Encountering the Manuscripts: An Introduction to New Testament Paleography and Textual Criticism

by Phillip Comfort

“[ Encountering the Manuscripts ] focuses on the most significant New Testament manuscripts from the perspective of paleography and textual criticism. Paleography pertains to the dating of the manuscripts, as well as to the calligraphic features of the manuscripts themselves. Each manuscript has a story to tell; each manuscript gives us a window into the transmission of the New Testament text in the earliest centuries. Textual criticism pertains to the critical evaluation of the trustworthiness of the text of each manuscript with respect to recovering the original wording of the Greek New Testament. This volume merges the two areas of study by looking at both paleography and textual criticism as we encounter the New Testament manuscripts.”

Genres: Biblical Studies

432 pages, Kindle Edition

First published November 15, 2005

Reviews

[Jon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although the title contains the word "introduction," do not be fooled: this is a very technical book that is not written for a general audience. This is an advanced seminary-level textbook that is written for the person who has a general understanding of the tenets of New Testament (NT) textual criticism (and, it goes without saying, knows Greek) and wants to dive deeper into the subject.

That being said, if you fall into that category of reader, as I am fortunate to do, this is a very good book. It takes you into the weeds of textual criticism, providing an introduction to literally every early NT manuscript and the similarities and differences among them. Comfort also dives deep into the types of texts, the various types of scribes who penned copies of the Bible, the importance of Oxyrhynchus in the history of the transmission of the NT, and a whole host of other subjects about which a garden-variety, seminary-trained student like yours truly would normally be blissfully ignorant.

It is true that the author puts forth his own hypotheses and shows his own biases on certain subjects, but he is very transparent about when and where he does this, and I can't fault him for wanting to have a say about matters in his own book, as he is the expert!

I enjoyed gaining all of the aforementioned insights and more from this book, and I'm glad I have it as a resource to be able to brush up on the topic or look up information about a particular manuscript whenever I need to.

Overall, it was a dense, technical read, but a good read nonetheless.

[Robert Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

A pretty dry read. It is about textual criticism, so I guess it is to be expected. Originally I wanted to give it 3 stars, but there a few very interesting insights in this book that brought the rating up to a 4. It is a very technical read, but accessible. All of the foreign words used are translated in parens. All technical terms are defined.