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59ook and Critical Editions(5 ) The D evelopm ent of the System
of Liturgies (p p. 93-111) deals with the develop-men t of
compulsory public service = liturgy) in the Roman em pire and d
iscusses thesymbolic use m ade of the Roman systems in the early
Christian discussions of serviceto God and the church; (6) The
Transport of Grain (p p. 112-29) considers the collec-tion of grain
revenues (as taxes), the transportation systems used, and the w
orkers soemployed.Part Th re e, Hellenistic and Jewish Law, deals
with various legal issues lyingbehind different N T texts: (7 )
Forcible Acquisition and the Meaning of M att. 11.12(p p. 130-62)
deals with the use of sanctioned violence to acquire imm ovable
property inGreco -Rom an Egypt and classical Athens, as a
background to the Q saying about theKingdom of Heav en being
acquired by force and being plunder ed by violent per -sons ; (8 )
'Slaves Obey Your Masters': Th e Legal Liability of Slaves (p p.
163-96) dealswith th e amb iguous legal situation of slaves in the
an cient world (P tolem aic and Rom anEgypt, the H ebr ew Bible and
Judaism, and th e N T), as objects owned by their m asterson th e
on e hand , but as functioning parts of society with certain rights
of their own onthe othe r; (9) The Procedure of Execution and the
npo opoh f' (pp. 197-232) deals withthe collection of debts in
Ptolem aic and Rom an Egypt, as these relate to th e biblical
lawsconcern ing loans and cred it, especially as they pertain to
the injunction against usuryand the law of the s abbatical year of
release, their effects on comm erce, and the d evel-opme nt of the
rcpooPoh+ as a way to circumven t the problems.Part Four, New
Testam ent and Ot her Studies, includes discussions of
sundrysocio-historical matters of interest: (10 ) A Civic
Benefactor of the First Centu ry in AsiaMinor (p p. 233-4 1)
discusses a long honorary inscription indicative of systems of bene
-faction during th e N T period (this brief essay was contributed
by R. A. Kearsley);(11) A Fragm ent of the Gospel of John (p p. 2 4
2 4 8 ) discusses the date and prove-nance of PgO, nd, especially,
its relevance for the que stion of the p resen ce of Gnosticismin
secon d-century Egypt (in relation to Walter B auer's claims in
Orthodoxy an d H eresyin Earliest Ch ristianity); and (12) The
Development of the Codex (pp . 249-6 2) dis-cusses various
hypotheses for the origin of the codex book and its unp recedented
popu -larity among the early Christians.Th e volume is fully
indexed.
Bart D . EhrmanUniversity of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC
27599
New Testament Greek Manuscripts: Variant Readings Arranged in
Horizontal LinesAgainst Codex Vaticanus. Vol. 1 , Matthew, e d.
Reuben J. Swanson. Sheffield, England:Sheffield Academic Press;
Pasadena, CA: William Carey International Un iversity Pre ss,1995.
Pp . xxii 304 . $119.95.This is a significant publication th at
will be of considerable use for everyone inter-ested in the textual
tradition of the New T estamen t. Unlike any other apparatu s
avail-able , it provides a complete-indeed, exhaustive-account of
the texts of approx imatelyforty-five of our most imp ortant Gree k
m anuscripts, yet does so in a format that isremarkably easy to
use-far easier and clearer than , say, the N estle-Aland Novum
Testa-m n tu m Graece.
http:///reader/full/$119.95http:///reader/full/$119.95
8/13/2019 Bart D. Ehrman, Book Review, New Testament Greek
Manuscripts
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16 Journal of Biblical LiteratureTh e drawback of this edition
is that it do es not inclu de as many textual witnesses as
the Nestle-Aland (or the U nited Bible Societies Greek N ew
Testam ent): there are noversions cited he re, for example, and
oniy one church father (Clem ent of Alexandria).But un like these
oth er editions, the texts of the witnesses that are cited are
given in toto:abso lutely noth ing is left ou t, misspellings,
scribal slips, abbreviations-everything ishere. And yet, most
significantly of all, by using a parallel-line format in which the
dif-fere nt wordings a ttested by th e chosen witnesses ar e given
on sep arate lines, the editio nis remarkably free of clutter. O ne
can use these volumes to ascertain with comp leteaccuracy th e text
of any on e of the forty-five manuscripts used a t any point of th
e text.
Swanson managed to avoid clutter by relegating so me aspects of
each manu script'stext (those that are of limited interest to most
people using a Greek edition) to appara-tuses at th e bottom of th
e page, on e giving every simple scribal error and d ifferenc e
ofspelling (except for those of p rope r nouns, which a re given in
the parallel lines of th etext); a second for th e nornina sacra
(abbreviations of sacred names ); a third for themanuscripts'
indications of ancient chap ter divisions (th e kephalaia maio ra),
sum marie sof pericopae (titloi) an d lectionary aids (indicating
the beginning an d en d of a lectionaryreading); and a fourth
giving the Eusebian canon tables.
O ne of the striking aspects of this edition is its use of a
solitary man uscrip t, codexVaticanus, as th e base text. Every ot
he r major editio n available today provides aneclectic text, that
is, a text that has been rec onst ructed by mo dern scholars on the
basis
of the surviving evidence . T he p roblem with an eclectic text,
as Swanson notes , is that bychoosing among readings found in o ne
or another manuscript, modern editors occasion-ally reconstruct a
verse in a form fo und in none of the surviving witnesses (e .g.,
by com -bining a phrase found in one group of manuscripts with a
phrase found in anoth er). Bychoosing codex Lraticanus as a base
text, Swanson at t he least can claim to b e giving aGree k text as
actually read by an anc ient Christian congregation, in this case,
a congre-gation living in th e fourth centu ry that ha ppen ed to
have a text very close in chara cter tothat, probably, of th e
original.
This privileging of Vaticanus doe s not skew any of the evid
ence, however. It simplymeans that th e first of the rrlultiple
lines given for each verse is Vaticanus; su bseq uentlines give the
com plete text for all the othe r witnesses, so that o ne can recon
struct eachof thes e m anuscripts with almost no effort. Among the
m are twenty-two of the mostim portan t papyri (whic h
unfortunately-and possibly simply by oversight-are no t cite das
lacunose along with oth er fragmentary witnesses for those verses,
which a re nu me r-ous, that they do not preserve), twenty-eight of
th e best known uncials, and seventeen ofthe significant
minuscules; also included are complete citations of three of the
mostpop ular critical editions of mo dern times (UBSGNT4, Westcott
a nd H ort, and the 873Oxford Textus Rece ptus ).
Perhaps th e most remarkable feature of this edition is that it
is entirely th e result ofth e indefatigable labors of one person.
Swanson himself did all th e collations, arran gedthe texts in
parallel lines, created the apparatuses, a nd produ ced th e m
anuscript. T o himall scholars of the text owe an im men se d eb t
of gratitude . This valuable resource is a sig-nificant additio n
to ou r critical tools and will b e of considerable u se for many
years tocome.
Bart D Ehr m a nUniversity of North Carolina, Chape l Hill, NC
27599
