A New Approach to Textual Criticism: An Introduction to the Coherence-Based Genealogical Method
Overview
With the publication of the widely used twenty-eighth edition of Nestle-Aland’s Novum Testamentum Graece and the fifth edition of the United Bible Society’s Greek New Testament, a computer-assisted method known as the Coherence-Based Genealogical Method (CBGM) was used for the first time to determine the most valuable witnesses and establish the initial text. This book offers the first full-length, student-friendly introduction to this important new method. After setting out the method’s history, separate chapters clarify its key concepts such as genealogical coherence, textual flow diagrams, and the global stemma. Examples from across the New Testament are used to show how the method works in practice. The result is an essential introduction that will be of interest to students, translators, commentators, and anyone else who studies the Greek New Testament.
- Presents a clear explanation of how and why the text of the Greek New Testament is changing
- Lays out step-by-step guidance on how to use the CBGM in textual criticism
- Includes diagrams, illustrations, and glossary of key terms
- Overview of the Method
- Pregenealogical Coherence
- Genealogical Coherence
- The Global Stemma
- Limitations and Future Improvements
Top Highlights
“But, in a relatively short sentence, the CBGM is a method that (1) uses a set of computer tools (2) based in a new way of relating manuscript texts that is (3) designed to help us understand the origin and history of the New Testament text.” (Page 3)
“What is new is not that the CBGM relates texts; what is new is how it relates them. The new principle the CBGM uses is that the texts of manuscripts can be related to each other using the relationships of their variants.” (Page 4)
“The Alexandrian is typically considered the most reliable text-type, with the Western, Caesarean, and Byzantine generally following in that order.” (Page 8)
“But this is precisely what the editors using the CBGM have done. They have replaced the relationships and value of text-types with the relationships and value of individual witnesses—well over one-hundred of them in the Catholic Letters. Because the computer can keep track of all these witnesses and their place in the transmission, there is no need to group them into a few text-types and relate these groups. More importantly, by focusing on individual witnesses, they completely bypass the difficult problem of defining text-types and their boundaries (see §2.3.1 below).” (Pages 8–9)
“The CBGM makes a consistent distinction between manuscripts as physical artifacts and the text these artifacts contain. The CBGM is only intent on relating texts, not manuscripts. The term witness is often used in the context of the CBGM to refer to the text of a manuscript in distinction from the manuscript itself. A text of a manuscript may, of course, be much older than the parchment and ink that preserve it. We will explore this important distinction further in later sections of the book (see §2.2.1), but it is important to note it here.” (Page 3)
This book will be of great service in helping scholars and serious students of the New Testament to grasp what the CBGM is. To this point it has largely been a “black box” for many. The explanations are clear, and the examples will be particularly helpful in showing what the CBGM offers and how to make use of the online access to it.
—Larry W. Hurtado, PhD, Emeritus Professor of New Testament Language, Literature and Theology at the University of Edinburgh
This book is essential reading for everyone who wants to understand how contemporary research is changing our understanding of the text of the New Testament or the significance of this new method for all textual scholarship. It is a clear and perceptive explanation of the methodology behind the new editions of the Nestle-Aland and the United Bible Societies Greek New Testaments, as well as the major edition on which they are based. With a historical overview and suggestions for further reading, it contains a step-by-step guide and examples that shed new light on such difficult passages as the first verse of Mark’s Gospel. The authors, who have practiced the methodology and studied it in detail, are ideally placed to offer this simple but thought-provoking guide.
—David Parker, Professor of Digital Philology and Director of the Institute for the Textual Scholarship and Electronic Editing (ITSEE) University of Birmingham
Wasserman and Gurry have together written an extremely useful book. They introduce and explain in detail the history and inner workings of the Coherence-Based Genealogical Method, a method that has become extremely important to the textual criticism of the Greek New Testament through its foundational role in determining the Initial text for the Editio Critica Maior and, in consequence, the printed text in the current (28th) and future (projected) editions of the Nestle-Aland Novum Testamentum Graece. All students of the Greek New Testament … are in their debt for writing such a helpful and informed account. It kept me awake almost the whole way through.
—Peter M. Head, New Testament Tutor at Wycliffe Hall, University of Oxford
- Title: A New Approach to Textual Criticism: An Introduction to the Coherence-Based Genealogical Method
- Authors: Tommy Wasserman, Peter J. Gurry
- Series: Society of Biblical Literature Resources for Biblical Study
- Volume: 80
- Publishers: SBL, Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft
- Print Publication Date: 2017
- Logos Release Date: 2019
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Logos Research Edition
- Subjects: Bible › Criticism, textual; Bible. N.T. › Hermeneutics
- ISBNs: 9783438051745, 9783438051721, 9780884142669, 9781628371994, 9780884142676, 3438051745, 3438051729, 0884142663, 1628371994, 0884142671
- Resource ID: LLS:NWPPRCHGNLGMTHD
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2022-09-30T02:00:47Z
Tommy Wasserman is Professor of Biblical Studies at Ansgar Teologiske Høgskole, Kristiansand, Norway. He is secretary of the International Greek New Testament Project, serves on the board of the Centre for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts, and has started projects on manuscript transcription and manuscript forgeries for the Museum of the Bible. He is Associate Editor of TC: A Journal of Biblical Textual Criticism. Wasserman has authored and edited several books including The Epistle of Jude: Its Text and Transmission (2006) and Studies in Isaiah: History, Theology and Reception (2017).
Peter J. Gurry is Assistant Professor of New Testament at Phoenix Seminary. He has worked with the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts and the Museum of the Bible to both preserve and publish New Testament manuscripts.
