BIBLIA HEBRAICA ET GRAECA

BIBLIA GRAECA

BIBLIA GRAECA 

Preface

In the Holy Scripture we would not seek thoughts of a writer, but the holy will of God. His will is not found by the human efforts, but was revealed often entirely regardless of the accepting attitude of its hearers or readers or too far ahead of it. Such a will of God is written precisely in the Holy Scripture. As a light in the darkness, its value has been enlightened also in other degree than that showed in the reductionism of the liberal arts. All truths involved in the written Word of God is referred to the developed values of the after-created, high-advanced autonomous system made of the divine skill.  Even the free will of all creatures within it is only a form of the divine grace which is from the beginning ever poured by the mighty power of God. The imperative relation between God and the created world means a metonymic illustration of his continued process of history.
  It was, therefore, necessary that God picked certain human languages for the everlasting pictures of his revelation, as they must be well articulated and developed to a good degree for the clear understanding of the future humanity. They are justly Hebrew and Greek. Of course, Hebrew, as the editor proved,  came to pass in the circumstance of very restricted, but in culture complex well-advanced period of the ancient Egypt, since which time many daily languages appeared in all history have been never more advanced. In contrast with Hebrew reformed by the old Egyptian, Greek have been in buildup of abstracted terms so much articulated as all ideas of human thoughts in history involved within it. The proclaimed revelation of God now remains written mostly by two high-advanced languages. All so written and collected scriptures of divine inspiration has undergone the turbulent criticism through all history, but remained nevertheless the Word of God.

  Our 'Scriptura Sacra' or 'Biblia Hebraica et Graeca' was attempted to return to the contemporary features of the original texts, retroactively in order to read the purest texts in all points. Although this 'Veteris Testamenti Biblia Sacra' depends upon the Leningrad Codex in its foundation, it was collated by old papyri of LXX, NT, and Qumran materials. The vowel signs of letters and Masoretic notes are omitted for readers to find some intrinsic features of the original texts. The original pronunciations may be now recovered by their high-creative studies on the old Semitic languages (Eblaitic, Old Akkadian, Ugaritic languages etc.).

  For the 'Biblia Graeca' or 'Novum Testamentum e Graeco', a new edition was inevitably requested, because many preceding editions did not reflect the recent results of studies on early biblical papyri, and above all have a number of errors on real features of the biblical papyri. Recently more by the new dating of many biblical papyri, had all texts of the New Testament to be updated and corrected. The revolutionary rediscovery of the early biblical papyri assigned to before the middle of 2nd century AD. made apparently either the alternative or some variance of texts disappeared. Thus, the so-called apparatus of texts became lost almost the explicit meaning for its insert into this edition. The dating of early biblical papyri of the New Testament may be properly assigned as follows:1)

P46(Corpus Paulinum): late 1st century before the reign of the Emperor                                  Domitian  (81¡­96 AD)
P5(Johannes-Evangelium): nearby end of 1st century or beginning of 2nd                                  century.
P104(Matthaeus-Evangelium): closing decades of 1st  century or early                                  2nd century
P69(Lucas-Evangelium + Act. Apostolorum ?):  a certain  time from the                                   end of  1st century until the middle of 2nd century
P53(Matthaeus-Evangelium + Act. Apostolorum): early 2nd century
P103(Matthaeus-Evangelium): the reign of the Emperor Hadrian or a little after
P77(Matthaeus-Evangelium): early 2nd century or the middle of 2nd century  
P87(Corpus Paulinum): early 2nd century
P32(Corpus Paulinum): early 2nd century
P45(Quatuor Evangeliorum  cum Act. Apostoloum ): the middle of 2nd century or  a little after the middle of 2nd century
P98(Johannes-Apocalypsis): 2nd century
P47(Johannes-Apocalypsis): late 2nd century2)
P90(Johannes-Evangelium): late 2nd century
P52(Johannes-Evangelium): last quarter of 2nd century
P29(Act. Apostolorum + Lucas-Evangelium ?):  a closing time of 2nd century

  Above all, P46 well reflects the typical orthography of the early Roman period, especially that of the reign period of the Emperors,  Tiberius and Tiberius Claudius. But in spite of such a sufficient evidence about the original text, P46 does not mean the original text of the Apostle Paul, because there is a calligraphical omission ( Gal. 1:11) which occurs as a less than frequent custom3) in the rapid copies. This editor suggests this omission already existed in the 'Vorlage' of our copy or occurred in the process copied acutely.

  In general, as proved not often in the copies of the reign period of the Roman Emperor Tiberius or Claudius, there is a possibility of the orthographic changes, already when a publisher exhibits letters publicly () for many readers being unable to hear reading aloud in a place. By a unpublished paper of this editor was demonstrated that the orthography (itacism, iota adscriptum etc.) has indicated no regional or periodic feature of characters, but a personal feature in due form.4) The alternative of the orthographic usage is often proved even in the same document of a writing scribe or by corrections of the same scribe. Therefore, the purest orthography of New Testament writers would be confirmed merely by the discovery of their original texts. Nevertheless, P46 reflects  such a orthographic feature of the middle of 1st century AD, at least uniquely approaching near to the original texts.

  This edition follows the common orthographic features of the early 1st century AD. Because iota adscriptum was well attested by P45, a general rule about it was applied to our edition. But in P45, the iota adscriptum after the verbal suffix of the 1st single person (for example, ), which is a decisive proof of the reign of Augutus or Tiberius, is not attested. Nevertheless, its keeping of the significant orthography () similar to the normal orthography ( )5) of the 1st century AD points out that P45 bears the original features of texts.

  For this edition especially, every word is marked by spaces in order to establish the future systematic database. The division space between words, of course, is found very  rarely.6)  But the beginning with the complete syllables of a word and ending at such a word in every line is observed frequently in many literary papyri. As far as the alignment of texts concerned, the normal rule of the early Roman period as shown in the Herculaneum papyri7) was on the whole considered for this edition. The system of paragraphs and coronis used in this edition is closely agreed with those used in early literary papyri. The picture of colonis would be earlier than that of the first century AD. Other critical signs usually used by modern editors of papyri were held  not available to this edition, because they were not identified in reading of the general literary papyri except the lectional signs (trema or diairesis, apostrophe, diastole, accents - acute, grave, circumflex, breathing - mostly the rough breathing, ancora mark for the omitted passage etc.) seen in the scholarly reading or schoolboy exercises. The stichometric notes were also omitted in this edition. The order of  letters of the Apostle Paul in this edition was changed according to that in P46 and P13, by which the so-called blasphemous problem concerning the anonymous author in the canonical scripture of divine inspiration was at first overturned.

  This edition is fulfilled by the efforts of the Rev. Sung-Ki Min, the Rev. Sung-Chan Lim, the Rev. Ji-Soo Jung, N. - N, Mr. Hyun-Ju Bai, Lic. Nam-Kyu Lee, Mr. Ho-Seok Eom. All texts, at first typewritten by Mr. Jin Hahn in Goettingen, Germany, were transcribed into the new fonts by them. According to the applied rule of the editor, many texts and orthographic spellings were also corrected by their hands.

  Our warm thanks go to the Nampo Church, Sung-Shim Church, Hwa-Pyung Church, Tulip Presbyterian Church, the members of Board of Trustee, and many life-members of our institute for support and comfort.

January 03, 2001
                     Rev. Young-Kyu Kim,  Chief Editor
Members of the Editorial Board:                          
                     N. - N       
                     Rev. Prof. Dr. Byung-Soo Cho      

2) P47 appears to be of considerably early date, especially in the last stroke of  the Eta, the second stroke of the Upsilon and the first,  strongly rounded stroke of the Tau (see l.13, f.10r; l.3, f.7r). The Beta, giving an impression of the late 2nd century, is still found in PSI VII 1285 (ca. the reign of Domitian or Trajan), P. Bremer 5 (AD 117-119) and P.Oxy. XLVI 3279 (AD 148/9). For the editor's dating, consider B.M.Pap. 131 (the second hand, terminus post quem AD 78/9), P.Oxy. II, 211 (until the reign of Trajan), P. Oxy. II, 270 (AD 94), P. Oxy. VI 853 (terminus ad quem AD 131/2), P. Berlin 11634 (terminus ad quem AD 168/9), P. Florence I 61 (AD 85), P. Princeton 147 (AD 87/88), P.Oxy. Inv 30 4 B 35/L [1-2] a (AD 87/8), P.Heid. IV 327 (AD 99 !!), P. Merton 13 (AD 98-102), P.Mich. Inv. 3164 (AD 141), P.Gand Inv.(= SB III 6951, terminus post quem AD 142-4), P.Berol 6849 (= P.Gr.Berol 24, AD 148), BGU XIII, 2229 (AD 152/3), P. Gen II 106 (AD 153/4), P.Heid. IV 319 (AD 162).  P47 is  apparently earlier than P27, which the ed. prin. held to be in an hand 'of much the same characters' as P20. But these show no exact resemblance. The similar styles to be compared to P27 are widely observed: P.Ryl.  II 154 (AD 66), P. Mich. Inv. 4719 (AD 81-96), P. Gr. Berol. 22a (AD 119), PSI V 446 (AD 133-136), P. Oxy. III 473 (AD 138-160), P. Wisconsin II 81 (AD 143), BGU XIII, 2229 (AD 152/3), P.Tebt. Tait 46 (terminus post quem AD 159), P. Mich. 532 (AD 181/2), P. Oxy. XLII 3076 (AD 225).  P27 may be assigned rather to the second century than the early 3rd century.

3) For example, cf. , in the published epistle of the Emperor Claudius (AD 41) (H. I. Bell, Jews and Christians in Egypt, Westport 1972, 2¡­3, l.64).

4) Cf. Young-Kyu Kim, On Orthography of the Early 1st Century as it Occurs in the Documents of Tryphon Family (AD 20¡­59), 1991 (written in Korean).

5) Cf. Henry A. Steen, 'Les Clich s  pistolaires dans les Lettres  sur Papyrus Grecques', Classica et Mediaevalia I, 1938, 142-143.

6) About examples of the 1st century. cf. E.G. Turner & P.J. Parsons, Greek Manuscripts of the Ancient World, Bulletin Supplement 46, London 1987, introduction 7, note 28.

7) See plates in: G. Cavallo, Libri scritture scribi a Ercolano, a Supplement of Cronache Ercolanesi, 13/1983. But there is highly some doubt about his dating of a few papyri assigned to the IIIrd century B.C.