Most studies of ancient New Testament manuscripts focus on individual readings and textual variants. This book, however, draws attention to, and attempts to advance, study of the textual and paratextual features of New Testament manuscripts. After defining paratext, the contributors discuss key manuscript characteristics, including headings, introductions, marginal comments, colophons, layout features such as margins, columns, spacing, and reading aids such as segmentation, paragraphos, ekthesis, coronis, and rubrication. The goal of this book is to explore how textual criticism goes beyond individual readings and includes studying the history of texts and their perceivable features.

An essential introduction for scholars and students of New Testament Greek With the publication of the widely used 28th edition of Nestle-Aland’s Novum Testamentum Graece and the 5th edition of the United Bible Society 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, including 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. Features A clear explanation of how and why the text of the Greek New Testament is changing Step-by-step guidance on how to use the CBGM in textual criticism Diagrams, illustrations, and glossary of key terms

Scripture is a beautiful mosaic of Christ. The earliest Christians expressed their faith with creativity through symbols and summaries. In Christ the Center, Tomas Bokedal explores the relationship of the rule of faith, nomina sacra, and numerical patterns with Scripture. The nomina sacra—scribal reverence for divine names within Scripture—display remarkable intentionality and theological reflection. The nomina sacra in turn directed the emerging rule of faith. These scribal practices reveal early devotional and theological preoccupation and guided the text's shape and interpretation in the early centuries after Christ. Christ the Center showcases early Christian reverence for Scripture—and especially for the One of whom Scripture speaks.

Some questions about the New Testament are far from settled, to say nothing of misconception and confusion. In this wide-ranging yet accessible overview, Bejamin Laird offers constructive insight on matters tied to the composition, collection, and authority of the New Testament canon.

Codex Alexandrinus is one of the three earliest surviving entire Greek Bibles and is an important fifth-century witness to the Christian Scriptures, yet no major analysis of the codex has been performed in over a century. In A Study of the Gospels in Codex Alexandrinus W. Andrew Smith delivers a fresh and highly-detailed examination of the codex and its rich variety of features using codicology, palaeography, and statistical analysis. Among the highlights of this study, W. Andrew Smith’s work overturns the view that a single scribe was responsible for copying the canonical books of the New Testament and demonstrates that the orthographic patterns in the Gospels can no longer be used to argue for Egyptian provenance of the codex.

The present volume provides a comparative look at the contents and layout features of secondary annotations in biblical manuscripts across linguistic traditions. Due to the privileged focus on the text in the columns, these annotations and the practices that produced them have not received the scholarly attention they deserve. The vast richness of extant verbal and figurative notes accompanying the biblical texts in the intercolumns and margins of the manuscript pages have thus been largely overlooked. The case studies gathered in this volume explore Jewish and Christian biblical manuscripts through the lens of their annotations, addressing the various relationships between the primary layer of text and the secondary notes, and exploring the roles and functions of annotated manuscripts as cultural artifacts. By approaching biblical manuscripts as potential "notepads", the volume offers theoretical reflection and empirical analyses of the ways in which secondary notes may shed new light on the development and transmission of text traditions, the shifting engagement with biblical manuscripts over time, as well as the change of use and interpretation that may result from the addition of the notes themselves.

This book is a collection of cutting-edge essays on the Dead Sea Scrolls as part of ancient Mediterranean media culture, featuring interdisciplinary feedback from scholars in New Testament studies and Classics.