The Greek New Testament, Produced at Tyndale House, Cambridge ed. by Dirk Jongkind and Peter J. Williams

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Greek New Testament, Produced at Tyndale House, Cambridge ed. by Dirk Jongkind and Peter J. Williams Peter R. Rodgers dirk jongkind and peter j. williams (eds.), The Greek New Testament, Produced at Tyndale House, Cambridge (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2017). Pp. 526. $27.16. The publication of a new critical edition of the Greek New Testament is a welcome event, and this is especially the case with the much-anticipated edition produced by Tyndale House in Cambridge, England. The editors, Dirk Jongkind and Peter J. Williams (together with Peter M. Head and Patrick James) are to be congratulated for this elegantly printed, beautifully bound, and reasonably priced edition. The impetus for this fresh edition was the concern of the editors and their colleagues to give a fresh presentation of the critical edition of the important nineteenth-century scholar Samuel Prideaux Tregelles. That edition was produced in 1870 and influenced the work of B. F. Westcott and F. J. A. Hort. But Tregelles's work was eclipsed by the 1881 edition of Westcott and Hort, which quickly became the standard for scholars. Tregelles's independence of judgment and his concern to present the earliest obtainable text on the basis of the available evidence had led J. and W. to begin with his printed text and to revise where necessary. They state in the introduction that their revision has ended up being more thoroughgoing than they had expected, "such that it is now a completely new edition" (p. 506). The editors have followed Tregelles's "strong reliance on the testimony of documents and on the principle of proven antiquity" (pp. 505-6). They note their reliance on new evidence that has come to light, especially on papyri, since the nineteenth century. In light of this insistence, some of their textual choices are surprising. In particular, their choice to print μονογενὴς υἱός in John 1:18 seems strange. Not only have they departed from Tregelles's text, which read μονογενὴς θεός, but they have made this choice despite the strong documentary evidence for the latter that has come to light in the last century (66, 75). Readers will need to wait for the promised commentary on the Tyndale House Greek New Testament for an explanation of this surprising choice. Jongkind and Williams have worked to produce an uncluttered edition. They have sought to present "the Greek text with as little interruption as possible" (p. 515). This concern has led to a minimal apparatus, which cites only Greek manuscripts (listed on pp. 518-23) and includes neither versions nor patristic evidence. In some cases, however, such evidence is critical for making textual judgments. Such a place is Heb 2:9, where patristic evidence helps to tip the scales toward χωρὶς θεοῦ, the reading they did not choose to print in the text but which is increasingly attractive to editors and commentators. In addition, the editors have avoided scholarly signs such as brackets and dashes. They have given special attention to matters of orthography, order of books, paragraphs, breathings, accents, and punctuation following the earliest documentary evidence. But they have not marked perceived citations by special typeface. While they follow Tregelles in this particular matter, at least Tregelles noted OT citations in the outer margins, whereas the Tyndale House Edition does not follow his practice. This seems to be a feature all the more needed, given the robust and growing interest in biblical intertextuality and its potential importance for textual decisions. Perhaps the second edition, which this important resource deserves, will include this valuable feature and might even improve on the information offered by NA28. In making textual judgments, the editors state their concern to take into account recent work on scribal tendencies in the transmission of the text. They especially note the phenomenon [End Page 336] of assimilation, and they write that "the lengthening of the text by harmonization is partly offset by occasional omission of small words and non-essential phrases" (p. 506). This latter phenomenon is perhaps the most striking instance of scribal tendencies that has come to light in modern study. James Ronald Royse, in his landmark study Scribal Habits in Early Greek New Testament Papyri (NTTSD 36; Leiden: Brill, 2007) has demonstrated that...