The Friends of CSNTM March 2012 E-Newsletter is now available. You can read it here: LINK.

An evening of scholarly dialogue on the origins, the transmission, and the reliability of the New Testament. Do we have the original manuscripts? Can we trust the copies passed down to us? How accurate is our New Testament today? These questions and more were discussed by two top-tier NT scholars. Both Dr. Ehrman and Dr. Wallace presented their respective positions before opening the floor for a time of Q&A.

HT: Jim Barr (BibleWorks) for pointing me to this video.

HT: Brian LePort and Joel Watts for pointing me to Ehrman vs. Wallace: Round Three on the Parchment and Pen blog. In the excerpt below, Dan Wallace shares a new discovery, which could very well be a first-century manuscript of Mark’s Gospel. Looking forward to learning more when this find is published by E. J. Brill next year. Since it’ll be published by Brill, I’m guessing it will be a bit out of my price range, but perhaps I will have finally reached the pinnacle of biblioblogging success, which will part the seas and open enough doors to finally entitle to one of those highly coveted E. J. Brill review copies.

We have as many as eighteen second-century manuscripts (six of which were recently discovered and not yet catalogued) and a first-century manuscript of Mark’s Gospel! Altogether, more than 43% of the 8000 or so verses in the NT are found in these papyri. Bart had explicitly said that our earliest copy of Mark was from c. 200 CE, but this is now incorrect. It’s from the firstcentury. I mentioned these new manuscript finds and told the audience that a book will be published by E. J. Brill in about a year that gives all the data. (In the Q & A, Bart questioned the validity of the first-century Mark fragment. I noted that a world-class paleographer, a man who had no religious affiliation and thus was not biased toward an early date, was my source. Bart said that even so, we don’t have thousands of manuscripts from the first century! That kind of skepticism is incomprehensible to me.)

Dr. Wallace and Dr. Ehrman are both lively characters and are a lot of fun to watch in debate. If manuscripts and textual criticism are you thing, you should consider picking up a copy of Can We Trust the Text of the New Testament: A Debate Between Daniel B. Wallace & Bart D. Ehrman from CSNTM.

Many thanks to the kind folks at Kregel Publications for sending along a review copy of Revisiting the Corruption of the New Testament: Manuscript, Patristic, and Apocryphal Evidence, which is the inaugural volume of The Text and Canon of the New Testament series, edited by Daniel B. Wallace. The book is comprised of six chapters, they are:

• Chapter 1 – Lost in Transmission: How Badly Did the Scribes Corrupt the New Testament Text? – Daniel B. Wallace
• Chapter 2 – The Least Orthodox Reading is to be Preferred: A New Canon for New Testament Textual Criticism? – Philip M. Miller
• Chapter 3 – The Legacy of a Letter: Sabellianism or Scribal Blunder in John 1.1c? – Matthew P. Morgan
• Chapter 4 – Patristic Theology and Recension in Matthew 24.36: An Evaluation of Ehrman’s Text-Critical Methodology – Adam G. Messer
• Chapter 5 – Tracking Thomas: A Text-Critical Look at the Transmission of the Gospel of Thomas – Tim Ricchuiti
• Chapter 6 – Jesus as THEOS: A Textual Examination – Brian J. Wright

Here’s a brief description of this new volume from Kregel’s web site:

This first volume focuses on issues in textual criticism—in particular, to what degree did the scribes, who copied their exemplars by hand, corrupt the autographs‌ All but one of the chapters deals specifically with New Testament textual criticism. The other addresses textual issues related to an early apocryphal work, the Gospel of Thomas.

The book begins with the full transcription of Wallace’s presentation at the Fourth Annual Greer-Heard Forum, in which he and Bart Ehrman debated over the reliability of the New Testament manuscripts. Adam Messer looks at the patristic evidence of “nor the Son” in Matthew 24:36 in a quest to determine whether the excision of these words was influenced by orthodox Fathers. Philip Miller wrestles with whether the “least orthodox reading” should be a valid principle for determining the autographic text. Matthew Morgan focuses attention on the only two Greek manuscripts that have a potentially Sabellian reading in John 1:1c. Timothy Ricchuiti tackles the textual history of the Gospel of Thomas, examining the Coptic text and the three Greek fragments, using internal evidence in order to determine the earliest stratum of Thomas. Brian Wright thoroughly examines the textual reliability of the passages in which Jesus appears to be called God, concluding that “the textual proof of the designation THEOS as applied to Jesus in the NT merely confirms what other grounds have already established.”

Revisiting the Corruption of the New Testament will be a valuable resource for those working in textual criticism, early Christianity, New Testament apocrypha, and patristics.

About the Editor:
Daniel B. Wallace (PhD, Dallas Theological Seminary) is professor of New Testament studies at Dallas Theological Seminary, director of the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts, and senior New Testament editor of the NET Bible. He has written Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics: An Exegetical Syntax of the New Testament (Zondervan, 1997).

I was excited to read the following in the Friends of CSNTM July E-Newsletter:

Today the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts (CSNTM) announces that it is now available on iTunes U, a dedicated area of the iTunes Store (www.itunes.com) that offers free audio and video content from leading educational institutions.

The Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts (CSNTM) has always been committed to helping others understand the reliability of our New Testaments, the history of translations, the study of the text, and significant figures who have made this possible.

Beginning today, CSNTM is making a series of videos concerning New Testament manuscripts, textual criticism, history of the New Testament, and expert commentary on key verses available as a free download on iTunes U.

Featured in the videos are interviews and footage shot around the world of important people involved in the work of the Center. Dr. Daniel B. Wallace will also be featured as he explains important aspects in the study of the text of the New Testament.

Visit CSNTM on iTunes U »»»

HT:   Tim Challies for pointing out an article from BBC News titled David Livingstone’s ‘lost letter’ deciphered.  David Livingstone wrote a four page letter around the margins of his journal in February 1871 from  Bambarre (modern day Democratic Republic of congo).  Fading and challenges caused by the iron gall ink bleeding through to the successive pages have left this letter illegible for many years.  Through the use of imaging technology, David Livingstone’s letter speaks once again.  A research team from Birkbeck College, University of London, working with colleagues at the National Library of Scotland and the David Livingstone Centre in Blantyre used successive waves of light to separate the text layers and a 39 megapixel camera to scan the images.  The recipient of the letter was David Livingstone’s friend and future biographer, Horace Waller.

What caught my eye most in this article was the use of advanced imaging technology to make this letter legible once again.  It’s exciting to see ancient documents brought back to life and preserved electronically for generations to come.  This is also why I closely follow the ongoing work of the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts, who travels the world digitizing manuscripts of the Greek New Testament.  You can learn more about the exciting work being done by CSNTM at their web site, www.csntm.org.  The article, David Livingstone’s ‘lost letter’ deciphered may be read in its entirety at the BBC News web site:  LINK.

During their recent visit to the Byzantine and Christian Museum of Athens this past May, they CSNTM team was able to photograph a previously uncatalogued gospel manuscript.  You can read the full story here:  LINK.  The Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts (CSNTM), under the umbrella of The Center for the Research of Early Christian Documents (CRECD), exists for the following purposes:

1. To make digital photographs of extant Greek New Testament manuscripts so that such images can be preserved, duplicated without deterioration, and accessed by scholars doing textual research.
2. To utilize developing technologies (OCR, MSI, etc.) to read these manuscripts and create exhaustive collations.
3. To analyze individual scribal habits in order to better predict scribal tendencies in any given textual problem.
4. To publish on various facets of New Testament textual criticism
5. To develop electronic tools for the examination and analysis of New Testament manuscripts.
6. To cooperate with other institutes in the great and noble task of determining the wording of the autographa of the New Testament.

You can learn more about the exciting and important work of CSNTM at www.csntm.org.

Head on over to Zondervan Academic’s Koinonia blog and read a brief article be Daniel B. Wallace called, “Digitally Preserving the Word of God”.  You can read it here:  LINK.

Daniel B. Wallace’s trip to Albania with the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts earlier this year may raise questions about whether or not the story of the adulterous woman in John 7:53-8:11was part of early New Testament manuscripts.

• Article on ChristianityToday.com
• Article from the Dallas Observer
• Article on CSNTM website

Take a few minutes to check out this post by Dan Wallace over at the Parchment & Pen blog about Codex Sinaiticus.