An Introduction to the Greek New Testament, Produced at Tyndale House, Cambridge E-Book

Dirk Jongkind

• Herausgeber: Crossway
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 152

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

In 2017, Crossway and Cambridge University Press released The Greek New Testament, Produced at Tyndale House, Cambridge—a groundbreaking edition of the Greek New Testament reflecting a decade of research. One of the principal scholars behind the project has now written this short book to provide crucial information about the Tyndale House edition in particular and the Greek New Testament in general, answering questions such as "What is a textual apparatus and why is one needed?" and "Is the New Testament reliable?" Dirk Jongkind gives guidance for understanding both the biblical text itself and this specific edition so that beginning Greek readers can have clarity and confidence as they engage with the New Testament in the original Greek.

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“The Greek New Testament, Produced at Tyndale House, Cambridge is one of the most exciting publications in biblical studies in the last decade. This new and user-friendly critical edition of the Greek New Testament now has a superb companion in Dirk Jongkind’s An Introduction to the Greek New Testament. Jongkind describes not only how the Tyndale House Edition came to be but also how any critical edition of the Greek New Testament came to be. Jongkind does a superb job explaining very technical topics related to manuscripts, textual variants, the Textus Receptus, and more, and explaining why it matters. Your seminary professor can teach you how to read Greek, but Jongkind teaches you how to read a critical edition of the Greek New Testament. A must-have resource for all students of biblical Greek.”

Michael F. Bird, Academic Dean and Lecturer in Theology, Ridley College, Melbourne, Australia

“This introduction to The Greek New Testament, Produced at Tyndale House, Cambridge took me by surprise. Textual criticism is an arcane discipline not well served by the combative and abstruse writing of many of its practitioners. Jongkind’s elegant yet almost carefree style, however, is refreshing for its clarity, simplicity, and irenic tone. This book is a delight to read on its own. The author goes to great lengths to make The Greek New Testament, Produced at Tyndale House, Cambridge accessible. His introduction is even an excellent primer on New Testament textual criticism. Jongkind introduces the reader to manuscripts, textual theory, praxis, major textual problems, and even brief theological reflections on the reality of textual variants. It is no easy task to render this field of study within the grasp of any interested reader, and Dirk Jongkind has done so in a remarkably disarming manner.”

Daniel B. Wallace, Senior Research Professor of New Testament Studies, Dallas Theological Seminary; Executive Director, Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts; author, Greek Grammar beyond the Basics

“Pulling back the curtain on the origins of the Greek New Testament, Dirk Jongkind explains where it came from, how it works, and why it can be trusted. If you have ever doubted the trustworthiness of the Greek text, you will find reassurance in this wonderful volume.”

Michael J. Kruger, President and Samuel C. Patterson Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity, Reformed Theological Seminary, Charlotte

“In An Introduction to the Greek New Testament, Dirk Jongkind provides the raison d’être for the Tyndale House Edition of the Greek New Testament and does so with his characteristic sagacity. I enjoyed reading this book, and I am happy to recommend it.”

David Alan Black, Dr. M. O. Owens Jr. Chair of New Testament Studies, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary

“This book is the perfect introduction for reading and benefiting from The Greek New Testament, Produced at Tyndale House, Cambridge. An easy read, it is brimming with helpful information—not just for orienting the reader to the Greek New Testament but also for covering broader issues like the basic principles of textual criticism and even a biblical theology of the transmission of biblical texts. Anyone interested in how the New Testament is compiled, or in the texts that stand behind it, will delight in this terrific resource.”

Constantine R. Campbell, Professor of New Testament, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School

“This clear and accessible introduction will be of great help to those learning about textual criticism for the first time, and especially to those wanting to make the most of the special features of The Greek New Testament, Produced at Tyndale House, Cambridge.”

Roy E. Ciampa, S. Louis and Ann W. Armstrong Professor of Religion and Chair, Department of Religion, Samford University

“Dirk Jongkind’s An Introduction to the Greek New Testament, Produced at Tyndale House, Cambridge demonstrates the advantages of an edition of the Greek New Testament that is thoroughly acquainted with the individual characteristics of the early manuscripts and deeply engaged in the world of the scribes who produced them. This volume is valuable not only for its defense of the editorial aims of the Tyndale House Edition but also as a primer on the New Testament text-critical enterprise itself. It is a great read for anyone interested in grasping the basics of the discipline.”

Charles E. Hill, John R. Richardson Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity, Reformed Theological Seminary, Orlando

“Bible-believing Christians are often disturbed when exposed to the great variety of New Testament manuscripts. This book explains why we should consider this variety a wealth, instead of being afraid of it. It also provides readers with all they need to effectively use the recent academic edition of the Greek New Testament that was produced at Tyndale House, Cambridge.”

Lydia Jaeger, Lecturer and Academic Dean, Institut Biblique de Nogent-sur-Marne

“The editors of the Tyndale House Edition of the Greek New Testament claim that they have produced ‘the most accurate edition of the Greek New Testament published so far’ (with accuracy defined by faithfulness in representing the apostolic autographs). This is a bold declaration, and senior editor Dirk Jongkind does much to back up this assertion in his new introduction to the Greek New Testament. The book is precise, irenic, and lucid. Only time and broader scholarly scrutiny will adjudicate the claims of the editors. Nevertheless, even in the early days of its public appearance, The Greek New Testament, Produced at Tyndale House, Cambridge should be celebrated by all as a magnificent achievement. I heartily encourage my students to read it, and this introduction is an invaluable companion to that joyful enterprise.”

Robert L. Plummer, Founder, Daily Dose of Greek; Professor of New Testament Interpretation, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary

“Encountering the Greek New Testament for the first time can be baffling. It need be no longer! Here is an admirably lucid ‘user guide’ to The Greek New Testament, Produced at Tyndale House, Cambridge that contains everything we need to know to read the Greek text with full understanding. The book includes excellent discussions of matters such as the nature of our manuscripts, how decisions about the text are made, and the various textual traditions that we possess. Highly recommended for all readers of the Scriptures!”

Paul Trebilco, Professor of New Testament Studies, University of Otago, New Zealand

“While this volume tells the story behind The Greek New Testament, Produced at Tyndale House, Cambridge, it does much more than that. It is an excellent overview of the issues in New Testament textual criticism. Jongkind expertly and concisely guides the reader in explaining the complexities involved in grappling with the differences among manuscripts and discerning the most likely reading. All who read this book will approach their Greek New Testament with a greater level of confidence.”

Clinton E. Arnold, Dean and Professor of New Testament Language and Literature, Talbot School of Theology, Biola University

An Introduction to the Greek New Testament

Produced at Tyndale House, Cambridge

Dirk Jongkind

An Introduction to the Greek New Testament, Produced at Tyndale House, Cambridge

Copyright © 2019 by Dirk Jongkind

Published by Crossway1300 Crescent StreetWheaton, Illinois 60187

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, except as provided for by USA copyright law. Crossway® is a registered trademark in the United States of America.

Cover design: Erik Maldre

First printing 2019

Printed in the United States of America

Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are the author’s translation.

Scripture quotations marked ESV are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked KJV are from the King James Version of the Bible.

All emphases in Scripture quotations have been added by the author.

Trade paperback ISBN: 978-1-4335-6409-3 ePub ISBN: 978-1-4335-6412-3 PDF ISBN: 978-1-4335-6410-9 Mobipocket ISBN: 978-1-4335-6411-6

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Jongkind, Dirk, author.

Title: An introduction to the Greek New Testament, produced at Tyndale House, Cambridge / Dirk Jongkind.

Description: Wheaton, Illinois : Crossway, [2019] | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2018034123 (print) | LCCN 2018040972 (ebook) | ISBN 9781433564109 (pdf) | ISBN 9781433564116 (mobi) | ISBN 9781433564123 (epub) | ISBN 9781433564093 | ISBN 9781433564093 (trade paperback) | ISBN 9781433564123 (ePub) | ISBN 9781433564109 (PDF) | ISBN 9781433564116 (Mobipocket)

Subjects: LCSH: Bible. New Testament. Greek. 1633. | Bible. New Testament. Greek. Tyndale House. 2017.

Classification: LCC BS1965 1633 (ebook) | LCC BS1938 .J66 2019 (print) | DDC 225.4/8—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018034123

Crossway is a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

2019-05-01 04:19:27 PM

To Simon and Pete

Contents

Analytical Outline

List of Illustrations

 1  Your Greek New Testament and the Manuscripts

 2  Practicalities

 3  Manuscripts

 4  How Decisions Are Made

 5  Why Not the Textus Receptus?

 6  Why Not the Byzantine Text?

 7  Biblical Theology and the Transmission of the Text

 8  Where to Go from Here?

Acknowledgments

Glossary

General Index

Scripture Index

Analytical Outline

 1  Your Greek New Testament and the Manuscripts

Translations and Editions

How Precisely Do We Know the Text?

Why Do We Need an Edition of the Greek New Testament?

 2  Practicalities

How to Use Your Greek New Testament

The Apparatus

Unusual Features

Order of the Books

Paragraphing

Spelling

 3  Manuscripts

Christian Manuscripts

Manuscripts and Their Designations

The Manuscripts Cited in the THGNT

The Large Papyri

P45

P46

P47

P66

P72

P75

The Early Majuscules

א‎(01), Codex Sinaiticus

B(03), Codex Vaticanus

A(02), Codex Alexandrinus

C(04), Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus

D(05), Codex Bezae

W(032), Codex Washingtonensis

The List of Manuscripts

 4  How Decisions Are Made

External Evidence, Copying, and Internal Evidence

Four Areas of Information

Distribution of the Evidence

Knowledge of the Individual Manuscripts

Knowledge of Groupings of Manuscripts

Knowledge of Scribal Behavior

A Balancing Act

Understanding Copying

Selection and Preparation

Copying the Text

Correction

Understanding Patterns

Influences on the Text

Influence of Similar Passages

Influence of Church Liturgy

Some Important Variants

Ending of Mark: Mark 16:9–20

The Woman Caught in Adultery: John 7:53–8:11

The Angel and the Sweat Like Drops of Blood: Luke 22:43–44

Jesus’s Prayer of Forgiveness on the Cross: Luke 23:34a

 5  Why Not the Textus Receptus?

What Is the Textus Receptus?

Providential Preservation

 6  Why Not the Byzantine Text?

Contrast with the Textus Receptus

Acts 8:37

1 John 5:7–8

The Argument for Byzantine Priority

The Argument of “Normal Transmission”

The Argument of Artificiality

Why Not the Byzantine Text

Lack of Early Evidence

Nature of the Byzantine Text

 7  Biblical Theology and the Transmission of the Text

The Words of the Old Covenant

The Arrival of the New Covenant

The Beginning of the Church

The Spread of the Church

 8  Where to Go from Here?

Illustrations

Figures

1.1  Manuscripts, editions, and translations

1.2  Opening of John in Codex Sinaiticus and Tyndale House Edition

3.1  Number of manuscripts per century (approx.)

3.2  A third-centrury papyrus, P27

3.3  A ninth-century majuscule, Y(034)

3.4  The script of a fifteenth-century minuscule, 69

4.1  Abrupt-ending view of Mark

4.2  Lost-ending view of Mark

4.3  Long-ending view of Mark

Tables

2.1  Elements in the apparatus

2.2  Sigla qualifications

3.1  Correction indicators for א‎(01) in Tyndale House Edition

3.2  Correction indicators for B(03) in Tyndale House Edition

1

Your Greek New Testament and the Manuscripts

All Bibles and translations have stories behind them. Some Bibles are beautifully produced; others give you the text on cheap paper and in tiny font. Likewise, translations make choices that are celebrated by some and scorned by others. And New Testaments in ancient Greek are tools prepared by scholars for all who want to read and study these Scriptures in their original language. This little book tells the story behind The Greek New Testament, Produced at Tyndale House, Cambridge (short title Tyndale House Edition, abbreviated as THGNT) and is a tool for all who have the privilege to learn New Testament Greek.

It is worth clarifying what this little book is not. It is not a grammar of New Testament Greek. There are many other grammars for beginning and intermediate Greek. Neither is this an exegetical guide or a “New Testament introduction.” There are also plenty of those. Some of the good Greek grammars and New Testament introductions devote space to where the text they study comes from. This is also what we do in this manual, but we do more. We look at Greek manuscripts and at how they transmitted the text. We explore errors in manuscripts and how to spot them. And we think about some of the answers others have given to the question, What should we print when publishing the Greek text of the New Testament? (and there have been a number of different answers to this question).

In the end, though, the main aim of this book is to help you read the Tyndale House Edition without any nagging and distracting questions about the text or the edition (or to answer these if you have them). I hope that after reading this introduction, when you pick up your Greek New Testament, you will do so with confidence and pleasure—even if you have only just started learning the language and barely recognize your first few words.

Translations and Editions

The Greek New Testament, Produced at Tyndale House, Cambridge is an edition of the text; it is not a translation. But what exactly is the difference between translations of the Greek, editions of the Greek, and “the original Greek”? Most people read the New Testament in a modern translation. These translations are based on a printed book that contains the Greek New Testament, which, of course, has been published since the invention of the printing press. Such a printed version of the Greek New Testament is an edition, because “the editor” has had to make all sorts of decisions on what text to print and how to print it. The goal of most editions is to give the original text as accurately as possible. The first such edition of the Greek New Testament ever printed and published was made in 1516 by a Dutch scholar, Erasmus of Rotterdam. The Spanish Complutensian Polyglot, which contains a Greek text of the New Testament, was printed earlier but published later.

Before the sixteenth century, the only way to reproduce a Greek New Testament was to copy all or part of it by hand. Consequently, early translations, made before the printing press, were translated from handwritten copies, or manuscripts. After the arrival of the printing press, modern translations were made from printed editions of the Greek, the first one being Luther’s German translation of the New Testament in 1522, based on Erasmus’s corrected, second edition of 1519 (see fig. 1.1). Over the centuries, various printed editions of the Greek New Testament have been made by using Greek manuscripts. At times, many manuscripts were used, while at other times, only a few (or even just one). There are also a surprising number of editions that are produced using only other editions, thus going back to the manuscripts only in an indirect way. The goal of the Tyndale House Edition, as is true of most editions, is to give the text of the original Greek as accurately as possible.

Figure 1.1 Manuscripts, editions, and translations1

Editions of the Greek New Testament include accents, spaces between words, and chapter and verse numbers. These come mainly from later Greek manuscripts or, in the case of chapter and verse numbers, from the sixteenth century. In order to ensure a text that is as free from typos as possible, the THGNT started off by digitizing a Greek New Testament published in the nineteenth century by Samuel Prideaux Tregelles. That text was then thoroughly compared to the earliest manuscripts and many later ones. The hundreds of changes that were made in this process have resulted in what the editors trust to be the most accurate edition of the Greek New Testament published so far. And an accurate edition lies at the heart of further accurate work in translation and in the study of the fine details of the text.

How Precisely Do We Know the Text?

For many readers of the New Testament, it is a disturbing moment when they are told that differences in the wording of the Greek text exist between the various handwritten copies of the text. A first response may be that, therefore, the New Testament itself cannot be reliable. After all, if the “original Greek” is in doubt, how can subsequent translations be reliable? How can we know that the text has not been edited in such a way that the original message was lost, or worse, suppressed? Sometimes this line of thinking is even developed into the thought that because there are differences between manuscripts, the words of the New Testament could not have been inspired.2 (Let me put my cards on the table. I stand in the Protestant tradition of historical Christianity and therefore hold to a belief in the divine inspiration of the Bible.)

Let us first have a look at the reliability argument. Is the text of the Greek New Testament unreliable because of differences between the manuscripts? One way to answer this question is to look at the important differences and the impact they make. Clearly, many of the differences affect how we read a particular sentence and how the text says what it says. But the actual content of a paragraph or a chapter—let alone that of a whole book—stands firm regardless. The message that is communicated comes across clearly even though there is interfering noise.

Take, for example, the opening phrase of Mark’s Gospel:

Ἀρχὴ τοῦ εὐαγγελίου Ἰησοῦ χριστοῦ υἱοῦ θεοῦ·

The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, Son of God.

In most of our translations, there is a footnote relating to the words “Son of God.” This is what the ESV has:

Some manuscripts omit the Son of God.

And this is what the same footnote looks like in the Tyndale House Edition: