Book review: Reuben J. Swanson, ed. New Testament Greek Manuscripts: Variant Readings Arranged in Horizontal Lines against Codex Vaticanus. 4 vols. Foreward by Bruce Metzger.

Abstract

"Each text is quoted in extenso, but identical readings are collected on one line. In the right margin of each line of text are the sigla of the witnesses supporting that form of text. The reading of Vaticanus is always on the first line, and either the Majority Text reading or the reading of the TR generally appears last, if different. As one can see from the example above, the material in one stanza of lines does not represent one unit of textual variation, but often several units combined together. This makes it easier to do continuous reading (or continuous searching) of the text of a single manuscript, but the arrangement in long lines makes it harder to separate out the units of variation for individual analysis. Three group sigla are used to save space and mental energy.  W  f1 = 1 118 1582  f13 = 13 69 124 788 1346 The abbreviation "rell" refers to all mss not otherwise cited. Grouped mss are generally cited individually when they defect from their group, but I was not able to discover what rule was used to determine the group reading when the group is split. Readings of the first hand and the corrector are both cited, and brackets found in the UBS4, WH, or TR editions are reflected in their citations. Accents, breathings, and punctuation appear in all texts, but these details seem not to be derived from the mss but uniformly from the editor."(pg 2)