Thinking about the Implications of the CBGM with Greg Lanier

Greg Lanier, a former compatriot at Cambridge, has two recent essays in the journal Reformed Faith & Practice (part 1 and part 2)  doing one of the things he does best: explaining what’s happening in NT scholarship to students and pastors. Here his focus is mostly on Greek grammar and lexicography, but he also touches on textual criticism in part two.

What I want to highlight here are Greg’s closing comments on the CBGM. (I’ve added the numbering and clipped these slightly.) I’m especially interested in helping to address Greg’s fourth point in future work because seminarians are going to need a lot of help using the CBGM. I hope we can give it to them. But he asks other questions about method and theology which seminary teachers will want to think about as they teach their students about the CBGM.

I’d like to hear what blog readers think of these. I given some of my own thoughts in brackets.

1. There are a lot of positives with the CBGM. The data set alone is a substantial improvement over what we had previously. The project has made great strides towards the previously unicorn-like dream of having thousands of manuscripts digitized, collated, and analyzable.... Moreover, the results for the Catholic Epistles indicate just how high-quality prior editions of the GNT (going back to Westcott and Hort and their contemporaries) have been. I would argue that our confidence in the text has, in the end, gone up with the ECM’s findings. [Generally agreed. I would just say that there is greater uncertainty overall in the results, judging by a comparison of brackets to diamonds in NA27 and NA28. But uncertainty can be better than unwarranted confidence.]

1. The ECM project began with the Catholic Epistles in part due to their relatively more stable textual tradition. [Not actually true from what I’ve read, but many seem to think so. See the essay mentioned here from Aland.] Additionally, one could argue that the implications of modifying the critical text (which had been unchanged for nearly forty years) in this section of the GNT poses the least risk of ruffling feathers. One wonders, however, just how substantial the revisions may be in the ECM for Acts, the Gospels, and Paul — which, for most in the evangelical world, tend to harbor more emotional/theological investment. We can only wait to find out. [True, the Catholics don’t get much attention. Klaus Wachtel said at SBL that there are about 40 changes in Acts so far. Just remember, textual changes may be the easiest way to measure progress in TC, but they are not the only way.]

1. Most contemporary English translations (outside the KJV-tradition) have used NA-26 or NA-27 as their base text. Presumably at some point the English translation committees will update their volumes, and when they do so, how will they approach the changes made to NA-28 (or NA-29 and beyond)? Will they embrace them? How will they signal the ◆ readings in the English text and footnotes, if at all? [This remains to be seen. Hopefully, they will find that their responsibility includes weighing the NA28’s decisions and rejecting them where appropriate. As for diamonds, we should note how few of them are even given space in the UBS5 apparatus. Clearly the UBS is showing they’re opinion that most are not relevant to translators.]

1. How will (or should) students learn to do textual criticism in the future? This issue is particularly challenging. As outlined above, for decades students have been taught a fairly straightforward method for weighing major manuscripts and internal evidence to determine whether they agree with the NA/UBS critical text. However, the CGBM producing the critical text that future Greek students will purchase is operating according to an entirely different method. This method is, as all readily admit, rather complex to understand, let alone teach. More importantly, one would need to have access to significant analytical tools — and abandon a manuscript-focused mentality (and text-types) in favor of the more abstract text-focused mentality — in order to reproduce the thought process behind a given judgment on a textual variant in the ECM/NA-28/UBS-5. Take the 2 Pet 3:10 example shown above. The old-school approach would look at the various options, weight א, B, papyri, minuscules, and Byzantine witnesses (most of which disagree) and come to some conclusion. However, this conclusion is quite unlikely to be that the lone attested witness for +οὐκ (sa in NA-27; the Syriac is not even mentioned) offers the best reading. Yet that is precisely what NA-28/UBS-5 print in the main text! The student is at a loss, then, for explaining why that reading is preferred when, on the traditional approach, it seems to be the least preferred! .... In short, we are facing a situation in which the method currently being taught to students (and taught to scholars/pastors in the past) will no longer correspond to the method underlying the new editions of the critical GNT they are/will be working with! It is encouraging that the total number of changes to the text itself, at least for the Catholic Epistles, was fairly small; however, the underlying method is, nevertheless, changing substantially. [I agree completely that the use of the CBGM will change how we as scholars and students interact with and critique the NA text. No longer can we engage that text on its own methodological terms with just the print edition. You now need a laptop. Pete Head and I discussed this a number of times during our supervisions. As for helping students, see my recent JETS article for a starting point and stay tuned for more.]

1. Related to the prior point, one wonders what use Metzger’s justly famous Textual Commentary will have in the future. It constitutes, in essence, the editorial committee’s notes from how they decided among variations in the 1970s and 1980s; its A-B-C ratings (in the UBS volumes only) have also been a helpful data point for years. However, as Elliott rightly notes, for those portions of the NA/UBS editions that incorporate the outcome of the CBGM/ECM project, “the tried and trusted vade mecum of old, Metzger’s Commentary … is only partially useful.” It may have helpful things to say about the internal evidence that might have impacted the ECM team’s decision for a given local stemma, but any appeal it makes to specific manuscripts is, now, almost entirely outdated. [For my part, I don’t see this as a bad thing. Metzger is great but he too easily becomes a crutch and an excuse to avoid TC rather than engage in it. But it would be nice to have a commentary on the new changes.]

1. Finally, how will the shift in goal, from “original” text to “initial” text impact the way Reformed/evangelical folks who hold to biblical inspiration approach the critical GNT? Majority-text/KJV-only debates aside, most inerrantists who make use of the NA/UBS volumes have functionally equated the eclectic text found therein with, for all intents and purposes, the inspired autographs. Yes, we know that the critical edition is not itself inerrant or infallible — thus necessitating the need to make one’s own text-critical judgments — but we have embraced it as the next-best-thing we have (much like our approach to the Masoretic Text). The philosophical shift underlying the ECM project, however, is meaningful. The goal is no longer positioned as “getting back to what Mark wrote” but, rather, “getting back as early as possible, given the extant data, to what the early church received as coming from Mark.” Much effort needs to be devoted to thinking through the epistemological and doctrine-of-Scripture implications of such a change with respect to the GNT text coming out of the project. [I have some thoughts on this but will save them for another time. I would only add that this is a concern that has emerged among some American Lutherans. See the recent debate on TC between Jeff Kloha and John Warwick Montgomery.]

Read the rest here.