Solid Rock Greek New Testament: Scholar’s Edition
Overview
The Solid Rock Greek New Testament offers a critical text that gives a greater priority to Byzantine textual tradition. The editors, Joey McCollum and Stephen L. Brown argue that other contemporary editions of the Greek New Testament place too much weight on scribes deliberately making changes and perceived corrections to the text. They instead propose that an edition that gives more weight the principle of scribal inertia in making textual decisions would fill an much needed lacuna. As such, the base text for their analysis is the Robinson-Pierpont text, with divergences cataloged and explained in an appendix.
This edition is not, technically speaking, a new critical text. The sources used for the production of the text and apparatus are modern critical editions of the Greek New Testament instead of ancient manuscripts. The apparatus itself presents a collation of these editions relative to the printed text in the main body. The central goal is to provide a useful tool for students and pastors who desire an accessible, but comprehensive guide to those places where New Testament textual critics have offered competing opinions about the original text. As the editors express it in their introduction: “Exegesis begins with the text; therefore, a solid foundation for making decisions on variants in the text is indispensable.”
Key Features
- Presents a critical Byzantine-priority text of the Greek New Testament
- Collated digest of the textual decisions of other editions of the New Testament
- Expands common text-critical abbreviations for manuscripts and nomina sacra for reading ease
- Includes two appendixes that introduce the principles of Byzantine-priority and provide textual commentary on divergences from the Robinson-Pierpont text
Product Details
- Title: Solid Rock Greek New Testament Scholar’s Edition
- Editors: Joey McCollum and Stephen L. Brown
- Publisher: Solid Rock Publications
- Publication Date: 2018
- Pages: 818
- Topic: Textual Criticism
- Resource Type: Bible
About the Editors
Joey McCollum is a software developer in Roanoke, Virginia. His personal study in Koine Greek and background in mathematics and programming quickly guided him to New Testament textual criticism, where his cross-disciplinary interests could fruitfully interact. He has authored a number of unpublished studies on scribal habits and text-critical methodology, the most notable one outlining a machine learning-based method for the pre-genealogical classification of manuscripts and readings in the presence of cross-contamination. He has also served as a volunteer transcriber for the International Greek New Testament Project for a year, during which time he has completed over 100 full transcriptions of manuscripts in Galatians and Ephesians.
Stephen L. Brown is assistant pastor at First Baptist Church in North Conway, New Hampshire. During his teen years, he discovered a passion for and proficiency in linguistics and biblical languages including Koine Greek, biblical Hebrew, and Aramaic. Since then, he has produced a number of unpublished works on both New Testament and Old Testament textual criticism. His early text-critical work in the New Testament followed the reasoned eclectic methodology popular in modern scholarship, but his continued study raised questions about the assumptions of this approach, and these questions in turn led him to find a more viable alternative in Byzantine priority theory.
Sample Pages from the Print Edition
Reviews
0 ratings
Robert Lehmann
5/17/2018
Are you familiar with the works of Zane Hodhes, Art Farstad, Wilbur Pickering etc.who have advanced the majority text position recognizing the Byzantine mss should not be ignored with a bias for the oldest mss. Back in the 60's I proposed using computers to analyze mss variants to provide factural data showing the combination of agreements to avoid the subjective problems of the eclective methodology. You may find their works helpful.