THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO JOHN IN THE BYZANTINE TRADITION
INTRODUCTION TO THE PRINTED EDITION
The present scientific edition of the Byzantine text of the
Gospel according to John is the result of a request from a
group of Orthodox Church representatives to the United
Bible Societies in 1999. Aware of work being done on the
Gospel according to John in various places, representatives
from the United Bible Societies settled on the Centre for the
Editing of Texts in Religion (now the Institute for Textual
Scholarship and Electronic Editing) at the University of
Birmingham as the best place to test the possibilities for
an edition of some part of the New Testament based on
individual Byzantine witnesses. It is hoped that the present
edition will prove useful to scholars, churchmen, translators,
and others interested in the history of the Byzantine texttype
of the New Testament.
The editor of this work sought to present a representative
sample of witnesses to the broad historical richness of
the Byzantine textual tradition across a long span of time,
from the fourth to the fourteenth century. Some seventy
witnesses were eventually selected for inclusion in the edition,
and the texts of two widely circulated editions were
included for comparison.
In order to give due weight to the realia of the textual
tradition and to focus on a key period in the formation of
the text, it was decided to use a specific manuscript as the
base text rather than risk the methodological pitfalls of creating
an eclectic text that never existed in the manuscript
tradition or relying upon an existing eclectic text. The best
example of the latter would have been the Patriarchal
Edition of 1904 as reproduced by the Apostoliki Diakonia, and serious consideration was given to this option.
However, the purpose of the present edition is to illustrate
the breadth of the Byzantine textual traditon from individual
witnesses. It therefore seemed more appropriate to
use a manuscript witness of the period. The base text of
the present edition, that printed at the head of the page,
is Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, Coislin Gr.199, Gregory-
Aland 35.
Manuscript 35 contains the entire New Testament, dates
to the eleventh century, has a very regular orthography, and
differs only slightly from familiar printed editions of the
Byzantine text. A sermon attributed to Chrysostom was
copied into the previously blank folios 309r-310r a century
or two later. The manuscript seems to have been still in
Greek hands at a relatively late date. Indeed, the rear flyleaf
of the manuscript bears a dedication with a Byzantine
world-era date (ζρλε) corresponding to A.D. 1626/27. Between
1643 and 1653 the manuscript was acquired (either
in Cyprus, Constantinople, or the territories bordering the
northern and western Aegean) for the collection of Pierre
Séguier (1588-1672), the great-grandfather of Henri-Charles
de Coislin, Bishop of Metz.
The other witnesses were chosen to give a representative sample of the Byzantine textual tradition.
Majuscule
manuscripts of the Byzantine tradition were chosen largely
on the basis of how complete they are in the Gospel according
to John.
Manuscript 038 (Θ) represents a text
on the boundary of what might reasonably be considered a
manuscript of the Byzantine tradition in John.
In order to illustrate the most fertile period in the development
of the Byzantine text, almost all of the minuscule
manuscripts were selected from among manuscripts written
before the twelfth century. Our base manuscript comes toward
the end of this period and is an early representative
of the controlled textual tradition that resulted in the recensional strand of the Koine text (Kr), of which Gregory-Aland 18 from 1364 is a later example.
Commentary manuscripts are an important part of the
textual tradition and were chosen to represent all but one of
the commentary types discerned in John by Joseph Reuss.
His type D manuscript has been omitted because the single
example he lists (Cod. Gr. Vallic. E 40 / Gregory-
Aland 397) does not appear to be Byzantine. Commentary
manuscripts are distinguished in the apparatus by having
a K prefixed to their Gregory-Aland number.
The lectionaries for the edition were chosen on the basis
of a list furnished by Professor Johannes Karavidopoulos
and represent a number of early manuscripts preserved at
Mount Athos and elsewhere.
They are distinguished in
the witness list and in the apparatus by having an L prefixed to their Gregory-Aland lectionary number. Passages
sometimes appear more than once in a given lectionary, especially
when the menologion is taken into account. Where
variants occur between the first and subsequent appearances
of a passage, either because the introductory words
have been adapted or for other reasons, the variant readings have been numbered according to the order in which they occur in the lectionary.
Also selected were five patristic witnesses whose quotations
from John seem to attest to the Byzantine tradition.
These five writers are in fact the earliest reasonably consistent
witnesses to the Byzantine textual strand in John.
The abbreviations of
their names in the apparatus follow the form of those found
in Nestle-Aland, 27th edition (hereafter NA27).
Where a
father quotes a passage more than once, or where the individual
witnesses to a father's text differ, and variants arise,
the variants have been given a letter, so e.g. Chrysa and
Chrysb would distinguish two different states of the text attested
by or for Chrysostom at a particular point. Patristic
writers often adapt the grammar of their quotations to fit
the context, and sometimes merely allude to part of a passage. Adaptations of texts will generally appear as singular
readings in the apparatus and will thus be readily apparent
to readers. On occasion variants that appear as singular
readings in the present work will have connections with
manuscripts not included here (for example the agreement
between Cyril of Jerusalem and Codex Sinaiticus at John
19.13), so it has been thought best to leave such readings in
the apparatus rather than to suppress them. Allusions are
of uncertain usefulness in reconstructing the text of a patristic
witness, so for the most part their existence is simply
noted in the apparatus of deficient witnesses.
The texts of the Patriarchal Edition (ΑΔ) and of NA27,
both mentioned above, were also cited for the sake of comparison.
As with all the witnesses, the user of the electronic
edition will be able to see the full text of these editions at
any time.
A number of early versions that might have connections
to Greek witnesses of the Byzantine strand were considered for inclusion, but it was thought better to focus the present
edition on the Greek text. This has two advantages: first,
it allows for a broader representation of the Greek textual
evidence, and second, it allows scholars working with the
various versions to make their own decisions about which
versional variants might be derived from a base text and
which might be due to translation techniques.
Scholars
may thus be able to gain a clearer picture of the origin of
the several early versions.
1. Η Καινη Διαθηκη (ed. B. Antoniades; Constantinople: Ek tou Patriarchikou
Typographeiou, 1904). Cited in this edition as reprinted Athens:
Apostoliki Diakonia, 1993.
2. For the current cataloguing information, see Bibliothèque Nationale,
épartement des manuscrits, Catalogue des manuscrits grecs, II, Le fonds
Coislin (ed. Robert Devreesse; Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1945), ii-x
& 176-77. For the original entry in the Coislin catalogue, see Bernard de
Montfaucon, Bibliotheca Coisliniana (Paris: Ludovicus Guerin & Carolus
Robustel, 1715), second page of the preface & p.250. Père Athanase the
Rhetor, who collected manuscripts for Séguier, bought manuscripts in
Cyprus, Constantinople, Mount Athos, and in the territories bordering the
northern and western Aegean as far to the southwest as Thessaly; see Henri Omont, Missions archéologiques francaises en Orient au XVIIe et XVIIIe
siècles (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1902), 1-26. The manuscript is not
among those Coislin manuscripts definitely known to have come from the
monasteries on Mount Athos; see Omont, 853-63. See further Jean Duplacy,
"Manuscrits grecs du Nouveau Testament émigrés de la Grande Laure de
l'Athos," in Studia Codicologica (ed. Kurt Treu; TU 124; Berlin: Akademie-
Verlag, 1977), 172-73. On the other hand, the manuscript does not appear
in the list of known Cypriot manuscripts now at Paris; see Jean Darrouzès,
"Les manuscrits originaires de Chypre à la Bibliothèque Nationale de Paris,"
Revue des études byzantines 8 (1950), 162-96, reprinted in Jean Darrouzès,
Littérature et histoire des textes byzantins (London: Variorum, 1972), 169-
70.
3. Non-Byzantine textual traditions of the Gospels known to have been in
circulation within the area influenced by the Byzantine empire at its height
and afterward include the texts of Family 1 and Family 13.
4. In addition to appearing in the electronic version of the present work,
full transcriptions of these and other majuscule witnesses will also be found
in The New Testament in Greek, IV, The Gospel according to St. John,
Edited by the American and British Committees of the International Greek
New Testament Project, Volume Two, The Majuscules (ed U.B. Schmid
with the assistance of W.J. Elliott and D.C. Parker; Leiden: Brill, 2007).
5. The Kr strand was first identified in Die Schriften des Neuen Testaments
in ihrer ältesten erreichbaren Textgestalt hergestellt auf Grund
ihrer Textgeschichte; T.1, Untersuchungen; Abt.2, Die Textformen; A. Die
Evangelien (ed. Hermann von Soden; 2nd edn; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck
und Ruprecht, 1911), 758-65.
6. Joseph Reuss, Matthäus-, Markus-, und Johannes-Katenen nach den
handschriftlichen Quellen untersucht (Neutestamentliche Abhandlungen
18,4-5; Münster: Aschendorf, 1941), 148-220.
7. As a check of the electronic transcriptions of lectionary evidence, the
present editor used the unpublished work of Johannes Karavidopoulos, St.
John's Gospel according to the manuscript ψ of Agia Lavra (Athos) with
Lectiones Variae of 32 manuscripts (9th to 11th centuries) (Thessaloniki,
1998).
8. It is possible that the slightly earlier writer Asterius "the Sophist" of
Cappadocia knew a text of the Byzantine type; see Gordon D. Fee, "The Text
of John and Mark in the Writings of Chrysostom," New Testament Studies
26 (1979-80), 547. Idem, "Use of Greek Patristic Citations in New Testament
Textual Criticism" in Studies in the Theory and Method of New Testament
Textual Criticism (ed. Eldon Jay Epp and Gordon D. Fee; Studies and
Documents 45; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1993), 358. Yet the corpus of
writings attributed to Asterius has recently come under question so that only
a few fragments can be attributed to him with certainty; see Markus Vinzent,
Asterius von Kappadokien, Die theologischen Fragmente (Supplements to
Vigiliae Christianae 20; Leiden: Brill, 1993). Study of those fragments that
are undoubtedly authentic by the present editor leads to the conclusion
that, while Asterius stands closer to the Byzantine strand and to Family 1
and 565 than to any other textual groups, the paucity of evidence precludes
absolute certainty on the matter.
9. Novum Testamentum Graece (ed. Barbara Aland et al.; 27th edn,
corrected; Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 2001).
10. The following collections of patristic citations have been used:
Basil of Caesarea - Harold Hunter Oliver, "The Text of the Four Gospels
as Quoted in the Moralia of Basil the Great" (Ph.D. dissertation: Emory
University, 1961).
Chrysostom - Stephen Dale Patton, "A Reconstruction and Evaluation of
the Johannine Text of John Chrysostom" (Ph.D. dissertation: Southwestern
Baptist Theological Seminary, 2003). Patton's work was based on the
Montfaucon edition of Chrysostom's works. Chrysostom's quotations in his
Homilies on the Gospel of John were also collected independently by Roderic
L. Mullen from manuscript Sinai Gr. 369-370. Patton's and Mullen's collections
were then compared to produce the electronic file.
Cyril of Jerusalem - Roderic L. Mullen, The New Testament Text of Cyril
of Jerusalem (SBLNTGF 7; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1997).
Gregory of Nazianzus - Sarah Julia Guthrie, "The Text of the Gospels in the
works of Gregory of Nazianzus" (Ph.D. thesis: University of Leeds, 2005).
Gregory of Nyssa - James A. Brooks, The New Testament Text of Gregory
of Nyssa (SBLNTGF 2; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1991).
11. Three versions in particular may have a close relation to the
Byzantine text-type. Possible links between the text of the Old
Slavonic version and the text of the majuscule manuscripts and the
lectionaries have been investigated by Professor Anatolii Alekseev and
others; see Anatolii A. Alekseev, Tekstologiia slavianskoi Biblii (St.
Petersburg: Dmitrii Bulanin; Köln: Böhlau, 1999), 98-130. The result
has been to refocus attention on the continuous-text manuscripts of
the New Testament. For a summary, see also Marcello Garzaniti, Die
altslavische Version der Evangelien (Köln: Böhlau, 2001), 278-80.
The Old Georgian recension associated with George the Athonite
appears also to be close to the Byzantine text in John; see J. N.
Birdsall, "The Pericope Adulterae in Georgian," in Papers Presented
to the 14th International Conference on Patristic Studies, Oxford, 18-
23 August 2003 (Studia Patristica; Leuven: Peeters, forthcoming).
Similarly the Harclean Syriac version has a close connection with
the Byzantine text-type; see Bruce M. Metzger, The Early Versions of
the New Testament (Oxford: Clarendon, 1977), 73-74. Sebastian P.
Brock, "The Resolution of the Philoxenian/Harclean Problem" in New
Testament Textual Criticism, Its Significance for Exegesis, Essays in
Honour of Bruce M. Metzger (ed. Eldon J. Epp and Gordon D. Fee;
Oxford: Clarendon, 1981), 325-43. Andreas Juckel, "Die Bedeutung
des Ms Vat. syr. 268 für die Evangelien-Überlieferung der Harklensis," Oriens Christianus 83 (1999): 28-31.