Description
For New Testament textual scholarship, the first half of the eighteenth century was a period of collecting material and developing text-critical rules. It was also the time when the Textus Receptus became firmly established. Moreover, lack of an encompassing theory for explaining the great variety of data made most textual critics misjudge those witnesses we now appreciate, including Codex Vaticanus (B03). Two factors prevented scholars from judging it properly. On the one hand, limited access to the manuscript forced them to rely on secondary and sometimes imprecise sources of its variant readings. On the other hand, due to its similarities with the Greek text underlying the Vulgate, the manuscript was regarded as a ‘Latinised’ witness, that is, its text was seen as corrected according to the Latin. Originally proposed by Erasmus, this inaccurate theory became influential for centuries. Therefore B03 was treated as a corrupt manuscript, thus worthless for the reconstruction of the text. Johann Jakob Wettstein (1693–1754) and his involvement with the manuscript offers one of the best examples among the textual critics of this period.The present contribution focuses on two of Wettstein’s famous works, the anonymous 1730 Prolegomena and his NTG of 1751–1752. At the same time, based on the examination of Wettstein’s archive preserved in Amsterdam, some findings are also offered in order to shed light on how he reached his conclusions. Three aspects of his use of B03 can be distinguished: (1) the identification and the siglum ‘B’; (2) more relevant variant readings becoming available; and (3) the evaluation and the continuation of the Latinisation theory. First, as perhaps his most acknowledged contribution, Wettstein created a numbering system for all the Greek manuscripts known to him, and attributed the siglum B to the manuscript we now call Codex Vaticanus. Second, he compiled a significant number of variant readings from various sources, many of which were unknown to previous scholarship. By way of investigating his handwritten notes, many of his sources can be identified now. The investigation of the archive also shows the way in which he collected material. Third, Wettstein eventually embraced the Latinisation theory and thus disregarded the value of B03. In short, Wettstein on the one hand collects many previously unknown variant readings, but on the other hand, he still belongs to his time by following the dominance of Erasmus’ theory.
| Period | 9 Dec 2020 |
|---|---|
| Event title | Society of Biblical Literature Annual Meeting |
| Event type | Conference |
| Degree of Recognition | International |