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The Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts (CSNTM) has posted two more uncatalogued manuscripts that they have discovered on recent expeditions:
During the 2008–2009 expedition season, CSNTM photographed two previously uncatalogued manuscripts in the United Kingdom. The first, Fragment B at Christ’s College in Cambridge, is an eleventh century, two-leaf minuscule from John’s gospel. The second is a tenth century, 284-leaf gospels minscule manuscript held in a private collection. Both of these manuscripts are now posted in the “Manuscripts” portion of the website.
You can view them in their entirety FOR FREE here. This organization really is doing a great work in making these manuscripts accessible to us, do consider making a donation to support them. Tell them Rob Kashow sent you.
I want to thank Daniel B. Wallace, Executive Director and Founder of the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts (CSNTM), for agreeing to be interviewed for this blog post which I hope will be very informative to all of you who have an interest in the New Testament and New Testament Textual Criticism. For this interview, I sent Dan a list of 10 questions that he has thoughtfully answered below:
1. Dan, thanks for agreeing to do this. I’m excited about this interview and I think it will be very informative to our readers to hear some of things that have been going on over at CSNTM. First, could you just briefly introduce yourself and your center?
I’m delighted to do the interview, Rob. I’m professor of New Testament Studies at Dallas Seminary, and have been on faculty for 23 years. I started CSNTM in 2002 as a non-profit organization (a 501(c)(3)). Our purpose is essentially twofold (your readers can see a fuller description on our site): take high-resolution digital photographs of all Greek New Testament manuscripts known to exist; and use the images, in conjunction with software currently being developed, to analyze the variants and determine, as much as is humanly possible, the autographic (original) wording of the text. It’s a huge project: just photographing the MSS will take 12 years, if fully funded. There are over 5700 Greek NT MSS, with more than 2.6 million pages of texts to shoot (we shoot them one page at a time). We have photographed approximately 6% of all such MSS to date and have posted tens of thousands of images on our website.
2. What has motivated you to be so proactive in the field of text criticism?
I’ve been fascinated with the biblical manuscripts for a long, long time. But the problem to date has been that almost all of the facsimiles that have been produced are poorly done. They are either on microfilm or in old black and white. There is a significant amount of information that cannot be interpreted properly in such a state of affairs. On a purely historical level, we need to get back to the original wording as much as possible because, by almost all accounts, the Bible is the most important book in the world. And ultimately what drives me is belief that the Bible is the Word of God. Consequently, I want to know what the autographs actually said in their every detail.
3. It has been made public knowledge through your e-newsletter that this past year has been a sabbatical year for you. At the outset, what goals did you set for the Center going into your sabbatical year? (And please, first tell us how one might sign up for your e-newsletter.)
CSNTM does not actually have an e-Newsletter. But there is a group of very interested and sympathetic friends who do—“The Friends of CSNTM.” Their e-Newsletter is sent out about once a month. Simply email the friends and let them know you’d like to get it: friendsofcsntm@gmail.com.
My goals were rather lofty: raise half a million dollars and go on expeditions year-round. We ended up having 43 weeks of expeditions and we photographed more than 60,000 pages of MSS. And the money came in!
4. Could you give us a brief e-tour of the locations and monasteries you visited?
In chronological order:
Tirana, Albania: we returned to the National Archives of Tirana after photographing their entire collection of NT MSS in 2007. The return trip was to retake about 400 pictures that needed to be done better. Not bad out of 18,000!
Patmos, Greece: we returned to Patmos (which we have visited several times) to photograph seven MSS at the Monastery of St. John the Theologian. This is an exquisite monastery with a superb library.
Lesbos, Greece: we visited the island of Lesbos for the first time, and located several MSS. One is not yet catalogued by the INTF in Muenster, Germany (the official clearing house of Greek NT MSS). This was an ‘advance trip’—we didn’t photograph any MSS but we did make some important contacts.
Kozani, Greece: We visited the little town of Kozani in north-central Greece. We discovered four MSS there and also examined the three known MSS.
Ann Arbor, MI: we visited the University of Michigan and photographed their entire collection of Greek NT parchment and paper MSS; all these images have been posted on our site, too. Several of these MSS had never been microfilmed before. Included in the ones we photographed was the ‘Wee Beastie’—the smallest complete Greek Gospels MS known to exist (app. 2.5” x 3.5”—with almost 1000 pages of text in very, very small handwriting). Two teams of four people each were there; one team stayed for six weeks. We also discovered one or two MSS.
Orlando, Florida: We visited the Scriptorium, a state-of-the-art facility that houses numerous biblical manuscripts in a variety of languages. Five of these were unknown to NT scholars. All the images are on our site.
The United Kingdom: We spent ten weeks in the UK, including six weeks in Cambridge and three weeks in Glasgow. We photographed MSS at some of the Cambridge University colleges, the University of Glasgow, the University of St Andrews, the Leicester Records Office, and Arundel Castle. Included in the MSS we photographed was one papyrus and half a dozen majuscule MSS. Most of these have been posted. We also discovered one or two while in the UK. But this trip was no picnic. I severely injured my neck on our last day in the UK, rupturing a couple of discs, when I was carrying 100 lb. bags up and down stairs at a hotel that didn’t have an elevator. I had to get emergency surgery (disc fusion, a titanium plate screwed into my neck) when I got back home.
Australia and New Zealand: Two of us went down under to photograph just three MSS in Australia and New Zealand. One of the MSS was a papyrus—probably the most important biblical MSS in the southern hemisphere. We visited Melbourne, Sydney, Auckland, and Perth.
Athens, Greece: We returned to Greece and spent most of our time in Athens. We were there nine weeks. We visited the Benaki Museum and photographed 38 MSS there (including 8 that were not yet catalogued), and then we photographed nine MSS at the National Historical Museum (including at least one that was not yet catalogued). We also prepared for a visit in 2010 to the Byzantine Museum.
Muenster and Munich, Germany: To round out the year, we went to Germany and photographed 16 MSS (including three new discoveries). During our time in Germany, two of us went to England to photograph a newly discovered MS owned by a private party. Sorry, but I’m not allowed to tell any more details than that—except that it’s a tenth-century Gospels MS and that we will be posting those images on our site soon.
Altogether, we discovered about 40 MSS this past year, made some terrific contacts, and got some good press (Christianity Today, Wall Street Journal, to name a couple).
5. What is your favorite manuscript and why?
My favorite is one that we have not photographed: Codex Vaticanus. This is the most important biblical manuscript (and, therefore, the most important manuscript of any sort) in the world. Dating from the fourth century, Vaticanus has been housed at the Vatican since the 1400s (no one knows how it got there or where it came from). In 2001, I had the privilege of examining this MS for a solid week. It has most of the NT and most of the OT. Vaticanus provides the backbone for most modern Greek NTs; it was very carefully done and it has an excellent pedigree. Its readings go back deep into the second century almost always, and most of the time even reflect the wording of the autographic text.
6-7. What is the most interesting manuscript the Center has photographed and why? Related to that, what is the most important manuscript the Center has photographed to date and why?
It’s very difficult to choose which is the most interesting MS: they all have a story to tell, and we’re still learning the story of most of them! To date, we have discovered about 80 MSS and have photographed most of those. The ‘Wee Beastie’ was fascinating because of how extremely difficult it must have been to transcribe. The font is about 3 points! I honestly don’t know how a scribe 800+ years ago did it. Another interesting MS is housed in Constantinople at the Ecumenical Patriarchate. It’s also from the 12th century and is a Gospels MS with commentary by Theophylact. Theophylact was bishop of Bulgaria and he lived a few years into the 12th century. So, this MS is nearly contemporaneous with him. The MS is the third longest Greek NT MSS known to exist—about 1300 pages. The scripture is written in gold ink; the commentary in red ink. This shows us—as the MSS always do—that the scripture itself is more important than the commentary about it. Scribes either wrote scripture out in a different, more expensive color of ink, marked it off by obelisks, or wrote in on the center of the page with commentary in smaller handwriting around the edges. However they did it, they were indicating the centrality of the Word of God. It took us four days to shoot this MS in a completely dark room—so as not to create glare from the gold ink (we don’t use flash photography anyway both because of the patina on the parchment MSS and because of microscopic bleaching damage to the text). A real challenge—and something that simply could not be done with microfilm. Albania has two purple codices—MSS prepared for royalty centuries ago. One of them was hidden by the monks on the mountain of Berat during World War II when Hitler sent soldiers to steal the MS. The soldiers lined up the monks and old men of the village against a wall, aimed their semi-automatics at them, and demanded that they tell where the MS was hidden. To a man, they all lied: “I don’t know.” The Nazis were compassionate on them (a grade B miracle!) and let them go, believing their story. These men had been willing to die for scripture, reminiscent of what happened to Christians during the Diocletian persecution in the early fourth century. The MS is now housed at the National Archives. It’s registered with UNESCO as a world treasure and is the pride and joy of Albania.
As for the most important MS we have photographed, that’s also hard to say. Some of the MSS we photographed in Albania are extremely important (including the one purple codex mentioned above). A couple were not known to Muenster and they seem to belong to a very old family of MSS—family 13. One of them may be the oldest member of that family. A doctoral student at the University of Birmingham (England) is working on them. Some of the MSS lack the story of the woman caught in adultery, a passage that most scholars believe was not part of the original text of John. It is found in the majority of MSS, but doesn’t start to show up in significant numbers until the eighth century. Perhaps more important than all of these is a two-leaf ‘palimpsest’—a MS that had been scraped over by another scribe centuries after the original writing. The undertext is very, very difficult to read. We’ve only been able to make out a few letters on each page but have managed to identify it as biblical: One leaf is from Mark 3 and the other leaf is from Mark 6. The date of the MS is still a bit of a mystery to us: It could be as early as the third century (and that would make the Mark 3 leaf the oldest MS of Mark 3 in existence), or it may be as late as the seventh century. Without further research and perhaps a return to the Patriarchate, we can’t tell. But this MS is the first one found in modern Constantinople to have come from the first millennium AD. That’s a remarkable thing in itself; we also discovered two others in Constantinople from the first millennium. The two papyri that we have photographed this past year are also very important, as are the several majuscule MSS. And some of the minuscules, even though later, are very important. It will take us a long time to work through all the images to determine how significant these MSS really are.
8. As of right now, what is CSNTM’s plan for the upcoming year?
First, to get all the images on-line that we’re allowed to post. Second, to complete the backup of these images: we back them up on multiple DVDs and hard drives in different locations. Third, to examine in detail the new discoveries—just doing this job could take years. Fourth, to raise money for more expeditions. We already have penciled in expeditions to Munich, Athens, and Romania. All we need is funding for those trips. Fifth, to continue to let folks know about CSNTM. And writing for your blog is helping to do that very thing!
9. What are your long-term goals for CSNTM over the next 20 years?
I would like to first get all the MSS photographed. We believe we can do it in 12 years with sufficient funding. After that, we are working on some new software that will be able to decipher these images significantly faster than humans can do and without mistakes. (It’s a new kind of OCR that we’re developing.) At the present rate, it would take 400 man-years to transcribe all 2.6 million pages of text. But with the new software, that should be reduced to two man-years. Of course, it can’t be done until the MSS are digitally photographed. With all this in place, we will be able to trace out genealogical relations among the manuscripts better (and we have a biogeneticist who is helping us with this task, even to the point of filling in the gaps of missing MSS). Our ultimate goal is really twofold: preserve these ancient MSS before they deteriorate any further, and reproduce the exact wording of the original text of the NT. Nothing like job security, eh?
10. How can the readers of this blog help CSNTM?
A few years ago, the Bibliotheque nationale in Paris did an inventory on their holdings. They hadn’t done one in decades. Much to their surprise, over 30,000 books and manuscripts had gone missing! At the same time, a monastery in Greek with an incredible library was burned to the ground. All of these priceless documents are gone forever, and most of them had never even been microfilmed. These are terrible tragedies, but the devastation can be minimized if the MSS can be digitally photographed as soon as possible. If we can photograph their MSS, if there should be a fire or other loss, there would still be an exact replica of each MS. At bottom, CSNTM is about preserving the Word of God. It costs us $4 to digitally preserve one page of text for posterity. A whole manuscript costs $2200. But the value for the Church and the Gospel: priceless.
The friends of CSNTM just started a great program to encourage folks to help us with our mission. It’s called the “Circle of Friends.” For those who donate $25, $50, or $100 a month, they will receive extra benefits and information about CSNTM that others don’t get. It’s a great investment for eternity. [for more information contact Friends of CSNTM at friendsofcsntm@gmail.com]
Besides helping us with much-needed funding, we are also looking for volunteers who would like to help us on the scripture indexing of these images. We already have several volunteers, but need a lot more. If someone knows Greek and would like to examine some of our images, providing a scripture index would be invaluable. It’s the first step in determining what’s in the MSS. It doesn’t take long—just a few minutes per page. If anyone of your readers is interested, have them write to me directly at dbw [at] csntm [dot] org.
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I want to thank Dan again for this informative interview and hope this has whet your appetite for the work of New Testament Textual Criticism and the work of CSNTM. You can visit CSNTM on the web by clicking here. If you have any questions or comments for Dan, please feel free to leave them below.
Several months back, I wrote a blog post on Codex B for The Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts. Click here for the post. Enjoy!
At the end of my “Comments” section of my first post on Christain and Cursing (more on this here), there was brief mention that the term ’skubalon’ in Phil 3.8 could possibly mean s-h-i-t. If this is true, it certainly has implications for our discussions on Christians and Cursing. I gave reference to O’Brien’s counter view that argues it simply means “trash,” but I thought it fair to also give the other side of the debate, via an article written by Daniel B. Wallce, President of the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts. Give the full article a read by clicking here.
Also, see the related post by me, on “Linguistics and the Technolocial Revolution: Implications for Defining a Curse” (more on this here).
Since my critique of one or two of Peter Head’s comments (more on this here), he has responded (you can view this directly in the comments section of his blog here):
Rob said: “To suggest that Wallace is theologically motivated in his dating of the papyri, I think, is incongruous with the spirit of his article. His article basically scolds evangelicals for theologically motivated scholarships and ends with an exhortation to “pursue the truth at all costs.” “
I agree with you. That in fact is why I am teasing away at that incongruity. Because I completely agree with Dan on the wider issue.
I like Head’s language here much better. “Teasing away at that incongruity” seems less of a charge against Wallace for theologically motivated assessments and perhaps more of an inquiry. Also note his agreement with Wallace on the wider issue, affirming that, aside from the minute detail of papyrological dating, he agrees on the “wider issue.” Moreover, it appears that both Wallace and Head are understanding each other better now (again, see the comments portion of Head’s blog) by clarifying and nuancing a variety of their statements.
If you find interest in New Testament Textual Criticism or respect the discipline, I encourage you to check out the blog by clicking here.
Peter Head over at evangelicaltextualcriticism.blogspot.com has posted an article summarizing a recent article by Dr. Daniel B. Wallace of Dallas Theological Seminary published in the Journal for the Evangelical Theological Society. In doing so he provides a somewhat decent synopsis of the article, but he misunderstands Wallace in a few ways. [update: the concerns below are what caused me to compose this blog and so are the focus here. But please note the comments section where I state that Wallace could have been clearer in making his point in the JETS article.] You can read the post and the comments to see the dialgue at length http://evangelicaltextualcriticism.blogspot.com/2009/05/dan-wallace-in-jets.html), but I wanted to address two specific concerns.
(1) Head, in the comments section of his blog, suggests that Wallace is theologically motivated with his conclusions in regard to his historical dating of some papyri. I’m not so sure of this assessment, however. To suggest that Wallace is theologically motivated in his dating of the papyri, I think, is incongruous with the spirit of his article. His article basically scolds evangelicals for theologically motivated scholarships and ends with an exhortation to “pursue the truth at all costs.” Moreover, Wallace is in one accord with Eldon Epp on the dating of these papyri, and it can hardly be suggested that Epp is theologically motivated in his scholarship.
(2) I’m not sure why there are numerous comments in Head’s blog over this point of minutia. While it certainly would be convenient for evangelicals and apologists to have an earlier dating, the fact is, even if the papyri are late, it doesn’t really matter because the arguments in Wallace article are still valid. In fact, even if all the manuscripts of the New Testament were destroyed tommorrow, we still would have over 90 percent of the New Testament preserved within the Fathers (Wallace makes this point at the Greer-Heard forum where he debated Bart Ehrman; publication of these lectures are forthcoming).
All this to say that I don’t think Head’s assesement is accurate and all the bickering and bantering in the ‘comment’ portion of the blog is, I think, unwarranted. Nonetheless, I appreciate what Head does in representing textual criticism on the blogosphere.
[Update: Peter Head has clarified a bit since and has responded to my first objection above. He responds (you can see it here), saying,
Rob said: "To suggest that Wallace is theologically motivated in his dating of the papyri, I think, is incongruous with the spirit of his article. His article basically scolds evangelicals for theologically motivated scholarships and ends with an exhortation to "pursue the truth at all costs." "
I agree with you. That in fact is why I am teasing away at that incongruity. Because I completely agree with Dan on the wider issue.
If you haven't stopped by Head's blog yet, I commend it to all of you who are interested in the discipline of New Testament Textual Criticism]
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