Professor Hugh Houghton, the Director of Birmingham's Institute for Textual Scholarship and Electronic Editing (ITSEE), gave one of the plenary addresses at Pen, Print and Pixels, the first-ever Text and Manuscript conference to be hosted by the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts located in Plano, Texas.
As Principal Investigator of the ERC CATENA Project, Prof. Houghton spoke on "The Importance of Catena Manuscripts of the Greek New Testament". His presentation illustrated how groups of these early commentary manuscripts share similar features in their biblical text, suggesting that it would be valuable to indicate them in scholarly editions. He also participated in the final panel session, addressing a variety of questions from the floor about issues in New Testament textual criticism.
Two other current members of ITSEE also spoke at the conference: Timothy N. Mitchell gave a presentation on "Exposing Textual Corruption in the Wider Circulation of the New Testament Writings During the Greco-Roman Era", while Peter Montoro (in conjunction with Robert Turnbull) addressed the subject of "Two Way Traffic on the Transmissional Highway?: Considering Chrysostom’s Exegesis as an Explanation for the Reading of GA 104 in Romans 2:26".
In addition, three former ITSEE students were selected to give papers. Dr Anna Persig spoke on misunderstandings in the Latin Vulgate text of the Catholic Epistles, Dr Edgar Ebojo identified phenomena associated with the end of the written lines in Papyrus 46, and Dr Grant Edwards presented on ancient book format and the limits of palaeography.
A full write-up of the conference, with further images, is presented on the CSNTM blog.
The Text and Manuscript conference is planned to be a biennial event, intercalating with the Birmingham Colloquium on the Textual Criticism of the New Testament: the thirteenth colloquium will be held in early 2023.
This very enjoyable conference provided a wonderful opportunity to meet up with ITSEE students past and present, as well as colleagues from across the world, and illustrated the importance of Birmingham's ongoing contribution to this field of research.
Prof. Hugh Houghton
