New Testament textual critics agree that there are three primary lines of evidence in the development of the original text: Greek manuscripts, early versions, and patristic quotations. More than 50 years ago, Gordon Fee called for more extensive studies of the Greek Fathers by reconstructing their NT texts.[1] It is amazing how little work has been done in this area.
I became interested in the Church Fathers and their biblical texts in a Ph.D. text criticism seminar led by Dr. Siegfried Schatzmann after doing a book review of all things.[2] In 2003, I completed my dissertation in which I reconstructed and evaluated the Johannine text of John Chrysostom.[3] Now deceased, Dr. Schatzmann’s encouragement and eye for detail helped me successfully pull off what was a critical lacuna in the field.
By far the most important part of the dissertation is the text’s reconstruction. Others have taken notice over the years. I was encouraged, for example, that my work was used by Dr. Roderic Mullen in The Gospel According to John in the Byzantine Tradition. Mullen compared my work, based on Mountfaucon,[4] and his, based on manuscript Sinai Gr. 369-70
Since 2003, I have wanted to lift Chrysostom’s reconstructed text produced in my dissertation and make it available in some form. Many other duties kept me away from what no doubt would be a time-consuming project – until now. Retirement, or at least something of a retirement, gives me the time I need, and last month I returned to Chrysostom’s Johannine text after more than two decades.
I plan to use this online forum to reproduce Chrysostom’s text of the Fourth Gospel. This will be done chapter-by-chapter. While I know many people will just by-pass the posts for something more interesting and understandable (since the text is Greek), there may be someone out there in cyberspace someday who might take a look. Perhaps I’ll reproduce the text in some journal in the future, but I want to use my own forum first.
The reconstructed text of John will be provided without commentary, except in a few footnotes that accompany each chapter. It’s probable that the project will take several months to complete. I will post each chapter when they are completed. There are other topics I wish to write about on my site, so the Chrysostom text will be mixed in with those. I will hashtag them the same, so it should not be hard to pull them all up at one time once the project is finished.
I’m using the electronic version of the Byzantine Tradition as I check my work from 2003 and compare it. I expect to correct any errors found in the dissertation, and I am open to making alternative decisions on the text I reconstructed. As I’ve started this work, however, it is amazing how comfortable I still am with my text decisions.[5]
The chapter posts are self-explanatory, I think. One should be able to follow what I’ve done easily. Just one note before I post chapter 1. An ellipsis (. . .) is used when there are gaps, small or large, in the reconstructed text. That happens a lot in a narrative like John as Chrysostom often leaves out introductory phrases like, “And Jesus said to them,” or, “The disciples said to Jesus,” etc.
[1] Gordon D. Fee, “The text of John in Origen and Cyril of Alexandria: A Contribution to Methodology in the Recovery and Analysis of Patristic Citations,” Biblica 52 (1971): 357-94.
[2] Bart Ehrman, Didymus the Blind and the Text of the Gospels (Atlanta: SBL, 1986).
[3] Known as one the greatest preachers of all time, Chrysostom was given the nickname “Golden Mouth,” to describe his eloquence. Chrysostom was Archbishop of Constantinople in the 4th century.
[4] Bernardi de Mountfaucon, Sancti Patris nostri Joannis Chrysostomi, Opera Omnia Quae Exstant, vol. 8 (Paris: Apud Gaume Fratres, 1839).
[5] Stephen Dale Patton, “A Reconstruction and Evaluation of the Johannine Text of John Chrysostom,” (PhD diss, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2003).
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