The Place for Textual Criticism in a Systematic Theology

The most common place to find textual criticism discussed in Evangelical systematic theologies is under the heading of inerrancy. This coincides closely with Evangelical statements of faith that often specify that the Bible’s inerrancy applies to the original autographs and not to later copies. It also coincides with the fact that inerrancy and textual criticism … Read more

The Gates of Hades in Matthew 16:18

Scholars have debated whether “gates of Hades” (πύλαι ᾅδου) in Matt.16:18 refers to the ungodly powers of the underworld (Davies and Allison 2004, 2.630-633) or death itself (Luz 2001, 363). This paper contends that significant progress can be achieved by exploring Septuagintal sources mediated through Second Temple literature. The argument begins by exploring πύλαι ᾅδου … Read more

Hebrews and Sirach, The Complexity of Intertextuality

Using Richard Hays’ criteria for intertextuality, this paper examines the likelihood of a reference to Sirach in Hebrews. While the criteria are not resoundingly in favor of an intertextual allusion, they do likely suggest a relationship, albeit a highly complex one. In order to understand this relationship, this paper considers the overlap of themes and … Read more

The Gospels We Have, Missionary Ideology and Gospel Canonization

This paper considers Francis Watson’s claim that no internal criteria can be identified which drove the canonization of the four canonical gospels as opposed to other “apocryphal” gospels. After reviewing Watson’s reconstruction for gospel canonization, I suggest that the four canonical gospels have something in common which no canonical “competitor” possesses, namely a missionary ideology. … Read more

Advantages of Scientific Textual Criticism

It has frequently been stated that New Testament textual criticism is both an art and a science, but over the centuries it seems that the field has been primarily dominated by the “art” part, resulting in a large amount of subjectivity that has little to do with science. One group of scholars examines the evidence … Read more

Counting The Number of Variants in the New Testament

Modern estimates of the number of variants in the New Testament have ranged from 400,000 to 750,000, but nobody has actually counted them to know. Considering that there are only about 140,000 words in the New Testament, those estimates often invoke skepticism for that would mean that on average there are about three to five … Read more

Romans 8:28 Revisited: Textual Criticism

This paper revisits the textual variant of Romans 8:28. The issue concerns the addition or omission of ὁ θεός. To determine the original reading, I evaluate both external and internal evidence using Systemic Functional Linguistics. To identify the variant unit, I apply the rank scale of SFL (Porter and Pitts 2015): (1) πάντα συνεργεῖ εἰς … Read more

Notions of ‘Canon’ and the Early New Testament Canon Formation: Extrinsic and Intrinsic Aspects

*This proposal is a co-authored submission by Sungmin Park and Tomas Bokedal , each submitting individually as per the submission guidelines. The present paper discusses extrinsic and intrinsic textual dimensions involved in the emergence of the canonical sub-units that formed the New Testament, and the respective relationships between these dimensions. After an introductory section on … Read more