[B-Greek] Christian chumash?
Curtis Hinson
curtis at curtishinson.com
Tue Aug 16 11:24:06 EDT 2005
I have been discussing this idea with someone and I would like to see it
done or know if it exists.
As far as I've been able to tell, there is no true Christian equivilant
of the chumashim. Why not have a type of Synopsis Quattor with a line
or two of the Greek text of, say, Mark at the top, and around it use the
other gospels as commentary. Different volumes could do the same thing
with other synoptic priorities I suppose. Now where you'd find talmudic
commentary in a Chumash, you could have NT commentary, early fathers,
and modern commentators. Where you'd find the targum, one could have
related LXX texts and Peshitta. There should be a standard format used,
and each gospel should get its own font, its own personality so to speak.
Of course it would be nice to have the same sort of format for the
entire NT: texts commenting on each other, related versions, and
external commentary showing opposing or varying points of view. This
sort of literature emphasizes the diversity and personalities of the
texts in the NT anthology. The idea is not to harmonize texts that
don't harmonize, but to give each its own voice and personality, and
also to juxtapose different opinions rather than distilling scholarship
into one opinion, or presenting one option as the correct one.
The closest thing to this I've run into is Alford's Greek New
Testament. Alford had a 6-volume set. Each page has a few lines of
critical text. Next to that are canon references and cross-references.
Under this is his apparatus. This app is interesting because it often
notes interesting anomalies in particular manuscripts you might not
ordinarily pick up in an app. Then Alford writes his own commentary
where he quotes and reacts to other major scholarship and presents some
different interpretive options. I am proud to own Alford but I really
wonder why it hasn't been updated, or why I haven't seen similiar recent
works.
Bless the Name
Curtis
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