Tag: Peter Williams

Phillips on a textual relative of the Leningrad Codex

The latest issue of the Tyndale Bulletin carries Kim Phillips’s essay, “A New Codex from the Scribe behind the Leningrad Codex: L17.” According to the abstract,

Samuel b. Jacob was the scribe responsible for the production of the so-called Leningrad Codex (Firkowich B19a), currently our earliest complete Masoretic Bible codex. This article demonstrates that another codex from the Firkowich Collection, containing the Former Prophets only, is also the work of Samuel b. Jacob, despite the lack of a colophon to this effect. The argument is based on a combination of eleven textual and para-textual features shared between these two manuscripts, and other manuscripts known to have been produced by the same scribe.

Phillips acknowledges that definitively linking the scribes of L and L17 isn’t entirely possible. But, he helpfully marshals several different lines of evidence to suggest the strong possibility of this connection.

For the essay’s full text and related links, see the Tyndale Bulletin website. See also PaleoJudaica. HT: Peter Williams.

TNT Updates

Two latest posts on the Tyndale New Testament blog contain some interesting further comments about the edition and its preparation.

The edition was based on Tregelles’s text because

by starting from Tregelles we go back beyond Westcott-Hort and their influential and lucid textual theories, but not as far back as the Textus Receptus. We could have opted for the text of Lachmann too, but I think that Tregelles is more explicit, and certainly more accessible, in justifying his methodology and theoretical approach. Another reason is that Tregelles is the most recent critical text that was not included in the triad of texts used to create Nestle’s first edition (Westcott-Hort; Tischendorf 8th; Weymouth [in itself the result of a comparison of editions]) or fourth (Weymouth replaced with Weiss).

The next entry discusses text(s) and the relationships among works, editions, and manuscripts. The post comments, in part,

Most people who think for a moment about the text and the various forms in which it appears, solve the question the same way as Plato did. Different manuscripts with their slightly different wording, and even different translations of the text in a wild variety of languages, all constitute different instances of the same text.

This same dynamic often functions unconsciously too when congregants in a church setting might “open their Bibles,” agree that they are all looking at “the Bible,” and yet have different versions like the ESV, NIV, or NRSV of the “same text” among them.

For these posts’ full comments, see The First Step: Digitising Tregelles and The Text of the New Testament, of an Edition, and of a Manuscript on the TNT blog.

Tyndale House GNT

Tyndale House Greek New Testament coverThe Tyndale House Greek New Testament is set to be released with Crossway on 15 November 2017, just in time for SBL. The text is already available for pre-order on Amazon.

According to the volume’s blurb, the principal editors, Dirk Jongkind and Peter Williams, have

taken a rigorously philological approach to reevaluating the standard text—reexamining spelling and paragraph decisions as well as allowing more recent discoveries related to scribal habits to inform editorial decisions.

Meanwhile, the principal editors have begun a blog about the edition. According to the blog’s initial post, future posts

will explore what such method means in practice at the hand of examples, and also probe the boundaries of such approach. However, in practice the emphasis on scribal behaviour implies that if, in the past, exegetical and theological arguments have been used to address a particular variant unit, we happily ignore these arguments if there is also a perfectly adequate transcriptional explanation.

HT: Dirk Jongkind, Mike Aubrey

 

NA28 @Logos

Nestle-Aland, Novum Testamentum Graece
Nestle-Aland, Novum Testamentum Graece, 28th ed.

The 28th edition of the Nestle-Aland Greek New Testament, including the critical apparatus, is now available on Logos Bible Software’s prepublication program. For Peter Williams’ review of the edition earlier this week, see here.

Origen on the Web (June 22, 2012)

On the web:

  • Jim Davila reports the discovery of some previously lost Greek homilies on the Psalms, potentially by Origen (1, 2).
  • Peter Williams provides a link to a set of images of the manuscript.
  • Roger Pearse comments on the press release and quotes Jerome’s catalogue of Origen’s writings.
  • Alin Suciu passes along a letter from Lorenzo Perrone, provides several updates on the discussion, and releases a guest post from Mark Bilby.
  • Dirk Jongkind comments on a textual variant in the text’s quotation of 1 Corinthians.