J.R. Hull Jr., The Story of the New Testament Text: Movers, Materials, Motives, Methods, and Models

Robert Hull Jr.'s book is both informed and informative, providing readers with a narrative history of textual criticism as a discipline, and issuing a summons to a new generation of scholars to join the field.The book would serve as an excellent textbook for an advanced undergraduate or early graduate level course in NT textual criticism, though advanced graduate students would also benefit from its map-like overview of this sometimes arcane area of study.2 Like bookends, the introduction and final five pages (pp.1-6 and 186-191, respectively) articulate the book's goals.Hull intends not only to summarize the field, but also to demonstrate need for future research by charting a course for prospective studies (p.191).To this end, he outlines ten "future tasks" that need attention, from, for example, careful examination of manuscripts along the lines of David Parker's work on Codex Bezae, to further analysis of patristic quotations of scripture, lectionaries, and allusions to the NT in non-continuous sources (inscriptions, amulets, letters, etc.), to the need for creative uses of electronic resources for the editing of texts (pp.189-190).Hull is optimistic that his book can help generate interest among a new crop of researchers (p.191), as it weaves together into one the periodic history of the discipline and the best of its scholarship to provide an "avenue of access" (p.4) for the novice.The book provides a careful, fair, and thoughtful summation of the field.3 It is also innovative.Chapters 2-9 are all structured mnemonically around themes: movers, materials, motives, methods, and models."Movers" are the protagonists in the story of text criticism, from pioneers to contemporary scholars."Materials" address the textual witnesses, including how they were discovered and collated."Motives" state the goals of text criticism (e.g.questing after an "original text", and debating the usefulness of such a quest)."Methods" deal with methodology, especially parsing the kinds of eclecticisms text critics employ.Lastly, "models" are the intermittent landmark studies that have advanced the discipline (pp.4-5).The categories are like lenses through which the goals, methods, tools, and discoveries are filtered to allow the reader a panoramic view of the field, while gathering a sufficient glimpse of its detail.To assist the reader along the way, block summaries and charts are provided that outline the most influential manuscripts, methods, and people (pp.16, 43, 51, 81, 118, 121, 124).There is also a glossary of terms at the beginning (pp.xiii-xiv), a thorough bibliography at the end (pp.193-215), and mostly in-text citations instead of extensive footnoting in between. 4Each chapter juxtaposes key contributors with the manuscripts discovered in the era in which they lived.Moving chronologically, ch. 2 ("The Precritical Age") discusses the period from Origen and Jerome to Erasmus, highlighting historical exigencies like Diocletian's belligerence toward early Christian texts and the resulting diminution of available manuscripts, Constantine's request for fifty copies of the scriptures and the resulting professionalization of copying, and the printing press as game-changer.Hull introduces the reader to the early versions and patristic citations of scripture, and underscores the shift from Latin to Greek as a "catalyst" for modern textual criticism (p.38), exemplified in the Complutensian Polyglot and Erasmus' multiple editions of the Greek NT.5Ch. 3 ("The Age of Collecting, Collating, and Classifying") covers the two hundred years from Robert Stephanus and Theodore Beza to Johann Albrecht Bengel and Johann Salomo Semler.Each contribution from such "movers" is conveniently accessible and instructional.The discussion of Bengel, for example, includes his alpha to epsilon grading scale for marginal readings, his articulation of text critical rules of thumb (e.g.weighing manuscripts takes priority over counting them; the harder reading is preferred), and his deduction that