A Handbook of New Testament Exegesis

Blomberg, Craig L., Foutz Markley, Jennifer

• Publisher: Baker Academic
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9781441233653
• Topic: Théologie et religion
• Subtopic: Études bibliques

This handbook provides a one-stop-shopping guide to the New Testament exegetical method. Brief and approachable, it offers both a broad overview of the exegetical process and a step-by-step approach to studying the New Testament in depth, helping students and pastors understand the text and appropriate it responsibly. The book is chock-full of illustrations of New Testament texts where the method under discussion truly makes a difference. "A wonderfully clear and accessible handbook for New Testament exegesis. Exegetically rigorous, theologically informed, and practically useful."-- Thomas R. Schreiner, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary

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Textual Criticism

The term “textual criticism” may sound more like students complaining about their reading assignments than a shorthand reference to the artful science of establishing a probable original text. The practice of textual criticism often takes a back seat to some of the more “glamorous,” or at least better known, exegetical endeavors. It is certainly not a discernible element in most sermons. Relatively few laypeople are aware of how the manuscripts of the Bible have been copied and passed down to us throughout the generations. However, because we do not possess Scripture as it was originally written, the exegete who is interested in handling the Bible with as much accuracy as possible needs to know that the ancient copies of the New Testament sometimes disagree with one another as to the precise wording of a given text. After acknowledging this, he or she needs to assess the various options and determine which of the different readings is most likely the original one.[1]

It is not our intention to give a comprehensive explanation of the entire field of textual criticism; many other works treat such issues with the detail that this brief chapter will not permit.[2] Instead we aim to introduce the topic in a way that will allow students and pastors to engage in the practice, thereby improving their understanding and exposition of Scripture. We will therefore define textual criticism and the relevant terms used in its practice, look at the history of how the various texts available for study have been transmitted, and then examine a few pertinent characteristics of these texts. With these items in place, we can move to a discussion of how one practices textual criticism as part of the exegetical process.

What Is Textual Criticism?

Our contemporary ease of communication makes it difficult to appreciate the painstaking process of textual transmission in antiquity. In a world of photocopiers, e-mail, and word processing that offers automatic correction of misspelled words and cut-and-paste options, it is easy to overlook the mistakes that come with copying documents by hand. Since the autographs (the original documents) of each of the writings in the Bible were lost or discarded long ago, we must rely on manuscripts that represent the originals copied many times over. If these copies agreed at all points, our discussion could end here. The exact text would be established for us. However, the copies do not agree, hence the need for textual criticism.

Simply defined, textual criticism is the practice of comparing the various copies of a work in order to determine, as best as possible, the exact wording of an original text that is either undiscovered or no longer exists. Textual criticism is both a science and an art. It is a scientific practice because it requires the critic to collect data and compare the various options and then to apply certain rules for determining the original reading. However, not all the rules apply equally to each instance of textual variation, so the critic must artfully balance the evidence and incorporate common sense in order to assimilate the relevant information and arrive at sound conclusions.

The ancient documents that are used to reconstruct the New Testament text as we have it today have been grouped into three main headings for ease of reference: Greek manuscripts, ancient translations, and patristic citations.[3] The Greek manuscripts are further subdivided into papyri (about 120), majuscules (about 320), and minuscules (nearly 2,900). Papyri (papyrus is an ancient form of paperlike material) comprise some of the oldest manuscripts available for scrutiny. A papyrus is usually designated in the scholarly literature by a Gothic p (𝔓), followed by a numerical superscript (𝔓45, for example). Greek manuscripts written on material besides papyrus (usually parchment and, much later, paper) were subdivided by writing style into majuscules (also called uncials) and minuscules. Uncials are the earliest codices (pages bound into books) and were written in capital letters, for the most part without spacing, word division, or punctuation. The most famous, oldest, and/or most reliable are represented by capital letters from the Hebrew, Latin, and Greek alphabets as well as by numbers with a “0” prefix, while the others are designated solely by numbers with a “0” prefix. Of the approximately 310 uncials, the most important are codices Sinaiticus (א/01), Alexandrinus (A/02), Vaticanus (B/03), Ephraemi Rescriptus (C/04), Bezae (D/05), and Washingtonianus (W/032), all dating to the fourth or fifth century, and Koridthi (Θ/038), dating to the ninth century.[4] Minuscules are manuscripts written in the later lowercase, cursive style that was developed in the eighth or ninth century to speed the copying process. Minuscules begin to introduce some occasional spacing between sections of text and a little punctuation. They are labeled with simple Arabic numerals with groups of extremely similar manuscripts collected together in families. Families 1 and 13 (designated ƒ1 and ƒ13, respectively) are often viewed as the most reliable or important for the text-critical process.[5]

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Sidebar 1.1

Types of Ancient Documents

Greek manuscripts

• papyri
• majuscules (or uncials)
• minuscules

Ancient translations

• Latin (esp. the Vulgate)
• Syriac
• Coptic
• Armenian
• others

Patristic citations

• Irenaeus
• Clement of Alexandria
• Origen
• Athanasius
• others

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A second category of source material for textual criticism involves translations of parts or all of the Greek New Testament into other ancient languages in the early centuries of church history. These include Latin, Syriac, Coptic, Armenian, Georgian, Ethiopic, and Slavonic. Because the Latin “Vulgate” (meaning “common” [language]), produced by Jerome in the fourth and fifth centuries, became the standard Roman Catholic Bible worldwide for over a millennium, its readings have been very influential. More significant for textual criticism, however, are the “old italic” or “old Latin” translations that predate the Vulgate. Syriac readings are significant for the Gospels because at times Syriac vocabulary and syntax closely resemble Aramaic, the language Jesus would have spoken before his words were translated into Greek by the Gospel writers. Occasionally, a divergent Syriac rendering may therefore enable us to pick up on a nuance of Jesus’s words that is not as clear from the Greek.[6] The other translations are less significant, except that some of the earliest ones do come from the third through fifth centuries so that, to the extent they were translated very literally, they represent testimony to the state of the Greek manuscripts in the period for which we have noticeably fewer Greek texts themselves than in the centuries that followed.

Finally, patristic citations of the New Testament are found in the writings of the earliest post–New Testament Christian leaders (often called church fathers), such as Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Eusebius, Athanasius, and Cyril of Alexandria. Because these writers were so dependent on what would later become the New Testament canon, if the New Testament as we have it today were somehow lost or destroyed it could be reconstructed virtually in its entirety from its quotation by the church fathers.[7] Th...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Abbreviations
• 1. Textual Criticism
• 2. Translation and Translations
• 3. Historical-Cultural Context
• 4. Literary Context
• 5. Word Studies
• 6. Grammar
• 7. Interpretive Problems
• 8. Outlining
• 9. Theology
• 10. Application
• Summary
• Appendix: Checklist for Doing Biblical Exegesis
• Select Bibliography
• Scripture Index
• Subject Index
• Notes