Review of: Chris S. Stevens. History of the Pauline Corpus in Texts, Transmissions and Trajectories: A Textual Analysis of Manuscripts from the Second to the Fifth Century. Texts and Additions for New Testament Study. Vol. 14. Leiden: Brill, 2020. 472 p.

Abstract

The work under review is a major study of the history of the Paulinum corpus through comparative analysis. This book is the published version of the dissertation of its author, Chris Stevens, which was written under the supervision of the noted biblical scholar Stanley E. Porter. In this book, a recent addition to Brill Publishers' New Testament Study Texts and Editions series, Chris Stevens offers a synchronic analysis of the Pauline corpus designed to assess the degree of textual uniformity of its earliest Greek witnesses (43). His study analyses over 40 manuscripts, most of which are thought to have been produced between the second and fifth centuries. In addition to P46, considerable attention is given to manuscripts 01 (Sinaiticus), 02 (Alexandrinus), 03 (Vaticanus), 04 (Ephraemi Rescriptus), and 06 (Claromontanus) of the sixth century. Stevens calculates that his analysis estimates approximately 167,000 words of text and identifies 3,080 places of textual variation, most of which relate to a single word. The first half of the volume includes eight main chapters, as well as an introduction and conclusion.