INTRODUCTION

The Four Gospels, the Tetraevangelium, is the book of Christianity – not four books, but one codex. Such manuscripts comprise more than a half of all continuous-text Greek copies of New Testament writings. In every ancient language of Christianity, copies of the Gospels predominate among what survives. And in case this preoccupation is seen as an ancient phenomenon, be it noted that the Gospels in these ancient languages are traditionally far better served with editions and results of research than is any other part of the New Testament. Moreover, more editions of Gospel manuscripts have been published, in facsimile or in some other form. Finally, it should be observed that many statements made about the New Testament text in general are really statements about the Gospels which have been extrapolated to the rest. I am thinking particularly about the entire concept of text-types and textual groupings. The result is that, while the number of research questions on which nothing has been said is small, the selection of views on many matters which have been discussed is a challenge to the author of a book such as this.

I have already written an introduction to the text of the Gospels, and see no value for anyone in my repeating myself. What follows will therefore contain some cross-referencing to matters which I have discussed in detail there.

INTRODUCTION

It is customary to divide the witnesses to the New Testament text into three types: Greek manuscripts, the versions and patristic citations. This is a reasonable classification from the point of view of the study of variant readings, and especially for the editor of a text. But it is worth pointing out at the beginning of this survey that there is an important way in which there is only one type of witness to the text – copyings of some or all of it in a manuscript. One might categorise these manuscript copyings in various ways: as manuscripts in Greek and manuscripts in other languages; as manuscripts of the whole text and manuscripts of a part of it in a different context; or using both, so that they were placed in one of four categories: as manuscripts of all the text in Greek, of all the text in another language, of some of the text in Greek or of some of the text in another language.

PATRISTIC CITATIONS

Editions of patristic writings

All the works of every early Christian writer were of course transmitted in manuscript form, and it is important that these works also should be properly edited from the manuscript sources. Not so many such editions exist as we would like, and too often we are dependent upon old editions made from a handful of manuscripts, and these not necessarily ones which a critical editor would wish to use.

THE HISTORY OF EDITIONS

Why we have critical editions

The main problem confronting the editor of the New Testament is demonstrably as old as the oldest surviving New Testament documents. The problem is, quite simply, to find the best way of displaying known differences. In the Introduction the difficulties of defining variant readings were discussed. These problems are important to the makers of editions and influence the user's understanding. But they are older than that. Whenever readers and copyists of the texts became aware of a difference in wording, they were faced with similar problems of interpretation. This is evident from one of the oldest manuscripts, the first described in 1.1.2.1. Consider the page of P66 illustrated there. ☛ (23) We find that the scribe provided corrections from a second manuscript, and did so by writing on whatever blank papyrus was available, either between the lines or in a margin. These corrections are better described as alternatives to the first reading, because his method of working allows the reader to see how the alterations stand in relation to the text as first written. There is no question of erasing text on this material. Instead, a system of symbols for transposing ☛ (24) (the single and double oblique strokes), deleting ☛ (25) (in two ways, the hooks around a series of letters and the dots over them) and inserting ☛ (26) material, along with additions on blank papyrus ☛ (27) are used to create a web of variant readings which are both distinguished from the first form of text and woven into it.