Guiding to a Blessed End: Andrew of Caesarea and His Apocalypse Commentary in the Ancient Church

15. Andrew and the Greek Apocalyse Text

 anDrew anD The greek apocalypse TexT The textual history of the Apocalypse is unique among the books of the New Testament. The commentary of Andrew of Caesarea has impacted the transmission of the text of Revelation itself by creating a text-type of its own, and by stimulating the production of a large portion of the existing Revelation manuscripts.1 The Apocalypse textual transmission differs from the rest of the New Testament, primarily because the text has been generated along two lines of transmission, one of them entirely outside the stream of the biblical manuscript tradition. Since the Apocalypse never became part of the lectionary of the Orthodox Church, it was copied far less frequently and a preferred ecclesiastical text type never resulted. Manuscripts containing the Revelation of John are not only found bound with other books of the New Testament but are located among collections of miscellaneous spiritual writings and even with profane literature. For example, one manuscript containing Revelation also holds the Acts of Thomas and various theological treatises, with the Apocalypse found between the life of St. Euphrosyne and a treatise by Basil the Great.2 1. A text-type is a family of manuscripts which derive from a common source and exhibit common characteristics. 2. Caspar René Gregory, Canon and Text of the New Testament (New York: Charles Scribner , 1907), 291.  w Andrew and the Greek Apocalypse Text  Approximately seven times more manuscripts exist of the gospels than of the Book of Revelation. Half of the manuscripts of Revelation stand alone, whereas other books of the New Testament are consistently found bound together with similar books.3 Metzger made a list of the “Greek Bibles that have survived from the Byzantine period,” and noted that the gospels exist in 2,328 copies but Revelation exists in only 287 copies, concluding: “The lower status of the Book of Revelation in the East is indicated also by the fact that it has never been included in the official lectionary of the Greek Church, whether Byzantine or modern.”4 J.K. Elliott, citing Kurt Aland’s 1994 Liste, counted 303 manuscripts containing Revelation. He observed that only eleven uncials contain Revelation and only six papyri do, and no papyrus preserves the complete text.5 The oldest fragments are P98 in Cairo (2nd century), P47 third century (Chester Beatty), and P18 from the third or fourth century. The oldest complete text is Sinaiticus ‫))א‬ from the fourth century.6 David Aune lists six papyri fragments, eleven uncials and 292 minuscules7 as textual witnesses, not including patristic quotations and translations.8 Of the 292 minuscules containing Revelation , 98 are commentaries, mostly copies of Andrew.9 As can be seen by 3. Edgar J. Goodspeed, The Formation of the New Testament (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1926), 136–37. 4. Bruce Metzger, The Canon of the New Testament: Its Origin, Development and Significance (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), 217, citing Kurt and Barbara Aland, Der Text des Neuen Testaments (Stuttgart, 1982). 5. An uncial is a manuscript written entirely in uppercase letters. It is also known as a “majuscule.” 6. J.K. Elliot, “The Distinctiveness of the Greek Manuscripts of the Book of Revelation,” Journal of Theological Studies, n.s. 48 (1997): 116–24, 120, citing K. Aland, ed. Kurzgefasste Liste der Griechischen Handschriften des Neuen Testaments (Berlin, 1994). 7. A minuscule is a manuscript written with upper and lower case letters. 8. David E. Aune, Revelation, 3 vols. Word Biblical Commentary 52A, B, and C, (Nashville : Nelson Reference and Electronic, 1997), 52A: cxxxvi. Although 293 minuscules have been listed as containing Revelation, only 292 actually do. The manuscript identified as number 1277, which has been said to contain Revelation in fact does not. See David E. Aune, Revelation , 52A: cxxxix–cxl. 9. David E. Aune, Revelation, 52A: cxxxix–cxl. See David E. Aune, Revelation, 5252A: cxxvi –cxlvii for a complete listing of Revelation manuscripts. Bruce Metzger, Canon of the New Testament, 217. According to Metzger, the Book of Revelation exists in 287 manuscripts and  Andrew and the Greek Apocalypse Text the figures above, apparently there is no consistent agreement on the number of existing Revelation manuscripts. A number of peculiarities also exist in the transmission of the actual text of the Apocalypse. First, the reliability presumed for ordinary text-type categories of the New Testament does not apply. Four main text-types can be identified for the Apocalypse: (1) A C...