Tyndale House Greek New Testament

Greek Koine and Biblical and Medieval Greek
1

First, and most important, Cambridge has worked hard to make this a nice edition for reading. I appreciate that they haven’t cluttered up the text with apparatus markers. They go light on paragraphing and somewhat light on punctuation. (Though it is a crime to put the verse and chapter numbers in this text, which is otherwise so readable. Put them on the side if they have to be there!) I would have appreciated a wider page margin. The font is serviceable, but not beautiful. Like W&H, they will be releasing a second volume with notes, which will hopefully prove to contain an interesting discussion of the various textual problems.

They use the Tregelles text as their base, for reasons that I don’t fully understand. It “followed a thoroughly documentary approach,” apparently, which they liked.

The spelling and accentuation reform principles are a bit of a grab bag, but I appreciate their decisions and the result. They are trying to produce the spellings that would be found in the earliest manuscripts. Despite this, they do not use abbreviations for sacred names. Also, they do not try to reproduce the accents of the earliest manuscripts (because there would be no accents), but instead the earliest manuscripts having accents, which are centuries later. They have removed many iota-subscripts in verbs, but kept it everywhere in the dative case. It’s actually hard for me to notice the ones that are gone. They don’t mention it in the appendix, but I notice that augmented verbs beginning with οι- keep the iota-subscript.

The complete neglect of the Patristic writers is probably the only really unfortunate thing about this edition. I doubt that it would have had much of an impact on the text though.

It’s probably going to be my favorite copy for reading, going forward. I have noticed that when reading a text with many critical marks aloud, I will often mistake a critical mark for a comma and pause inappropriately.

Still, I’d give a lot for an 1881 edition of W&H, with its wide margins, beautiful font, and lack of verse numbers. Unfortunately I only have that as a PDF on my iPad.

2

Interesting! I’ve been looking for opinions on the book because I’m trying to pick up a GNT.

3

Some of the punctuation rules can produce funny results in practice. Here is 1 Corinthians 1:12 (capitalization following THGNT):

ἐγὼ μέν εἰμι Παύλου, ἐγὼ δὲ Ἀπολλώ, ἐγὼ δὲ Κηφᾶ, ἐγὼ δὲ χριστοῦ.

4

In fact all four possible combinations are represented:

THGNT: ἐγὼ δὲ χριστοῦ.



UBS 5: Ἐγὼ δὲ Χριστοῦ.



RP: Ἐγὼ δὲ χριστοῦ.



1904 Patriarchal: ἐγὼ δὲ Χριστοῦ.

ἐγὼ δὲ Χριστοῦ might mean ἐγώ εἰμι Ἰησοῦ, whereas ἐγὼ δὲ χριστοῦ might mean ἐγώ εἰμι τοῦ μεσσίου.

Here is how I would punctuate the passage:

«ἐγὼ μέν εἰμι Παύλου,» «ἐγὼ δὲ Ἀπολλώ,» «ἐγὼ δὲ Κηφᾶ.» (ἐγὼ δὲ Χριστοῦ.)

That is, Paul is adding a parenthetical comment to explain his own position, no longer quoting the Corinthians. The text flows better without this addition, and the idea that there was a “Christ party” in Corinth along with the others does not make sense to me. It’s possible that ἐγὼ δὲ Χριστοῦ was even added in a subsequent draft, although of course a draft from the hand of Paul himself.