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Reviewed by:
  • Gospel Traditions in the Second Century: Origins, Recensions, Text, and Transmission
  • Lawrence R. Hennessey
William L. Petersen , editor. Gospel Traditions in the Second Century: Origins, Recensions, Text, and Transmission. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1990. Pp. xi + 174. $21.95.

This well-edited volume is a collection of papers delivered by "eight leading scholars from six nations, " who gathered at the University of Notre Dame from 15 to 17 April 1988 to discuss "Gospel Traditions in the Second Century: Origins, Recensions, Text, and Transmission." According to the editor, each scholar was expected to present "insights from his or her area of research" (1). The result is a fascinating overview of the kinds of questions, problems, and methods involved in the preparation, analysis, and publication of critical texts—in this case, the texts of the four Gospels.

In this age of specialization, many of us working in the wide field of early Christian studies simply take the work of the text critics for granted. This volume serves as a valuable corrective for the temptation to such nonchalance. Several discreet specialties converge—study of Patristic citations, linguistic examination of versions, text-critical cataloging and collating and editing, higher critical searching for the most primitive recoverable form of a given pericope—and we are clearly reminded of the foundational importance text-critical research has for whatever else we may do in the wider field of our discipline. Here are some samples from the collection's rich fare.

Introducing what proved to be a major theme of the conference, J. Neville Birdsall, in a paper entitled "The Western Text in the Second Century," presents "a conspectus of data and opinion at present" on the vexed question of the so-called "Western Text. " Birdsall maintains that "there is a body of data for which the term was devised, and it continues to demand both examination and . . . hypotheses to explain it . . ." (3). He surveys the question from its 19th century beginnings to the state of current research. The "Western Text," he concludes, "is an object which we [End Page 346] do not yet perceive with absolute clarity, but of whose existence . . . there can be no doubt . . ." (17). The reader is left with a clear appreciation of the open questions and on-going problems that must be addressed if a consensus on the "Western Text" is ever to develop.

In his paper, "The Text of the Synoptic Gospels in the Second Century," Helmut Koester sets out the evidence supporting his conclusion that the original Gospel texts have undergone substantial revisions during their first hundred years of transmission, and that a process of harmonization is already evident in the earliest stages of transmission. The theme of harmonization thus loomed very large in the conference. Koester maintains that "the quest for the text of the Synoptic Gospels in the second century is identical with the question of the earliest usage of their text in other writings" (19). Warning the reader about the immense problems involved in textual transmission, he then discusses the evidence for Matthew's and Luke's use of Mark; what is already at work is the desire for Gospel "harmony." The evidence from the Apostolic Fathers—specifically Second Clement, which has a number of quotations almost all of which are "harmonizations of parallel texts of Matthew and Luke" (27)—sets the stage for Koester's new and intriguing hypothesis that Justin Martyr, "like Matthew . . . is creating a new text of the 'Gospel,' harmonizing what he has inherited, adding phrases which are missing in the texts of Matthew and Luke "(32). Justin wants to strengthen "the close bond between prophecy and fulfillment," achieving "an even closer agreement than is evident in Matthew" (32). In the last section of his paper, he also considers the relationship between the so-called Secret Gospel of Mark and canonical Mark, where a process of harmonization is also apparently at work—this time to avoid the questionable passages in the Secret Gospel.

Frederik Wisse, in his paper, "The Nature and Purpose of Redactional Changes in Early Christian Texts: the Canonical Gospels," by arguing for what the editor calls "the necessity of a clean method" (155), takes, in effect...

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