David Trobisch:
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IntroductionBefore book printing was invented in the 15th century, all books had to be copied by hand. Approximately 800 early copies of the letters of Paul have survived to the current day. No two copies are completely identical. When copies are made by hand, mistakes will inevitably appear in the text. But there are other reasons for the differences in the text of the extant manuscripts. Different EditionsAt all times books were made to be sold. The text has been revised over the centuries to meet the needs of the people who actually used the books. Different needs prompted different editions. Bilingual editions were produced for Latin-speaking students who were learning Greek; these provided the Latin translation between the lines or on the page facing the Greek text, paragraph by paragraph. Lectionaries were produced to be read aloud by the priest during worship services. Other editions added introductory passages to explain where and why Paul wrote the specified letter. As with modern revisions of the English Bible, old-fashioned expressions were changed to modern ones and style was updated. Some of the manuscripts are mere copies of an older copy. But often the scribes would compare more than one older manuscript and note all the differences in the copy they were producing. We do the same today with our critical text editions: if there are differing readings in extant manuscripts, modern editors decide which one they believe is the authentic one and print it as the critical text, putting the variants in the apparatus at the bottom of the page. Usually an English translation will not give the reader all the information on the variants of the text. The same was true in ancient times. Only if the scribes were producing a copy for scholarly use would they carefully note variants and give explanatory notes on the margin. But if they were producing a copy for a broad audience, they would try to produce an authentic but understandable text, as free from scribal blunders as possible. This was the situation of all ancient literature. The letters of Paul were passed on from one generation to another in essentially the same way as, for example, the writings of Aristotle. Huge Number of ManuscriptsCompared to any other ancient Greek letter collection, however, the letters of Paul survive in an enormous number of manuscripts. The large number of manuscripts provide a large number of variant readings and the result is that there probably is not a single verse of the letters of Paul that has the same wording in all surviving manuscripts. How should we deal with this discouraging situation? Grouping ManuscriptsFortunately, the complex manuscript evidence is not as enigmatic as it seems at first sight. The trick is to find a way to reduce the enormous number to a small set of manuscripts to be considered. One way is to group manuscripts into families. This may reduce the number dramatically. Let me give you an example. A paperback economy edition of the King James Version of the Bible looks a lot different than a deluxe study edition of that same King James Version. Yet, as far as the Bible text is concerned, both can be treated as printed copies of the same manuscript. The majority of the extant manuscripts of the letters of Paul reproduce the Bible text as it was officially edited, revised, and published by the authorities of the Byzantine Church. I will call these editions the Authorized Byzantine Version. The Authorized Byzantine VersionMore than 85 percent of Greek manuscripts of the New Testament were produced in the eleventh century or later. At this time Christianity was no longer connected to the Greek language as closely as it had been in the second century, when the New Testament came into being. From the third century on, the influence of the Roman church was steadily growing and with it the influence of the Latin translation. During and after the eleventh century, the political situation of the Byzantine Empire became more and more precarious. Wars were fought and often lost, against Islamic tribes in the South and against Bulgarians, Slavs and Russians in the North. In 1054 the Byzantine and the Roman Catholic Church separated. May 29, 1453 the city of Byzantium was finally taken by the Turks and the Byzantine Empire came to an abrupt end. For the Greek manuscript tradition of the Bible during these centuries this means that exemplars were produced, sold, bought, and used within a very limited geographical region controlled by the Byzantine Church. Almost all manuscripts, therefore, reproduce the same Authorized Byzantine Version. All manuscripts of the Authorized Byzantine Version can be dealt with as one single manuscript. The differences of text are the result of scribal blunders or the varying purposes for which the editions were produced and usually do not convey any knowledge of manuscripts independent of the Authorized Byzantine Version. Fragmentary ManuscriptsMany manuscripts are not complete. Whole pages or parts of pages are missing. The vast majority of copies older than the sixth century actually provide only small portions of text, some of them being tiny scraps of papyrus containing but a few words. This results in the favorable situation that a large number of text witnesses are useful only for very small portions of the text. And because we look at the letters of Paul as a whole in the following, the number of manuscripts to be considered shrinks further. To be precise, by now we are talking about no more than eight manuscripts. Besides the Authorized Byzantine Version these eight manuscripts form the essential background for the reconstruction of the original text of the letters of Paul. In the next chapter I will introduce these eight manuscripts to you. |
