CATENA

This research project, funded by a £1.75m European Research Council (ERC) consolidator grant between 2018–24, undertook groundbreaking research into collections of commentaries on early New Testament texts.

It investigated ‘catenae’, collections of commentaries that were written alongside New Testament texts written in Greek. These collections were first compiled in the fifth or sixth century and they contain some of the most significant reflections on these texts.

The project will have a direct impact on editions of the Greek New Testament, providing a new understanding of its textual transmission and reception, and will lead to broader insights into their history and culture.

Until the invention of printing, catenae were the main way people encountered both the text and interpretation of the Greek New Testament. The number of known copies increased by 20% after a survey undertaken at the University's Institute of Textual Scholarship and Electronic Editing (ITSEE) in 2016 uncovered an extra 100, and just three months into the project, the CATENA project identified a further 50 manuscripts.

Recent research has shown that this type of witness is more important than previously thought in the transmission of the New Testament, with the biblical text of catena manuscripts occupying significant positions in the textual flow of the Greek New Testament and in some cases in the first rank of witnesses descended from the Initial Text.

The project team used digital tools to undertake the most thorough analysis of the manuscripts ever carried out. It produced the first ever catalogue of Catena Manuscripts of the Greek New Testament, with a digital counterpart, and identified twenty-three new types of catena. Detailed studies of the catenae on the Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles and the Epistle to the Romans provided new insights into the text and development of these traditions.

This page records the activity of the project across its duration, bringing together outputs and findings as they appeared.

The project released its first checklist of Greek New Testament manuscripts which contain commentary on the biblical text on the University of Birmingham ePapers repository in August 2018. This comprises 646 items in the form of an Excel spreadsheet, including 50 new witnesses not included in the preliminary checklist published in 2016. The checklist was superseded in May 2021 by the published Catalogue of Greek New Testament Catena Manuscripts and the online searchable Database of Catena Manuscripts.

The project identified four new manuscript witnesses to the Greek New Testament held by the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate in Alexandria. One of them is a tenth-century gospel catena manuscript, which has been allocated the number GA 2937. The others are three lectionaries, copied between the tenth and sixteenth century, which have been added to the Kurzgefasste Liste as L2477, L2478 and L2479. News of the discovery was released on the NT.VMR blog in April 2019. A full description of the manuscripts, with illustrations, has been published in the Journal of Theological Studies (2020). In total, the work of Dr Georgi Parpulov has added thirty-one manuscripts in the Kurzgefasste Liste of Greek New Testament manuscripts. The GA numbers of the new entries are as follows: 2945, 2947, 2948, 2949, 2950, 2951, 2952, 2961, 2962, 2963, 2964, 2965, 2966, 2975, 2977, 2978, 2979, 2981, 2983, 2984, 2985, 2986, 2987, 2988, 2989, 2993, 2994, 2995, 2997, 2998, 2999. Further details are given in the Catalogue of Greek New Testament Catena Manuscripts (2021) and the Database of Catena Manuscripts. Dr Parpulov also identified the following pairs of witnesses as coming from the same manuscript: GA 640 and 1862; GA 2011 and 2968; GA 2205 and 2659; GA 2764 and 2936; GA L954 and L2361. He found a new fragment of GA L1586. We are grateful to Dr Greg Paulson of the INTF for ratifying these discoveries and including them in the online Kurzgefasste Liste.

The project's research identified twenty-three previously-unknown types of catenae on the New Testament. The majority of these have come from work towards the catalogue of catena manuscripts. The new types have been registered in the online version of the Clavis Patrum Graecorum, the Brepols Clavis Clavium (Open Access). The new types (some of which are the subject of project publications) are as follows:

• Gospel of Matthew: C116.4, C119.1, C119.2, C119.3
• Gospel of Mark: C126.7, C126.8
• Gospel of Luke: C137.7, C137.8, C137.8, C137.10, C139.1, C139.2
• Gospel of John: C147.8, C147.9
• Acts of the Apostles: C155.1, C155.2, C155.3, C155.4, C155.5, C155.6, C156
• Pauline Epistles: C169.1 (see Parpulov, Byzantine Review, 2020).
• Catholic Epistles: C182.1

The project would like to thank Dr Bram Roosen of Brepols Publishers for his assistance with these entries. The CATENA project has also updated the Clavis Clavium sigla for Catenae on the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles, following its new research.

In summer 2019, the Principal Investigator of the CATENA project teamed up with the ERC PLATINUM project to produce an edition of Latin Christian papyri. This led to the identification of the earliest known witness to two works of Augustine in a sixth-century manuscript which was later palimpsested and found in the Cairo Genizah at the end of the nineteenth century. It is now held in Cambridge University Library. An edition of these texts was published in the 2019 volume of the journal Sacris Erudiri.

The project held a consultation on catenae at the University of Birmingham's Brussels office in February 2020. In addition to the project team, twenty experts from Belgium, France and Germany attended to discuss the current state of the question in the study of catena manuscripts. A smaller workshop on manuscript layout was held in Birmingham in March 2022, papers from which have been published as a special section of the Journal of Biblical Textual Criticism.

The first two books from the project were published in summer 2020. These are a monograph by Dr Panagiotis Manafis on collections of Greek historical extracts: (Re)writing History in Byzantium. A Critical Study of Collections of Historical Excerpts (Routledge, 2020), and a printed edition of the Greek text of the catena in Codex Zacynthius with an English translation, The Palimpsest Catena of Codex Zacynthius: Text and Translation (Gorgias Press, 2020).

The three doctoral projects involve an examination of the Pseudo-Oecumenian Catena on Romans (Jacopo Marcon), an analysis of witnesses to unique forms of the Catena on Acts (Emanuele Scieri), and a study of the development of Gospel Catenae (Andrew Patton). In December 2021, both Emanuele and Andrew published articles in leading journals with new findings from their research. Andrew's article was awarded the Michael K. O'Rourke publication prize in 2022. Jacopo had a successful doctoral viva in December 2022, followed by Andrew in November 2023 and Emanuele in February 2024.

The CATENA project has also been contributing to the bank of transcriptions of Greek manuscripts of the Pauline Epistles hosted by the International Greek New Testament Project at www.epistulae.org. In November 2021, an initial apparatus of over 200 Greek manuscripts of Galatians (prepared by Hugh Houghton with Catherine Smith and Amy Myshrall) was released, which includes the biblical text from 60 catena manuscripts. In May 2023, the project completed its release of 164 proofread transcriptions of the Epistle to the Romans. An initial apparatus of 131 Greek manuscripts of Ephesians was released in January 2024 (with 23 catenae), followed by an initial apparatus of 152 Greek manuscripts of Romans in April 2024 (with 38 catenae). All the project's data has been made available through the University of Birmingham's eData repository.

The project's work on the importance of catenae for the text of the New Testament has been presented at numerous conferences. Four team members presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature 2022 in Denver, while Prof. Houghton gave a keynote address at the inaugural Text and Manuscript conference in Texas in May 2022. The project hosted a conference at Birmingham from 15–17 May 2023 focussing on catenae and other biblical marginalia, to an international audience both in person and online. All of the presentations are available on a YouTube playlist, including Prof. Houghton's paper on the goals and achievements of the CATENA project.

The project's comparison of the Coherence-Based Genealogical Method with an analysis of the same collation of New Testament witnesses using phylogenetic algorithms has led to the identification of three direct copies of surviving manuscripts of the Pauline Epistles. Prior to this, only eighteen direct copies had been identified in this tradition. The new findings provide fresh material for the study of manuscript production and scribal habits. An interface for generating phylogenetic trees was developed as part of the project, and applied to all of the apparatuses produced during its course.

Further books produced by the project include a collection of papers on New Testament fragments (March 2023), and an edition of exegetical scholia on the Gospel according to Luke which are only attested in individual manuscripts (February 2024).

Complete details of all outputs are available on a page dedicated to project publications, with links to open access downloads.

The project concluded in May 2024.

The following people were employed on the CATENA project:
Principal Investigator: Prof. Hugh Houghton
Research Fellows: Dr Panagiotis Manafis, Dr Amy Myshrall, Dr Georgi Parpulov, Dr Catherine Smith
Doctoral Students: Jacopo Marcon, Andrew Patton, Emanuele Scieri
Administration: Dr Megan Davies
Additional programming: Dr Andrew Edmondson, Liam Carrington
Transcribers: Clark Bates, Gavrill-Ioannis Boutziopoulos, Maria Chatzistefanou, Aikaterini Chelioti, Chiara Coppola, Vasiliki Kafourou, Panagiota Mantouvalou, Dimitra Maravelaki, Duane McCrory, Peter Montoro, Anna Persig, Maria Ester Portokali, Thomas Ruston, Anna Shirav, Zachary Skarka, Christine Thompson, Ioannis Tzianis, Flavia Vanni, Dr Alison Welsby.

Principal Investigator: Professor Hugh Houghton

CATENA team

• Dr Amy Myshrall - Research Fellow
• Dr Catherine Smith - Research Fellow and Technical Officer
• Dr Andrew Edmondson - Research Software Group Leader

Books

• Panagiotis Manafis, (Re)writing History in Byzantium. A Critical Study of Collections of Historical Excerpts. Abingdon: Routledge, 2020. ISBN 978-0-3673-6730-5. 330pp. Also published as Open Access e-book.
• H.A.G. Houghton, Panagiotis Manafis and Amy Myshrall (ed.), The Palimpsest Catena of Codex Zacynthius: Text and Translation (T&S 3.22). Piscataway NJ: Gorgias, 2020. ISBN: 978-1-4632-4105-6. 440pp. Open Access
• Georgi R. Parpulov, Catena Manuscripts of the Greek New Testament. A Catalogue. (T&S 3.25). Piscataway NJ: Gorgias, 2021. ISBN: 978-1-4632-4260-2. 228pp. Open Access
• Clark R. Bates, Jacopo Marcon, Andrew J. Patton, Emanuele Scieri (ed.), That Nothing May Be Lost: Fragments and the New Testament Text. Papers from the Twelfth Birmingham Colloquium on the Textual Criticism of the New Testament (T&S 3.29). Piscataway NJ: Gorgias, 2022. ISBN: 978-1-4632-4367-8. 294pp. Open Access
• Panagiotis Manafis, Exegesis of the Gospel of Luke: Codices Singuli and Catena C139.1. (TU 194). Berlin & New York: De Gruyter, 2024. ISBN: 978-3-1113-2511-8. 318pp. Open Access.

Journal sections

• Andrew J. Patton and Clark R. Bates (ed.), Special Feature: Decentralizing the Biblical Text in Greek New Testament Manuscripts. TC: A Journal of Biblical Textual Criticism 28 (2023) 127–206. Open Access.

Peer-reviewed articles and book chapters

• G.R. Parpulov, “Κr in the Gospels” in H.A.G. Houghton, David C. Parker and Holger Strutwolf (ed.), The New Testament in Antiquity and Byzantium: Traditional and Digital Approaches to its Texts and Editing: A Festschrift for Klaus Wachtel (ANTF 52). Berlin & New York: De Gruyter, 2019 (pp. 203–13).
• H.A.G. Houghton, “An Initial Selection of Manuscripts for the Editio Critica Maior of the Pauline Epistles,” in H.A.G. Houghton, David C. Parker and Holger Strutwolf (ed.), The New Testament in Antiquity and Byzantium: Traditional and Digital Approaches to its Texts and Editing: A Festschrift for Klaus Wachtel (ANTF 52). Berlin & New York: De Gruyter, 2019 (pp. 343–59).
• H.A.G. Houghton, “New Identifications Among the Sixth-Century Fragments of Augustine in Cambridge University Library,” Sacris Erudiri 58 (2019) 171–81.
• H.A.G. Houghton and Mina Monier, “Greek Manuscripts in Alexandria,” Journal of Theological Studies ns 71.1 (2020) 119–133.
• H.A.G. Houghton, “The Layout and Structure of the Catena,” in H.A.G. Houghton and D.C. Parker (ed.), Codex Zacynthius: Catena, Lectionary, Palimpsest. (T&S 3.21). Piscataway NJ: Gorgias, 2020 (pp. 57–88). Open Access
• Panagiotis Manafis, “Catenae on Luke and the Catena of Codex Zacynthius,” in H.A.G. Houghton and D.C. Parker (ed.), Codex Zacynthius: Catena, Lectionary, Palimpsest. (T&S 3.21). Piscataway NJ: Gorgias, 2020 (pp. 127–158). Open Access
• Georgi Parpulov, “An Unknown Catena on the Pauline Epistles,” The Byzantine Review 2 (2020) 9–16.
• Panagiotis Manafis and Georgi Parpulov, “A Chapter from the History of Catenae: CPG C111–C112, and Their Previously Unknown Ancestor,” Parekbolai 11 (2021) 159–170.
• Georgi Parpulov, “Some New Patristic Scholia on the Gospel of Matthew,” Adamantius 27 (2021) 392–395.
• Emanuele Scieri, “The Catena Manuscripts on Acts: A Revised Classification,” Vigiliae Christianae 76.1 (2022) 281–305.
• Andrew J. Patton, “Greek Catenae and the 'Western' Order of the Gospels,” Novum Testamentum 64.1 (2022) 115–129.
• Panagiotis Manafis, “A New Witness to the Catena of Codex Zacynthius,” Zeitschrift für Antikes Christentum 26.3 (2022) 371–401.
• Jacopo Marcon, “A Missing Link in the Chain: A Neglected Fragmentary Manuscript of the Ps. Oecumenian Catena on Romans (Oxford, Bodleian Library, Auct. T.1.7 [Misc. 185]) (GA 2962),” in Clark R. Bates, Jacopo Marcon, Andrew J. Patton, Emanuele Scieri (ed.), That Nothing May Be Lost: Fragments and the New Testament Text. Papers from the Twelfth Birmingham Colloquium on the Textual Criticism of the New Testament (T&S 3.29). Piscataway NJ: Gorgias, 2022, 187–214. Open Access
• Emanuele Scieri, “Exegetical Fragments: Observations on the Catenae on Acts in Vatican, BAV, Reg. gr. 6 (GA 886),” in Clark R. Bates, Jacopo Marcon, Andrew J. Patton, Emanuele Scieri (ed.), That Nothing May Be Lost: Fragments and the New Testament Text. Papers from the Twelfth Birmingham Colloquium on the Textual Criticism of the New Testament (T&S 3.29). Piscataway NJ: Gorgias, 2022, 215–240. Open Access
• H.A.G. Houghton, “Unfinished Business: The Ending of Mark in Two Catena Manuscripts,” New Testament Studies 69.1 (2023) 35–42.
• H.A.G. Houghton and A.C. Myshrall, “Three Direct Copies and Other Closely Related Manuscripts of the Pauline Epistles,” Novum Testamentum 65.3 (2023) 381–399.
• Andrew J. Patton, “Unchaining the Scriptures,” TC: A Journal of Biblical Textual Criticism 28 (2023) 131–148.
• Andrew J. Patton, “Direct Copying in a Group of Gospel Manuscripts with Catenae,” New Testament Studies 69.4 (2023) 445–461.
• H.A.G. Houghton, “Catena Manuscripts in the Editio Critica Maior of the Greek New Testament,” in Daniel B. Wallace, David Flood, Elijah Hixson and Denis Salgado (ed.), Pen, Print, and Pixels. Advances in Textual Criticism in the Digital Era. Peabody MA: Hendrickson, 2023, 3–31. Preprint.
• Andrew J. Patton, “A Disordered Genealogy and a New Family of Greek New Testament Manuscripts,” Novum Testamentum 66.3 (2024) 402–422.

Online datasets

• Database of Greek New Testament Catena Manuscripts (Open Access; released May 2021). Dataset deposited at https://doi.org/10.25500/edata.bham.00001105.
  
• A Collation of the Greek Manuscripts Selected for the Editio Critica Maior of the Epistle to the Galatians, edited by H.A.G. Houghton with A.C. Myshrall and C.J. Smith (Open Access; released November 2021). Dataset deposited at https://doi.org/10.25500/edata.bham.00001108 (including phylogenetic data).
  
• Jacopo Marcon, Transcriptions and Synopsis of Selected Witnesses for the Pseudo-Oecumenian Catena on Romans (Open Access; released September 2022). Dataset deposited at https://doi.org/10.25500/edata.bham.00001097.
• A Collation of the Greek Manuscripts Selected for the Editio Critica Maior of the Epistle to the Ephesians, edited by H.A.G. Houghton with A.C. Myshrall and C.J. Smith (Open Access; released January 2024). Dataset deposited at https://doi.org/10.25500/edata.bham.00001110 (including phylogenetic data).
• A Collation of the Greek Manuscripts Selected for the Editio Critica Maior of the Epistle to the Romans, edited by H.A.G. Houghton with A.C. Myshrall and C.J. Smith (Open Access; released January 2024). Dataset deposited at https://doi.org/10.25500/edata.bham.00001112 (including phylogenetic data).
• Transcriptions of 226 Greek manuscripts of Galatians: dataset deposited at https://doi.org/10.25500/edata.bham.00001107 (including a synopsis).
• Transcriptions of 163 Greek manuscripts of Ephesians: dataset deposited at https://doi.org/10.25500/edata.bham.00001109 (including a synopsis).
• Transcriptions of 166 Greek manuscripts of Romans: dataset deposited at https://doi.org/10.25500/edata.bham.00001111 (including a synopsis).
• Andrew Edmondson, Research Data supporting Phylogenetic Networks for ECM Paul: dataset deposited at https://doi.org/10.25500/edata.bham.00001148.

Theses

• Jacopo Marcon, “The Pseudo-Oecumenian Catena on Romans,” PhD thesis. University of Birmingham, 2022. See also online dataset above.
• Andrew J. Patton, “The Development of the Catenae on the Gospels,” PhD thesis. University of Birmingham, 2023.
• Emanuele Scieri, “Multilayered and Multiple-Text Catena Manuscripts on the Acts of the Apostles,” PhD thesis. University of Birmingham, 2024.

Reports, working papers and online publications

• Georgi Parpulov, “A Checklist of Greek New Testament Catena Manuscripts”. Working Paper, University of Birmingham ePapers Repository (2018).
• Jacopo Marcon, “The CATENA PROJECT: The Pseudo Oecumenian Catena on Romans” Diogenes 8 (2019) 78–81
• Georgi Parpulov, “A New Catena on the Gospel of Matthew.” Blogpost on What’s New In Patristics? (April 2021)
• Jacopo Marcon, “Παῦλος ὁ μύστης τῶν ἀπορρήτων λόγων: On the Use of Book Epigrams in New Testament Catenae on Paul,” Blogpost on Database of Byzantine Book Epigrams project blog (October 2022)
• Andrew Patton, “Greek New Testament Catena Manuscripts,” CSNTM Manuscripts 101 Blog (December 2022)
• Andrew Patton, “The Layout of Greek New Testament Catena Manuscripts,” CSNTM Manuscripts 101 Blog (December 2022)
• H.A.G. Houghton, “Introduction,” in Clark R. Bates, Jacopo Marcon, Andrew J. Patton, Emanuele Scieri (ed.), That Nothing May Be Lost: Fragments and the New Testament Text. Papers from the Twelfth Birmingham Colloquium on the Textual Criticism of the New Testament (T&S 3.29). Piscataway NJ: Gorgias, 2022, xv–xxii. Open Access