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Greek Manuscript Titles


Enoch

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In looking over my super whiz bang version of Accordance, I took a look at the Greek texts supplied. As far as I looked there were not titles on Matthew, no "Kata Maththaion." I can't believe that all the ancient Greek manuscripts of Matthew had no titles. So I am wondering why the Accordance texts lack the titles in the original language? If all the Greek manuscripts attribute the first gospel to Matthew, that is important. Is it an accident that there are no titles?

 

Thanks for the explanation.

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It appears that none of the Accordance Greek manuscripts have the titles (superscriptions). I wonder if it were an oversight that, for example, you don't find Kata Maththaion at the top of Matthew in Greek. One would think that whatever the ancient manuscript had as a title should be included at the start of the text. Can Accordance add the superscription titles please.

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One would think that whatever the ancient manuscript had as a title should be included at the start of the text.

 

Currently, none of our Bible texts include the title before a particular book (at least that I could see). This could be for a number of reasons, probably the most obvious to me is that it is superfluous.

 

The NT books in our Greek texts are composed from different MSS. If you want to study more about the titles to NT books and how they appear in NT MSS a tool like the CNTTS Apparatus would be a good place to start. Also, a technical commentary like the WBC treats this material. Here are a couple shots as an example (note for the WBC I broke the tied scrolling and went to the intro section on Authorship):

 

post-5629-125596151278_thumb.png

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Actually, where the MS includes the title our MS module does include it. For example, in Vaticanus and Washingtonensis it appears at the end of the book.

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Actually, where the MS includes the title our MS module does include it. For example, in Vaticanus and Washingtonensis it appears at the end of the book.

 

Thanks a lot for your answers. The first answer is of course (please no offense) wrong. The titles are important evidence as to ancient belief about the authorship & thus should not be omitted if a text has them.

 

The second answer was helpful. I note that Accordance Washingtonensis has the title for John (and it does occur at the start of that epistle, as I found by locating a photo of this ms on the internet). I have not yet found photos of V & Aleph to check, but I suppose that Accordance left it off for not having it on the Gospel of John at the start of John.

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Hi Enoch,

 

When I commented about the titles being superfluous, I was coming from a purely technical/logical perspective as relates to Accordance. The print editions of versions of the GNT which correspond to our modules (GNT-T, GNT-TR, GNT-WH, etc.) contain titles for every book. These titles are not included in the actual text of our edition, you are correct. But, they are included in the Accordance interface. To get a purist print-to-module perspective maybe we can discuss including them in Greek before each text as a separate verse reference, i.e. Matt 1.0: κατα μαθθιον (I still personally feel this is superfluous). But, this still speaks nothing of how the titles may or may not be represented in the MSS witnesses. For this you need to consult resources such as those which I previously mentioned.

 

Helen brought up a totally different topic than what I was referring to. In our editions of actual manuscripts (א B D W) titles may be included as she pointed out.

 

I hope this helps to clarify what I meant by "superfluous." :)

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Thanks Rick. I didn't understand you. Yes, you are right; the titles aren't needed on critical, eclectic editions of the Greek NT. Best wishes

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