Introducing the Solid Rock Greek new Testament (ed. McCollum and Brown)

I am excited to draw your attention to a new type of Greek New Testament, The Solid Rock Greek New Testament (see here for purchase on Amazon, and here for Logos pre-pub). The editors are James J. McCollum (who introduced this at the recent Bible Faculty Summit) and Stephen L. Brown.

The basic premise of this edition of the Greek New Testament is, in a nutshell, a Byzantine-based Greek Bible (close to, but not identical with Robinson/Pierpont 2005) that compares the readings to other critical Greek editions. In other words, the Solid Rock Greek New Testament (which we'll call the SRGNT) is to the Byzantine text what the new SBL GNT is to the eclectic text. In McCollum's own words (from his presentation at the BFS), the SRGNT
"Was developed with the purpose of offering a comparative overview of prominent NT editions . . . . Because it does not collate the readings of individual manuscripts directly, it is not a critical edition in the strict sense. Rather, it is a digest of other critical editions intended to give pastors, translators, and researchers a compact and accessible snapshot of trends in scholarly opinion over the last few centuries."

In other words, the SRGNT gives you the Byzantine text, but then notes where other Greek New Testament editions differ, specifically:
1. Robinson-Pierpont's Byzantine
2. Pickering's f35
3. Stephanus' 1550 edition of Erasmus' Textus Receptus (to be clear, the TR is, in a sense, a "critical text" because it was not based on one manuscript but multiple manuscripts and Erasmus had to make choices between them when they disagreed)
4. Tyndale House's corrected edition of Tregelles's Greek NT
5. Westcott and Hort's Greek NT
6-8. Nestle-Aland 25th, 27th, and 28th edition.
9-10. The Greek text behind the 1973 and 2011 versions of the NIV (which is not technically identical to any one Greek NT, though similar to the Nestle-Aland)
11. The SBL Greek New Testament
12. For (some) Pauline epistles only, the Greek text assumed by John Eadie's commentaries.
13. For Galatians only, the Greek text assumed by Stephen C. Carlson.
14. For Philemon only, the Greek text argued for by Matthew Solomon in his recent dissertation at NOBTS.
15. For Jude only, the work by Tommy Wasserman in The Epistle of Jude: Its Text and Transmission. [Though fairly recent, I get the impression that this is now considered the definitive work on textual criticism in Jude, and Wasserman has definitely established himself as a tier-1 textual critic].
So, in regards to those 15 different Greek texts, the SRGNT includes the variants where any of them might disagree with the base text of the SRGNT itself.

The only significant omission here is the Hodges-Farstad The Greek New Testament According to the Majority Text. Besides Hodges-Farstad, I cannot think of any other edition of the Greek New Testament that really matters at this point for actually figuring out what the Apostles originally wrote, so McCollum and Brown have almost covered all the bases! (And Hodges-Farstad would probably not have too many variants that were not reflected somewhere in the other editions McCollum and Brown compare with their text).

As a Byzantine priority guy myself, I'm excited to see an edition of the Byzantine Greek New Testament that nonetheless provides the differences between it and [almost] all the other major Greek texts out there, including the TR. Furthermore, if the reader will permit some theological speculation on the nature of preservation, because of the scope of material it covers as a result of being a "comparative-critical edition of critical editions," so to speak, based on the Byzantine text, I will tentatively suggest that (at least from my perspective) the SRGNT has a higher probability of having preserved all the original words of the apostles somewhere in its text than any other version/edition in existence (let alone any single ancient mss)! If a variant reading does not occur somewhere in the text or apparatus of the SRGNT, then it probably isn't worth considering as legit, no matter what your views on preservation.

I ordered my copy of the SRGNT today, and I'm excited about the possibilities of utilizing this text in my seminary "Introduction to Greek Exegesis" course. I already have my students read my Doktorvater David Alan Black's New Testament Textual Criticism: A Concise Guide, and the SRGNT would potentially add to their understanding of the practical ramifications of textual criticism along with that.

Festschrift for textual scholar. Dr Maurice Robinson

I am pleased to announce the publication of a Festschrift in honor of Dr. Maurice Robinson; the book is Digging for the Truth: Collected Essays Regarding the Byzantine Text of the Greek New Testament—A Festschrfit in Honor of Maurice A. Robinson (ed. Mark Billington and Peter Streitenberger; Norden, Germany: FYM, 2014). 

 (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.