Text history of the New Testament

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⁶⁶ ( Papyrus Bodmer II ), dated around the year 200. One of the oldest surviving New Testament manuscripts

The text history of the New Testament is the transmission of the text through manuscripts .

The handwritten tradition of the New Testament is better and more extensive than that of any other ancient literary monument. The oldest text witnesses are very close to the time when the original autographs were written .

The manuscripts that are essential for the history of the text are divided into papyri , capitals , minus capitals , lectionaries and early translations .

While the history of the canon looks forward by considering the development leading to a certain goal, namely the conclusion of the canon, the history of the text is directed backwards in that it seeks to come close to the starting point of the textual tradition.

Discovery of the manuscripts

There are currently around 5000 known manuscripts that contain all or part of the Greek New Testament. Most of it has been opened up for research over the past two centuries. At the time of the Reformation, apart from the Codex Bezae , no manuscript written before the 11th century was known to a larger group.

In 1627 King Charles I (England) received the Codex Alexandrinus from the Patriarch of Constantinople . This code was published in the 18th century. In the second half of the 19th century two of the most important capital letters were published, the Codex Vaticanus and the Codex Sinaiticus .

The Oxyrhynchus papyri were discovered around 1900, the Chester Beatty papyri in 1930 and the Bodmer papyri in 1950 .

material

Papyrus and parchment were used as material for the manuscripts .

Papyrus was the "paper of antiquity". It was made from the pressed stems of the papyrus bush. Papyri are not very durable in humid climates, but so long in dry climates that finds of ancient papyri caused a sensation in Egypt and Palestine since the 19th century . Papyrus is quite fragile, so most of the finds are fragments with only a few letters. Parchment was already a very expensive writing material back then, but it is much more resistant to moisture and breakage, which is why many more early manuscripts on parchment have been preserved, even if these were probably clearly in the minority at the time of their creation.

Scroll or Codex

The manuscripts are either rolls - before being inscribed, several sheets of papyrus or parchment are glued together and rolled onto a stick - or codices , an early form of our books.

New Testament manuscripts have only survived in codex form. This can be decided with certainty even with the smallest fragments, since pages of a codex are always written on both sides (except perhaps on the last page of the entire codex). New Testament manuscript remains written on one side are extremely rare and do not belong to the usual scrolls (cf. the manuscript lists in Aland : The Text of the New Testament ).

Whether New Testament manuscripts were possibly written in codex form from the beginning, i.e. whether there never were New Testament writings in roll form, cannot currently be determined with certainty. The oldest New Testament papyri date from the second century AD.

Papyri

Papyri are the oldest surviving New Testament manuscripts. They date from the 2nd to 7th centuries. Papyri were discovered from the 19th century when Egypt and other countries in the Middle East were opened up for archaeological excavations.

Some important papyri collections are named after the buyer ( Chester Beatty , Martin Bodmer ) or after the place where they were found ( Oxyrhynchus ). Papyri are included in the text criticism ${\ displaystyle {\ mathfrak {P}}}$ and abbreviated superscripts. Today over 400,000 papyri are known, of which a little more than 100 contain parts of the NT, some of which are only very small fragments.

Some papyri are definitely from the 2nd century. The famous Johannes Papyrus ^{52 is} dated 125–150. Even more far-reaching early dates of fragments, some up to the first half of the 1st century, are controversial in science. For example, some researchers classify papyrus 7Q5 as a New Testament papyrus. A prominent representative of this early dating was Carsten Peter Thiede . ⁶⁴ , ⁶⁴ and ^{67 can} still be regarded as papyri of the second century. ${\ displaystyle {\ mathfrak {P}}}$ ${\ displaystyle {\ mathfrak {P}}}$ ${\ displaystyle {\ mathfrak {P}}}$ ${\ displaystyle {\ mathfrak {P}}}$

The main papyri are

Bodmer papyri , e.g. B. ⁶⁶ and ⁷⁵ , both around 200, comprise much of the Gospel of John. ${\ displaystyle {\ mathfrak {P}}}$ ${\ displaystyle {\ mathfrak {P}}}$

Chester Beatty Papyri ⁴⁵ , ⁴⁷ , around 200-250; ⁴⁶ (contains most of Paul's letters) also around 200, but dated to the 1st century by one author

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Oxyrhynchus Papyri , 2nd – 4th centuries Century, e.g. B. ⁹⁰

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⁵² , a small piece of John's Gospel from the first half of the 2nd century at the latest, the oldest fragment that can definitely be assigned to the New Testament.

Capitals

Capital letters are manuscripts written in capital letters on parchment. Parchment is significantly more expensive, but much more durable than papyrus, so it was used especially for valuable documents or for fonts with representative purposes.

Today about 300 capitals are known from the 4th to 9th centuries. They are abbreviated in textual criticism according to the Nestle-Aland system using capital letters or numbers that start with a zero.

The five most important of these are also the most important representatives of the various text types, so that these five codices can already give a good overview of the most important variants:

the Codex Sinaiticus , abbreviated א or 01, New Testament, 4th century
the Codex Alexandrinus , abbreviated A or 02, Old and New Testament, 5th century
the Codex Vaticanus , abbreviated B or 03, Old and New Testament, 4th century
the Codex Ephraemi , abbreviated C or 04, about two thirds of the New Testament, 5th century
the Codex Bezae or Cantabrigiensis (after the location Cambridge), abbreviated D or 05, the four Gospels and parts of the Acts of the Apostles, from the 5th or 6th century.

Minuscules

Minuscules are the names of the manuscripts written in lower case letters from the lower case script, which date from the 9th to 15th centuries. About 2900 minuscules are cataloged.

The younger age limits the value of the minuscule for textual criticism, but there are some that are closely related to much older manuscripts. For example, the minuscules 33, 579, 892 and 2427 are divided into the highest quality level.

Lessonaries

A New Testament lectionary is a copy of a liturgical book for reading, which also contains parts of the New Testament. Lectionaries can be written in Greek uncials or minuscules. Parchment, papyrus, vellum or paper are used as writing material.

Early translations

In the early days of textual criticism, Greek text witnesses from the first centuries were not yet available, so that the early translations can give clues to the text forms of this period. Since the papyri were found, the early translations and quotations have receded into the background with the Church Fathers, because direct Greek text witnesses from this early period are now available. The various translations have their own text history and the resulting text form indirectly represents only a single text witness, namely the Greek manuscript that was available to the translator. However, the exact wording of the Greek original cannot be deduced with certainty from the translation.

Syriac: A distinction is made between five different Syrian translations of the New Testament, which were created between the 2nd and 6th centuries: the Old Syrian translation, the Peshitta , the Philoxenic, the Harclean and the Palestinian-Syrian.

Latin: Before the well-known Vulgate of Jerome from the late 4th century, there were various Latin translations that originated in Africa, Italy and Gaul. The oldest originated in Africa in the last quarter of the 2nd century. Sometimes they are grouped under the name Itala or Vetus Latina .

Coptic: The first translations into Coptic were made at the beginning of the 3rd century . There are different dialects, e.g. B. Sahidic, Bohairian etc.

Gothic: Wulfila translated the Bible into Gothic around the middle of the 4th century .

Armenian: The 5th century Armenian translation, also known as the “Queen of the Bible Translations”, is considered the most accurate of the early Bible translations. Apart from the Vulgate, no other translation has received nearly as many manuscripts.

Quotes

Bible texts were quoted very early on. The main group of quotations is from the Church Fathers, but there are also quotations in scriptures that have been condemned as heretical. Much has been quoted, especially in Gnostics. For a secure use of quotes in textual criticism, the text stock must first be secured in terms of textual criticism and the history of the text researched in order to rule out that the Bible quotes have been adapted to later text forms in the course of tradition. Because of this problem, the Church Fathers' quotes have increasingly disappeared from textual criticism. However, there are projects that evaluate the complete material of the Church Fathers' manuscripts and want to publish a critical edition. When that is done, these quotations can again play a scientifically proven role in the history of the text.

literature

Kurt Aland , Barbara Aland : The Text of the New Testament . 2nd edition German Bible Society, Stuttgart 1989 ISBN 3-438-06011-6 ( the standard work on the subject)
Bruce M. Metzger : The Text of the New Testament. Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration . 3rd edition 1992, ISBN 0-19-507297-9
Karl Jaroš : The oldest Greek manuscripts of the New Testament. Edited edition and translation . Böhlau, Cologne et al. 2014 (contains the 104 oldest copies, dating back to the beginning of the 4th century). [Edition in Greek with German translation]

Web links

Complete list of NT papyri
Critical commentary on the Gospels
Attempt to prove the historical credibility of the New Testament
Biblical manuscripts The Chester Beatty Papyri I, II, III (P45, P46, P47, all 200-250 AD)
Biblical manuscripts The Bodmer Papyri (P66, P72, P75, around 200 - 3rd / 4th century AD)
Codex Vaticanus (English)
Interpreting Ancient Manuscripts English, rich with illustrations of many codices and papyri
www.nestle-aland.com, information page of the German Bible Society on NA 28

Individual evidence

↑ Wilhelm Michaelis : Introduction to the New Testament. Bern 1961, p. 343.
↑ P52: A Fragment of the Gospel of John (English)
↑ Biblica Magazine, Vol. 69, No. 2, 1988, Palaeographical Dating of p46 to the Later First Century (archive version) ( Memento of November 30, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
^ The assignment of minuscule 2427 to the 14th century was made using paleography . It was not until 2006 that the manuscript was exposed as a forgery from the 19th century. It contains the text of the Codex Vaticanus , so Aland correctly assigned it to Category I.
^ A new edition by Wolfgang Kosack : Novum Testamentum Coptice. New Testament, Bohairian . Christoph Brunner, Basel 2014.

[1] Wilhelm Michaelis : Introduction to the New Testament. Bern 1961, p. 343.

[2] P52: A Fragment of the Gospel of John (English)

[3] Biblica Magazine, Vol. 69, No. 2, 1988, Palaeographical Dating of p46 to the Later First Century (archive version) ( Memento of November 30, 2007 in the Internet Archive )

[4] The assignment of minuscule 2427 to the 14th century was made using paleography . It was not until 2006 that the manuscript was exposed as a forgery from the 19th century. It contains the text of the Codex Vaticanus , so Aland correctly assigned it to Category I.

[5] A new edition by Wolfgang Kosack : Novum Testamentum Coptice. New Testament, Bohairian . Christoph Brunner, Basel 2014.