THE HISTORY OF EDITIONS

Why we have critical editions

The main problem confronting the editor of the New Testament is demonstrably as old as the oldest surviving New Testament documents. The problem is, quite simply, to find the best way of displaying known differences. In the Introduction the difficulties of defining variant readings were discussed. These problems are important to the makers of editions and influence the user's understanding. But they are older than that. Whenever readers and copyists of the texts became aware of a difference in wording, they were faced with similar problems of interpretation. This is evident from one of the oldest manuscripts, the first described in 1.1.2.1. Consider the page of P66 illustrated there. ☛ (23) We find that the scribe provided corrections from a second manuscript, and did so by writing on whatever blank papyrus was available, either between the lines or in a margin. These corrections are better described as alternatives to the first reading, because his method of working allows the reader to see how the alterations stand in relation to the text as first written. There is no question of erasing text on this material. Instead, a system of symbols for transposing ☛ (24) (the single and double oblique strokes), deleting ☛ (25) (in two ways, the hooks around a series of letters and the dots over them) and inserting ☛ (26) material, along with additions on blank papyrus ☛ (27) are used to create a web of variant readings which are both distinguished from the first form of text and woven into it.