an excellent addition to the Byz. Priority bibliography. The essay in the festschrift is quite informative, a good read whatever one's position on the texts.

 

I see Jonathan has a review there of the first essay.

 

Thanks for the link.

 

If you don't mind sharing your email, drop me a PM and I'll send you a copy when I can get to it. :wavey:

 

Thanks for the kind words, Tim.

I'm back from the two conferences now, and can get back to this review. The conference on missionary Bible translation was great--about 95 attending, eight projects presented, lectures from two good men.

 

Edward D. Gravely is Professor for Biblical Studies and History of Ideas at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, from where he has his PhD under Dr. Robinson. His dissertation was: The Text Critical Sigla in Codex Vaticanus.

In 1995, Philip Payne discovered that over 900 umlauts are in the margins of the famous Codex Vaticanus. (Interestingly enough to me, Payne used to be a missionary to Japan.) If you've seen the two dots over a vowel in some languages (notably German), intended to mark a certain pronunciation, that is an umlaut. In this case the umlauts don't mark pronunciation, but according to Gravely, "The umlauts do mark places of textual variation between Vaticanus and another or other manuscript or manuscripts" (p. 54).

Dr. Gravely goes on to examine the text that the umlauts indicate. According to Payne's research and Gravely's, both, there are umlauts indicating the existence of the Pericope de Aldultera (John 8:1-20) at the time the unknown scribe added the umlauts to Vaticanus. When was that? "All of the evidence points to the fact that the umlauts were made very early, close to the time of the manuscript's production" (p. 54).

There are other indications from the umlauts pointing to the Byzantine text type. Dr. Gravely goes into detail about the resemblance of the text represented by the umlauts to the "Family 1" collection of Byzantine manuscripts from the tenth century. Gravely writes that "it is chronologically possible for a Family 1 ancestor to be a source of the Vaticanus umlauts" (p. 60).

After a chart detailing the connection between the umlauts and the Family 1 mss in the Gospels, Gravely writes, "There is a significantly high number of Family 1 variants found at umlaut locations in the Gospels. In total, 145 umlauts in the Gospels mark locations that contain Family 1 variants" (p. 65).

There is more discussion of the umlauts and their similarity to Family 1, and two more charts, but I think I've captured the gist of this technical but enlightening essay.

 

Just one further brief note before I move on. According to Dr. Robinson, there is another umlaut at 7:52 is not marking the pericope de adulterae as Payne believes, but it marks a different problem. The umlaut at the end of John, corresponding with Family 1, is what marks the pericope.

 

The next essay is by Timothy J. Finney, an Australian textual scholar and computer programmer. His dissertation for Murdoch U. was, The Ancient Witnesses of The Epistle to the Hebrews. It can be viewed here: http://www.tfinney.net/PhD/. He is also the editor of the peer reviewed online journal of textual criticism found here: http://rosetta.reltech.org/TC/index.html#page=home

His essay is, "Varieties of New Testament Text," "a statistical examination of data derived from the apparatus of the second edition of the United Bible Societies Greek New Testament," normally referred to as UBS2. He used UBS2 because it was available in a digital form suitable for analysis.

He first discusses the ancient production of mss, in particular "The Hand Copying Process" and how it produced variations, then discusses "Comparing Texts," in particular with computer analysis. May I say here that this is one field Dr. Robinson is quite well acquainted with. In his office he has several PCs including one he uses in DOS! (You young whippersnappers may not know what that is.)

Dr. Finney then discusses his use of multivariate analysis (MVA) to compare the texts. Frankly, at this point and for several pages his essay is beyond me. He has some charts which are no doubt of great use to fellow MVA acolytes, but hard to follow. That said, some of his conclusions are striking. For example, he writes, "The MDS map implies that the really old Greek manuscripts Jerome used when editing the Latin text of Mark were of the Byzantine textual variety. Unless he was badly mistaken abot the age of the Greek manuscripts, one can hardly date them any later than a century before Jerome wrote his preface. This would set the terminus ante quem of the 'Byz' text somewhere in the third century, along with the other three varieties" (p. 89).

 

Next we have Abidan Paul Shah and his essay, "The Alexandrian Presumption of Authenticity regarding the Matthew 27:49 Addition." Shah is a PhD student of Dr. Robinson's in textual criticism, and a pastor in Henderson, NC, though originally from India.

The passage in question is an odd case wherein eclectics rejects a reading with key Alexandrian support: "But another taking a spear pierced his side, and there came out water and blood" (my translation). What we have about this in Metzger's Textual Commentary on the Greek NT (2nd ed.) is a complete guess: "It might be thought...."

Shah puts it this way: "The UBS committee chose, presumably on internal grounds, to omit this strongly supported Alexandrian reading. It appears that modern eclectics have hastily abandoned their time-honored canons and principles in order to avoid a potential contradiction with John 19:34" (p. 92). The contradiction is that if the spear stabbing is the correct reading in Matt., Jesus was stabbed before his death! (Of course, the Byz. tradition does not include the reading in question.)

Again, Shah writes: "Metzger along with the UBS editors awarded a 'B' rating (almost certain) against the Alexandrian reading--this, in spite of its overwhelming external support" (p. 93). This illustrates why internal evidence, in spite of my own essay in the volume, is secondary in the Byzantine Priority method. Ignoring the external evidence can be perilous.

Shah goes on to discuss in more detail the eclectic method, other scholars and their views, other evidence including internal evidence, and finally discusses the "Possibility of an Early Liturgical Recension." This is a short essay (only 7 1/2 pages), but valuable in comparing the eclectic method with Byz. Priority.

 

The next essay is "Orthodox Cotrruption of Scripture:A New Concept?" by Thomas R. Edgar. Edgar is the retired Professor of New Testament Literature and Exegesis at Capital Bible Seminary.

Those who keep up with textual criticism will immediately recognize that this essay is contra the work of Bart Ehrman, student of Metzger and an apostate. Edgar writes, "Has Ehrman come up with a new 'canon' for textual criticism; 'Prefer the least orthodox reading.'? This would be a specific application of the more general canon, 'Prefer the reading which best explains the origin of the others'" (p. 100).

Beginning on p. 101 Edgar gives specific examples of charges of Ehrman that correctors of the sacred text purposely altered the Bible: Eph. 4:9, John 12:41, Heb. 2:9. He then critiques Ehrman's method. For example, Edgar writes, "Ehrman ignores the possibility of intentional corruptions of the text by non-orthodox persons..." (p. 102).

Edgar goes on to compare the critical method as shown in Metzger's textual commentary with Ehrman's method. Lo and behold, Ehrman simply is copying Metzger and the other UBS editors and their method of 25 years before.

"Ehrman's approach is not new. It is merely a logical and more radical extension of the standard approach to New Testament textual criticism that has been practiced for years. It specifically fits the approach of Ehrman's mentor at Princeton, Bruce M. Metzger." (p. 103).

After discussing said method for some pages, Edgar then discusses the improbability of Ehrman's approach. I'll not get into all of that here, but it is convincing to me. Let me give just one quote of what would have to happen if the Metzger/Ehrman approach is correct: "These scribes at the same time are so dumb and careless they make numerous mistakes. They are professional scribes but they cannot tell a gloss in the margin from the text. They are theologically orthodox; those with the highest view of Scripture, yet allegedly willing to tamper with the text at will" (p. 111).

Edgar's conclusion finishes off Ehrman. The "best and earliest" mss "exist today only because they were either discarded or forgotten by the church" (p. 114).

 

Dr. James A. Borland is Professor of New Testament and Theology at Liberty University and School of Divinity, where he has been since 1977. Before that he pastored and taught at Maranatha Baptist Bible College (now a U.) in Wisconsin. He has his Th.D. from Grace Theological Seminary, and has published numerous books and articles.

His essay is: "The Textual Criticism of Luke 24:53 and its Implications." Similar to the essay of Dr. Paul Himes, this essay has a narrow focus concentrating on the Byzantine Priority approach to this one verse.

His first paragraph says, "The textual criticism of Luke 24:53 carries more weight than most passages because of its larger bearing on the nature of the autographic text. Luke 24:53 was the last of eight verses B. F. Westcott and F. J. A. Hort used to assert the primacy of the so-called 'Neutral' text. The logical result of the reasoning was the irrevelance of the majority of manuscripts that exhibited 'Byzantine' readings" (p. 116).

The problem in this verse is that the Alexandrian text type ends with "blessing God," while the Byzantine has "praising and blessing God." After the "Introduction," Dr. Borland has a section on "The Texts of English Translations," showing that various scholars down through the centuries have had one or another of the readings.

In "The Manuscript Evidence RE: Luke 24:53," Dr. Borland lists many mss. and lectionaries that have the longer reading, referring especially to the Byzantine Textform Greek NT of which Dr. Robinson is a co-editor. Of particular importance is the fact that "The Lectionaries uniformly support praising and blessing" (p. 117), since the Lectionaries show broad church approval of the longer reading.

Next, Dr. Borland does a good job of applying the canons of textual criticism to the passage. I'll not give the discussion in detail, but he concludes that "praising" is an omission and should be in the text. His discussion of Codex D, which is faulty with the same type of omission in just the final four lines, is telling.

 

Oops!

Funny thing about that. Metzger and Ehrman cooperated on the 4th edition of The Text of the New Testament in 2005, long after Ehrman apostasized. So the thing is, the so-called evangelical Metzger still identifies strongly with Ehrman, his disciple in textual criticism.

A basic knowledge of textual criticism reveals that Ehrman would never say this but Edgar would.

Concerning the mss discovered in the 20th century, many of them are Byzantine also. So this is really irrelevant to Edgar's argument.

 

Congrats to your daughter!

 

He obviously did in 2005 when he shared authorial duties with him. That was quite close to his death.

Have I really given praise? I doubt that. I've quoted him, yes, as a scholar.

No.