Texts and Artefacts: Selected Essays on Textual Criticism and Early Christian Manuscripts

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Description

The essays included in this volume present Larry W. Hurtados steadfast analysis of the earliest Christian manuscripts. In these chapters, Hurtado considers not only standard text-critical issues which seek to uncover an earliest possible version of a text, but also the very manuscripts that are available to us. As one of the pre-eminent scholars of the field, Hurtado examines often overlooked 2nd and 3rd century artefacts, which are among the earliest manuscripts available, drawing fascinating conclusions about the features of early Christianity. Divided into two halves, the first part of the volume addresses text-critical and text-historical issues about the textual transmission of various New Testament writings. The second part looks at manuscripts as physical and visual artefacts themselves, exploring the metadata and sociology of their context and the nature of their first readers, for the light cast upon early Christianity. Whilst these essays are presented together here as a republished collection, Hurtado has made several updates across the collection to draw them together and to reflect on the developing nature of the issues that they address since they were first written.

Reviews

It will make an excellent companion reader for all students and scholars of the New Testament. Ultimately, this volume is an example a Hurtados commitment to New Testament and early Christian scholarship. We are indebted to him for his many years of service to our guild. * Biblical Theology Bulletin *
Masterly written and extremely insightful ... Studying these texts to try and determine the earliest available form of the Greek text is useful, but studying them as artefacts provides some understanding of the early Christians themselves. I highly recommend this volume. * Neotestamentica *
Hurtados style is moderate, though appropriately decisive and well-reasoned. As a result, each chapter is particularly engaging and persuasive. Ultimately, they are argued competently and convincingly for the importance of increased scholarly engagement with the physical and visual features of manuscripts for the purpose of developing a greater understanding of early Christianity and its texts. * Reviews in Biblical and Early Christian Studies *

Author Bio

Larry W. Hurtado is Professor Emeritus of New Testament Language, Literature and Theology at the University of Edinburgh, UK.