Daily Gleanings: Manuscript Matters (15 August 2019)

Leigh Ann Thompson and Andrew Patton discuss four types of ektheses, or visual markers of textual divisions, in New Testament manuscripts and provide a helpful example illustration of each.


Peter Montoro discusses textual stability in Patristic literature and this literature’s function in textual criticism of the Greek New Testament. Montoro particularly focuses on Chrysostom’s homilies on Rom 8 as a helpful illustration. A repeated refrain is that

it seems sometimes to be forgotten that the task of “proper evaluation” [of the witness that Patristic citations give to the text of the Greek New Testament] is incomplete without a careful investigation of the manuscript transmission of the work in which a given patristic citation is located.

It needs to be more clearly recognized, in practice as well as in theory, that the usability of patristic citations is directly dependent upon their stability within the manuscript tradition of the work from which they derive. (italics original)

Yes, and yes. For the balance of Montoro’s discussion, see his original guest post.

Daily Gleanings: Manuscript Preservation (7 August 2019)

CSNTM has posted a video featuring Dan Wallace. The video introduces CSNTM and the balance of the post invites financial partners to join the effort.


Roger Pearse discusses Craig Evans’s 2015 article in the Bulletin for Biblical Research, “How Long Were Late Antique Books in Use?” (25.1: 23–37).

Pearse is critical of various points in Evans’s article but particularly appreciates “the first part of the article [that] is a dossier of evidence that ancient papyrus books could be in use for considerable periods of time, perhaps even a couple of centuries.” Pearse (and Evans) then both connect this observation to the claim of the Peter of Alexandria (d. 311) that the autograph of John’s gospel “was still around and that readings could be obtained from it.”

Daily Gleanings: Thoughts from Larry Hurtado (31 May 2019)

Larry Hurtado discusses early Christian investment in texts with helpful reference to the detailed work of Randolph Richards, Paul and First-Century Letter Writing: Secretaries, Composition and Collection (InterVarsity Press, 2004).


Larry Hurtado also discusses the nature of “extant evidence” and inferences based on it, specifically in terms of early Christian texts.

Tov, Scribal Practices and Approaches

Emmanuel Tov has made available the full text of his 2009 monograph Scribal Practices and Approaches Reflected in the Texts Found in the Judean Desert in two PDF files in the “Publications” section of his website. Excepting certain “minute changes,” these files are substantially identical to the printed versions.

HT: Doretha Burrows