
Evangelical Textual Criticism
293 FOLLOWERS
This is a forum for people with knowledge of the Bible in its original languages to discuss its manuscripts and textual history from the perspective of historic evangelical theology.
Evangelical Textual Criticism
5d ago
I’m in the process of working through all the manuscripts in the Liste tagged as containing Pauline content. One of these mss is GA 2766. The Liste describes the contents of this ms as “aprK.” It dates to the 17th century, is located in the Petraki Monastery in Athens, and is described as containing “c.a. 250” leaves.
However, the portion in the manuscript workspace only contains James through Jude, with no text of Acts or Paul or Revelation. So I dug a little deeper. Pinakes listed only one additional source of information about this ms ..read more
Evangelical Textual Criticism
1w ago
AI destroying the joy of human creativity,
as drawn by AI
Tommy's list of top ten essential works in NT textual criticism has had a very good run on this website. It remains our most read blog post ever. It could probably use a minor update given that it's more than a decade old, but it's still useful. Until then, I thought I would see what AI says are the top ten books in our field. I asked two AI platforms, Google Gemini and Microsoft's Copilot. I have no real insight into how either of these work or what the LLMs are behind them. But here are there answers.Copilot
Here are t ..read more
Evangelical Textual Criticism
1w ago
Sean McDowell and I recently had a conversation about 1QIsaa. You can access the conversation here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90_Mpiz1ons&t=333s
I repeat some of my points here along with some pictures! I hope you enjoy.
1QIsaa is the most popular Dead Sea Scroll. It was one of the initial six (or seven) manuscripts discovered (see Weston Fields’ Full History for a helpful overview of the discovery), and it is a copy of the book of Isaiah: a very important OT book. Additionally, the text is ancient. Although many antiquity dealers and scholars initially assessed it as me ..read more
Evangelical Textual Criticism
1M ago
Just in time for Christmas:
Nehemia Gordon, Patrick Andrist, Oliver Hahn, Pavlos D. Vasileiadis, Nelson Calvillo, and
Ira Rabin, 'Did the Original Scribes Write the Distigmai in Codex Vaticanus B of the Bible (Vat. gr. 1209)?' the Vatican Library Review 3 (2024), 125-156. Click here.
Abstract: The fourth-century Greek Bible manuscript Codex Vaticanus B (Vat. gr. 1209) contains pairs of horizontally aligned marginal dots known as distigmai, which correspond to textual variants in other manuscripts. The production of the distigmai has been variously dated to the 4th or 16th centuri ..read more
Evangelical Textual Criticism
2M ago
Recently I announced that my book and text-critical edition, The Epistle of Jude: Its Text and Transmission is available as e-book through Amazon.
Now it can also be pre-ordered as a Logos Research Edition integrated in Logos Bible Software with detailed interlinking ..read more
Evangelical Textual Criticism
3M ago
Being a grad student is tough. Money is often very tight and, if you can manage to get to SBL, there often isn't much in the coffer left for meals. But, thanks to Daniel Sharp, I have two complimentary tickets to offer to grad students who want to come to the blog dinner at SBL.
I will give them to the first two grad/PhD students who email me and tell me where they are a student and what they're studying. Many thanks to Daniel for doing this ..read more
Evangelical Textual Criticism
3M ago
Volume 29 (2024) of TC: A Journal of Biblical Textual Criticism has just been published. This volume contains five articles, four notes and one "pedagogical note" (a new feature). The volume is not yet complete. Some reviews and an extensive review article will be added soon.
  ..read more
Evangelical Textual Criticism
3M ago
For a few years now, we’ve had an informal lunch at ETS in order to be able to get together with people who are not staying for SBL and as a result can’t come to our annual blog dinner. Everyone interested in TC is welcome to join us. Even those people who like Old Testament TC!
I don’t know where we’ll go yet—we usually walk to a fast food place—but I’m going to let that be a problem for future Elijah. Let’s plan to meet on Wednesday, 20 November at 11:45 outside of the Marriott Grand Ballroom 2, where the 8:30–11:40 New Testament Canon, Textual Criticism, and Apocryphal Literature session is ..read more
Evangelical Textual Criticism
3M ago
I am pleased to announce that the 2024 ETC Blog Dinner is a go! Thanks to generous support from CSNTM it will also be much more affordable (hurray!). This year’s event will be Sunday night at 7:00pm at Casa Octavio in San Diego. It’s about a 15-minute walk from the convention center.
Details
There doesn’t seem to be a NT text criticism session that night, but there is a Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible (S24-344) as well as a Papyrology and Early Christian Backgrounds (S24-236). Both meet 4:30–6:30pm. I may be at one of the Paul sessions (forgive me!), but anyone attending those ot ..read more
Evangelical Textual Criticism
3M ago
A few of you have asked me about our annual blog dinner at SBL. After reaching out to my cobloggers, the lot has fallen on me to find a place. I’ve reached out to a bunch of restaurants to see which is cheapest (none will be cheap, I fear). But I will update you here if I find a good place. If, by some slim chance, a blog reader knows of a church near the convention center in San Diego that might be willing to host us, do reach out and let me know.
What AI thinks a group of text critics having dinner in downtown San Diego looks like ..read more