By LEON VAGANAY
THE PURPOSE AND THE ARRANGEMENT OF THIS BOOK
By * textual criticism' is meant
any methodical and objective study which aims to retrieve the original form of
a text or at least the form closest to the original. Even in a modern book
there are nearly always printing errors despite careful checking by the author
and proof-readers, so it is not surprising that early writings, copied as they
were many times over the centuries, should have frequently undergone
alteration. And indeed, from time to time in the old manuscripts of a work
different forms of the text can be observed. These different forms are known as
Variants'; they may also be referred to as divergent or erroneous readings. The
goal of textual criticism as applied to the New Testament is thus a very
specific one, namely to select from among the many variants transmitted by the
manuscript tradition the one which most likely represents the primitive
reading. It is only when the contents of the whole text have been established
that the other disciplines can operate: literary criticism, to decide the
origin of each book and to locate the sources used by the author; historical
criticism, to assess the value of the books as historical documents; exegesis,
to define the exact meaning of the text. Clearly, on many questions there is
interplay between all the different aspects of biblical criticism which often
have to lend each other mutual support. Nevertheless, as a general rule, the
original reading must be decided upon before anything else. The task of textual
criticism may not be a high-ranking one but it is a no less important one for
that. It is, furthermore, a particularly arduous task. The obstacles
encountered in seeking to restore a document of any kind are familiar. There is
no problem as long as the document is an autograph, however old it may be, such
as a private letter written on papyrus; it is simply a matter of indicating the
obvious careless slips which the author failed to notice as he was writing. The
difficulties begin when the piece of writing was dictated or when there is only
a copy of the original text available: account has to be taken of the scribe
who may have made many mistakes, from simple slips of the pen to the most glaring
faults. The job of discarding the erroneous readings becomes even less
straightforward with a work which has been repeatedly copied and the extant
copies of which were made a long time after the original: there is no hope of
recognising all the errors which may have found their way into a text during a
period for which no witnesses remain. Things are more complicated still when
there are a large number of late copies with several equally plausible variants
for different passages. This is precisely the situation with New Testament
textual criticism. In point of fact, the lapse of time between the original
documents and the copies which have been handed down is relatively short: at
worst, 250 years or so, since whole manuscripts from the fourth century have
survived; and at best, no more than 100 years in the case of papyri dating from
around AD 200. In this respect, no other work of early classical literature is
in such a favourable position. There is a gap of over 1,000 years between the
original composition and the extant manuscripts of the writings of Euripides,
Sophocles, Aeschylus, Aristophanes, Thucydides, Plato and Demosthenes. With the
Latin authors, the picture is slightly less bleak, but still not nearly as good
as the situation of the New Testament writings. The gap is well over three
centuries for the writings of Virgil, which are the best preserved.
What constitutes a handicap for
New Testament textual criticism are the vast number of witnesses and the
enormous number of variants. There are more than 5,000 Greek manuscripts or
fragments of manuscripts, counting the lectionaries. And that is nowhere near
the number of manuscripts of the versions (that is, the translations into
foreign languages), let alone that of the quotations in the writings of the
Church Fathers (several million) which help to make up the total sum of
witnesses. That being the case, it is not hard to imagine how many thousands of
variants there must be. Some say 150,000, others would say nearer 250,000, but
the exact number is not really important. The fact is that it would be
difficult to find a sentence, even part of a sentence, for which the rendering
is consistent in every single manuscript. That certainly gives plenty of food
for thought! It is sometimes said that the greater the number of variants, the
greater are the chances of finding the original reading, and attention is drawn
to the disadvantageous position of early classical literature for which the
original text usually has to be reconstructed from only a small number of
copies. In the best cases, for such authors as Euripides, Cicero or Virgil,
there are only a few hundred manuscripts. There is another side of the coin
which tends to be forgotten. During the centuries prior to the date of the
oldest extant manuscripts the books of the New Testament were copied much more
frequently and consequently were subject to many more changes. Another negative
factor is that, in the beginning at least, copying was generally carried out by
amateur scribes whose skill did not match their enthusiasm. Finally, and most
importantly, there are a great many places in the manuscripts of the New
Testament (unlike those of more ordinary literature) where the alterations are
deliberate and where it is not always easy to see what was the intention behind
them. This explains something of the difficulty of New Testament textual
criticism. It would be wrong, however, to paint too black a picture. The great
majority of the divergences in readings are to do with details of spelling,
grammar or style and do not affect in any way the meaning of the text. True,
these minor differences aside, there are a good number of variants which arouse
the reader's curiosity by reason of some detail omitted or added to the text.
Some are particularly interesting either because they involve a considerable
portion of the text or because of their theological significance. In the latter
case, though, as would be expected, the substance of Christian doctrine is
never affected; rather such variants reflect the diversity of the text as it
was known in the first Christian communities. The early papyri attest the
overall integrity of the text. The alterations of the most daring revisers are
proof of the limits they set themselves. Nevertheless, ' between this general
soundness on which historical and theological deductions rely and a text which
is perfectly identical to the original one, there is quite a considerable gap'
(Lagrange 1929, p.clxv). The aim of textual criticism is to fill this gap.
The first job is to draw up a
catalogue of the documents available. Chapter 1 provides a survey of these
documents. The next step is to know how to make use of the material to hand and
to establish fundamental rules which allow erroneous readings to be discarded;
chapter 2 studies this question of method. Using these methodological
principles, along with a thorough comparison of the variants, it is sometimes
possible for the critic to come to some conclusions about the value of the
various witnesses. Although this is a thorny subject, we have nevertheless
presented an outline of the history of the text in chapter 3; our lack of
knowledge on many of the major points in this area will be obvious but will
also help to explain the reason behind changes of opinion amongst scholars.
These groping explorations thus quickly lead to fresh questions: What has been
done so far to restore the original text? What remains to be done? The answer
is to be found in chapter 4: 'The history and the future of the printed text'.
1
The sources of textual criticism
It is usual to classify the
witnesses which need to be consulted in order to establish the text of the New
Testament into three main types. These are the Greek manuscripts, the versions
and the quotations found in early writings. A preliminary task is to examine
what might be termed the identifying marks of the witnesses, that is their age
and their individual characteristics. That task is the object of this chapter
which, by reason of its brevity, can present little more than a dry list and a rather
incomplete one at that. But it can still be useful despite these limitations.
The chapter begins with some prefatory remarks concerning the manuscripts in
general, a natural introduction to the study of New Testament textual
criticism.
T HE MANUSCRIPTS IN GENERAL
MATERIALS AND FORMS
All kinds of materials have been
used for writing on: stone, metals, terracotta, waxed tablets of wood and
ivory, even pottery remains ('ostraka'). But the main materials are papyrus,
parchment and paper and it is for writings on these that the term 'manuscript'
is reserved.
The papyrus plant
(Tt&TCUpoc;) is a fibrous reed which used to grow in abundance along the
marshy banks of the River Nile. The Egyptians were using it for writing before
2000 BC, and it appears to have been known to the Greeks in the seventh century
BC. It was not, however, until the fifth century BC that it entered into
general use, first among the Greeks, and then among the Romans. In the writings
of Pliny (Naturalis historia XIII, 21-6), there are some indications as to how
papyrus was made. The inside of the reed (the pith) was cut lengthwise into
thin strips which were laid across each other in two layers at right angles and
then pressed together. When the fabric was dry, it was polished and then coated
with wax so as to be ready for writing on ). Papyrus remained in general use
until the Arab conquest of Egypt in the seventh century AD when its importation
became practically impossible. The first discoveries of papyrus manuscripts
were made in the eighteenth century, since when large numbers of these literary
treasures have been found, mostly in Egypt where the dry climate favours the
preservation of such fragile materials.
The age of papyrus was succeeded
by the age of parchment. Hides of animals had been used for writing since very
early times and, outside Egypt, were the chief writing material until papyrus
became common in the fifth century BC. The oldest Greek parchment known dates
from the end of the third or the beginning of the second century BC and was
found at Dura-Europos in the Euphrates valley some seventy years ago. Tradition
has it that when one of the Ptolemaean kings refused to send papyrus to the
people of Pergamum it was they who invented a method of preparing skins that
made writing on them less arduous than it had been previously. The animal skin,
usually a sheep's, instead of being tanned was softened in a solution of lime
and then scraped with a knife in order to take off the hairy or greasy parts,
before being finally polished with a pumice stone. This is how 'parchment', or
skin of Pergamum, got its name (7l£pyauT|vfi, pergamena; also known as
neuPp&va, membrana), and it was then that this new material, being strong
enough to allow for mistakes to be scratched away, began to compete both with
tablets and with papyrus for things like rough work, sketches and anything
needing retouching. Later, as it became less expensive, parchment was preferred
for literary texts, and for other important work generally. Finally, from
around AD 650, when papyrus became rare, parchment predominated until the
fourteenth century.
Then it was the turn of paper to
take over. Its place and date of origin are somewhat uncertain; it does not
seem to have been known in Syria or Egypt until after the taking of Samarkand
by the Arabs in AD 707. Distinction can be made between, on the one hand,
oriental paper or 'bombycine' which is of Arab invention and manufacture, and,
on the other hand, paper of different sorts manufactured in the West. Of the
latter, the earliest was that made in Spain from the tenth century, which
resembles the paper of Arabic origin; but later types have their own
characteristic format (e.g. Catalan paper, mid-twelfth century). The Italian
paper (early thirteenth century) which was the first to have watermarks (1280,
in Fabriano) replaced all the other Western papers from the fourteenth century.
The fragile nature of paper, its high cost and its Arabic origin prevented it
from being widely known for a long time. It was parchment which continued to be
generally used for finer. copies, particularly for the sacred books. Paper
finally took over completely with the invention of printing.
As to the form of the
manuscripts, they were either made as a scroll (volumen) or as a square book
(quadratics), the scroll being the older of the two forms. One individual sheet
of parchment or papyrus could be used only for short documents such as letters
or contracts, and so, for longer texts, the sheets were joined together so as
to make a scroll about ten metres in length. The much longer papyrus scrolls
which have been found in tombs appear to have been made ad hoc. It was usual to
attach a roller to the end of the scroll and sometimes even to the beginning as
well, so enabling the scroll to be rolled up as the reading of it progressed.
Towards the end of the first
century AD the codex entered into use. It had already been customary to fasten
several waxed tablets together with one or more threads and this practice was
later extended to the tying together of sheets of parchment or papyrus. These
would be folded and sewn together in quires. This is the origin of the modern
book. It was much easier to handle a codex than a scroll and, in addition, a
codex could hold more than a scroll; yet despite these advantages it was only
gradually that it replaced the scroll, such is the force of habit. It is
interesting to note that the Christians were among the first to use the papyrus
codex, when they came to write their sacred books. The oldest New Testament
papyrus fragment, dating from the first half of the second century, comes from
a codex (P52). From the same period, there is a copy of Numbers and Deuteronomy
which is a combination of a papyrus scroll and a parchment codex. From the
fourth century onwards, the codex form became general.
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