(from left to right: Pastor Abidan Shah, Dr. Maurice Robinson, Paul Himes)
Dr.
Maurice Robinson is professor of New Testament at Southeastern Baptist
Theological Seminary. He will soon be transitioning to a new role as research
professor where he will have the privilege of producing a textual commentary on
the Byzantine text of the New Testament. I had the privilege of grading for Dr.
Robinson for many years during my doctoral studies, and I was pleased, along
with pastor and doctoral student Abidan Shah, to present the Festschrift
personally to Dr. Robinson in his office (a public presentation will be made
during chapel sometime in the Fall semester).
The book (published in Germany)
will soon be available from the US Amazon site at this link: (click here). A
brief description of the various essays is as follows:
First off,
we have Dr. Timothy Friberg’s “A Modest Explanation for the Layman of Ideas
Related to Determining the Text of the Greek New Testament.” This is probably the
most accessible of the essays, and provides a basic overview both of the basics
of textual criticism and manuscript transmission and the arguments for a
Byzantine priority position (dealing with common objections to that position,
as well).
Secondly,
we have Andrew Wilson’s “Scribal Habits and the New Testament.” This is a somewhat
more technical essay that deals with Wilson’s area of specialty, namely the
nature of scribal habits and whether or not scribes really were more likely to
omit rather than add (as is commonly argued, almost a “sacred cow” of textual
criticism). By the way, Andrew Wilson has an article dealing with this same
issue in Filologia Neotestamentaria volume 24 (2011).
Next, we
have my father John R. Himes’ “A Translator Takes a Linguistic Look at
Mark’s Gospel.”
John Himes provides a basic introduction to the concept of “discourse analysis”
and then delves into a study of Mark’s use of euquV/euqewV and its relation to the textual criticism of
Mark’s Gospel.
Next, we
have T. David Anderson, “Early Textual Recension in Alexandria: An
Evaluation of Fee’s Arguments.” This article represents Anderson’s interaction
with Gordon Fee over the relative merits of Codex Vaticanus, (B), especially
regarding whether or not B was the result of textual recension.
Fifthly,
Edward D. Gravely writes on “The Relationship of the Vaticanus Umlauts to
Family 1”
(drawing on his dissertational work under Robinson). Codex Vaticanus contains
certain “umlauts” which mark textual variants between this text and other
texts. This is a very detailed essay with a wealth of data (including a number
of tables laying out the data in a helpful format). Gravely suggests that
although “it seems possible that the scribe of Vaticanus making the umlauts was
not marking every place of variation . . . but rather was marking places of
interest,” yet nevertheless “there is a clearly demonstrable connection between
the umlauts in the Vaticanus Gospels and the manuscripts in the Family 1
tradition” (page 72).
In what is
probably the most technical essay, Timothy J. Finney discusses “Varieties of
New Testament Text”
using statistical analysis and various charts to demonstrate “clusters” of
texts, their relation to provenance (e.g., “population centers” [see pp.
89-90]), etc. (see especially his charts on pages 79, 81, 82-86). Note that
Finney provides the kind of statistical analysis that can only be done on
computers; as such this is a major contribution to the discussion (though it’s
a bit over my head).
Next, we
have Abidan Paul Shah’s “The Alexandrian Presumption of Authenticity
Regarding the Matthew 27:49 Addition.” Shah closely examines the situation of Matthew
27:49, where eclectic scholars prefer to argue that a particular phrase
(“another one, having taken the spear, pierced his side, and water and blood
came out”) should be omitted despite the fact that it has major Alexandrian
support. Shah demonstrates that eclectic scholars are not consistently
following their own methodology (both external and internal criteria) by too
quickly abandoning this phrase.
The eighth
essay in the book, Thomas R. Edgar’s “Orthodox Corruption of Scripture: A
New Concept”
is an extended critique of Bart Ehrman’s The Orthodox Corruption of
Scripture.
Edgar deals with both specific passages and the overall concept of theological
“corruption” in favor of a particular doctrine.
The ninth
essay is James A. Borland’s “The Textual Criticism of Luke 24:53 and Its
Implications.”
Borland closely examines the issue of whether or not Luke 24:53 should read
“praising and blessing” or just one of those actions (this text is an important
one for textual discussions since it is one of the examples Westcott and Hort had
originally given in favor of their
“neutral” text-type; see Borland, page 116).
Next, we
have another essay by Andrew Wilson, this one entitled “The Adulteress and
Her Accusers: An Examination of the Internal Arguments Relating to the Pericope
Adulterae.”
Wilson focuses on two things: 1. answering the objections raised against the Pericope
Adulterae’s
belonging in John, and 2. focusing on the themes of the John 7-10 and how the PA
fits
with those themes (e.g., “The Brilliance of Christ’s Words and Teachings,”
“Judgment,” etc.).
The
eleventh essay in this book is by Paul A. Himes (yours truly), entitled “‘Burned
Up’ or ‘Discovered’? The Peculiar Textual Problem of 2 Peter 3:10d.” I’ll probably go into
more detail in a future blog post, but suffice it to say I defend the Byzantine
reading here on the basis of internal evidence (ironically!). I argue that
despite attempts to make “the earth and all her works will be discovered” mean
something along the lines of “judged” (or “revealed in judgment”), this still
would not make sense because “the earth and her works”/”the works of the earth”
is a Jewish-Greek idiom meaning “agricultural produce or vegetation.”
Furthermore, the argument that the more difficult reading is to be preferred
has not been appropriately applied to this verse, for it is difficult to see
how (among other things) the writer would chose a more difficult word (the
relatively rare “katakahsetai”) to add rather than
something simpler.
Next we
have a second essay by T. David Anderson, “Arguments for and against the
Byzantine and Alexandrian Text Types.” This is probably the longest essay in the
book, but it is nevertheless a very thorough examination of textual criticism
and the Byzantine text, including such issues as text-types, patristic
evidence, the dates of manuscripts, the habits of copyists, and the method of
transmitting a text.
Finally,
at the very end of the book, we have an immensely helpful “Byzantine
Bibliography”
by Mike Arcieri. This includes articles (including foreign language articles),
book reviews, paper presentations, books, dissertations, and even relevant
websites.
