[gothic-l] 2Cor cap.13 of Wulfila's Bible

[M. Carver]

Interestingly enough, I just happened to pick up Kurt and Barbara Aland's
book. Unfortunately so far, though fairly scholarly, it seems like little
more than propaganda for the Nestle-Aland pocket edition GNT. But I did
happen to read that Gothic section and it has reproductions of at least one
page of most of the major texts besides the gothic text as well. The Alands
destroy the reliability of not only the Textus Receptus, but Von Soden, Van
Tischendorf, Streitburg and several others.

Matþaius

on 10/30/00 7:36 PM, jdm314 at aol.com at jdm314 at aol.com wrote:

> OOps! A while back I asked a friend of mine abotuy this thread, then I didn't
> even notice when he replied to me! This was because I couldn't keep up with
> the thread... so excuse me if I'm repeating old ground here:
> 
> -IUSTEINUS
> 
> 
> In a message dated 10/28/00 12:03:00 PM, jrblack at students.wisc.edu wrote:
> 
> <<You can post this to the list if you want to.

> The following comment from Aland's _The Text of the Greek New Testament_
> (2nd ed., Eerdmans, 1989) may be helpful:
> 
> "The fact that the Gothic version was made directly from the Greek
> text is unquestioned.  Nevertheless, the Gothic version is not cited
> along with the Latin, Syriac, and other versions as a primary witness
> in the critical apparatuses of editions of the Greek New Testament.
> As a rule it is cited only casually, because the general character
> of its textual base is rather precisely known:  for his translation
> Wulfilas made use of a manuscript of the early Byzantine text differing
> little from what we find in the Greek manuscripts.
> 
> "Naturally it would be of considerable significance for the history
> of the text to determine precisely the form of the Greek text used by
> Wulfilas, because this would reveal the stage of development of the
> Koine text about 350 in a purer form than is available elsewhere.  But
> unfortunately this is impossible because the Germanics specialists who
> have reconstructed the underlying Greek text have not followed the
> Gothic text as it stands, but proposed a hypothetical Greek text of
> their own.  The standard edition by Wilhelm Streitberg differs from
> the Gothic text (under the influence of Hermann Freiherr von Soden's
> views among others) in hundreds of instances in a way that can only be
> described as arbitrary.  Ernst Bernhardt's reconstruction has other
> faults because of its assumption that Wulfilas followed an exemplar of
> the type of Codex Alexandrinus.  For the Gothic version to make its
> full contribution to New Testament textual criticism, what is needed
> from Germanics scholars is a reconstruction of the Greek exemplar
> based exclusively on the Gothic materials apart from any theory of
> its textual history.  Wulfilas' version is, after all, quite literal,
> attempting to render the Greek words consistently whenever possible.
> While admittedly an element of Latin influence may be detected in it,
> there is the question whether this was already present with Wulfilas
> himself (certainly a possibility in Moesia), or whether it is a later
> element due to textual transmission in a Latin environment (Codex
> Argenteus is dated in the sixth century).  But this should be deter-
> mined by textual criticism and not by Germanics scholarship--at least
> not exclusively.
> 
> "The version was begun soon after 341 (if not earlier), when Wulfilas
> came to Byzantium as a member of a Gothic delegation and was consecrated
> 'bishop of the Gothlands' by Bishop Eusebiius of Nicomedia.  Christian-
> ity had already spread among the Goths (brought by Roman Christians
> taken as prisoners of war), but it expanded vigorously in the years
> following.  Although the Christians under Wulfilas were expelled in
> 348 (crossing the Danube into Moesia, where Wulfilas completed his
> version), the triumphal advance of Christianity among the Goths and
> other Germanic tribes could not be checked.
> 
> "For his translation Wulfilas devised a special alphabet of twenty-
> seven letters, two thirds of which were derived from Greek, and the
> rest from Latin and the Old German runes.  Apart from the Gospels
> (in the order Matthew, John, Luke, Mark) and the Pauline letters
> (incomplete), which are preserved in a total of nine manuscripts,
> only about fifty verses from Nehemiah 5-7 have survived of the Gothic
> Bible." [pp. 210-212]
> 
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
> James Roger Black                         jrblack at students.wisc.edu
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------


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