Novum Testamentum Graecum Editio Critica Major: A Non-Specialist's Perspective

Abstract

"Let me differentiate my own perspective from that of other members of this panel. I am not an expert on the NT text; I know relatively little about how one goes about creating a critical edition like the one we are examining today. However, I am an exegete who writes commentaries and thus is very interested in the quality of the product. 2. What issues interest me as an exegete? Naturally, I want the resulting text to be accurate, but I have not seen the manuscripts, so the text's accuracy would be difficult for me to judge other than through reviews by those who are experts in this field. There is a certain amount of trust that the exegete must have in the textual specialist. At the same time, this edition gives one as honest a picture of the manuscripts as one could get without having an ungainly book of photo-reproductions. That is, we are informed when certain manuscripts have lacunae or are unreadable or might be construed to support either of two readings. This means that I feel that I am interpreting as accurate a set of data as is possible without studying the manuscripts myself. 3. This observation leads to what is most important to me in a critical text, namely, (1) completeness of the evidence, particularly in terms of the variant readings, and (2) clarity of the presentation. There is no reason to have information I either cannot read or I might easily misunderstand. Yet clarity without completeness might leave me missing significant options. 4. In reviewing this work I went to my own commentary on the Greek text of James (Davids 1982) and picked out the 30 times that I chose to comment on textual issues. These are hardly unbiased or necessarily representative. I note, for instance, that the issue in Jas 2:3 that interests Prof. Aland is not included. Yet these did give me a relatively even coverage of the epistle and allowed me to use the new edition to check a discussion that had already been initiated."(pg 1)