Augustine's Text of John: Patristic Citations and Latin Gospel Manuscripts. By H. A. G. HOUGHTON.

Abstract

Spanning the disciplines of New Testament textual criticism and patristics, Houghton’s study of the text of John’s gospel known to Augustine and his citational techniques in relation to that gospel is an invaluable and groundbreaking work. The book falls into three major parts. In Part I, evidence is brought together from Augustine’s writings relating to the textual history of the Latin Bible prior to Augustine’s death. Part II chronologically surveys Augustine’s works, and notes a detectable change in the source of citations from John’s gospel. Here the switch from Old Latin versions to St Jerome’s revised text is carefully documented. The final part provides much of the ‘raw data’ that informs Houghton’s study. In this section he provides a close textual commentary on Augustine’s citations from the fourth gospel. He states the aim of this section as presenting and discussing ‘most of the variations within Augustine’s citations of John and the differences between his text and the Vulgate’ (p. 183). This allows him to assess the significance of readings contained in Augustine’s works for tracing the history of the transmission of the biblical text.