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Quotations in early Christian writers provide important evidence for the text of the New Testament as well as the ways in which Scripture was used and received in the early Church. The fourth-century archbishop Gregory of Nazianzus was one of the most influential and widely-read authors of his time, but because the majority of his output was in poetic form he has rarely been treated as a source for the biblical text. The present study brings together all the identifiable references to the Gospels in Gregory’s writings for the first time, comparing them with standard biblical texts and manuscripts in order to determine their significance for the history and transmission of the New Testament. This collection also sheds new light on Gregory’s treatment of Scripture and the distinctive role it plays in his rhetorical style.
The present study represents the first attempt to expand the methodological and practical framework of textual scholarship on the Greek New Testament from an Orthodox perspective. Its focus is on the Antoniades edition of 1904, commonly known as the Patriarchal Edition. The examination of the creation and reception of this edition shows that its textual principles are often misrepresented. In particular, it is shown to be more closely related to the Textus Receptus than to lectionary manuscripts. This is confirmed by an analysis of lectionary manuscripts using the Text und Textwert methodology and a detailed comparison of the Antoniades edition with the recent Editio Critica Maior of the Catholic Epistles. A textual commentary is provided on key verses in order to formulate guidelines for preparing an edition of the Greek New Testament that would satisfy the needs of Orthodox users in different contexts. This study offers a foundation for the further development of New Testament textual scholarship from an Orthodox perspective, informed both by modern critical scholarship and Orthodox tradition. It also provides a fresh translation of Antoniades’ introduction in an Appendix.
Indirect evidence, in the form of early translations (‘versions’) and biblical quotations in ancient writers (‘patristic citations’), offers important testimony to the history and transmission of the New Testament. In addition to their value as early evidence for the Greek New Testament, versions have a textual tradition of their own which is often of considerable historical, theological and ecclesial significance. Early quotations have the potential to provide a form of text which can be attributed to a specific time and location, as well as shedding light on its interpretation. This volume brings together a series of original contributions on these topics, which were the focus of the Eleventh Birmingham Colloquium on the Textual Criticism of the New Testament. It includes an account of the newly-discovered third Old Syriac version of the Gospels, followed by studies of the Coptic, Arabic, Latin and Gothic traditions. Two Greek-Latin bilingual manuscripts are examined, Codex Bezae and the St Gall Bilingual Gospels, along with a comparison of verb forms in these languages. Biblical quotations are considered from Tertullian, Ambrose and John Chrysostom, as well as a work attributed to Rufinus the Syrian which has been key to identifying the origin of the Latin Vulgate: the early printed editions of this version are the subject of another chapter. Although at one remove from Greek New Testament manuscripts, the research described in this volume illustrates not just the ongoing importance and variety of indirect material, but also the way in which it may shape the theory and practice of text-critical scholarship and lead to new insights about this vast and rich tradition.
Most scholars who employ manuscripts in their research tend to focus on the literary content itself. But what about the role of the scribe who typically remains at the periphery of research? How can we, in the words of the NT textual critic James Royse, “virtually look over the scribe’s shoulder” to understand the process by which our manuscripts were produced? Moreover, manuscripts often contain far more material than the words that form their primary texts: dots and various other symbols that mark vowels (in the case of Semitic languages), intonation, readings aids, and other textual markers; marginal notes and sigla that provide additional explanatory content akin to but substantially different from our modern notes and endnotes; images and illustrations that present additional material not found in the main text. These extratextual (or peritextual) elements add additional layers to the main body of the text and are crucial for our understanding of the text’s transmission history as well as scribal habits. This volume brings together contributions by scholars focussing on such extra-, peritextual elements as found in Middle Eastern manuscripts written in Hebrew, Syriac, Arabic, Persian and other languages, to study the individuals who produced our manuscripts and how they shaped the transmission of literary texts they copied.
This edition presents the complete palimpsest undertext of Codex Zacynthius (Cambridge, University Library MS Add. 10062) for the first time in print. Relying on state-of-the-art multispectral images produced for the Codex Zacynthius project, supplemented by significant new textual parallels identified by the CATENA project, a full transcription is given of each page of this unique ancient commentary on the Gospel according to Luke preserving the distinctive format of the catena. On the facing pages, the first-ever English translation of a New Testament catena makes the commentary accessible to a broad readership. This volume complements the digital edition of the manuscript in the Cambridge Digital Library and a set of studies of Codex Zacynthius also published in the Texts and Studies series.
This book consists of a series of studies of Codex Zacynthius (Cambridge, University Library MS Add. 10062), the earliest surviving New Testament commentary manuscript in catena format. A research project funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council has produced new multispectral images of the palimpsest undertext in order to enable a thorough investigation of the manuscript and the creation of a complete electronic edition. This volume, co-authored by the members of the project, will provide a full account of the research undertaken by the project. Many advances have resulted from this research, which will be presented here for the first time in print.
This work represents the first time that a major part of the masorah of the great Leningrad Codex, that of the Former Prophets, is being published with an English translation and commentary. The translation and commentary is preceded by an Introduction which deals with topics such as description of the importance of the Leningrad Codex, the Masorah and its development, the Masorah of the Leningrad Codex, and the relation of the Leningrad’s Masorah to the accepted text of the Hebrew Bible. Every masoretic note in the Leningrad Codex that accompanies the text of the six books of the Former Prophets (Joshua, Judges, 1 Samuel, 2 Samuel,1 Kings, and 2 Kings) is transcribed, translated and annotated Every occurrence of each lemma is provided with its biblical references, and an indication is given as to where else in the ms. a note for any particular lemma may be found. Furthermore, and most originally, an attempt is made to suggest a reason for each note. The presentation employed in this work is user friendly so, for example, catchwords that occur in the Masoretic notes are arranged horizontally to correspond to their biblical references. This arrangement not only enables readers to immediately see the contexts where lemmas occur, but also to see where the lemmas are distributed in various sections of the Bible. Another aid for students is that all Hebrew references, other than in the ms., are given in a fully vocalized form.
This work represents the first time that a major part of the masorah of the great Leningrad Codex, that of the Former Prophets, is being published with an English translation and commentary. Almost nine-thousand notes are transcribed and annotated with biblical references.
