Texts and Manuscripts of the New Testament
TEXTS AND MANUSCRIPTS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT
Philip W. Comfort
AN INTRODUCTION TO IMPORTANT NEW TESTAMENT MANUSCRIPTS
Because not one original writing (autograph) of any New Testament book still exists, we depend on copies for reconstructing the original text. According to most scholars, the closest copy to an autograph is a papyrus manuscript designated P52, dated around 110–125, containing a few verses of John 18 (31-34, 37-38). This fragment, only twenty to thirty years removed from the autograph, was part of one of the earliest copies of John’s Gospel. A few scholars believe there is another early manuscript, designated P46. This manuscript, known as the Chester Beatty Papyrus II, containing all of Paul’s epistles except the Pastorals, can be dated to the mid-second century. If this dating is accurate, then we have an entire collection of Paul’s epistles that must have been made only a few decades after Paul wrote most of the Epistles. We possess many other early copies of various parts of the New Testament; several of the papyrus manuscripts are dated from the late second century to the early fourth century. Some of the most important New Testament papyrus manuscripts are as follows:
The Oxyrhynchus Papyri
Beginning in 1898 Grenfell and Hunt discovered thousands of papyrus fragments in the ancient rubbish heaps of Oxyrhynchus, Egypt. This site yielded volumes of papyrus fragments containing all sorts of written material (literature, business and legal contracts, letters, etc.) as well as over fifty manuscripts containing portions of the New Testament. Some of the more noteworthy papyrus manuscripts are P1 (Matthew 1), P5 (John 1, 16), P13 (Hebrews 2–5, 10–12), P22 (John 15–16), P39 (John 8), P77 (Matthew 23), P90 (John 18–19), P104 (Matthew 21), and P115 (Revelation 2–15).
The Chester Beatty Papyri
(named after the owner, Chester Beatty)
These manuscripts were purchased from a dealer in Egypt during the 1930s by Chester Beatty and by the University of Michigan. The three manuscripts in this collection are very early and contain a large portion of the New Testament text. P45 (second century) contains portions of all four Gospels and Acts; P46 (late first century to early second century) has almost all of Paul’s epistles and Hebrews; and P47 (third century) contains Revelation 9–17.
The Bodmer Papyri
(named after the owner, M. Martin Bodmer)
These manuscripts were purchased from a dealer in Egypt during the 1950s and 1960s. The three important papyri in this collection are P66 (c. 175, containing almost all of John), P72 (third century, having all of 1 and 2 Peter and Jude), and P75 (c. 200, containing large parts of Luke 3—John 15).
During the twentieth century, nearly a hundred papyrus manuscripts containing portions of the New Testament were discovered. In previous centuries, especially the nineteenth, other manuscripts were discovered—several of which date in the fourth or fifth century. The most noteworthy manuscripts are as follows:
Codex Sinaiticus—designated א or aleph
This manuscript was discovered by Constantin von Tischendorf in St. Catherine’s Monastery situated at the foot of Mount Sinai. It dates around A.D. 350, contains the entire New Testament, and provides an early and fairly reliable witness to the New Testament autographs.
Codex Vaticanus—designated B
This manuscript had been in the Vatican’s library since at least 1481, but it was not made available to scholars, like Tischendorf and Tregelles, until the middle of the nineteenth century. This codex, dated slightly earlier than Sinaiticus, has both the Old Testament and New Testament in Greek, excluding the last part of the New Testament (from Hebrews 9:15 to the end of Revelation) and the Pastoral Epistles. For the most part, scholars have commended Codex Vaticanus for being one of the most trustworthy witnesses to the New Testament text.
Codex Alexandrinus—designated A
This is a fifth century manuscript, displaying nearly all of the New Testament. It is known to be a very reliable witness to the General Epistles and Revelation.
Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus—designated C
This is a fifth century document called a palimpsest. (A palimpsest is a manuscript in which the original writing has been erased and then written over.) Through the use of chemicals and painstaking effort, a scholar can read the original writing underneath the overprinted text. Tischendorf did this with a manuscript called Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus, which had the sermons of Ephraemi written over a New Testament text.
Codex Bezae—designated D
This is a fifth century manuscript named after Theodore Beza, its discoverer, containing the Gospels and Acts and displaying a text quite different from the manuscripts mentioned above.
Codex Washingtonianus
(or, The Freer Gospels—named after its owner, Charles Freer)—designated W
This is a fifth century manuscript containing all four Gospels housed in the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.
Prior to the fifteenth century when Johannes Gutenberg invented movable type for the printing press, all copies of any work of literature were made by hand (hence, the name “manuscript”). At present, we have more than six thousand manuscript copies of the Greek New Testament or portions thereof. No other work of Greek literature can boast of such numbers. Homer’s Iliad, the greatest of all Greek classical works, is extant in about 650 manuscripts; and Euripides’ tragedies exist in about 330 manuscripts. The numbers on all the other works of Greek literature are far less. Furthermore, it must be said that the amount of time between the original composition and the next surviving manuscript is far less for the New Testament than for any other work in Greek literature. The lapse for most classical Greek works is about eight hundred to a thousand years; whereas the lapse for many books in the New Testament is around one hundred years. Because of the abundant wealth of manuscripts and because several of the manuscripts are dated in the early centuries of the church, New Testament textual scholars have a great advantage over classical textual scholars. The New Testament scholars have the resources to reconstruct the original text of the New Testament with great accuracy, and they have produced some excellent editions of the Greek New Testament.
Finally, it must be said that, although there are certainly differences in many of the New Testament manuscripts, not one fundamental doctrine of the Christian faith rests on a disputed reading. Frederic Kenyon, a renowned paleographer and textual critic, affirmed this when he said, “The Christian can take the whole Bible in his hand and say without fear or hesitation that he holds in it the true Word of God, handed down without essential loss from generation to generation throughout the centuries” (Our Bible and the Ancient Manuscripts, 55).
A HISTORY OF THE RECOVERY OF THE ORIGINAL TEXT OF THE NEW TESTAMENT: AN OVERVIEW
When we speak of the original text, we are referring to the “published” text—that is, the text as it was in its final edited form and released for circulation in the Christian community. For some books of the New Testament, there is little difference between the original composition and the published text. After the author wrote or dictated his work, he (or an associate) made the final editorial corrections and then released it for distribution. As is the case for books published in modern times, so in ancient times the original writing of the author is not always the same as what is published—due to the editorial process. Nonetheless, the author is credited with the final edited text, and the published book is attributed to the author and considered the autograph. This autograph is the original published text.
Some scholars think it is impossible to recover the original text of the Greek New Testament because they have not been able to reconstruct the early history of textual transmission. Other modern scholars are less pessimistic but still quite guarded in affirming the possiblity. And yet others are optimistic because we possess many early manuscripts of excellent quality and because our view of the early period of textual transmission has been getting clearer and clearer.
When we speak of recovering the text of the New Testament, we are referring to individual books of the New Testament, not to the entire volume per se, because each book (or group of books—such as the Pauline Epistles) had its own unique history of textual transmission. The earliest extant copy of an entire New Testament text is the one preserved in Codex Sinaiticus (written about A.D. 350). (Codex Vaticanus lacks the Pastoral Epistles and Revelation.) Prior to the fourth century, the New Testament was circulated in its various parts: as a single book or a group of books (such as the four Gospels or the Pauline Epistles). Manuscripts from the late first century to the third century have been found with individual books: such as Matthew (P1), Mark (P88), Luke (P69), John (P5, 22, 52, 66), Acts (P91), Revelation (P18, 47), or containing groups of books, such as the four Gospels with Acts (P45), the Pauline Epistles (P46), the Petrine Epistles and Jude (P72). Each of the books of the New Testament has had its own textual history and has been preserved with varying degrees of accuracy. Nonetheless, all of the books were altered from the original state due to the process of manual copying decade after decade and century after century. And the text of each of the books needs to be recovered.
The recovery of the Greek New Testament has had a long history. The need for recovery arose because the New Testament text was affected with many variations in its early history. In the late first and early second century, the oral traditions and the written word existed side by side with equal status—especially with respect to the material of the Gospels. Often, the text was changed by scribes attempting to conform the written message to the oral tradition or attempting to conform one Gospel account to another. By the end of the second century and into the third century many of the significant variant readings entered into the textual stream.
The early period of textual transmission, however, was not completely marred by textual infidelity and scribal liberty. There were those scribes who copied the text faithfully and reverently—that is, they recognized that they were copying a sacred text written by an apostle. The formalization of canonization did not ascribe this sacredness to the text. Canonization came about as the result of common, historical recognition of the sacredness of various New Testament books. Certain New Testament books, such as the four Gospels, Acts, and Paul’s Epistles were considered inspired literature from the onset. As such, certain scribes copied them with reverential fidelity.
Other scribes, however, felt free to make “improvements” in the text—either in the interest of doctrine and harmonization or due to the influence of a competitive oral tradition. The manuscripts produced in such a manner created a kind of “popular text”—i.e., an uncontrolled text. (This text type used to be called the “Western text,” but scholars now recognize this as a misnomer.)
The first ones to attempt a recovery of the original text were scribes in Alexandria or scribes familiar with Alexandrian scriptoral practices—for in the hellenized world there were many who had come to appreciate the scholarly practices of Alexandria. Beginning as early as the second century, the Alexandrian scribes, associated with or actually employed by the scriptorium of the great Alexandrian library or members of the scriptorium associated with the catechetical school at Alexandria (called the Didaskelion) were trained philologists, grammarians, and textual critics. The Alexandrians followed the kind of textual criticism begun by Aristotle, who classified manuscripts as to their date and value; and other scholars followed the practices of Zenodotus, the first librarian, with respect to textual criticism. The Alexandrians were concerned with preserving the original text of works of literature. A great amount of textual criticism was done on the Iliad and the Odyssey because these were ancient texts existing in many manuscripts. They would make text critical decisions from among many different manuscripts and then produce an archetype. The archetype was the manuscript produced officially and deposited in the library. From this were copied, and with it were collated, further manuscripts as required.
We can presume that the same kind of textual criticism was being applied to the New Testament text by Christian scribes in Alexandria. From the second century to the fourth century, the Alexandrian scribes worked to purify the text from textual corruption. Speaking of their efforts, Gunther Zuntz wrote:
The Alexander correctors strove, in ever repeated efforts, to keep the text current in their sphere free from the many faults that had infected it in the previous period and which tended to crop up again even after they had been obelized [i.e., marked as spurious]. These labours must time and again have been checked by persecutions and the confiscation of Christian books, and counteracted by the continuing currency of manuscripts of the older type. Nonetheless they resulted in the emergence of a type of text (as distinct from a definited edition) which served as a norm for the correctors in provincial Egyptian scriptoria. The final result was the survival of a text far superior to that of the second century, even though the revisers, being fallible human beings, rejected some of its own correct readings and introduced some faults of their own (The Text of the Epistles, 271-272).
The Alexandrian type of text was perpetuated century after century in a few manuscripts, such as Aleph and B (fourth century), T (fifth century), L (eighth century), 33 (ninth century), 1739 (a tenth century manuscript copied from a fourth century Alexandrian manuscript) and 579 (thirteenth century). Unfortunately, most of the Alexandrian-type manuscripts disappeared for centuries—awaiting discovery fourteen centuries later.
Concurrent with the Alexandrian text was the so-called “Western” text—which is better characterized as the popular text of the second and third centuries. In brief, this popular text was found in any kind of manuscript that was not produced by Alexandrian influences. This text, given to independence, is not as trustworthy as the Alexandrian text type. But because the Alexandrian text is known as a polished text, the “Western,” or popular, text sometimes preserved the original wording. When a variant reading has the support of both “Western” texts and Alexandrian, it is very likely original; but when the two are divided, the Alexandrian witnesses more often preserve the original wording.
At the end of the third century, another kind of Greek text came into being and then grew in popularity until it became the dominate text type throughout Christendom. This is the text type first instigated by Lucian of Antioch, according to Jerome (in his introduction to his Latin translation of the Gospels). Lucian’s text was a definite recension (i.e., a purposely created edition)—as opposed to the Alexandrian text type which came about as the result of a process wherein the Alexandrian scribes, upon comparing many manuscripts, attempted to preserve the best text—thereby serving more as textual critics than editors. Of course, the Alexandrians did do some editing—such as we would call copyediting. The Lucianic text is the outgrowth and culmination of the popular text; it is characterized by smoothness of language, which is achieved by the removal of obscurities and awkward grammatical constructions and by the conflation of variant readings. Lucian (or his associates) must have used many different kinds of manuscripts of varying qualities to produce a harmonized, edited New Testament text. The kind of editorial work that went into the Lucianic text is what we would call substantive editing.
Lucian’s text was produced prior to the Diocletain persecution (c. 303), during which time many copies of the New Testament were confiscated and destroyed. Not long after this period of devastation, Constantine came to power and then recognized Christianity as the state religion. There was, of course, a great need for copies of the New Testament to be made and distributed to churches throughout the Mediterranean world. It was at this time that Lucian’s text began to be propagated by bishops going out from the Antiochan school to churches throughout the east taking the text with them. Lucian’s text soon became the standard text of the Eastern church and formed the basis for the Byzantine text—and is thus the ultimate authority for the Textus Receptus.
While Lucian was forming his recension of the New Testament text, the Alexandrian text was taking on its final shape. As was mentioned earlier, the formation of the Alexandrian text type was the result of a process (as opposed to a single editorial recension). The formation of the Alexandrian text involved minor textual criticism (i.e., selecting variant readings among various manuscripts) and copyediting (i.e., producing a readable text). There was far less tampering with the text in the Alexandrian text type than in the Lucian, and the underlying manuscripts for the Alexandrian text type were superior than those used by Lucian. Perhaps Hesychius was responsible for giving the Alexandrian text its final shape, and Athanasius of Alexandria may have been the one who made this text the archetypal text for Egypt.
As the years went by, there were less and less Alexandrian manuscripts produced, and more and more Byzantine manuscripts manufactured. Very few Egyptians continued to read Greek (with the exception of those in St. Catherine’s Monastery, the site of the discovery of Codex Sinaiticus), and the rest of the Mediterannean world turned to Latin. It was only those in the Greek-speaking churches in Greece and Byzantium that continued to make copies of the Greek text. For century after century—from the sixth to the fourteenth—the great majority of New Testament manuscripts were produced in Byzantium, all bearing the same kind of text. When the first Greek New Testament was printed (c. 1525), it was based on a Greek text that Erasmus had compiled, using a few late Byzantine manuscripts. This printed text, with minor revisions, became the Textus Receptus.
Beginning in the seventeenth century, earlier manuscripts began to be discovered—manuscripts with a text that differed from that found in the Textus Receptus. Around 1630, Codex Alexandrinus was brought to England. An early fifth-century manuscript, containing the entire New Testament, it provided a good, early witness to the New Testament text (it is an especially good witness to the original text of Revelation). Two hundred years later, a German scholar named Constantin von Tischendorf discovered Codex Sinaiticus in St. Catherine’s Monastery (located near Mount Sinai). The manuscript, dated around A.D. 350, is one of the two oldest vellum (treated animal hide) manuscripts of the Greek New Testament. The earliest vellum manuscript, Codex Vaticanus, had been in the Vatican’s library since at least 1481, but it had not been made available to scholars until the middle of the nineteenth century. This manuscript, dated slightly earlier (c. A.D. 325) than Codex Sinaiticus, had both the Old and New Testaments in Greek, excluding the last part of the New Testament (Heb. 9:15 to Rev. 22:21 and the Pastoral Epistles). A hundred years of textual criticism has determined that this manuscript is one of the most accurate and reliable witnesses to the original text.
Other early and important manuscripts were discovered in the nineteenth century. Through the tireless labors of men like Constantin von Tischendorf, Samuel Tregelles, and F. H. A. Scrivener, manuscripts such as Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus, Codex Zacynthius, and Codex Augiensis were deciphered, collated, and published.
As the various manuscripts were discovered and made public, certain scholars labored to compile a Greek text that would more closely represent the original text than did the Textus Receptus. Around 1700 John Mill produced an improved Textus Receptus, and in the 1730s Johannes Albert Bengel (known as the father of modern textual and philological studies in the New Testament) published a text that deviated from the Textus Receptus according to the evidence of earlier manuscripts.
In the 1800s certain scholars began to abandon the Textus Receptus. Karl Lachman, a classical philologist, produced a fresh text (in 1831) that represented the fourth century manuscripts. Samuel Tregelles (self-taught in Latin, Hebrew, and Greek), laboring throughout his entire lifetime, concentrated all of his efforts in publishing one Greek text (which came out in six parts, from 1857 to 1872). As is stated in the introduction to this work, Tregelles’ goal was “to exhibit the text of the New Testament in the very words in which it has been transmitted on the evidence of ancient authority.” Henry Alford also compiled a Greek text based upon the best and earliest manuscripts. In his preface to The Greek New Testament (a multivolume commentary on the Greek New Testament, published in 1849), Alford said he labored for the “demolition of the unworthy and pedantic reverence for the received text, which stood in the way of all chance of discovering the genuine word of God.”
During this same era, Tischendorf was devoting a lifetime of labor to discovering manuscripts and producing accurate editions of the Greek New Testament. In a letter to his fiancée he wrote, “I am confronted with a sacred task, the struggle to regain the original form of the New Testament.” In fulfillment of his desire, he discovered Codex Sinaiticus, deciphered the palimpsest Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus, collated countless manuscripts, and produced several editions of the Greek New Testament (the eighth edition is the best).
Aided by the work of the previous scholars, two British men, Brooke Westcott and Fenton Hort, worked together for twenty-eight years to produce a volume entitled The New Testament in the Original Greek (1881). Along with this publication, they made known their theory (which was chiefly Hort’s) that Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus (along with a few other early manuscripts) represented a text that most closely replicated the original writing. They called this text the Neutral Text. (According to their studies, the Neutral Text described certain manuscripts that had the least amount of textual corruption.) This is the text that Westcott and Hort relied upon for compiling their volume.
The nineteenth century was a fruitful era for the recovery of the Greek New Testament; the twentieth century, no less so. Those living in the twentieth century have witnessed the discovery of the Oxyrhynchus Papyri, the Chester Beatty Papyri, and the Bodmer Papyri. To date, there are nearly 100 papyri containing portions of the New Testament—several of which date from the late first century to the early fourth century. These significant discoveries, providing scholars with many ancient manuscripts, have greatly enhanced the effort to recover the original wording of the New Testament.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, Eberhard Nestle used the best editions of the Greek New Testament produced in the nineteenth century to compile a text that represented the majority consensus. The work of making new editions was carried on by his son for several years, and is now under the care of Kurt Aland. The latest edition (the 27th) of Nestle-Aland’s Novum Testamentum Graece appeared in 1993 (with a corrected edition in 1998). The same Greek text appears in another popular volume published by the United Bible Societies, called the Greek New Testament (fourth edition—1993). The twenty-sixth edition of the Nestle-Aland text is regarded by many as representing the latest and best in textual scholarship.
THE ORIGINAL TEXT OF THE NEW TESTAMENT
In their book The Text of the New Testament Kurt and Barbara Aland argue for the position that the Nestle-Aland text “comes closer to the original text of the New Testament than did Tischendorf or Westcott and Hort, not to mention von Soden” (24). And in several other passages they intimate that it may very well be the original text. This is evident in Kurt Aland’s defense of the Nestle-Aland text as the new “standard text”:
The new “standard text” has passed the test of the early papyri and uncials. It corresponds, in fact, to the text of the early time. . . . At no place and at no time do we find readings here [in the earliest manuscripts] that require a change in the “standard text.” If the investigation conducted here in all its brevity and compactness could be presented fully, the detailed apparatus accompanying each variant would convince the last doubter. A hundred years after Westcott-Hort, the goal of an edition of the New Testament “in the original Greek” seems to have been reached. . . . The desired goal appears now to have been attained, to offer the writings of the New Testament in the form of the text that comes nearest to that which, from the hand of their authors or redactors, they set out on their journey in the church of the first and second centuries (“The Twentieth-Century Interlude in New Testament Textual Criticism” in Text and Interpretation, 14).
The Alands should be applauded for speaking about recovering the original text, for it is apparent that many modern textual critics have given up any hope of recovering the original text. Other scholars think it can be recovered, and they believe that NA27 is quite close to presenting the original text. The reason for this optimism is that we have many early manuscripts and we also have greater understanding about the early history of the text.
There are about sixty manuscripts that date before the beginning of the early fourth century—several of these manuscripts are from the second century. Until recently, the dating of certain manuscripts was too conservative because Grenfell and Hunt did not believe the codex existed before the third century and therefore dated many Oxyrhynchus papyri in the third or fourth century which should have been dated in the second or third century.
As was mentioned before, one of the most significant dates is that of P46 (the Chester Beatty Papyrus II, usually dated around 200), containing all of Paul’s epistles except the Pastoral Epistles. In a very convincing article, Young Kyu Kim has dated P46 prior to the reign of Domitian (A.D. 81–96); (see Biblica, 1988, 248-257). He determined this date because all other literary papyri comparable to the handwriting style of P46 are dated in first century A.D. and because there are no dated parallel papyri from the second or third centuries. My analysis of the dating of P46 would place it in the middle of the second century (c. A.D. 150). (For a full discussion of the dating of P46, see The Text of the Earliest New Testament Greek Manuscripts, 2001, 204–206).
The following manuscripts have been dated in the second century or early third century:
In addition to the early manuscripts listed above, there is another late second century vellum manuscript: 0189, containing a portion of Acts 5. And there are forty-three other third-century manuscripts, with portions from the passages noted below:
The manuscripts listed above, especially the first group (those dated in the early second century, second century, and early third century), provide the source for recovering the original text of the New Testament. Many of these manuscripts are over two hundred years older than the two great manuscripts discovered in the nineteenth century: Codex Vaticanus (c. 325) and Codex Sinaiticus (c. 350). These were the two great manuscripts that revolutionized New Testament textual criticism in the nineteenth century and were the impetus for the compilation of new critical editions of the Greek New Testament by men such as Tregelles, Tischendorf, Westcott and Hort.
Tregelles, working according to similar principles as Lachmann, compiled a text based on the evidence of the earliest manuscripts. Tischendorf attempted to do the same, even though he was too biased toward his prized discovery, Codex Sinaiticus. Westcott and Hort implemented the same principle when they created their critical edition, even though they were biased toward Codex Vaticanus. Nonetheless, Westcott and Hort made an attempt to print the original text of the Greek New Testament. Some critics in this century deride them or anyone else making such an attempt because they are convinced that it is impossible to recover the original text due to the great divergence of readings that exist in so many different manuscripts.
Other critics will argue that it is not wise to base a recovery of the original text on manuscripts that are all Egyptian in origin. In fact, certain scholars contend that the early papyrus manuscripts represent only the Egyptian New Testament text, not the text of the entire early church. Kurt Aland has effectively argued against this view by pointing out that (1) we are not sure if all of the papyri discovered in Egypt actually originated in Egypt and (2) that the text typically called the Egyptian text (as opposed to the “Western” or Byzantine text) was the text displayed in the writings of early church fathers who lived outside of Egypt—such as Irenaeus, Marcion, and Hippolytus (“The Text of the Church?” Trinity Journal, vol. 8, 1987.) Therefore, it is likely that the manuscripts discovered in Egypt were typical of the text existing at that time throughout the entire church.
Furthermore, it must be remembered that the churches of the late first to the third century throughout the Mediterranean area were not isolated from one another. Due to a flourishing commerce, accessible highways, and open seaports (all under Roman rule), there was a regular flow of communication between cities like Carthage and Rome, Rome and Alexandria, Alexandria and Jerusalem. The churches in North Africa and Egypt were not isolated from the rest of the churches to the north. This connection began from the earliest days of the church. Some of the first to become Christians at the day of Pentecost (A.D. 30) were from Egypt and Libya (Acts 2:10); undoubtedly some of them returned home with the gospel. The Ethiopian eunuch, after receiving Jesus as his Savior, must have returned home with the gospel (Acts 8:25ff). Apollos, the Alexandrian, became one of the earliest apostles in Asia (see Acts 18:24).
History tells us that there was a church in Alexandria as early as 100. Around 160–180, Pantaneus became the first known head of a small catechetical school in Alexandria. According to Eusebius, the school had already begun by the time Pantaneus took over the leadership. Clement took over the leadership when Pantaneus left Alexandria, never to return. Clement worked hard to establish the small catechetical school there as the center of Christian study and mission. By 200 Clement had built up a flourishing community of well-educated Alexandrian Christians. But then, due to the savage persecution of 202, Clement fled Alexandria. Origen took over from Clement and established a well-known school of Christian scholars.
History also tells us that there were churches in the rural areas south of Alexandria as early as the first part of the second century. Several of the earliest New Testament manuscripts—those dating from the early second century (see list above) have come from the Fayum and Oxyrhynchus, thereby revealing the existence of Christians in these rural towns as early as 125. This is the area where archeologists have discovered nearly all of our early New Testament manuscripts. The manuscripts have not come from Alexandria because the Alexandrian library was destroyed twice (once accidentally by the Romans, and another time by the Moslems). Furthermore, the water table is too high in Alexandria; papyri could not withstand the moisture.
Rural Middle Egypt, because of its dry climate and low water table, has become a repository of manuscripts produced indigenously and extralocally. And the extant manuscripts, I believe, present a fair sampling of what would have existed in the late first to third centuries throughout the entire Graeco-Roman world. That is to say, if we could find—by some miracle—early manuscripts in Turkey, Israel, Syria, or Greece, they would very likely contain the same samplings of readings found in the so-called Egyptian manuscripts. In other words, the New Testament manuscripts used and read in the churches in Egypt during the early centuries of the church would fairly represent what was being used and read throughout all the churches. Furthermore, it is safe to assume that rural Middle Egypt preserved many manuscripts that had come from Alexandria (and were prepared in the Alexandrian tradition) and other cities, such as Rome or Antioch.
Rural Middle Egypt, the site of our manuscript discoveries, was not isolated from the rest of the world. The numerous nonliterary papyri discovered there have shown that there was regular communication between those living in the Fayum with those living in Alexandria, Carthage, and Rome. And there is evidence that there was general correspondence about works of literature and scriptoral practices. Therefore, among those who produced the early manuscripts we have today, there must have been some scribes who were producing copies of New Testament books much in the same manner as those who lived elsewhere in the Graeco-Roman world. Therefore, we can conclude that the manuscripts discovered in Egypt are legitimate sources for reconstructing the original text of the Greek New Testament.
EXAMINING THE RELIABILITY OF THE EARLY TEXT
Some textual critics will argue that an early date for a New Testament manuscript is not necessarily all that significant because they believe the early period of textual transmission was inherently “free.” Those who espouse this view have argued that the scribes making copies of various books of the New Testament prior to the period of canonization (late third century) used liberty in making the copies. Unlike the Jewish scribes who meticulously made accurate copies of the sacred Old Testament text, the Christian scribes have been characterized as not feeling obligated to produce exact copies of their exemplars because they had not yet recognized the “sacredness” of the text they were copying. This view of the early period, which has become axiomatic among many New Testament textual critics, is not entirely true, for several reasons:
1. Most of the writers of these New Testament books were Jews who believed that the Old Testament, in Hebrew and in Greek, was the inspired Word of God. Because of their Jewish background, they had great respect for the Scriptures, which had become central to their worship and religious life. They were the people of the book. Most of them read the Greek Old Testament, the Septuagint, which was very likely the translation work of Alexandrian Jews.
Some of the Jewish Christian scribes would have emulated Jewish scribal practices. This began with the making of copies of the Septuagint, which they believed was an inspired text, and would have extended to any New Testament books they regarded as authoritative or equally inspired. Christians would have been aware of the strict rules that governed the copying of the Old Testament text and the reverence given to the copies.
2. Many of the early copies of various books of the New Testament were copied by scribes who must have believed that they were copying a sacred text—originally composed by their founding apostles, such as Peter, Matthew, John, and Paul. Certain books were treated as sacred from the onset—such as the four Gospels, Acts, the Pauline Epistles, and 1 Peter—while other books, ones that took a longer time to be “canonized,” were perhaps treated with less textual fidelity—books such as 2 Peter and Jude, the Pastoral Epistles, James, and Revelation. Canonization was perceived before it was pronounced for some books as early as the first century. For example, the Pauline Corpus was formed as early as A.D. 75 and recognized as apostolic, authoritative literature. The writer of 2 Peter went so far as to categorize Paul’s epistles along with “the other Scriptures” (2 Pet. 3:15-16). The four Gospels were also recognized as being authoritative as early as the second century.
3. Many of the New Testament books were originally produced as works of literature. For example, the four Gospels, Acts, Romans, Ephesians, Hebrews, 1 Peter, and Revelation are clearly literary works. Most of the other New Testament books are “occasional” letters—i.e., letters written primarily to meet the need of the occasion. But not so with the other books, for they were designed from the beginning to be literary works reaching a large audience.
Because they lived in a hellenized world, the New Testament writers spoke Greek, read Greek, and wrote Greek. The kind of Greek they wrote was the common language (koine) of the Graeco-Roman world. Many of the New Testament writers knew other works of Greek literature and cited them. John alludes to Philo. Paul quotes Epimenides, Aratus, and Menander; and his epistolary style is modeled after that first created by such Greek writers as Isocrates and the philosopher Plato. The Gospel writers were typical Greek historiographers. Their works follow the pattern set by the Greek historian Herodotus, who set a high standard of observation and reporting.
The first readers of these works, whether Jewish Christians or Gentile Christians, would have been aware of both the spiritual and literary value of these texts. As such, some of those who were the first to make copies of these books would have done so with great respect for preserving the original text.
4. All the early papyri, without one exception, show that all the early Christians who made copies of the text used special abbreviations to designate divine titles (nomina sacra). The name was written in abbreviated form with a suprascript line over the abbreviation. For example, the Greek word for “Jesus” Ιησους was written as IC. Other titles that were written as nomina sacra are Lord, Christ, God, Father, Son, and Spirit. Though the creation of the nomina sacra may reflect the Jewish influence of the tetragrammaton (YHWH written for Yahweh), it is an entirely new creation found exclusively in Christian documents. According to C. H. Roberts, the creation of this kind of writing system “presupposes a degree of control and organization. . . . The establishment of the practice would not have been left to the whims of a single community, still less to that of an individual scribe. . . . The system was too complex for the ordinary scribe to operate without rules or an authoritative exemplar” (Manuscript, Society, and Belief, 45-46).
The universal presence of the nomina sacra in early Christian documents speaks loudly against the notion that the early period of textual transmission was characteristically “free.” Christian scribes were following an established pattern, an “authorized” exemplar. As Roberts said, “The remarkably uniform system of nomina sacra . . . suggests that at an early date there were standard copies of the Christian scriptures” (“Books in the Graeco-Roman World,” 64).
5. Accompanying the phenomemon of the formation of nomina sacra in Christian documents is the phenomenon of the use of the codex by all the early Christians. Prior to the middle of the first century, all the Scriptures and other writings were written on scrolls. For example, Jesus used a scroll to read from when he delivered his address from Isaiah 61 in the Nazarene synagogue (Luke 4:18ff). Jews used scrolls and non-Jews used scrolls; everyone in the Graeco-Roman world used scrolls.
Then the codex (a book formed by folding pages and stitching them at the spine) appeared—probably first modeled after parchment notebooks. According to C. H. Roberts’s hypothesis, John Mark, while living in Rome, used such a parchment notebook to record the sayings of Jesus (via Peter’s preaching). The entire Gospel of Mark, then, was first published as a codex (Birth of the Codex, 54ff.). “A gospel circulating in this format determined, partly by way of authority, partly by way of sentiment and symbol, that the proper form for the Christian scriptures was a codex, not a roll” (E. G. Turner’s Greek Papyri, 11).
Thereafter, all portions of the New Testament were written on codices. The codex was unique to Christianity until the end of the second century. Kenyon wrote, “Among all the papyri discovered in Egypt which can be assigned to the second century, . . . no single pagan [i.e., non-Christian] manuscript is in codex form” (Books and Readers in Greece and Rome, 111). This practice (which began either in Rome or Antioch) was a clear break with Judaism and, again, shows a kind of uniformity in the formation and dissemination of the early text.
6. Contrary to the common notion that many of the early New Testament papyri were produced by untrained scribes making personal copies of poor quality, several of the early New Testament papyri were produced with extreme care by educated and professional scribes. Paleographers have been able to classify certain handwriting styles from the first to the fourth century (as well as beyond). Many of the early New Testament papyri were written in what is called “the reformed documentary hand” (i.e., the scribe knew he was working on a manuscript that was not just a legal document but a literary work). In The Birth of the Codex, Roberts wrote:
The Christian manuscripts of the second century, although not reaching a high standard of calligraphy, generally exhibit a competent style of writing which has been called ‘reformed documentary’ and which is likely to be the work of experienced scribes, whether Christian or not. . . . And it is therefore a reasonable assumption that the scribes of the Christian texts received pay for their work. (46)
Scriptoral practices in rural Egypt (i.e., the Fayum, Oxyrhynchus, etc.) beginning in the second century were influenced by the work of the professional scribes working in the scriptorium for the great library at Alexandria or perhaps by a Christian scriptorium founded in Alexandria (in association with the catechetical school) in the second century. Eusebius implies that the school began well before the time Pantaneus took charge of it around 180 (H.E., v. 10. I.). And Zuntz quite convincingly argued that the Pauline corpus was produced by the methods of Alexandrian scholarship or in Alexandria itself at the beginning of the second century (The Text of the Epistles, 14-15). Functioning as the most ancient of the New Testament textual critics, the Alexandrian scribes selected the best manuscripts and then produced a text that reflected what they considered to be the original text. They must have worked with manuscripts having the same quality as P1, P4/64/67, P27, P46, P75.
Zuntz also argued that by the middle of the second century the Alexandrian bishopric possessed a scriptorium that, by its output, set the standard for the Alexandrian type of biblical manuscript (op. cit.). This standard could have included the coding of nomina sacra, the use of codices, and other literary features. However, in saying that Alexandria set a standard it does not necessarily mean that Alexandria was exerting a kind of textual uniformity throughout Egypt during the second and early third centuries. It was not until the fourth century, when Athanasius became bishop of Alexandria, that Alexandria began to exert control over the Egyptian churches. This may have extended to the production of New Testaments, but certainly would not have reached every church. Prior to the third century, the manuscripts do not give evidence of having been produced at a central scriptorium. Rather, each manuscript was produced by a scriptorium associated with a local church. Nevertheless, it is quite evident that a scriptorial standard had been set by Alexandria, and that certain major Egyptian cities (such as Oxyrhynchus) were influenced by this standard.
CONCLUSION
Textual critics working with ancient literature universally acknowledge the supremacy of earlier manuscripts over later ones. Textual critics not working with the New Testament would love to have the same kind of early witnesses that biblical scholars possess. In fact, many of them work with manuscripts written 1,000 years after the autographs were composed! We all marvel that the Dead Sea Scrolls have provided a text that is nearly 800 years closer to the originals than the Masoretic manuscripts, and yet many of the Dead Sea manuscripts are still over 600 to 800 years removed from the time of original composition! New Testament textual critics have a great advantage!
The nineteenth century New Testament textual scholars—such as Lachmann, Tregelles, Tischendorf, Westcott and Hort—worked on the basis that the earliest witnesses are the best witnesses. We should continue this line of recovery using the testimony of the earlier witnesses. But textual scholars since the time of Westcott and Hort have been less inclined to produce editions based on the theory that the earliest reading is the best. Most present-day textual critics are more inclined to endorse the maxim: the reading that is most likely original is the one that best explains the variants.
This maxim (or “canon” as it is sometimes called), as good as it is, produces conflicting results. For example, two scholars, using this same principle to examine the same variant unit, will not agree. One will argue that one variant was produced by a copyist attempting to emulate the author’s style; the other will claim the same variant has to be original because it accords with the author’s style. One will argue that one variant was produced by an orthodox scribe attempting to rid the text of a reading that could be used to promote heterodoxy or heresy; another will claim that the same variant has to be original because it is orthodox and accords with Christian doctrine (thus a heterodox or heretical scribe must have changed it). Furthermore, this principle allows for the possibility that the reading selected for the text can be taken from any manuscript of any date. This can lead to subjective eclecticism.
Modern textual scholars have attempted to temper the subjectivism by employing a method called “reasoned eclecticism.” According to Michael Holmes, “Reasoned eclecticism applies a combination of internal and external considerations, evaluating the character of the variants in light of the manuscript’s evidence and vice versa in order to obtain a balanced view of the matter and as a check upon purely subjective tendencies” (“New Testament Textual Criticism,” in Introducing New Testament Interpretation [ed. S. McKnight], 55).
The Alands favor the same kind of approach, calling it the local-genealogical method, which is defined as follows:
It is impossible to proceed from the assumption of a manuscript stemma, and on the basis of a full review and analysis of the relationships obtained among the variety of interrelated branches in the manuscript tradition, to undertake a recension of the data as one would do with other Greek texts. Decisions must be made one by one, instance by instance. This method has been characterized as eclecticism, but wrongly so. After carefully establishing the variety of readings offered in a passage and the possibilities of their interpretation, it must always then be determined afresh on the basis of external and internal criteria which of these readings (and frequently they are quite numerous) is the original, from which the others may be regarded as derivative. From the perspective of our present knowledge, this “local-genealogical” method (if it must be given a name) is the only one which meets the requirements of the New Testament textual tradition. (Introduction to Novum Testamentum Graece, 26th edition, 43)
The “local-genealogical” method assumes that for any given variation unit any manuscript (or manuscripts) may have preserved the original text. Applying this method produces an extremely uneven documentary presentation of the text. Anyone studying the critical apparatus of NA26 or NA27 will detect that there is not an even documentary presentation. The eclecticism is dispersed throughout the text.
“Reasoned eclecticism” or the “local-genealogical” method tends to give priority to internal evidence over external evidence. But it has to be the other way around if we are going to recover the original text. This was Westcott and Hort’s opinion. With respect to their compilation of The New Testament in the Original Greek, Hort wrote, “Documentary evidence has been in most cases allowed to confer the place of honour against internal evidence” (The Introduction to the New Testament in the Original Greek, 17).
In this respect, Westcott and Hort need to be revived. Earnest Colwell was of the same mind when he wrote, “Hort Redivivus: A Plea and a Program.” Colwell decried the “growing tendency to rely entirely on the internal evidence of readings, without serious consideration of documentary evidence” (152). In this article he calls upon scholars to make an attempt to reconstruct a history of the manuscript tradition. The main thesis of this essay has been to do just that, and in so doing promote the value of the earliest manuscripts in the ongoing endeavor to recover the original text of the New Testament.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Aland, Kurt, and Barbara Aland. The Text of the New Testament, trans. Erroll F. Rhodes, 1987.
Colwell, Earnest. “Hort Redivivus: A Plea and a Program,” in Studies in Methodology in Textual Criticism of the New Testament, 1969.
Comfort, Philip W. Early Manuscripts and Modern Translations of the New Testament, 1990.
Comfort, Philip W. and David P. Barrett, The Text of the Earliest New Testament Greek Manuscripts, 2001.
Kenyon, Frederic. Books and Readers in Ancient Greece and Rome, 1951.
———. Our Bible and the Ancient Manuscripts, 1958.
Metzger, Bruce M. The Text of the New Testament, 1980.
Roberts, Colin H. “Books in the Graeco-Roman World and in the New Testament” in Cambridge History of the Bible, Vol. 1, eds. P. R. Ackroyd and C. F. Evans, 1970.
Roberts, Colin H. Manuscript, Society, and Belief in Early Christian Egypt, 1979.
Roberts, Colin H. and T. C. Skeat. The Birth of the Codex, 1987.
Turner, Eric G. Greek Papyri: An Introduction, 1968.
Westcott, B. F. and F. J. A. Hort, Introduction to the New Testament in the Original Greek, 1882.
Zuntz, Gunther. The Text of the Epistles, 1953.