The course that a generation will follow in its textual studies depends on the acceptance or rejection of the Keisertext. For the clarification of the technical aspects of the second and main part of this study, the investigator. The whole of Matthew is covered and one of the two chapters of John that exists in the fragments.
PART II
PART III
FROM BENGEL TO GRIESBACH
Perhaps the most important of Griesbach's various suggestions in his Prolegomena60 for dealing with the. Such an attitude ripened the need for Hort's approach to the problem of admixture. They have lifted the whole thing from the realm of empiricism to the level of historical science.4.
THE·METHOD AND PRINCIPLES OF HORT
The inconstancy of groups is the most serious obstacle in the analysis of a textual situation. The theory of conflation is that the longer one is a combination of two shorter variants. This seems to indicate that there are two. the shorter ones are not partial omissions of the longer one or "double simplification".
THE FAMILIES OF HORT
Hort did not originate the idea of mixed readings; 48 its distinction lies in the use made of it to prove the lateness and eclectic nature of the Byzantine Text. Judging that the Syriac vdt witnesses can apparently be safely neglected in most cases55 and accordingly restricting himself to the earlier evidence, Hort set out three Pre-Syrian texts. East as well as West, this critic surmised that it “took its rise in north-west Syria or Asia Minor56 and then spread generally, led by D and other Greco-Latin manuscripts, the Old Latin and the Latin fathers. Hort saw a stylistic revision which, due to the local relations of its customary representatives, he called 69 Alexandryns.
THE FERRAR-GROUP
44 Lake owns it had some points of affinity but was not a primary member of the group. Gregory50 said that Codex 543 appears to belong to the Farrar Group, from the summary of the. 34; a theory that was part of the general effort, of which he (Harri~ and the late Dr.
In search of their relationships, Lake studied the variations of the group (what they have in common) 135 from the standard text. It is much more difficult to say anything about the character of the text in the other Gospels, since the phenomena are by no means so clearly marked. The same description would be true of the text used in Alexandria in the days of Clement.
It is equally significant, in light of the current stage of textual studies, that Lake promoted the idea of local. This group shows a mixture of the same 'family text' with the Syriac or Antiochian text. It will be seen that the noteworthy readings in the first half of the Gospel are much more than in the second.
In the first four chapters I have listed about 60 instances where 604 agrees, against the received text, with the approximate consensus of a group of authorities who. 226 Speaking of the close alliance of the early versions with the peculiarities of the Western text, Sanders added,. Robertson praised Goodspeed's temperament and expressed the need for a full, new study of the manuscript.
But it will repay careful study precisely because of the complex nature of the text it contains.
From Farrar to Streeter, it has been argued that the ever-growing Caesarean group has affinities with the Syrian tradition. 258 Dobschutz allied the text of 8 with the Old Syriac, 259 and Sanders argued that W was associated with the same. It proved to be older than the Peshitta and more perfect than the Curetonian, but represented, with considerable variations, the same old version in an earlier form.
262 The text strengthened the neutral against the Syriac, but it differed from the neutral "in almost the same way (though not in the same passages) as the Latin group which Westcott and Hort called 1western and which also had affinities with Ferrar." Group 264 Immediately, those in favor of the Western text argued that this fifth-century manuscript represented a second-century Greek text and therefore much older than ,~B, along with other Old Syriac versions. the main representatives of the neutral This assertion of the superiority of the Syriac text is one of the main points of research in this thesis.
Ferrar and his assistant stated that their group frequently agreed with this version, 271 and Lake observed the ratio of the larger group to the same version. 273 Burkitt remarked on the affinity of 9W 565 in Mark with this version, 274 and Dobschutz emphasized the same for a. Streeter worked on the lines of Hort; his effort was not a change of routes, but a further operation of the same route.
3 In addition to this obvious relationship to Hort, Streeter's additions became "the capstone" of the structure 4.
Fresb. examination of already known material has, however, made the stratification of the Western Text clearer. Notwithstanding the monumental nature of the contribution of Streeter on local texts, there were defining antecedents in the views of other workers. Hug's original treatment of the local texts with their attendant differences appears to be the first to label Streeter.
Parallel to the investigation of local texts (and in a sense the fruit thereof) there arose a persistent demand for a new evaluation of the Neutral Text of Hort, mainly B. He further found that the agreement between the dia =--- tessaron and the Latin versions due to the common use of the same local text (ibid., p. 289fn). Robertson, whose work on textual criticism was in press with Streeter's, pointed independently of Streeter to the stratification of the Western text.
Because of the local nature of the divergence and the local coherence of the spread of copies, this is. The clue to the situation lies in the careful use of the early manuscripts and critical editions of the Fathers. Georgian applies through all the fou~ospels, the old Georgian version will become an authority of the greatest importance for the text of the Gospels.
Indeed a notable feature of the fam.e is the number of similarities with B again~the.
STORY Q! DISCOVERY
From the first eminent scholars have judged these papyri to be the oldest and most valuable of the primary evidence yet to come from the sandy archives of the Land of the Nile. They contain significant portions of the Greek Bible and date back to the second century of the Christian era. It is therefore no wonder that this discovery is considered the most important since Tischendorf's discovery of the Codex Sinaiticus a century ago.
Because of this situation, no definite report on the locality of the Beatty Papyrus has yet come in, nor have the Egyptian authorities found where the discovery was made. In 1933, Kenyon could do no more than locate them in the Fayum, whose dry sand vaults have yielded so much in recent decades. From their character, however, it is clear that they must have been discovered among the ruins of some early Christian church or monastery; and there is reason to believe that they come from the neighborhood of Fajum. 3.
The originals can be seen in the British Museum, the University of Michigan, the Princeton University Museum, the National Library in Vienna, Italy, and in private hands. It is estimated that a papyrus scroll or codex will not last more than a century at most if used, and the decay of storage in a tomb has made papyri more fragile. When this group of papyri reached the British Museum, some appeared as a simple piece of papyrus.5 Before Sir Frederic began his studies at.
Again, "Fayum or (with somewhat more definiteness) as near Aphroditopolis, on the opposite side of the Nileu {~., !a! Bible~ Archaeology, p. 225).
Kenyon dates the first in the first half of the third century and the second in the same or probably in the second half of the century. Two codices preserve parts of Genesis, one from the fourth and the other from the third century. The twelfth codex of the group consists of parts of Enoch and Melito of the fifth.
In the intervening fifteen years, it became the best-known codex of the group. Because of his great interest in the Gospels, Kenyon published this codex before the rest of the group, 8 and later accompanied it with photographic facsimiles. In the spring of 1930, the National Library in Vienna, Austria secured. through Professor Hermann Junkers, then director.
The margin size allows the number of letters in each line to be counted. Gerstinger paleographically compared the script with several other papyri and decided that the Vienna fragment can be dated to the middle of the third century at the latest. 10 Hans Gerstinger, "Fragment of Chester Beatty's Gospel Codex in the Papyrus Collection of the National Library in Vienna," Aegxptus, Vol.
The leading aim in such a presentation was to see the whole conformation of the textual situation. 45 is the official numbering of the Chester Beatty Gospels and Acts, the main subject of this thesis. The remains of Matthew are too meagre to determine the character of the text.
COLLATION !!Q CRITICAL APPARATUS
