Reuben J. Swanson, ed. New Testament Greek Manuscripts: Variant Readings
Arranged in Horizontal Lines against Codex Vaticanus. 4 vols. Foreward by
Bruce Metzger. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995; Pasadena: William
Carey International University Press, 1995. ISBN (Sheffield hardcover):
1-85075-595-7, 1-85075-596-5, 1-85075-597-3, 1-85075-598-1; (Sheffield
softcover): 1-85075-772-0, 1-85075-773-9, 1-85075-774-7, 1-85075-775-5;
(Carey softcover): 0-86585-051-8, 0-86585-052-6, 0-86585-053-4,
0-86585-054-2. Pp. xxi+304+xix+271+xx+420+xix+302. Separate volumes from
Sheffield (hardcover/softcover): Matthew: UK £43.00/£19.95; US
$64.00/$29.95; Mark: £39.00/£18.50; US $58.50/$26.95; Luke: £50.00/£24.95;
US $75.00/$39.00; John: £43.00/£19.95; US $64.00/$29.95. 4 volumes from
Carey (softcover): US $34.50.
1. Swanson's mammoth new text-critical edition of the Gospels seems to be
both innovative in presentation and exhaustive within its compass. Indeed,
the detailed thoroughness with which the textual material in the selected
Greek witnesses is presented may be unequalled.
2. The 71 Greek witnesses collated for this new textual apparatus include
the following, identified by the usual Gregory/Aland notation:
* [P]1 [P]2 [P]5 [P]6 [P]19 [P]22 [P]25 [P]35 [P]36 [P]37 [P]39 [P]45
[P]52 [P]53 [P]59 [P]60 [P]62 [P]63 [P]66 [P]75 [P]76 [P]82
* [aleph] A B C D E F G H K L M N P Q S T U W Y [Gamma] [Delta]
[Theta] [Lambda] [Pi] [Psi] [Omega] 0171
* 1 2 13 28 33 69 118 124 157 565 579 700 788 1071 1346 1424 1582
* Clement of Alexandria, TR Oxford 1873, Westcott-Hort, and UBS4
No versions, lectionaries, or fathers other than Clement appear in this
work. Observing that most of these papyri are small fragments, and several
other mss are incomplete, I estimate the total number of collated witnesses
attesting to any single verse to average about 45 or 46, a hefty trove of
material, especially for the work of one man! Swanson collated all these
himself, twice, and did his own typing and typesetting.
3. The main body of this work is organized on each page into two sections
and four apparatuses. The first and main section presents the readings found
in all the textual witnesses, quoted in full, vertically aligned to match up
corresponding words in each reading, something like this (Greek
transliterated):
B [aleph]
proseuxesqe peri twn ephreazontwn umas L 579 700 u
w
pro........ .eri tw. .phreazo.... .... [P]75
kai proseuxesqe peri twn ephreazontwn umas W
proseuxesqe uper twn ephreazontwn umas [Lambda]
omit f13 2*
proseuxesqe uper twn ephreazontwn umas kai diakontwn umas 69 124
proseuxesqe uper twn epereazontwn umas 33 1071
proseuxesqe uper twn ephreazontwn umas kai diakontwn umas 788
kai proseuxesqe uper twn ephreazontwn umas TR
proseuxesqe uper twn ephreazontwn umas [M] rell
4. Each text is quoted in extenso, but identical readings are collected on
one line. In the right margin of each line of text are the sigla of the
witnesses supporting that form of text. The reading of Vaticanus is always
on the first line, and either the Majority Text reading or the reading of
the TR generally appears last, if different. As one can see from the example
above, the material in one stanza of lines does not represent one unit of
textual variation, but often several units combined together. This makes it
easier to do continuous reading (or continuous searching) of the text of a
single manuscript, but the arrangement in long lines makes it harder to
separate out the units of variation for individual analysis. Three group
sigla are used to save space and mental energy.
* [M] = E F G H S Y [Omega]
* f1 = 1 118 1582
* f13 = 13 69 124 788 1346
The abbreviation "rell" refers to all mss not otherwise cited. Grouped mss
are generally cited individually when they defect from their group, but I
was not able to discover what rule was used to determine the group reading
when the group is split. Readings of the first hand and the corrector are
both cited, and brackets found in the UBS4, WH, or TR editions are reflected
in their citations. Accents, breathings, and punctuation appear in all
texts, but these details seem not to be derived from the mss but uniformly
from the editor.
5. Swanson's new finding that the minuscule 1346 belongs to family 13 (and
his citing it under that siglum in the apparatus) looked suspicious at
first, because von Soden, Geerlings, and Wisse all classify 1346 as a member
of family [Pi] . After I browsed through sections of Swanson, noting how
often 1346 appeared on the same line with [Pi] or with f13, I decided that
1346 appears to have suffered block mixture, with short blocks of a few
chapters in length taken from either family [Pi] or 13 alternately.
6. The second section on each page of the text lists mss with lacunae on
that page. Unfortunately, the papyri other than [P]45 and [P]75 are not
listed here, and the only way to find out where they are extant is to check
other reference works, such as the appendices in the Nestle-Aland 27th
edition (NA27). Cursory checks suggest that some of the minuscules may also
have undocumented lacunae. The extent of the text collated from each
fragmentary ms often differs from the limits described by Aland. This is
possibly due to the NA27 list of mss combining under one siglum fragments
preserved at different sites, if it is judged that the fragments were
originally part of one ms. Lacunae are indicated precisely in the main text
by ellipses (...), which are necessary to distinguish the lacuna from the
blank space needed to align shorter texts vertically.
7. The first apparatus below these two sections lists spelling problems in
the mss. The spelling of names is fully documented in the main text section,
but otherwise minor itacisms and transparent blunders are regularized in the
main text and the original spelling noted here. This helps a lot in
uncluttering the presentation of the evidence, and it also helps the reader
identify individual scribal weaknesses and habits.
8. The second apparatus documents the nomina sacra originally found in the
mss, before such contractions were expanded as they appear in the main text.
The third apparatus documents the kefalaia, titloi,
lection arxh and telos marks, and incipit texts found
in the mss. The fourth apparatus lists the chapter and section numbers found
in the margins and the Eusebian canon tables.
9. Pericopes are labeled with English section headings derived from those in
UBS4, with some Greek titloi, and with synoptic cross references.
Septuagint quotations are printed in bold, poetry is indented, and textual
variations are highlighted by underlining to indicate which words differ
from Vaticanus. The Clement quotations are given with some context, and the
portion matching the scripture is underlined.
10. A preliminary printing of the Matthew volume appeared in 1994, which I
will not discard, because it contains an extra appendix of textual
commentary for chapters 1-19 not found in the final printing. There does not
seem to be any other material difference between the preliminary and final
printings. I did substantial work with this preliminary printing,
transcribing the Freer Gospels text in Matthew and searching for singular
readings in several uncials. I found the format clear and easy to work with.
11. I am accumulating an errata list, which is available on the Web and by
FTP, and which at present lists 66 potential errors, including both minor
typographical problems and significant textual errors. I found these errors
by referring only to secondary sources, not to microfilm images of the mss.
Contributions of error reports to broman@nosc.mil are welcome.
12. Every book contains some errors, but the degree of reliability expected
of a textual apparatus is a critical factor in its being useful and its
staying in demand. Tischendorf's reputation for accuracy has kept his eighth
edition popular for more than a century, while von Soden's and Legg's major
works have not been widely used, partly because of the perception that their
error rate was too high.
13. I performed a simple test of Swanson's accuracy in collation by
comparing the apparatus in NA27 for the 22nd and 23rd chapters of Luke
against the corresponding section of Swanson. The NA27 apparatus for these
two chapters reports on 215 units of variation, and there were 25
manuscripts, some fragmentary, which are consistently cited by both NA27 and
Swanson. Discrepencies between Nestle-Aland and Swanson were found at 33
places in these two chapters. I attempted to adjudicate these discrepencies
by referring to the IGNTP apparatus as an independent tie-breaker. Whichever
source was supported by the IGNTP was considered to be correct in that
place, and the other source to have erred. In Lk 23:45, the reading of the
first corrector of C could not be determined from these secondary sources.
In Lk 22:18 it appears that all three sources erred in different ways in
representing the reading of W. Without access to an image of the Freer
Gospels ms, I conjectured that the most likely reading was piw apo tou
nun genhmatos, which is the reading reported in Goodspeed's collation
of W.
14. The final tally indicates that in these 33 disagreements, NA27 was at
fault 12 times, and that Swanson erred 21 times, One could accordingly
estimate that his error rate is probably less than twice that of NA27, and
would amount to around .01 errors per manuscript per unit of variation. This
is a respectable showing when measuring oneself against the latest
Nestle-Aland edition, a respected production for which the collations have
been checked and rechecked by a substantial staff over many years. Besides,
the NA27 data had to be given the benefit of the doubt in several cases
during this side-by-side test because of the selective nature of its
apparatus, while the Swanson edition aspires to be exhaustive and offers no
excuses.
15. One other concern arose in my mind during these tests: a doubt whether
defections from group readings of f1, f13, and [M] were invariably reported.
To test Swanson on this point, I searched the IGNTP apparatus in Lk 22:1-10
and found 41 instances where the mss assigned by Swanson to the groups f1,
f13, or [M] did not read unanimously as a group. In 29 of these 41 instances
a defection was documented by Swanson, and in 12 instances the defection was
not noted (or was due to IGNTP error). This result suggests that a failure
to note group defections could be of significant concern. But to be fair,
this kind of detailed information is completely absent from sources like
NA27, which cites f1 and f13 by group siglum only.
16. Swanson's publication of Greek manuscript texts of the Gospels seems to
be reasonably accurate, and it is valuable both for its approachable full
text format and its no-sparrow-may-fall coverage of the material. The
appearance of the book of Acts in the near future is eagerly awaited.
© TC: A Journal of Biblical Textual Criticism, 1996.
Vincent Broman
San Diego, California, USA