Textual Criticism On The Manuscripts And Text Of The New Testament

As the methods of New Testament textual criticism develop, and as more manuscripts are discovered and catalogued, handbooks and textual commentaries of the New Testament require updating and revision. Philip Comfort’s A Commentary on the Manuscripts and Text of the New Testament endeavors to provide such an updated resource. This work is a concise handbook on the manuscripts of the New Testament, a brief introduction to the theory and practice of textual criticism, a commentary on textual variations within the manuscript tradition of the New Testament, and an introduction to the curious scribal features known as nomina sacra.

Philip Comfort is senior editor of Bible reference at Tyndale House publishers and has taught at Trinity Episcopal Seminary, Wheaton College, Columbia International University, and Coastal Carolina University. He is well known for the Text of the Earliest New Testament Greek Manuscripts (2001), edited together with David P. Barrett, and for his New Testament Text and Translation Commentary (2008).

In the introduction of A Commentary on the Manuscripts and Text of the New Testament Comfort set out the goal for the work when he wrote, “[i]n this commentary readers will be reading commentary on actual manuscripts. . . No other Bible commentary does this” (p. 7). Besides providing annotation on textual variation, every instance where a nomina sacra appears within the text of these manuscripts is noted throughout the commentary.

Between the brief introduction and chapter one is placed a segment entitled simply as “Early Manuscripts” (p. 11-14). In this section, the earliest manuscript evidence is presented by chapter for each New Testament book. Though some may dispute the earlier dates given for some of the papyr...

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...). Comfort discusses the five variation units along with their manuscript, versional, and patristic attestation. The discussion appears to be taken nearly word-for-word from his Text and Translation Commentary. In contrast, though Comfort discusses the manuscript, versional, and patristic evidence, the commentary on the Pericope de Adultera, at two pages (p. 258-259), is highly abridged when compared to his Text and Translation Commentary. Therefore, it appears that some of the material is nearly identical and some an abridgment of the commentary already published in his previous Text and Translation Commentary. Only two features are absent in the current commentary, a list of English Bible translations that contain a particular reading, and the Greek text of the variation units. When variation units are listed, only English translations of the readings are provided.