Does the presence or absence of the definite article in Greek affect the meaning of a verse? While a noun or participle being definite or indefinite can be significant for interpretation, Eldon Epp is probably correct that in most cases, the absence or presence of an article does not affect meaning. A significant exception is … Read more
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
*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
According to the Westminster Confession of Faith (1.8), Scripture has been “kept pure in all ages” by the special care and providence of God. The same idea is echoed in the Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (1.8). For some, this assertion means that textual criticism, as usually practiced by those in the field, is … Read more