Introduction
Joey McCollum and Stephen L. Brown
About This Edition
The Solid Rock Greek New Testament: Scholar's Edition (SRS) was produced for the purpose of highlighting interactions between the various text-critical methodologies that underlie prominent Greek New Testament editions. In compiling this edition, we have expanded on the apparatus of the SBL Greek New Testament (SBL GNT) by collating several additional works at more than one thousand additional points of variation. This expansion was motivated by two goals: First, to add to the SBL GNT's coverage of Byzantine and majority texts, with the purpose of highlighting previously-overlooked points of heterogeneity in the bulk of later manuscripts; and second, to extend the SBL GNT's treatment of prominent critical texts like Nestle-Aland that have seen major changes in content and methodology in their most recent editions.
Strictly speaking, SRS is not a critical edition of the Greek New Testament. Since the sources we have collated are other editions rather than historical manuscripts, translations, and citations of the Greek text, SRS is better described as a digest of critical texts. As such, it is intended to be a study help to students, pastors, and other teachers of the Word who desire a simple, but comprehensive guide to the places where text-critical scholarship offers differing opinions. Exegesis begins with the text; therefore, a solid foundation for making decisions on variants in the text is indispensable.
The Text
The SRS edition has been produced on Byzantine-priority grounds, using an electronic version of the Robinson-Pierpont (RP) text as a base. A commentary on all of the textual differences between this edition and RP can be found in the second essay of the appendix.
Paratextual matters, such as verse and paragraph divisions, capitalization, and punctuation generally follow the conventions of RP, though some changes have been made. Abbreviations for numbers and nomina sacra, common in Greek manuscripts, have been expanded for ease of reading. The typeface used in this edition prints iota adscripts, rather than subscripts, with capital letters, so, for example, ῼ should be read as the capitalized equivalent of ῳ. For the sake of convenience, we have placed the New Testament books in the order most familiar to English-speaking Christians.
The Apparatus
Our collation covers the following editions of the Greek New Testament:
In addition, we have cited the readings of the following text-critical works limited to portions of scripture:
We have collated all differences between this edition and those listed above down to the level of orthography. As noted already, we derived many of these differences from the SBL GNT apparatus. Throughout the apparatus, however, we have divided, consolidated, and redrawn the boundaries of variation units, both to account for more extensive changes from other editions and to ensure that, semantically and genealogically, dependent variants were grouped together and independent ones were treated separately to the extent that this was possible. In other places, where the SBL GNT apparatus normalized the orthography of readings, we have corrected some of its readings in order to cite the text of other editions accurately up to orthography. Since paratextual differences such as word breaks and accents were not original to the text, we consider them to fall under the scope of exegesis rather than textual criticism, and for this reason, we have normalized these features in our collation.
For the sake of transparency, we will detail our collation process here. We have used the following sources to produce a complete collation spreadsheet of all of the above editions:
• We began with an electronic version of the RP text. We then added all SRS-RP differences resulting from our textual decisions to the spreadsheet.
• Using the RP-f 35 collation compiled by the CSPMT as a reference, we added all differences between RP and f 35 to the spreadsheet.
• Using the RP-TR collation compiled by Maurice Robinson as a reference, we added all differences between RP and TR to the spreadsheet. We then checked the resulting TR readings against the CNTR's more recent transcription of the TR, and where the two disagreed, we consulted the CSNTM's images of the source.
• We added all RP-TNT2 differences collated in the SBL GNT apparatus to the spreadsheet, and then we updated and extended these using the TNT2 corrected digital transcription from Tyndale House.
• We added all RP-WH differences collated in the SBL GNT apparatus to the spreadsheet, and then we corrected and extended these against the CNTR's more recent WH transcription, making corrections and additions where necessary. Where there were disagreements, we consulted images of the source.
• We added all RP-NA27 differences from the RP 2005 apparatus to the spreadsheet.
• Using David Holly's extensive collation of NA25 and NA26 (= NA27), we added all applicable NA²⁷-NA²⁵ differences to the spreadsheet.
• We manually collated NA28 against NA27, including orthographic differences outside of the catholic epistles, and added all differences to the spreadsheet.
• Checking the variation units in the SBL GNT where the NIV and NA sigla occurred distinctly, we added all NA27-NIV73 differences to the spreadsheet.
• We manually collated NIV11 against NA28 using the NIV11 apparatus and added all differences to the spreadsheet.
• We added all RP-SBL differences collated in the SBL GNT apparatus to the spreadsheet, and then we corrected and extended these using a computer-based difference check between digital transcriptions of both texts.
• We manually collated Ead, Carl, Sol, and Wass against SRS and added all differences to the spreadsheet.
A chart depicting all collations used can be found in Figure 1.
Our collation consists of over 12300 variation units. We have further broken down these units into the following classes:
• Orthographic variants are defined in this work as semantically insignificant spelling changes, such as movable nu and sigma, final vowel elisions, crasis, itacism and other vowel exchanges (when they do not effect semantically significant changes), σσ-ττ exchanges, doubled consonants and augments, alternate spellings of proper names, and abbreviations for numbers. Variation units that solely concern this type of variation make up roughly 38% of the total. For the sake of space, we have not included these variants in the print apparatus, except in units of another variation type described in this list. A spreadsheet containing all collation data, including orthographic variants, can be found at the official GitHub repository for this edition (https://github.com/jjmccollum/solid-rock-gnt).
• Variants involving different conjugations or declensions of the same lemma make up roughly 14% of the total.
• Variants involving transposition of word order make up roughly 10% of the total.
• Variants involving the addition, omission, or substitution of a conjunction, a disjunction, or the particle μὲν make up roughly 10% of the total.
• Variants involving the addition or omission of the article make up roughly 7% of the total.
• Variants involving the addition, omission, or substitution (beyond change in declension) of pronouns make up roughly 7% of the total.
• Variants involving the addition, omission, or substitution of prepositions or prepositional prefixes make up roughly 6% of the total.
• Variants involving the clarification or obfuscation of a referent in a sentence or clause make up roughly 1% of the total.
• Variants involving the expansion or contraction of nomina sacra make up roughly 1% of the total.
• Variants involving the addition, omission, or substitution of verbs of communication (often in a narrative setting) make up roughly 1% of the total.
• The remaining variants, which may involve semantically- or genealogically-significant changes, make up roughly 16% of the total.
Since multiple types of variation may co-occur in the same variation unit, the total of these percentages will exceed 100%.
Taking the whole New Testament into consideration, our edition exhibits the following trends of agreement and disagreement (measured as the number of variation units where two editions both possess readings, and their readings disagree) over nonorthographic variants:
Notation
In addition to the sigla associated with the editions cited above, the apparatus of this edition uses the notation for textual variation found in the latest editions of Nestle-Aland, except that distinctions between single-word and multiple-word variants have been dropped in favor of simplicity. The following symbols occur in the text and apparatus:
In the apparatus, each verse containing variation units is listed before the details of the variation units. If multiple variation units of the same type occur in a verse, then the subsequent markers are distinguished with numbers. The first reading listed is always the SRS reading; therefore, the SRS siglum is omitted except where no other cited edition shares its reading. If all cited NA or NIV editions agree at a variant, then they are simply combined under the NA or NIV siglum, respectively; otherwise, they will be represented by distinguishable sigla like NA25 and NA27+28.
Throughout the essays in the appendix, the following abbreviations for common terms are used: NT for New Testament, MS for manuscript, MSS for manuscripts, and LXX for the Septuagint.
Acknowledgments
We owe special thanks to Maurice A. Robinson, whose extensive text-critical efforts with William G. Pierpont and commitment to making God's word freely accessible have provided the basic text of this edition, and whose comments on collation details and divided Byzantine readings were indispensible in the preparation of this text. We also wish to recognize Michael W. Holmes, whose exemplary work on the SBL GNT and encouraging responses to our ideas gave us the confidence to undertake the project that culminated in this edition; we hope that our extension to his collation work will be an honor to him and his efforts. We extend our gratitude to Paul D. Anderson of the CSPMT for his helpful feedback during the early stages of this edition's development.
To God be the glory!
January 2018