Commentary Manuscripts in the History and Transmission of the Greek New Testament

Project Information

CATENA

Grant agreement ID: 770816

DOI

10.3030/770816

Project closed

EC signature date 15 March 2018

Start date 1 June 2018

End date 31 May 2024

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - European Research Council (ERC)

Total cost

€ 1 756 928,00

EU contribution

€ 1 756 928,00

Coordinated by

THE UNIVERSITY OF BIRMINGHAM
United Kingdom

Periodic Reporting for period 4 - CATENA (Commentary Manuscripts in the History and Transmission of the Greek New Testament)

Reporting period: 2022-12-01 to 2024-05-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Manuscripts which contain commentary alongside the biblical text are some of the most significant and complicated witnesses to the Greek New Testament. First compiled around the sixth century, the commentaries consist of chains of extracts from earlier writers (catenae). These manuscripts became the main way in which users encountered both the text and the interpretation of the New Testament and continued to hold the field until the invention of printing. Recent advances have indicated that commentary manuscripts play a much more important role than previously thought in the history of the New Testament, both in terms of the number of surviving copies and their place in the history of transmission.

The CATENA Project employed digital tools to undertake a fuller examination of Greek New Testament commentary manuscripts than had ever before been possible. It aimed to produce the first-ever complete catalogue of these documents as a starting point for a new, comprehensive survey of the nature, development, and significance of the tradition. The function of these commentaries in transmitting and explaining the biblical text provides insights for the Christian community as well as historians, theologians and textual scholars. In particular, the question of whether catenae constitute a particular class of biblical manuscript, with characteristic features in their scriptural text, has an impact on the way in which they are presented in the standard editions of the New Testament.

The project met all of its initial objectives: it has made it possible to examine all known witnesses to each type of catena, and advance hypotheses about their development and transmission on the basis of all surviving evidence. New types of catena have been identified, earlier identifications have been corrected (sometimes substantially), additional witnesses to the Greek New Testament have been discovered. The project has produced full-text resources making individual extracts from early writers and complete commentaries available for the first time. It has also demonstrated that these documents do have distinctive elements in their biblical text and should be clearly identified in order for their evidence to be properly assessed. The application of phylogenetic algorithms has also led to the identification of manuscripts copied from other surviving documents. All this results in a new state of the art in understanding complex documents, manuscript transmission, and the history and interpretation of the New Testament text.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

The first objective of the project was to produce a full catalogue of Greek New Testament catena manuscripts. This was published in month 36 in printed form (Parpulov, 2021) and a searchable online database (https://itsee-wce.birmingham.ac.uk/catenacatalogue/). At the end of the project, this contained 724 items. The project has identified over 50 manuscripts not previously recognised as catenae, and added 35 manuscripts to the official register of Greek New Testament manuscripts. Several of these have now been incorporated into scholarly editions and the catena catalogue has become adopted as an authoritative reference source.

The second objective was to examine the nature and structure of Greek New Testament catenae. The project identified 23 catena types not currently listed in the Clavis Patrum Graecorum. These have now been integrated into this official catalogue, along with a complete reworking of the classification of manuscripts of catenae on the Acts of the Apostles and the Gospel according to Luke (Scieri, 2022; Patton, 2023). The project produced full-text editions of five catenae on Luke (Manafis, 2024), the Pseudo-Oecumenian Catena on Romans (Marcon, 2022) and the oldest surviving catena manuscript, Codex Zacynthius (Houghton, Manafis and Myshrall, 2020). These publications open catenae to a wider readership. A variety of project outputs provide new information about the history and development of the catena tradition and individual documents.

The third objective was to locate catenae within the textual tradition of the New Testament. The first approach was to examine features of catena manuscripts in the published volumes of the Novum Testamentum Graecum Editio Critica Maior. This demonstrated that this genre of witness did contain distinctive characteristics (Houghton, 2023b). The second approach was to produce fresh transcriptions of manuscripts of the Pauline Epistles in order to provide full-text comparisons, including the application of the Coherence-Based Genealogical Method and phylogenetic algorithms. This resulted in significant advances in the selection of manuscripts for the Editio Critica Maior of the Pauline Epistles (Houghton, 2019 and forthcoming), as well as identifying four previously unrecognised copies of surviving documents (increasing the known total from 18 to 22; see Houghton & Myshrall, 2023; Patton, 2023) and other ineligible witnesses. Other contributions included illustrations of how catena tradition affected the sequence of biblical books (Patton, 2022) and discounted what has long been considered an exceptional witness to the short ending of Mark (Houghton, 2023a). These findings will all be reflected in future editions and scholarship on the text of the New Testament.

The project hosted a consultation of European experts in Brussels in month 20 and a workshop in month 46. A hybrid conference was held in Birmingham in month 60, whose presentations continue to be available on a YouTube channel. Team members have also presented their work at a range of international scholarly conferences. A broad range of outputs have been produced, including five monographs, eight datasets and some exceptionally highly-viewed articles in peer-reviewed journals.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

It is no exaggeration to say that this project has placed the study of New Testament catena manuscripts on an entirely new footing.

For the first time, it is possible to consider the entire corpus of these documents, thanks to the production of the catalogue and online database. This has resulted in the discovery of over 20 new types of catena, and fresh understandings of how the tradition developed, replacing the previous syntheses advanced in the twentieth century (e.g. Reuss, Rauer and Sickenberger). Extracts from early Christian writings which have not been preserved elsewhere have also been brought to light.

The project has also led to the recognition that catena manuscripts are a distinctive class of witness to the biblical text, whose evaluation needs to take the context of this evidence into account. A significant contribution has been made to the official register of Greek New Testament manuscripts, with alterations to over 50 items. It has also been shown that a combination of phylogenetic algorithms and documentary approaches enables a fresh approach to manuscript relationships, for instance increasing the number of known copies of surviving documents by over 20%.

The project has also raised broader questions about the classification of Greek New Testament manuscripts with exegetical material, calling for further research building on its data and findings.

Project logo