Kilpatrick and UBS2

From: Edward Hobbs (EHOBBS@wellesley.edu)
Date: Fri Sep 15 1995 - 19:02:00 EDT


Vincent Broman asked whether Kilpatrick had been involved with the editing of
UBS2. The answer is an emphatic NO -- Kilpatrick was appalled by the
successive editions of UBS GNT. Twice I arranged for him to come to Berkeley
for scholarly discussion(s) and for his (and his wife's) refreshment.
We discussed textual criticism almost constantly, and he argued for his
position quite passionately. During the last of these visits, I convened
the 32nd Colloquy of the Center for Hermeneutical Studies, based on a
paper Kilpatrick produced for us. I retitled the paper (and the Colloquy
itself) "A Textus Receptus Redivivus?" (aimed at the UBS, editions 1, 2,
and 3). In JBL, 1966, he had reviewed the first edition. Thirty-one
participants were present, including six students and George's wife Marion.
The paper was published before the Colloquy, together with five Critiques
of Kilpatrick's paper; the Colloquy itself took off from this published
material, sent to all participants a few weeks earlier. One of the
Critiques was written by Allen Wikgren (Chicago, Emeritus) who was on
the UBS committee (and. according to a letter he wrote to me, was
progressively through each edition outvoted by Metzger and his allies),
and another by Jim Royse, who was writing a dissertation on the habits
of scribes (I was one of his advisors) and was at the time professor of
philosophy at San Francisco State University; Eldon Epp also wrote
a Critique, as did Charles Murgia, then-chair of Classics at U.C.-Berkeley.
        The discussion is summarized in the Protocol, for those who are
interested. Most of my private discussions with Kilpatrick are not
reflected in the Colloquy, of course. George was planning (by that time,
probably almost a pipe-dream) to produce his own edition of the NT.
He WAS the editor of the BFBS Second Edition (H KAINH DIAQHKH), 1958
and later printings. This was done in a beautiful type-face (the one
BFBS always used in the old days; I "grew up" on the First Edition of
1904, since Nestle was not available from Germany during WW-II). But the
text itself did not really reflect Kilpatrick's own views, and he hoped
to get out a text which did. Of course the UBS decision to combine
resources to print a cheap/universal text ended his hopes.

        I have spoken here of some of my own links to Kilpatrick; but
in fact Carlton Winbery (who is quite plainly on this List) spent a
year with him at Oxford, and I am sure can tell far more than I can
of his views as privately expressed.
        Incidentally, he was opposed to the use of final sigma, since it
begs the question of how to divide words, and of course was not in the
original MSS. I finally saw the good sense in this position; but final
sigma is such a pretty letter that I really would hate to give it up.
After all, if we had given up final "s" in English, our "s"'s would still
look almost like "f"'s!

Edward Hobbs



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