OUP (2016) h/b 366pp £25 (ISBN 9780198744733)
The title describes this book as a guide, and as such it is timely. The manuscript deposit is rich, though of course imperfect, and digitisation is making it accessible for easy comparison at an increasing rate. H., who is Reader in New Testament Studies at Birmingham University and clearly well qualified to take us through this jungle, comments in the preface that this is fuelling interest in biblical textual criticism and manuscript study, and that much of the published scholarship is now well out of date.
The book is in three parts. Part I, ‘History’, summarises the development of the Latin New Testament in five chapters: the earliest sources up to the end of the third century, the fourth century and the beginning of the Vulgate, the fifth to seventh centuries, the eighth and ninth centuries, and the tenth century onwards. The key manuscripts and the changes they introduced are discussed in their historical contexts. All books of the New Testament are considered, as well as references in patristic and other commentaries which often throw light on sources which are missing.
Part II, ‘Texts’, has three chapters: ‘Editions and resources’ gives a detailed account of each of the main editions and other material available to scholars; the next chapter discusses Latin translations from Greek and its problems, and what the Latin texts may tell us about Greek versions; finally, each section of the New Testament (the four gospels, Acts, Pauline epistles, the so-called Catholic epistles and Revelation) are described and discussed separately in terms of their manuscript texts.
Part III, ‘Manuscripts’, has two chapters: chapter 9 describes in detail the physical features of manuscripts and their variation, and chapter 10 is a 72-page catalogue raisonnée giving bibliographical descriptions of all the manuscript sources covered earlier in the book. An appendix gives a full concordance of the reference signs (sigla), all of which vary between different editions; other appendices list other manuscripts not covered in the main chapters. There is a 46-page bibliography of authorities and several indices.
While Parts II and III will appeal to biblical scholars, and may well become a vital reference for them, there is much to intrigue the general reader, especially in Part I. Various perceptions emerge. It now seems to be widely agreed that early Latin versions probably trace back to a single original, rather than arising as a multiplicity of translations from Greek which then gradually came together. The Old Latin (Vetus Latina), the language of manuscripts before the Vulgate, was not, as some have believed, special wording invented by and for Christians, but rather derived straight from the language spoken on the street at the time, and was understood by any reader whether Christian or not. Old Latin did not suddenly come to an end with Jerome’s fourth-century revision leading to the so-called Vulgate, the version later adopted by the Church: Jerome only revised the gospels, and Old Latin continued to appear in later centuries, even alongside Vulgate versions.
There now seems to be a revival of interest in Old Latin versions, and the book refers to new editions in production. Throughout Parts I and II, several examples are given of differences between manuscript versions, from which one gets a sense a) that many of them are minor (slightly different ways of saying the same thing), some are clearly corrections of obvious mis-copyings, some are readings which do not occur in other sources at all, and some are just peculiar. Why for example, one wonders, did Jerome, in Matthew’s version of the Lord’s Prayer, choose a very odd-looking word (panem) supersubstantialem for (άρτον) έπιουσιον (‘necessary for life’) when other versions had the later standard ‘daily bread’ (cotidianum)?
The book is attractively produced, with photographs of some of the most interesting manuscripts. It is a bargain at £25 and looks likely to be a standard resource for some time.
Colin McDonald