Textual
Scholarship and the Making of the New Testament
David C. Parker
OUP £20
(978-0-19-965781-0)
Church Times Bookshop £18 (Use code CT771
)
UNSOPHISTICATED readers of
printed books - that is, anything written since the invention of
printing - usually take it for granted that the text in front of
them (apart from any printer's errors) represents what the author
actually wrote. If they read a Gospel in a modern translation, and
notice some small differences between one version and another, they
are likely to assume that this is due to differences in
translation. But they may begin to notice that there tend to be
small notes at the foot of the page, saying things such as "some
witnesses add . . ." or "other au- thorities read . . ."; and they
become aware that, since all our editions depend ultimately on
written manu-scripts, and since no two handwritten copies are ever
exactly the same, there may be doubt about which to follow.
Those who go on to study
these texts in the original Greek will find, at the bottom of the
page, not just footnotes, but what is called a critical apparatus,
with a large number of symbols for manuscripts which they need to
recognise.
The next stage is to learn
which manuscripts are regarded as the most reliable; how they
differ; how they may be related to one another; and what variations
are best ascribed to the mistakes that anyone copying a text is
liable to make.
But there are many further
stages of sophistication through which students must travel if they
wish to pursue the matter. They will become aware of the fine
judgement that must be exercised by any editor who seeks to print a
Greek text that claims to approximate to what the author wrote. It
is students who have reached this last stage who will best
appreciate David Parker's argument.
The book is based on a
series of lectures that the author, an authority in this field,
gave in the University of Oxford in 2011. Its purpose is to make
more widely known the Münster Method being developed with the aid
of computers at Münster and Birmingham, and already bearing fruit
in the production of an important new critical edition of the Greek
text.
He argues that these new
techniques raise radical questions about the traditional methods of
textual criticism; and his book also gives a flavour of the new
possibilities being opened up by the digitisation of a large number
of manuscripts, and the detailed comparison of them now being
performed by computers - and not only of the texts themselves, but
also of physical characteristics of each manuscript, such as
artwork and decoration, which were not previously listed, but which
may be found to have a bearing on the origin of a manuscript and
its relationship to others.
"There is no such thing as a
manuscript of the New Testament," Parker writes provocatively. The
text is a process, not a fixed object. Each manuscript represents a
stage in the process, and the sheer quantity and quality of
computerised evidence will make editions of the future look quite
different from the ones that we use today.
His argument is based on
detailed analysis of complex material. Those who can follow it will
be rewarded by a glimpse of the startling innovations that may be
in store.
Canon Anthony Harvey is a former Sub-Dean of Westminster
Abbey.