This volume reviews the criteria, assumptions, and methods involved in critical Jesus research. Its purpose is to clarify the procedures necessary to distinguish tradition that stems from Jesus from tradition and interpretation that stem from later tradents and evangelists. This publication has also been published in paperback, please click here for details.

Although consistently overlooked or dismissed, John 8.6, 8 in the Pericope Adulterae is the only place in canonical or non-canonical Jesus tradition that portrays Jesus as writing. After establishing that John 8.6, 8 is indeed a claim that Jesus could write, this book offers a new interpretation and transmission history of the Pericope Adulterae. Not only did the pericope's interpolator place the story in John's Gospel in order to highlight the claim that Jesus could write, but he did so at John 7.53-8.11 as a result of carefully reading the Johannine narrative. The final...

This book provides transcriptions and images of some of the oldest parchment manuscripts of the Gospel of John in Greek. It contains also a complete critical apparatus of all the parchment manuscripts of John, including such important manuscripts as Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus. The transcriptions and plates are restricted to fragmentary and difficult-to-read copies. These havereceived the same detailed treatment as was used by the International Greek New Testament Project to make an edition of the papyri of John (Brill: 1995). The International Greek New Testament Project is a...

With the discovery of the "Oxyrhynchus Papyri" just over a century ago a number of important texts directly relating to ancient Christianity have come to light. While certain literary texts have received considerable attention in scholarship by comparison the documentary evidence relating to Christianity has received far less attention and remains rather obscure. To help redress this imbalance, and to lend some context to the Christian literary materials, this book examines the extant Christian epistolary remains from "Oxyrhynchus" between the third and seventh centuries CE. Drawing upon this...

The Text of the New Testament in Contemporary Research: Essays on the Status Quaestionis provides a thoroughly up-to-date assessment of every major aspect of New Testament textual criticism. The twenty-four essays in the volume, all written by internationally acknowledged experts in the field, cover every major aspect of the discipline, discussing the advances that have been made since the mid twentieth century. With full and informative bibliographies, these contributions will be essential reading for anyone interested in moving beyond the standard handbooks in order to see where the...

In Critical History of the Text of the New Testament, 17th century Oratorian Richard Simon (1638-1712), 'father' of modern biblical criticism, surveys the genuineness, accuracy, authority, and reliability of all then known sources of the New Testament. He makes rigorous, objective, and expert use of a staggering quantity of material relating to the text--Greek and Latin manuscripts, early versions, quotations from the Old Testament in the New, from the Church Fathers and other commentators of all periods. Though in his day Simon was contradicted, opposed, persecuted, and silenced, it...

This is an important time for textual criticism of the New Testament. A fundamental re-evaluation is underway of both the purpose of the discipline and the nature of the manuscripts upon which it relies. The place of the controversial method of conjectural emendation is a debate that encompasses both of these issues. In this study, Ryan Wettlaufer explores the theory and practice of the method and then, using the Epistle of James as a case study, argues that conjectural emendation is an important tool that can be used to restore readings which were once found in the original text but now are...

As a first order witness of the Greek New Testament, Family 13 has a long history in the field of textual criticism. Nearly seventy years after Kirsopp and Silva Lake's publication, La Famille 13 dans l'evangile de Marc offers an enlarged, wholly up-to-date and thoroughly revised study of the text of the Gospel of Mark for the witnesses considered as family members by Didier Lafleur. His extensive survey includes the history of the discovery of the manuscripts, their codicological description and new research on the text. The most part of the book is devoted to the edition of minuscule...

The aim of this new Gospel Synopsis is to enhance the study of the Synoptic Gospels and provide insights into the synoptic problem through a clear presentation of the Greek text. Jenny Read-Heimerdinger and Josep Rius-Camps set out the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke in turn, comparing each line by line with the other two. A further innovative feature is that the text is presented according to two important Gospel manuscripts, Codex Bezae and Codex Vaticanus, rather than the usual eclectic edition of the Greek New Testament. Thus, not only are the differences between the Gospels...

The methodology of New Testament textual criticism, the critical evaluation of readings, and the history and texts of early Christianity is the focus of the influential work of J. K. Elliott. Texts and Traditions offers eighteen essays in his honour. The essays, by colleagues and students from his long career, reflect Elliott's wide interest and impact. From questions of the purpose and practice of textual criticism, to detailed assessment of New Testament literature and the readings of its manuscripts, to provocative studies of the reception of Jesus and the New Testament in the...