In a recent conversation with Bruce Morill on the indexing of a Romans manuscript (GA 1506), he pointed out that I had indexed a particular page as Rom 14:23-15:8, though the correct indexing is Rom 14:23; 16:25-27; Rom15:1-8. Of course he was right, but it made me think about how just this way of numbering verses is.
It is a well known textual issue that most manuscripts have the verses that are numbered 16:25-27 in our modern editions at the end of Romans 14. And just by numbering them as part of chapter 16 we are making a judgement call.
The solution is obvious. We need Romans 14:24-26. Not just so because it is easier to index all those manuscripts that have text at this place, but also because this reflects the Bibles that were used for hundreds of years. And if I wanted to sound a little more contemporary, I could say things such as that we need these verse numbers as a matter of respect to the actual artefacts we are working with. Or, Why impose our theories on these documents?
On checking this phenomenon in some editions, I found, not unsurprisingly, that there is at least one edition out that contains Romans 14:24-26, the Byzantine Textform edition by our own Maurice Robinson (congratulations, you beat me to it). And for a moment I thought we had something similar in von Soden as well. Look at this page, where we have a note on a verse 24:
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But alas, this is a wandering note that got lost here and perhaps should have been placed at Romans 8:26.
Still, we need Romans 14:24-26, regardless whether we believe that the words found also in 16:25-27 should be there. Time to end this colonial nonsense and give a home back to the dispossed.
It is a well known textual issue that most manuscripts have the verses that are numbered 16:25-27 in our modern editions at the end of Romans 14. And just by numbering them as part of chapter 16 we are making a judgement call.
The solution is obvious. We need Romans 14:24-26. Not just so because it is easier to index all those manuscripts that have text at this place, but also because this reflects the Bibles that were used for hundreds of years. And if I wanted to sound a little more contemporary, I could say things such as that we need these verse numbers as a matter of respect to the actual artefacts we are working with. Or, Why impose our theories on these documents?
On checking this phenomenon in some editions, I found, not unsurprisingly, that there is at least one edition out that contains Romans 14:24-26, the Byzantine Textform edition by our own Maurice Robinson (congratulations, you beat me to it). And for a moment I thought we had something similar in von Soden as well. Look at this page, where we have a note on a verse 24:
But alas, this is a wandering note that got lost here and perhaps should have been placed at Romans 8:26.
Still, we need Romans 14:24-26, regardless whether we believe that the words found also in 16:25-27 should be there. Time to end this colonial nonsense and give a home back to the dispossed.