Text of the Pauline Epistles and Hebrews in Clement of Alexandria
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Date
25/06/2016Author
Gilliland, Maegan Chloe Marie
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Abstract
The primary goal of this research is to produce a text-critical evaluation of the
Pauline Epistles and Hebrews as represented in the writings of Clement of
Alexandria, an early Christian theologian who lived ca. 200 AD. The result of such
an undertaking will be a refined understanding of the transmission of the New
Testament text at the end of the 2nd century, a time period for which we have very
little textual data. Unlike our earliest New Testament manuscripts, the text of the
early Church Fathers is preserved exclusively in later manuscripts. These
manuscripts are often far removed from the original Patristic documents by both
date and location. This results in an added layer of textual complexity for which
the text critic must account, especially in the evaluation of a Church Father’s
citation of New Testament manuscripts. Because of the multivalent nature of the
research, the biblical data extracted from Clement of Alexandria’s writings will
undergo several stages of statistical analysis comparing it to other early Greek New
Testament manuscripts. The resulting data will reveal if the early text of the
Pauline Epistles and Hebrews was stable (controlled) or if it underwent changes
due to scribal additions and subtractions. It will also shed light on the citation
techniques used by Clement of Alexandria, an early Christian reader. The combined
data will allow New Testament scholars to generate a more precise critical edition
of the Greek New Testament and come to a better understanding of how the
earliest Christian communities transmitted the New Testament text.