This book is a presentation of transcriptions of all those mss, papyrus and parchment, which the editors deem to have been produced before the fourth century.It generated a certain amount of interest in the files of the TC-list.In order to avoid any prejudice, I avoided studying the correspondence until I had completed my own survey.I turned to it after my own examination, and shall deal with the principal issues at the end of this review.Sundry footnotes dealing with points from the list were added later. General Description, Selection of Witnesses and Identification of Mss2. The contents of the book include a list of the manuscripts in their canonical order, so that one may see which are extant in any given portion; an introduction with bibliography; transcriptions of 55 mss, each with an introduction; plates of 41 of them; and an index of names.While we are on the subject of names, I shall refer to this book by the first editor alone since, in spite of the two names on the title page, the Acknowledgements and the introductory material to each ms are generally written in the first person singular (e.g., 'My studies ' p.494, 'My opinion ' p.599), although 'we' is also found in the first part of the introduction.3. The volume describes itself as providing the 'complete text of the earliest New Testament manuscripts' .The first question is therefore one of selection.
D. C. Parker (Fri,) studied this question.