Evangelical Theological Society 2015

The Evangelical Theological Society held its annual meeting in Atlanta from 17-19 November, and I thought I would summarize some of the text-critically relevant papers for those who did not attend.

Russell Fuller and Richard McDonald argued that the study and teaching of Hebrew should be based on the use of Arabic grammatical categories, since it is the closest living language with a long history of grammatical analysis. They suggested that modern linguistic approaches have led to more confusion than insight, and that the use of native Semitic grammatical analyses better explains many phenomena. I must admit that the idea that we even need a paradigm language seems to me unnecessarily limiting. Neither does native Arabic grammar seem to me necessarily to be the best tool for studying Hebrew grammar. Nevertheless, it was a good reminder that we stand in a long line of grammatical tradition, and we would do well not to neglect the study of earlier grammarians and cognate languages.

Benjamin Giffone presented a theological paper on the problem for Evangelical bibliologies of defining a single, definitive text in a tradition that was repeatedly edited. He suggested that it is all but inevitable to have to appeal to "Catholic" arguments from community determination. He raised many insightful, probing theological questions, but unfortunately had no particular answer to give.

Eric Tully presented a helpful model for distinguishing between textual variants in a source language text and translation shifts in a target language text. He suggested gradually accumulating a database of tentative conclusions on individual readings, which can then inform later decisions or be corrected by later decisions. This iterative approach is not particularly new, but it was nice to see it clearly laid out.

Chris Stevens compared Titus in P32 and Sinaiticus, showing that the two are almost completely identical. He also used Sinaiticus to reconstruct the lacunae in P32 (rather than the NA text), further showing how close they are based on the near-perfect fit. I personally am a big fan of comparing the early witnesses to each other directly, rather than through intermediary textual witnesses or editions, so I appreciated that part of his paper.

Michael Kruger reevaluated P.Antinoopolis 12 (0232), a miniature codex containing 2 John. He suggested a 5th century date based on the physical features of the codex and the hand. He noted an error in the editio princeps, which led to a major error in the reconstruction of the codex. While admittedly speculative, he suggested that Hebrews may have been included in the codex along with the Catholic epistles, which would fill up the requisite amount of text indicated by the page numbers on the fragment.

Tomas Bokedal reviewed the history of the study of the nomina sacra, suggesting that Jesus was the primary member of the group of five reflecting an early core. He suggests the other names were chosen to line up with Christological creeds, indicating titles attributed to Jesus. This, of course, would imply a Christian origin for the nomina sacra.

Eric Mitchell presented on an unpublished fragment of Deuteronomy located at the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. I missed the first part of the presentation, but if I understand correctly, it is a late 1st century BCE fragment from Qumran with regular morphologically long 2mp suffixes, but only one (semi-)meaningful difference from the MT. Unfortunately, the fragment reads the broken word י]בחר, so I don't know if it is possible to tell whether it read the perfect (SP) or imperfect (MT) in that important ideological difference, though Eric reconstructed with the MT.

I caught the last part of Peter Gurry's paper on the textual variants in the divorce passages in the Gospels in light of the Coherence-Based Genealogical Method. Among other things, he suggested that genealogical coherence suggests a preference for a longer reading in Matt. 19:9.

Nicholas Perrin argued against Watson that P. Egerton 2 does not witness to a pre-Johannine source, but is rather secondary. Among other arguments, he suggests that key stylistic features of the common text are part of broader themes in John that cannot be explained on the basis of P. Egerton 2 alone.

David Yoon looked at the use of ekthesis (putting the first letter of a line in the margin for visual prominence) in Galatians in Sinaiticus, suggesting that the text segments divided by ekthesis cannot be identified as paragraphs according to modern understandings, since they occur too frequently and sometimes even mid-sentence. He did not come to a definitive conclusion as to what exactly was the function of the scribal practice.

Textual Communities Workshop, KU Leuven 11 and 12 June 2015

I received the following announcement from Peter Robinson, which may be of interest to some. For Old Testament scholars who may not know, Peter Robinson has a long-standing project editing the Canterbury Tales and is one of the leaders of the use of the digital humanities for the creation of critical editions. For those interested in learning the platform he has created for making critical editions, this would be a great opportunity.



Textual Communities Workshop, KU Leuven 11 and 12 June 2015 

Museumzaal (MSI 02.08, Erasmusplein 2, 3000 Leuven)

This workshop will serve three overlapping purposes. 

First, it will introduce the Textual Communities system for creating scholarly editions in digital form. Textual Communities allows scholars and scholarly groups to make highest-quality editions in digital form, with minimal specialist computing knowledge and support.  It is particularly suited to the making of editions which do not fit the pattern of “digital documentary editions”: that is, editions of works in many manuscripts or versions, or editions of non-authorial manuscripts. Accordingly, Textual Communities includes tools for handling images, page-by-page transcription, collation of multiple versions, project management, and more. See the draft article describing Textual Communities at https://www.academia.edu/12297061/Some_principles_for_the_making_of_collaborative_scholarly_editions_in_digital_form.

Second, it will offer training to transcribers joining the Canterbury Tales project, and to scholars leading transcription teams within the project.  The project is undertaking the transcription of all 30,000 pages of the 88 pre-1500 witnesses of the Tales (18000 pages already transcribed but requiring checking; 12000 needing new transcription). Participants will be given accounts within the Textual Communities implementation of the Canterbury Tales project, introduced to the transcription system, and undertake their first transcriptions of pages from the Tales.  See http://www.textualcommunities.usask.ca/web/canterbury-tales/wiki/-/wiki/Main/Becoming+a+transcriber.

Third, it will offer an introduction to the principles of manuscript transcription for digital editions to any scholars or students considering undertaking a digital edition project based on a manuscript. The materials of the Canterbury Tales project will be used as a starting point for discussion of transcription, supplemented by reference to other textual traditions on which the workshop leaders have worked (including Dante, medieval Spanish and New Testament Greek).

This workshop will be useful to scholars undertaking a wide range of digital edition projects, especially of works existing in multiple witnesses.  Because both the architect of Textual Communities (Robinson) and its chief programmer (Xiaohan Zhang) will be present, it will be useful also for technical consultants who plan to work with the Textual Communities API. And, of course, it will be useful for transcribers joining the Canterbury Tales project.

There is no charge for this workshop, but places will be limited.  Please contact Barbara Bordalejo barbara.bordalejo@kuleuven.be or Peter Robinson peter.robinson@usask.ca to confirm attendance. For accommodation, see http://www.leuven.be/en/tourism/staying/index.jsp.

This page is also at http://www.textualcommunities.usask.ca/web/textual-community/blog/-/blogs/first-textual-communities-workshop-11-12-june-2015 and at www.arts.kuleuven.be/digitalhumanities/activiteiten.

Doctoral Thesis Posted Online

I have posted online the final version of my doctoral thesis A Contextualized Approach to the Hebrew Dead Sea Scrolls Containing Exodus for the University of Birmingham under Charlotte Hempel, which I successfully defended on 25 February 2015 without corrections. I welcome corrections and comments from interested readers.

Update: The University of Birmingham has hosted a permanent URL http://etheses.bham.ac.uk/5780/ for the thesis. The full text will be available at this link from 1 July 2015.

Greek Fragments in European Libraries and Museums: A Whirlwind Tour

I just posted a blog post on the CSTT blog about my recent examinations of manuscripts in Berlin, Vienna, Paris, and Birmingham.

An Author's Text in an Editor's Hands

Update: Just so everyone is aware, the editorial team at Logos has expressed apologies for the mishap and is currently revising the published text discussed below to account for changes I suggested. This is one of the many great advantages of electronic resources! I consider myself a satisfied Logos user and would gladly publish with them again. I cite this only as an interesting example of something that temporarily slipped through the cracks in the complicated modern publication process.

I recently had the opportunity to write a series of short dictionary entries for the Logos e-publication The Lexham Bible Dictionary, including "Ancient Libraries," "Masorah," and "Masoretes." Overall it was a fairly pleasant experience. On reading the final versions in the Logos resource, however, I immediately noticed differences between my submitted version and the published version. There were clear stylistic differences from my own work and a whole host of other problems that clearly betrayed to me an editor's hands. Sometimes the editor improved the text by making it more concise or simpler for a lay audience, which was not particularly objectionable. But at other times, the editor altered the text in significant (and to my mind detrimental) ways. I would like to explore briefly the interaction between author and editor in this publication process. To do this, I will list some of the more interesting/disturbing examples of the published version (in italic font) and the submitted version (in bold italics).

Perhaps of interest for all my Qumran friends, with the omission of a single word, it seems I am now committed in (electronic) print to the Essene hypothesis (!).

• Khirbet Qumran, a communal residence associated with the Jewish Essene sect.
• Khirbet Qumran, a community residence in the Judean Desert near the Dead Sea commonly associated with the Jewish sect called the Essenes

Some changes rendered the text garbled nonsense.

• Many scholars suggest the term comes for the root often considered to mean “to transmit,” thus concluding that the Masorah tradition is transmitted from generation to generation preserve the text
• Most scholars relate the word to the root מסר, whose precise nuance is contested. Many suppose the common root meaning “to transmit,” thus concluding that the Masorah is the body of traditions transmitted from generation to generation for preserving the text.

One particularly egregious structural rearrangement makes the Masorah magna a subset of the Masorah parva.

• Many Masorah parva notes indicate the number of times a particular word or group of words occurs in a certain form within a portion of Scripture, sometimes listing alternative forms found elsewhere. These notes are designed as an external control to ensure its precise preservation. Many types of Masorah parva notes exist, but the two most frequent include:
• 1.   Kethiv/Qere. [only section headings listed]
• 2.   Masorah Magna.
• There are many types of Masorah parva notes, of which two of the most frequent and important are discussed here.
• 1. Usage Statistics -- Many Masorah parva notes indicate the number of times a particular word or group of words occurs in a certain form within a portion of Scripture, sometimes listing alternative forms from elsewhere. These notes are designed as an external control on the copying of the text to ensure its precise preservation.
• 2. Kethiv versus Qere
• Masorah Magna [i.e., new section header]

There were also a number of problematic transliterations.

• Other scholars derive it from the root ‘sr [i.e., ayin for aleph], “to bind”
• Other scholars derive it from the root אסר “to bind”
• ben Asher reads יִשָּׂשכָר (yissoshkhar)
• ben Asher reads יִשָּׂשכָר

All this just goes to show the complexity of the entire concept of an "authorial text," no less in the present age than in antiquity. Once I emailed the file to submit it to Logos, the text was truly out of my hands and at the mercy of others. There are probably some devious literary critics smiling right now...

 

Greek Exodus Fragments at the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

My family and I have been travelling throughout Europe for the past few weeks on a grand Christmas market tour, and I decided to stop by some major European libraries and museums along the way. On the 23rd of December I was able to visit the Ägyptisches Museum und Papyrussammlung of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin to examine several Greek Exodus fragments held in the collection. Marius Gerhardt was kind enough to welcome me and assist me in the study room, even during the holiday season.

I was able examine parts of three manuscripts:

• Ra 835 (P. 11766 + 14046) - The large fragment of this manuscript was on display in the museum (and so unavailable for detailed examination), but I was able to examine a fragment containing parts of Exodus 5.
• Ra 960 (P. 13994) - This fragment, once thought to be missing, has thankfully been found again, and I was able to examine its contents including parts of Exodus 23 and 31.
• Ra 978 (P. 16990) - This fragment contains parts of Exodus 34.
• Unfortunately, Ra 836 (P. 14039) was being restored, so I was not able to examine it.

These fragments have all been published, but a few notes are in order from my visit. One of the most interesting things for me was that these fragments were all parchment fragments, rather than papyri. Before looking into them more closely, I had assumed they were papyri. They were included in Wever's "Papyri and Fragments" category and housed in the papyrus collection in Berlin. But as it turns out, they were not. In fact, many of the surviving Greek Exodus fragments were written on parchment, and references to these manuscripts are frequently unclear or inaccurate with regard to the material medium. This is a good example of the need to double check original materials, rather than simply relying on secondary literature.

Perhaps most importantly, Marius also pointed me in the direction of online digital images of each of these manuscripts. The museum has been very good about digitizing their collection in Berlin, and many high-quality digital images are available online. During our time in the study room in fact, Marius uploaded several new fragments from the collection! He noted that they have had problems with scholars publishing the images and stressed to me that they were for research purposes, not for publication. The downloadable images have a resolution of 600 dpi on a white background, which is sufficient for most purposes. I was able to access digital images of three out of the four manuscripts I was looking for in the collection:

• Ra 835
• Ra 836
• Ra 978
• Unfortunately, the museum has not yet posted online images of Ra 960 (P. 13994).

Textually, the most interesting phenomenon I looked into was the transition from Exodus 23:13 to 31:12 in Ra 960. On the verso side, 23:13 ends near the end of a line in the middle of the column and is followed by a vacat of 1-3 letter spaces left of the right margin. 31:12 then begins at the left margin of the following line without any obvious indications preserved of the massive jump in the text. Looking at this fragment was very helpful for me to understand the nature of this intriguing manuscript.

All in all, it was a very fruitful and enjoyable experience at the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, and I would like to thank Marius and the rest of the team again for allowing me the opportunity. There really is nothing like first-hand familiarity with the manuscripts you are working on, and I recommend all textual scholars to get to know their sources well.

Positions at the University of Helsinki

The University of Helsinki is opening another round of applications for doctoral students and postdoctoral researchers. The Centre of Excellence is a fantastic research environment, and the University is very accommodating to international researchers, so I highly recommend applying.

1-3 Doctoral Students
http://www.helsinki.fi/recruitment/index.html?id=94249

1-2 Postdoctoral Researchers
http://www.helsinki.fi/recruitment/index.html?id=94420