New Portuguese Introduction to New Testament Textual Criticism

Indicative of the continuing international diversification and growth of NT scholarship, there arrived in today’s mail a copy of the newly-published introduction to NT textual criticism in Portuguese by Wilson Paroschi, Origem e Transmissão do Texto do Novo Testamento (Barueri, Brazil:  Sociedade Biblica do Brasil, 2012).   I was pleased to have been invited to preview the book and happy to endorse it.   In this work, completed during a research leave spent in Heidelberg, Paroschi provides a wide-ranging and up-to-date introduction that covers the production of ancient books (scribal features, physical forms, various readers’ aids), the principal textual witnesses (Greek manuscripts, ancient Versions, Patristic citations), the history of the transmission of the text and the development of NT textual criticism, the principles and practice of NT textual criticism (with a chapter devoted to several examples of significant variation-units), and a concluding chapter on recent developments in method/approach.  There are also appendices on the number of NT Greek manuscripts by century, the number of NT papyri by NT writing, and the specific contents of the most ancient manuscripts for each NT writing.

I congratulate Paroschi on this demanding and impressive work, and I hope that it will be used in Brasil and other Portuguese-speaking circles to inform students and other interested readers about NT textual criticism.