Introduction to Volume Two, 2020
My first acknowledgment and expression of thanks is to biblical and classical scholars, going back to Erasmus in the mid-sixteenth century, all the way up to those at work presently. Their scholarship has provided the basis, the reservoir of materials, and the inspiration for my own. Perhaps nothing makes this point clearer than the array of footnotes throughout the reprinted articles and chapters that follow. Indeed, what could I have contributed without standing on the shoulders of this multitude of learned predecessors? I am most grateful to each one for the opportunity to build upon their accomplishments. Each footnote is a meaningful “thank you!”
My introduction to textual criticism, and my pursuit of it, are described with some detail in the “Introduction” to volume one of Perspectives …: “A Half-Century Adventure with New Testament Textual Criticism,” I wish now to expand on the environment in which my researches developed.
My major advisor from the beginning of my graduate study at Harvard was Krister Stendahl, who – with a measure of cynicism and exaggeration – was accustomed to characterize modern biblical scholarship as the transference of footnotes from other books and articles to our own. I did not resonate well with this description, though I thought it might be clever, when writing in a Festschrift for Krister’s sixty-fifth birthday, to prepare a “tribute” written entirely without a single footnote (and using as resources only a couple standard reference works, one of his articles, and my own reflective thoughts). It is among my shortest articles and it did not make a great splash: “Jewish-Gentile Continuity in Paul: Torah and/or Faith? (Romans 9:1–5),” Christians among Jews and Gentiles (ed. G. W. E. Nickelsburg, G. W. MacRae SJ; Fortress Press, 1986) 80–90.
Otherwise, however, my agreement with Professor Stendahl was virtually complete. For example, his well-known maxim for exegesis influenced his students and many beyond: Tell what the text meant, and then tell what the text means – and the latter “means” this: What does the text mean for me? for you? for us? today? Some now may dismiss this as an out-dated modern-historical or historicism view in contrast to a preferable post-modern view, but, for example, as a fifty-plus year Board member of the HERMEMEIA commentary series, we insisted all along on an historical-critical approach, regardless of what interpretations an author may draw from an ancient writing. I say this at some risk, for I realize that the historical-critical method currently is being reevaluated – and not often with positive sentiments. But this long-standing approach has its reasonable aspects and provides a baseline, a foundation, upon which various interpretations might properly be structured. Consequently, my investigations are accompanied by a profusion of footnotes – an average of sixty-five in those reprinted here, with individual articles containing up to 158 references to earlier scholarship.
Professor Stendahl, of course, influenced my scholarship in many other ways, for after retirement from Harvard he became Bishop in the Church of Sweden – for he was above all a churchman who throughout his career was an early, much-alone advocate for the ordination of women. Three of those Swedish women pastors attended his funeral in Harvard’s Memorial Church in 2008. Krister’s success in that respect had been significant, and undoubtedly was a factor in my composition and publication of Junia – The First Woman Apostle (2005).
Other members of my doctoral committee helped shape my scholarship. Helmut Koester joined the Harvard faculty a year before I began my dissertation, and, being one of the last two of Rudolf Bultmann’s students, not only demanded “perfection” in scholarship, especially in Greek, but he also admired a measure of risk-taking in writing papers and dissertations, as long as substantive evidence could be garnered. My dissertation (published as The Theological Tendency of Codex Bezae Cantabrigiensis in Acts) [which really was on the so-called “Western” text or D-Text of Acts] appeared to have met his specifications, and he pressed for its publication (SNTSMS; Cambridge University Press, 1966). When asked to speak at Helmut’s funeral in 2016, I opened my remarks by asserting that doubtless – but with the exception of his wife, Gisela – I had known and worked with Helmut longer than anyone else attending. I was one of his first students at Harvard (1957–1961), and in 1962 I joined him and Professor Frank Cross on the Editorial Board of what was to become (in 1966) the well-known HERMENEIA biblical commentary. It has been an unusual privilege to have worked closely all of one’s career with Helmut, a world-class expert whose knowledge was deep, wide, and insightful – and who was a remarkable humanitarian and creative human being.
And then there was Arthur Darby Nock, whose British characteristics never left him, a classical scholar of Greek and Roman religions, who made it abundantly clear that every doctoral student or scholar is totally responsible for every statement made orally or in writing – everything must be backed up with firm evidence. He operated on that principle in his classes and in my doctoral exams and dissertation. He stressed a relevant maxim: “A fact is a holy thing, and its life should never be laid down on the alter of a generalization” I was pleased, of course, when, as Editor of HTR, he published my very first article, “The ‘Ignorance Motif’ in Acts and Anti-Judaic Tendencies in Codex Bezae,” 1962. It was often said that when Nock cited an ancient Greek or Latin author, giving the chapter and verse, he hadn’t looked up the reference – he knew it by heart. He was open to students (but only by appointment at twelve noon!) and would welcome us to his office with “Please, sit down,” but there was nowhere to sit, there were books on every chair and everywhere. He and most doctoral students smoked in those days, as he did, but not in his office – he would say with alarm, “My books, my books!”
Finally, Amos Niven Wilder, brother of playwright Thornton Wilder, was himself a Yale Younger Poet who became a well-published poet and literary critic. He and his brother left college in view of World War II, where Amos was an ambulance driver. His later literary skills and sentiments characterized his teaching and all his writings, and he expected students not only to write with clarity, but also – hopefully – with some elegance. His care, generosity, and availability to students made it a pleasure to meet his demands. In the articles that follow, I cannot claim elegance, but I hope to have written with clarity.
My seventy years of studying religion – principally ancient manuscripts and texts of the earliest Christian writings and the Roman world into which they moved, began in 1948 when, as a college freshman, I purchased my first scholarly book; a textbook for a course in Koine Greek. It was a Nestle-Aland Greek New Testament, and cost me $1.35 – a reprint of the 1938 16th edition. As my field of specialization narrowed down to manuscript studies and New Testament textual criticism, relevant books became an obsession of sorts. The long-term result was a personal library of some 4,500 volumes, with innumerable scarce and rare books, and files containing some 6,000 copies of articles on text-critical subjects. In 2019 this entire collection went to Baylor University Libraries, as a Special Collection, which, it has been said, was likely unmatched anywhere as a personal library on its subject. Movers picked up 224 boxes, weighing about 10,000 pounds, as our house rose a foot out of the ground. Baylor University also has, as a Special Collection, the books and papers of Kathleen Kenyon, the British archaeologist of Jericho.
Present in my collection are facsimile editions, or those in ordinary Greek font, including all New Testament papyri, majuscule codices
Some noted older volumes include a 1602 English Bible – nine years earlier than the KJV; Cartwright’s 1618 Confutation of the Rhemists, published in Holland by William Brewster two years before he boarded the Mayflower for the Plimoth colony here in Massachusetts Bay; Apocalypsis Sancti Johannes by Joseph Scaliger (1627); Bengel’s Apparatus criticus ad Novum Testamentum (2nd ed. by Burk,1763); Bibliotheca sacra by Le Long, Boerner, and Marsch (1778–1790); Qvatuor evangelia graece by A. Birch (1788), and his Variae lectiones ad textum … (1798–1801); Bibliotheca Novi Testamenti graeci by E. Reuss (1872), and dozens more.
Noteworthy is one of Kirsopp and Silva Lake’s two personal copies of their Dated Greek Minuscule Manuscripts to the Year 1200 (1945; 10 large portfolios with 757 photographic facsimiles from 401 manuscripts – essential tools for dating literary manuscripts). I purchased the copy from Silva Lake herself and discovered that it had extensive marginal notes by the authors.
Beyond this, of course, were about two thousand modern monographs relative to manuscript studies, including monograph series, such as 41 volumes of Münster ANTF; 12 of Biblotheca Bodmeriana; 18 of CSCO; 7 of Horae Semiticae; 15 of NovTSup; 19 of NTTS; 30 of SNTSMS; 11 of Studia Sinaitica; 20 of TU; multi-volumes of other series, and 245 volumes on Hellenistic and Roman religions, with primary sources; 329 Loeb volumes; 315 Festschriften and collected essays; 72 of the Oxyrhynchus Papyri, plus 250 other papyrology volumes, ad infinitum. How long books will be read in the traditional fashion is unknown, but these will be available to specialists for some decades to come. This was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, for my dream always was to keep my collection together.
Beyond thanks to scholars, past and present, to my distinguished Ph.D. professors, and to books, especially those difficult to find, I wish to acknowledge the generosity and collegiality of the Executive Editors of Supplements to Novum Testamentum, Margaret M. Mitchell and David P. Moessner, and their Editorial Board for including my work in their influential monograph series, not once, but also for this second volume. I owe much to the Brill personnel who carried through the first volume of my Perspectives (2005), but now I wish to offer profound thanks to Loes Schouten, with whom I first consulted about the second volume, who – in spite of enormous responsibilities at Brill – is available always to offer her assistance and insight, with detailed knowledge and competence. It is Tessa Schild, however, who had to deal with the nitty-gritty of the actual publication process, and her experience and expertise and her everlasting patience and attention to detail have turned a tedious task into a joyous, rewarding event for me. My gratitude is beyond words. Finally, I owe much to Kim Fiona Plas, my Production Editor, who, with care and efficiency, brought the volume to its finished form.
I am grateful above all to my family for their tolerance and patience while living for many years with a “nose to the grindstone” husband and father (and father in law and grandfather). Their understanding and long-suffering certainly are ameliorated by their own doctoral studies: my wife, ElDoris B. Epp, Ph.D. (see dedication page), daughter Jennifer Merrell, M.D., her husband, Nathaniel J. Merrell, M.D., son Gregory Epp, Ph.D., and his wife, Kristin Stapleton, Ph.D. The two grandsons, Nathaniel G. Merrell and Andrew J. Merrell are recently in post-college and college stages, respectively. My best wishes for satisfaction and joy follow them as all of us move into a changing world.