Errors in CNTTS

[Mark Dubis]

I am just beginning to use the CNTTS in earnest and have found some significant errors in it. Yesterday I was working on 1 Peter 1:15-16 and encountered the following:

 

(1) The CNTTS gives incomplete and therefore misleading information re: the Aland categories in the Instant Details window. For example, if one compares the CNTTS data to the Aland descriptions in their _Text of the New Testament_, one finds that the CNTTS (a) labels 1 (f1) as category III, but fails to mention that it is category V outside of the Gospels (such as 1 Peter), ( labels 69 (f13) as category III, but fails to mention that it is category V outside of Paul (such as 1 Peter), © labels P025 as category V in Acts and Revelation and as category III in Paul, but fails to mention that it is category III in the Catholics (such as 1 Peter). All of these problems dramatically impact my ability to use the CNTTS categorizations in my 1 Peter research since these omissions are all directly related to the Catholics.

 

(2) The CNTTS contradicts itself. In 1 Peter 1:16-2, it lists the hoti after gegraptai as being both included and omitted by Sinaiticus.

 

(3) The CNTTS omits data included in the NA27 apparatus. The CNTTS makes no mention of papyrus 72 which supports the omission of the hoti after gegraptai as well as other textual variants in this verse.

 

(4) The CNTTS contradicts info in the NA27 apparatus. For example, the CNTTS says that both C and P include the hoti after gegraptai, but the NA27 says that C and P omit this hoti.

 

Here is my question. Have others encountered these kind of problems elsewhere? In other words, is the CNTTS generally unreliable or did I just happen to hit upon a bad collation of the data? Obviously, the presentation of Aland categories are unreliable more broadly than just 1 Peter 1 (and this is a serious problem in and of itself), but what about the collations?

[Helen Brown]

Mark:

 

It would be good to update your CNTTS to the current edition (the CD is just $10, and it now includes the Gospels, Acts, Hebrews, and the General Epistles) before posting the errors you found. It is a work in progress, and I am sure that the editors will be glad to receive any comments and correct any errors for the next rev.

 

I do not have either time today, nor the skill to evaluate your comments in detail, but I do urge you to upgrade before criticizing an old edition.

[Mark Dubis]

Helen,

 

I would indeed like to upgrade. I assumed that the upgrade was primarily expanding the module to other NT books, but if the upgrade also includes revisions to address the kinds of errors I pointed to, I would be very interested to learn that. In the meantime, if there are other users who have the newest version, I would be interested to learn of their assessments.

 

Mark Dubis

[Bill Warren]

Mark, thanks for your post on this. One facet of what you mentioned simply escaped us: revising the ms descriptions with regard to the Aland categories for some of the ones like family 1, 13, etc., outside of the Gospels. We'll get on that and put out a revision before long. I really appreciate you bringing that to our attention.

 

On P72, we will be including it in the future for 1 Peter, but have not inserted it into the module so far, thus the lack of reference to it. I know that's a major omission, so we will be including it in the near future.

 

On the variant at 1 Peter 1:16-2, I've made the correction that happened as we worked in the after math of Katrina and had some editing and file problems. Our collations are correct, but our data entry was not when we decided to combine two variation units. Please feel free to send us any matters like this. While there is no excuse for such errors in one sense, to be honest the post-Katrina period when we were trying to finish the General Epistles as well as make corrections on the Gospels was tremendous trying as we lost workers, had people displaced from the Center to various states, and tried to do the editing via e-mails, etc. We are still recovering, needless to say. That is simply to state that we're trying to correct some entry problems that we had from that period. We are presently working on a thorough revision of the Gospels, Acts, and General Epistles, with more data included as well. Thankfully we only lost a small portion of our collation data, but even that represented months of work.

 

On the Nestle-Aland question, we are also comparing our results to that apparatus at this stage. For example, in Hebrews we found about a dozen places where N-A was wrong (we've already finished that comparison for Hebrews, so we have that data and have compared the differences in the collations/apparatus data with the manuscripts to be sure as to who was correct.). On the other hand, we were wrong in about the same number of places in Hebrews (actually about 15 for our data). At this point, I would think that our Hebrews data is actually better than the N-A data since those updates are in the newest release of the apparatus.

 

All of this is to say that we need the feedback and are actively working (will be back full-strength on staffing in August, which is great in our post-Katrina world of New Orleans) on corrections, etc. Thanks again for your input.

 

Bill Warren, Director

Center for New Testament Textual Studies

Landrum P. Leavell, II, Professor of New Testament

New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary