Text and Story: Narrative Studies in New Testament Textual Criticism

Text and Story

Narrative Studies in New Testament Textual Criticism

Peter R. Rodgers

Text and Story

Narrative Studies in New Testament Textual Criticism

Copyright © 2011 Peter R. Rodgers. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.

Pickwick Publications

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isbn 13: 978-1-61097-304-5

eisbn 13: 978-1-63087-596-1

Cataloging-in-Publication data:

Rodgers, Peter R.

Text and story : narrative studies in New Testament textual criticism / Peter R. Rodgers.

x + 126 p. ; 23 cm. Including bibliographical references and indexes.

isbn 13: 978-1-61097-304-5

1. Bible. N.T.—Criticism, Textual. 2. Bible. N.T.—Criticism, Narrative. I. Title.

bs2325 r55 2011

Manufactured in the U.S.A.

For Kathy, Mark, Ben, and Amanda

Abbreviations

AB Anchor Bible

ABD Anchor Bible Dictionary

ANF Ante-Nicene Fathers

BCE Before the Common Era

BECNT Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament

BJRL Bulletin of the John Rylands Library

CBQ Catholic Biblical Quarterly

CE Common Era

CJT Canadian Journal of Theology

DTIB Dictionary for Theological Interpretation of the Bible

ICC International Critical Commentary

JBL Journal of Biblical Literature

JTS Journal of Theological Studies

KJV King James Bible

LNTS Library of New Testament Studies

LXX Septuagint

MM Moulton and Milligan, Vocabulary

MT Masoretic Text

NA26 Nestle–Aland, Novum Testamentum Graece, 26th edition

NA27 Nestle–Aland, Novum Testamentum Graece, 27th edition

NEB New English Bible

NETS New English Translation of the Septuagint

NIGTC New International Greek Testament Commentary

NIV New International Version

NovT Novum Testamentum

NRSV New Revised Standard Version

NTS New Testament Studies

RBL Review of Biblical Literature

REB Revised English Bible

RivB Revista biblica italiana

RSR Recherches de science religieuse

RSV Revised Standard Version

TDNT Theological Dictionary of the New Testament

UBS1 2 3 4 United Bible Societies Greek New Testament (four editions)

WBC Word Biblical Commentary

WH Westcott and Hort, The New Testament in the Original Greek

Introduction

The purpose of this book is to make a subject students often consider boring and complicated into one that is exciting and accessible. The subject is New Testament textual criticism. Textual criticism is both a science and an art. It is the science of discovering how and why a text has been corrupted in the course of copying, and the art of restoring it to its original form. ¹ The textual criticism of the New Testament begins with the scientific study of a vast amount of data, which includes over 5,800 Greek manuscripts, translations into Latin, Syriac, Coptic, and a host of other languages, and quotations in early Christian writers. This data comprises the external material relating to the study of the text, and has been classified by scholars according to date, quality, affinity with other manuscripts, and text-type. Having analyzed and organized this data, the textual critic then seeks by the application of a number of principles, to determine which reading was most likely to have been written by the author. Among the factors considered are the oldest and best manuscripts, the reading with the broadest geographical spread among the manuscripts, and the reading that best explains the rise of the alternative readings. In addition to the external data, there are other factors to consider. Transcriptional probabilities is a term used to describe the habits or choices of scribes as they copied manuscripts. Internal factors such as the style and theological perspective of the book in which the variation occurs need to be carefully considered in solving textual puzzles. In these latter considerations it will be clear that the practice of New Testament Textual Criticism requires not only the expertise of a scientist, but the talent of an artist.

In some cases the textual critic will have no difficulty in deciding on the original text (sometimes referred to as the initial text). Both external data (the manuscript evidence) and internal considerations (language and style, etc.) will tell in favor of one reading or another. For example, in the case of the story of the woman taken in adultery (John 7:53—8:11) both factors indicate that the story was not original with John, but was added later by a scribe. Not only is the manuscript evidence for omitting it both early and diverse, but also the vocabulary and style are very different from the rest of the Gospel of John. Reviewing the evidence, Bruce Metzger wrote, The case against its being of Johannine authorship appears to be conclusive.² But there are other points where the decision on the original reading is not as straightforward. For example, did Paul write mystery (μυστήριον) or testimony (μαρτύριον) in 1 Cor 2:1? The words in Greek are similar enough when either read or heard that the mistake might easily have arisen accidentally. For the textual critic the decision is not easy. In discussing this passage Gordon Fee puts the issue succinctly, Did Paul write μυστήριον in anticipation of the argument in vv. 6–16, or did he write μαρτύριον, referring to his preaching in bearing witness to what God had done in Christ crucified?³ There are other places where the text critic finds that the external evidence (manuscripts) supports one reading and the internal considerations (style, theology) suggest another. Romans 5:1 is such an instance. Here the earliest manuscripts read "let us have peace," but the context clearly calls for the indicative, "we have peace." The difference in readings is between a long o (omega) and a short o (omicron). There are a number of places where the editors of the United Bible Societies Greek New Testament have chosen the reading with inferior manuscript support because of such internal considerations.⁴ Such decisions on variant readings are not easy, and require that those who practice the discipline are both scientists and artists.

Decisions on textual questions can benefit from the discovery of new evidence, or from the refinement of methods within the discipline. The discovery of the papyri has greatly aided the study of the text in the past century. Some readings, formerly suspected to be original, now have a stronger claim because of these discoveries. For example, the reading only-begotten God, in John 1:18 was carefully studied by F. J. A. Hort in 1876,⁵ and Hort argued that this reading was original, rather than the words of the Authorized Version (KJV) "only-begotten Son. Now two important early papyri of the Gospel of John, P66 and P75, both discovered in the twentieth century, have notably strengthened the external support for only-begotten God" (μονογενὴς θεὸς)⁶ on this still much debated textual crux interpretum.

The textual critic has also been helped by the refinement of methods and criteria for evaluating variant readings. For example, one of the rules followed by modern textual critics of the New Testament is that the shorter reading is to be preferred (lectio brevior potior). However, some studies have raised questions about the value of this rule. E. C. Colwell, James R. Royce, and Peter M. Head studied scribal habits in the early papyri and found that the scribes of these earliest manuscripts were more prone to omit words from their texts than to add to them.⁷ In assessing the evidence of the earliest manuscripts, other things being equal, the longer reading is to be preferred.

Another study conducted by Michael Holmes has further refined the evaluation of variations in the New Testament text. The assumption has been that scribes tended to harmonize a passage they were copying either to its parallel in another gospel or to a passage in the Old Testament where it was quoted by a New Testament writer. Holmes studied the passages in Matthew relating to divorce and re-marriage, and concluded that there was far less of a tendency to harmonize than is commonly assumed.⁸ Careful studies in methodology combine with continual discovery of new evidence to aid the textual critic in the task of recovering the original text of the New Testament.

This book is intended to make a further contribution to the study of the text of the New Testament. My goal is to relate the field of New Testament Textual Criticism to the Narrative critical study of the New Testament. Hence the title of this study, Text and Story. This study is an experiment in the engagement of Narrative Criticism with Textual Criticism in the study of the New Testament. To date not much attention has been given to such an experiment. Indeed, there has been neglect on both fronts. I quote an example from one of the early and important studies in the Narrative Criticism of the New Testament. In Mark as Story, David Rhoads and Donald Mitchie write, We have not made reference to many important textual variations. For example, throughout our study we assume that Mark’s gospel ends at 16:8.⁹ Such an assumption not only begs the textual questions regarding the endings of Mark, but also fails to ask whether the study of Mark as story might have anything new to add to the textual question. In his recent study Narrative Criticism of the New Testament, James L. Resseguie makes only two references to Bruce Metzger’s Textual Commentary, and in both cases the variations are merely mentioned and not discussed. In the first instance, Mark 1:1, the textual decision is of fundamental importance for interpreting the narrative shape of Mark.¹⁰ Whether or not Mark wrote the Son of God in 1:1 dramatically impacts the way the reader responds to Mark’s story. So there is a need for the study of text and story.

One problem we face in such a study is that narrative is a protean and multivalent term, especially when applied to biblical studies. In the study of the New Testament there have been at least two main senses in which the term is employed. Some have used the term narrative criticism to describe how biblical literature works as literature. This analysis looks at various elements of a written work: rhetoric, setting, character, point of view and plot. This study of the formal features in its finished form is similar to the kind of examination of any work of literature. Its aim is to discern how the readers, both original and subsequent, would have understood and responded to the text. This has become a very popular method of approach to New Testament documents in recent years.¹¹

Another sense in which the term narrative has been used in the study of the New Testament has been the discovery of narratives or stories that have influenced the New Testament writers. Some scholars have discerned the influence of stories beneath the surface of the New Testament writings. The stories of creation and Adam, of Abraham and the patriarchs, of the exodus, kingship and exile, and of the promised coming messiah have informed and shaped the thinking of the writers and the writings as we have them. Sometimes these stories are obvious (for example, the story of Abraham in Romans 4 and Galatians 3–4). At other places the story is beneath the surface, and their presence and influence is debated (Do the stories of Adam’s disobedience or of the Servant of Isaiah 53 form the background of Paul’s thought in Phil 2:6–8?).¹² This is not so much the emphasis on the narrative shape of a passage (plot, character, point of view, etc.) as the narratives that have shaped the passage (creation, exodus, exile, etc.). It is this latter narrative critical study of the New Testament that is the primary focus of the present book. Is it possible that discernible narratives, which informed and shaped an author’s writing of a text, offer fresh perspective on long-debated problems in New Testament textual criticism? Can the clarity gained on the textual-critical front in turn help the interpreter to a richer understanding of the passage in which the textual variation appears? To conduct this inquiry it will be important to review recent developments in three areas: New Testament Textual Criticism, The use of the Old Testament in the New Testament, and the Narrative Critical studies of the New Testament. Following these three preliminary explorations, we will study a number of textual critical problems, some of which continue to be debated. My hope is that the study of the story may give new perspective for decisions on the text, and that a new confidence regarding the text my lead to a better understanding of the story.

New Directions in New Testament Textual Criticism

In recent years there have been significant developments in the discipline of New Testament textual criticism. The traditional goal in studying the textual tradition has been to recover the original text of the New Testament. But in the latter half of the twentieth century a second goal has begun to emerge. Students of the text have shifted their focus from the establishment of the original