The fruit of more than three decades of research

This collection of fourteen essays by Eberhard W. Güting covers important aspects of editorial science with a particular focus on New Testament textual criticism. Essays cover textual emendation, text-critical procedures, literary criticism, history of scholarship, advantages and disadvantages of online manuscripts, and text-critical studies of words and phrases. The addition of a substantial introduction to text criticism makes this a valuable resource for students and teachers.

Features

• Essays concerned with establishing the original text of New Testament writings
• Nine essays published in English for the first tim
• Two previously unpublished essays

The essays in this volume summarize an international research project on early Christian citations from Israel’s scriptures. These quotations are not only theologically significant but are also part of the textual history of the Septuagint and adjacent textual traditions of the Greek and Hebrew Old Testament. The essays discuss relevant manuscripts (Bible codices, papyri, etc.) up to the fifth century, signs and marginal notes (e.g., the diplé) that were used in the ancient scriptoria, and the specifics of the reception history in early Christianity from Matthew to 1 Peter and from the apostolic fathers to Theophilos of Antioch. The contributors are Felix Albrecht, Ronald H. van der Bergh, Heinz-Josef Fabry, Kerstin Heider, Martin Karrer, Christin Klein, Arie van der Kooij, Siegfried Kreuzer, Horacio E. Lona, Martin Meiser, Maarten J. J. Menken, Matthias Millard, Darius Müller, Ferdinand R. Prostmeier, Alexander Stokowski, Martin Vahrenhorst, Christiane Veldboer, and Johannes de Vries.

A fresh look at the development of Paul’s argument in Romans

The Greek word gar occurs 144 times in Romans and 1,041 times in the entire New Testament. However, many instances of this connective defy easy definition, and the English translation for is often inadequate, obscuring the clue that gar gives to the direction of the communicator’s thought. In this ground-breaking work, Sarah H. Casson argues that gar offers vital guidance to the coherence of Romans. The book applies the cognitive approach of relevance theory to show how garfunctions as an indispensable guide for tracing the significant points of Paul’s argument, helping resolve questions about the coherence of sections, as well as smaller-scale exegetical problems. The work engages with key debates regarding the purpose of Romans and challenges some recent influential interpretations.

Features:

• An exegetically useful understanding of the connective gar
• A new method for determining Paul’s audience and reason for writing
• A challenge to recent key debates and influential interpretations of the purpose of Romans

Engage an interdisciplinary approach

In Toward a Latino/a Biblical Interpretation Francisco Lozada Jr. explores the complex and diverse issues related to Latino/a biblical interpretation. After laying the theoretical foundation, he offers three sample readings of biblical texts to lead readers through the intricacy of interpretation that has historically and culturally surrounded understanding what it means to do Latino/a biblical interpretation. Throughout, Lozada attempts to work out various strategies that Latinos/as have employed to read biblical texts. He argues that Latino/a biblical interpretation is concerned with identity and belongingness with a goal of transforming/liberating the Latino/a community.

Features

• An introduction to what it means to do Latino/a biblical interpretation
• A demonstration of three different reading strategies (correlation, dialogical, and ideological) that Latinos/as employ in reading biblical texts
• An exploration of whether one has to be Latino/a to do Latino/a biblical interpretation

With characteristic boldness and careful reassessment of the evidence, MacDonald offers an alternative reconstruction of Q and an alternative solution to the Synoptic Problem: the Q+/Papias Hypothesis. To do so, he reconstructs and interprets two lost books about Jesus: the earliest Gospel, which was used as a source by the authors of Mark, Matthew, and Luke; and the earliest commentary on the Gospels, by Papias of Hierapolis, who apparently knew Mark, Matthew, and the lost Gospel, which he considered to be an alternative Greek translation of a Semitic Matthew. MacDonald also explores how these two texts, well known into the fourth century, shipwrecked with the canonization of the New Testament and the embarrassment at outmoded eschatologies in both the lost Gospel and Papias’s Exposition.