P.J. Williams of the Evangelical Textual Criticism blog has a post called D, F, and G in the Pastorals.

Thanks to John Kendall for the pointer!

The Wulfila project has transcribed and mechanically analyzed virtually all of the Gothic Bible fragments. This includes known fragments of the Pastoral Epistles.

• Fragments of First Timothy
• Fragments of Second Timothy
• Fragments of Titus

The Gothic is, from the accounts I've read, a literal word-by-word interpretation of a Greek vorlage. The primary codex from which we know Gothic, Codex Argentus (beautiful purple vellum with gold and silver ink) dates back to the fifth or sixth century, as I understand it.

Browsing around this evening, I happened upon the Early Manuscripts at Oxford University site. Poking around a bit further in the Magdalen College collection, I examined Magdalen College MS. Gr. 9 which is described as:

Greek New Testament, Psalms and Canticles, with illuminated headpieces and initials, Constantinople, 3rd quarter of the 12th century, with additions up to the end of the 14th century including a note relating to Epiros.

Note the following:

• First Timothy begins on folio 215 recto
• Second Timothy begins on folio 218 recto
• Titus begins on folio 220 verso

The order of the books is different than we're used to today; MS. Gr. 9 has Gospels, then Acts, then Catholic (General) Epistles, then Paulines (which include the PE), and then the Apocalypse.

The MS uses, of course, a minuscule hand that I can only read if I happen to know the Greek in question. But it looks pretty cool. Check it out.

Anyone know if this particular MS has any interesting readings (in the Pastorals or otherwise?)

I've created an 8-page PDF file (approx 500kb) that has the contents of the Pastoral Epistles from a transcription of Codex Alexandrinus. You'll need to rotate the document in order to read it in your browser.

The entire transcription of Alexandrinus' New Testament, in PDF, is available from bibles.org.uk

I've created an 8-page PDF file (approx 600kb) that has the contents of the Pastoral Epistles from a photographic facsimile of Codex Sinaiticus. The facsimile is based on photograph taken by Kirsopp Lake in the summer of 1908 in St. Petersburg.

The entire facsimile edition of Sinaiticus, in PDF, is available from bibles.org.uk

My friend and colleague Eli, over at Big Slow Eel, has some comments about my previous post on Miller's book. In light of his comments, I should clear a few things up and set the scene for a response.

First, Miller is not positing a single author compiling sources; he's proposing that there was a Pauline community of some sort. The below is a bit out of context (apologies for that); Miller is working through one of Hanson's reservations about the Pastorals being fragmentary in nature:

... each of our three Pastorals originated as an authentic note written by the apostle to Timothy and Titus. These three notes were read by the recipients, who then handed them over to the scribes responsible for preserving the communitity's sacred writings. Over the course of transmission, the notes were expanded by the addition of other sacred community traditions; the expansion was not intended to make the letters "look" Pauline; rather it was motivated by the community's desire to preserve the traditions and to be instructed by them. (Miller, 146)

Miller suggests this may be analogous to the community he sees as responsible for the Hebrew Bible book of Jeremiah:

... the book of Jeremiah, for example, in its present form, cannot be attributed to any one man; it is clearly made up of a variety of traditional materials. But there is little doubt that the book originated as a collection of genuine prophetic oracles from the great Jeremiah himself. Other materials were added later during the process of transmission. Similar literary histories are shared by most of the prophetic books. (Miller, 146)

Ok. Now we can start to hit some of the questions and suggestions that Eli throws out. First, Eli makes some suggestions (responding to my earlier post) as to what some of the Apostolic Fathers may have been alluding to in their writings:

They could have been alluding to the unedited form, that is, the letters that they were alluding to no longer exist in the form they were discussing. The fathers could be referring to one version, copy, or redaction as it existed at a single point in time. Redaction of the text we have received could have happened at any time during or after the exchange of letters between the fathers. Or they might have been merely alluding to one of the snippets that eventually made its way into the collective documents that we now know as the PE.

Yes, this is all true and it should be considered. But if this is the case, and if there were early and most likely much shorter editions of the Pastorals floating about, why don't we see hugely variant editions of the Pastorals (or other canonical NT books, for that matter) There is one MS that has a few massive additions to the Pastorals (MS 460, a 13th century MS; e.g. Titus 1.9). Why don't we see more textual evidence like this, and why don't we see stripped-down versions of the Pastorals? Apart from 460, variants in the Pastorals are fairly typical from what I can tell.

To be fair to Eli, he's arguing with me for the sake of arguing (we do this frequently, it's a good thing). He sees the Pastorals as cohesive. And no, Eli, I don't have the Deissmann citation handy, though I recall the quote and tend to agree. One more reason for folks to state their preference and start the line for Deissmann's Light from the Ancient East via the Logos Bible Software Community Pricing Program.

(Sorry, couldn't resist the plug.)

Ellicott's commentary hails from the late 19th century, but don't let that scare you away. The commentary is on the Greek directly. I'm not sure of the Greek edition, though. I'd thought it was Tischendorf's editio octava maior, but I can't confirm that at present. Perhaps it is Textus Receptus.

Either way, Ellicott's work is worth examining, primarily because he really is commenting critically on the language. He also brings in readings from Latin, Syriac and Gothic and examines them along with the Greek where he deems appropriate. He references readings from various uncial texts frequently. There are several references to classical Greek works as well.

His Revised Translation is his attempt to update the KJV. Most helpful in this translation is his apparatus of alternate English readings, with several English versions represented.