Tuesday, January 24, 2006

A good introduction to Textual Criticism?

In comments, Sean du Toit asks if I could recommend a good introduction to Textual Criticism. Indeed I can:

David Parker, The Living Text of the Gospels (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997)

Amazon have it on "Search Inside" so you can get a good taster before buying. And it's on Google Books too, like a lot of CUP's stuff.

Incidentally, the fact that it was available for searching allowed me to try out the terms discussed in that previous blog post and comments and it seems that David is, on the whole pretty consistent in his usage: "textual criticism" x 50; "textual critic" x 7; "text critic" x 0; "text criticism" x 0; but "text-critical" x 7 and "textual critical" x 0.

Updates (Friday, 9.33): thanks to Matt Page for the corrected Amazon link for David Parker's book, now adjusted above. Thanks too to Holger and to Steve Walton for the endorsement of another useful introduction to NT Textual Criticism, which I had completely forgotten about:

J. K. Elliott and I Moir, Manuscripts and the Text of the New Testament: An Introduction for English Readers (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1995)

Alas, it is a bit expensive on-line, like several of the Continuum back-catalogue (including one of my own books, to my frustration); e.g. see Amazon. It is reviewed by Tim Finney on TC.
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5 comments:

  1. Holger25 January 2006 at 02:42

    For 'first year' students (if required) I would still recommend:

    Elliott, J K & I Moir 1995. Manuscripts and the Text of the New Testament: An Introduction for English Readers. Edinburgh: T&T Clark.

    Of course, Parker (while more demanding) is much more interesting as he opens up a number of fascinating issues, in particular in relation to the relevance of textual criticism for other fields of NT research.

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  2. Matt Page25 January 2006 at 09:26

    The Amazon link didn't work for me - try http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0521599512
    instead

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  3. Anonymous25 January 2006 at 09:59

    I agree about Elliott & Moir - it's very helpful, especially for beginners who either don't have Greek or don't have good Greek. See my review in Anvil 14.1 (1997) 59-60.

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  4. Anonymous2 February 2006 at 19:05

    I can't speak for anyone but myself, but I'm going to read all suggested. Just out of curiosity, is everyone here of the same faith? Maybe yours isn't the right one. ?

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  5. Anonymous2 February 2006 at 23:51

    Lord, but I have my work cut out for me, don't I! I am off to read...

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