Subject: tc-list A Reply to Criticisms of Comfort/Barrett's book

From: "Barrett, David" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 13 Jul 1999 12:53:46 -0500

Following is a response to criticisms that have appeared on the TC-list 
regarding The Complete Text of the Earliest New Testament Manuscripts. I, 
David Barrett, am posting this for Dr. Comfort and myself, as he is not 
currently able to send and receive emails.

In recent days, some individuals have offered some criticisms of our 
book, *The Complete Text of the Earliest New Testament Manuscripts*. 
This, of course, is not surprising, but rather, expected. The nature of 
this kind of work--and all the detail that goes into producing 
it--invites further revision. In the introduction to our book, we said:

"We have done our best to provide an accurate transcription, always 
recognizing that our work may need emendation here and there. We 
therefore welcome any comments that will help make this book better."

As far as we know, the only person to have offered specific suggestions 
for emendation is Maurice Robinson. (We will address his suggestions 
below.) The other criticisms are general, some of which we will also 
address.
	The most important issue has to do with the accuracy of the 
transcriptions. As this is our preeminent goal for the book, we desire 
nothing more than to provide the most accurate transcriptions possible. 
But this undoubtedly takes at least two printings to get it completely 
right. No one can expect it to be perfect in the first printing--no 
matter how much effort was put into it. Other eyes will see what none of 
us saw the first time around and then recommend emendations.
	Of course, our chiefest critics--one of whom is William Petersen--want 
to pan the book immediately because it has some errors. By contrast, 
Petersen claims that the Muenster Institute would never have printed a 
book with errors. In this regard, Petersen says:

"Pause, for a moment, and think: Have `errors' been a problem with the 
work of the Muenster Institute? I think not. Their accuracy has been--and 
I use the word in its very best sense `Teutonic': meticulous, thorough, 
detailed, exhaustive. We may quibble with what was or was not included in 
the apparatus of a pocket edition--which is what NA27/UBS4 is; we may 
argue over what reading they took into the text. But errors? No."

Petersen is wrong in this regard. The first printing of NA26 (which is 
now NA27) had many, many errors in the critical apparatus, especially 
with respect to the citations of the papyri. I (Comfort) noted several of 
these in the Gospel of John and wrote to Barbara Aland with my concerns. 
(I also published several corrections to NA26 in an article entitled, 
"The Greek Text of the Gospel of John Compiled from the Earliest Papyrus 
Manuscripts, As Compared to the Greek Text of NA26" in *New Testament 
Studies*, September, 1990). Barbara Aland wrote me a detailed letter in 
December of 1987 apologizing for the errors. She agreed that there were, 
indeed, a great many inaccuracies that they noticed in the critical 
apparatus of NA26 after the first printing. These mistakes, she assured 
me, would be corrected in future printings of the Nestle-Aland text. And 
most of them *were* corrected--in the Gospel of John and in several other 
books. By the way, the critical apparatus of UBS3 also went through a 
major revision after its first printing. That's why it was later called, 
"third, corrected edition."
	We make these points not to discredit the Nestle text or the work of the 
Muenster Institute but to argue the case that readers need to be fair in 
their criticisms. To use the proverbial expression, they shouldn't "throw 
out the baby with the bath water." In due course, the Muenster Institute 
got things right and made multiple corrections in their citations of the 
papyri, as also did the United Bible Societies. No one dare suggest that 
these two editions were worthless because they contained many errors; 
rather, all balanced criticisms encouraged revision. In like manner, we 
will be glad to consider all suggested emendations to our work for future 
printings.
	And now, let's look at Robinson's criticisms. He offers 22 emendations. 
In our estimation, 9 of these call for correction. They are as follows:
1. insert DE (Acts 5:6 in 0189)
2. an extra bracket needs to be deleted (Acts 5:12 in 0189)
3. insert EN (Acts 5:12 in 0189)
4. OUDEI should be written as OUQEI (Acts 5:13 in 0189)
5. KAI should be moved from the beginning of a line to the end of the 
previous line (Acts 5:21 in 0189)
6. the Greek article TO should be TA (John 2:15 in 0162)
7. insert DE (John 8:15 in P75)
8. note "d" on p. 580 for P75 should read APO THS T[RA]PEZ[HS], omitting 
the S before T[RA]PEZ[HS]. This is a typographical error. I had cited 
this correctly in *The Quest for the Original Text of the New Testament*, 
p. 187.
9. note "c" on John 13:20 in P66 needs to be adjusted

As to the rest of the emendations Robinson proposes, some (with respect 
to 0189) are debatable, and the rest are not debatable at all. What we 
transcribed is affirmed by the photographs, editio principes, and/or NA27 
for the other citations Robinson made with respect to P66, P75, and 0162. 
Unfortunately, our transcription of 0189 does have a few problems--there 
were some logistical reasons for this, which we have now discovered. We 
can assure our readers that our presentation of 0189 is not indicative of 
what appears in the rest of the book. In any event, these 9 errors that 
Robinson has cited for our book are minor; they amount to no more than 
seven words. True, they are errors and need correction. And, of course, 
there will be more errors spotted as time goes on. But such is the 
process of producing a better book.
	Therefore, we appeal to our critics to see the big picture. The book, 
even as it now stands, is a significant contribution to New Testament 
textual studies. We have provided transcriptions that are far more 
accurate than what was originally provided for certain manuscripts such 
as P45, P46, and P66 (especially). And we have brought together 
separately published fragments of certain manuscripts into one text, as 
well as provided new reconstructions.
	To pan this book is a mistake. To start over--as Robinson suggests--is 
unthinkable. For anyone who would like to start from scratch, he calls 
upon them to emulate the meticulousness of the International Greek New 
Testament Project (IGNTP) and the Muenster Institute. At this point, we 
must speak of our own participation in the IGNTP project on the papyri of 
John's Gospel. As participants in this project, we (Comfort and Barrett, 
along with other graduate students at Wheaton College) provided countless 
corrections to the first-draft transcription of P66, thereby vastly 
improving its accuracy. Then, we went way beyond this in our own work on 
P66. Just compare the two. Our point is this: Our aim in this work is the 
same as that shared by the IGNTP and the Muenster Institute; we all 
strive to present accurate replications of the NT manuscripts.
	Contrary to the opinions of Robinson and Petersen, we think the book 
will serve students and scholars well, as does the eminent papyrologist, 
T. C. Skeat, who recently wrote to Comfort, "I must congratulate you on 
the production of a work which will be of utmost value to scholars in 
many fields."

Philip Comfort and David Barrett