Are there ancient editions of Paul's letters?

Abstract

Nils Dahl was an omnivorous scholar, tackling questions related to the composition, redaction, theology, transmission, and history of the New Testament. One area that captured his attention (and the attention of his students and colleagues) was the Euthalian apparatus, a series of complicated and ubiquitous lists, cross-reference systems, biographical texts, and text divisions. Dahl saw the critical value of these traditions for understanding the early transmission of the Pauline corpus, hypothesizing that the material once comprised an official ancient edition connected to the library of Caesarea. This article takes a step back by first examining the flexibility of the Euthalian material in the manuscripts that preserve it, arguing that it is more valuable to understand these features in the context of transmission and reading as opposed to viewing the tradition as evidence for an ancient edition.

It is a great honour for me to be here today to give a lecture in the name of a scholar whose work I greatly admire for its breadth, technical skill, and ability to navigate multiple research contexts. The more I read the work of Nils Dahl and learn about his life, the more I identify with him, not only as an expatriate who has worked most of my career away from my home country, but also as someone whose interest in the New Testament is not exclusively exegetical or theological, although of course Dahl's interests extended to these areas too.¹ Among Dahl's many skills, I am most impressed by his ability to explore the New Testament in the context of early Jewish literature and the Dead Sea Scrolls (especially in a period when most of the scrolls were not yet published) and in light of ancient literary conventions, all the while considering its manuscripts and early textual scholarship on the emerging corpus.² I admire his ability to get beyond the first century as the only legitimate locus for serious biblical scholarship and behind the critical edition as a proxy for the text of the New Testament.³

In line with his critical sensibility, and in honour of Dahl's scholarship, I want to connect two concerns that go hand in hand in his work. The first is the so-called Euthalian apparatus, a topic that the vast majority of New Testament scholars have ignored for nearly a century, and the second is the question of ancient editions, a reality that scholars have accepted as a given over the past hundred years.⁴ The first line in Dahl's programmatic article on the Euthalian tradition emphasises the opacity of this complex system; he says, “when I have mentioned to colleagues and students that I was working on the so-called Euthalian Apparatus, quite a few have not known what it was about.” This is a very tactful way of saying that no one knows what any of this stuff is and, even if they did understand it, they couldn't possibly see why anyone would care about it.⁵ Reactions to my own interest in this area have been equally ambivalent.

That I was invited to give this lecture in 2022 is serendipitous. I am currently leading a research project on the paratextual features of Greek New Testament manuscripts based in Glasgow called “Titles of the New Testament: A New Approach to Manuscripts and the History of Interpretation.”⁶ My focus within this larger umbrella is on the Euthalian material, a late ancient network of prefaces, textual divisions, lists, biographical texts, and other items that frame the way we read Acts, the Catholic Letters, and the Pauline Letters. Dahl, his students, his collaborators, and those in his wider scholarly network are almost single-handedly responsible for every study that has explored the Euthalian apparatus since 1945 when Günther Zuntz published The Ancestry of the Harklean New Testament.⁷ Dahl rightly recognized the significance of the Euthalian material, even if most New Testament scholars were happy to leave him to it, and, as far as I can tell from a distance, his influence played a major role in motivating the now-resurgent interested in the tradition.⁸

The other important ingredient in Dahl's work on the Euthalian apparatus was the idea of ancient editions. He considered this material to be relevant for understanding the early history of the Pauline letters and the shaping of this collection in late antiquity. The Euthalian material, for Dahl, was one example of an ancient edition of Paul's writings, which he referred to as EUTH.⁹ In a number of studies Dahl asserted that even highly fragmentary manuscripts, like the Muratorian Fragment and GA 0230 (eight lines of a fourth century bilingual copy of Ephesians, now lost; previously Florence, Bibl. Med. Laur., PSI 1306, LDAB 3024), are evidence for the existence of multiple ancient editions, by which he meant intentionally designed arrangements of the letters in a particular order, codified in a particular text form, and framed by editorially contrived reading aids that assist interpretation and engineer a Pauline narrative.¹⁰ Editions are constructed by selecting particular works, arranging them in a specific order, choosing their text, and shaping encounters with this text through the deployment of paratexts.

Importantly, Dahl saw intentionality in the production of these editions. He argued that “the extreme complexity of New Testament textual history,” especially of the Pauline Letters, was not attributable to scribal mistakes alone or the vagaries of textual transmission but to “the activity of editors and correctors,” agents who purposefully shaped the Pauline corpus as we now have it the manuscripts.¹¹ For Dahl, the story of how a group of ancient letters became the New Testament is the story of editions and the anonymous people responsible for compiling them. We can reconstruct the initial forms of these editions by exploring the afterlives of their features in later manuscripts.

This view of responsibility for the types of changes that define the New Testament's transmission suggests that these editors, whoever they were, actively made the New Testament's constituent sub-corpora anew as they produced manuscripts that contained these works in varying orders, languages, and contexts. Production of a manuscript forces the scribe, artist, patron, reader, and whoever else might have a hand in the process to make choices. Which works should we include, in what order, with what wording, with what accompanying material? The assertion that multiple ancient editions of Paul's work existed and that the Euthalian Apparatus is one such example appear regularly in the literature subsequent to Dahl.¹² Even if the reconstruction of the activities behind and motivations for edition making are not always evident,¹³ textual scholars have devoted significant attention to crafting hypotheses about these editions and their possible makers.

What I want to do in this discussion is to shift the frame for how we view complex paratextual systems like the Euthalian apparatus, from viewing them as one example of an edition to be reconstructed, toward viewing them as spaces where tradition coalesces in, with, and among the text of the New Testament as a conduit to change. The features that we often see as defining editions are not hermetically sealed in the manuscripts. The Euthalian material has a tendency toward mobility, selectively appearing in many hundreds of manuscripts. Tradition accrues in the space that is made for it. The Euthalian apparatus functions like a magnet, attracting new paratexts into the space carved out for its existing features.¹⁴ In other words, the hypothesis that a series of distinct editions existed is not the most compelling conclusion to draw when we consider the complexity and transmission of systems like the Euthalian apparatus. Even if a possible edition might be reconstructed, much like we construct the “initial text” of the New Testament itself, what explanatory power does it have apart from the manuscripts that preserve its remnants? Like eclectic critical texts, ancient editions will always be hypotheses, abstractions of complex realities transmitted in the manuscripts. They are highly replete pictures that we make for ourselves, but they are not coequal to the tradition they represent.

What is not an abstraction, though, is the manuscripts that preserve parts of the tradition. Turning to this material, I argue for an alternative model for construing the Euthalian tradition. It is, as my subtitle calls it, a storehouse of tradition, a location where new and old frames for interpretation stand side by side, where the machinery of reading becomes more cluttered, supple, complex, where new voices can make themselves heard in conversation with the biblical text. It is a boundary space where scribes and readers can reframe their sacred traditions and reshape their interpretation without directly intervening in the text itself. It is a space where pre-existing features can be taken off the shelf and deployed to influence readings of the text and where new items can be fashioned from the stuff that already sits there.

To make this point stick, I’m going to try three things. First, we need to begin by understanding what we’re talking about when we say the “Euthalian apparatus” or its constituent features, what I call the Euthaliana.¹⁵ We can then examine how these features manifest in the manuscripts, before finally returning to the question of whether edition is the right concept for such a complex tradition. My point is that benefits accrue when we alter our framework and begin with the manuscripts as we have them, not with a hypothetical “edition” reconstructed from a selection of their remains.¹⁶

The Euthalian apparatus and evidence for editions

The main problem with writing about the Euthalian apparatus is that every time you do, you need to spend time describing what it even is.¹⁷ Defining the Euthaliana is complex because they are intricate, because there has been no edition made of them since 1698, because the system is mostly anonymous, and because they appear in a variety of combinations and locations in the manuscripts.¹⁸ I have described the system elsewhere, as have others, but one of the best overviews belongs to Dahl, which I will analyse here in reference to the manuscripts.¹⁹

In its fullest instantiation, the Euthalian tradition of the Pauline Letters preserves dozens of Euthalian features, setting aside the material associated with Acts and the Catholic letters. In GA 181 (Vatican, BAV Reg. gr. 179; diktyon 66348) for example, the tenth century manuscript that Lorenzo Alessandro Zacagni had to hand when he produced his 1698 edition, there are multiple features that preface the entire Pauline corpus and each individual work. As Table 1 shows, the biblical works (in bold) are dwarfed in terms of quantity by the Euthalian material, and this is even before we consider the Euthalian text division, chapter titles, and quotations markers that appear in, with, and around the biblical texts. In its maximal form, the Euthalian material can border on the oppressive.

Table 1. The Pauline Letters and Euthalian material in GA 181.

Folia	Feature	Folia	Feature
71v–75v	Prologue to Paul (PROL)	124v	Chapter list to Philippians (CAP)
75v–76r	Martyrdom of Paul (MART)	124v–127r	Philippians
76r–77r	Lection list (LECT)	127v	Hypothesis to Colossians (ARG)
77r–78r	Short quotation list, with prologue (TEST I)	127v–128r	Chapter list to Colossians (CAP)
78r–82v	Long quotation list, with prologue (TEST II)	128r–130v	Colossians
82v	Ταδϵ ϵνϵστιν list	130v–131r	Hypothesis to 1 Thessalonians (ARG)
82v	Διὰ τί text	131r–v	Chapter list to 1 Thessalonians (CAP)
82v–83v	Hypothesis to Romans (ARG)	131v–134r	1 Thessalonians
83v–84r	Chapter list to Romans (CAP)	134r	Hypothesis to 2 Thessalonians (ARG)
84r–95r	Romans	134r–v	Chapter list to 2 Thessalonians (CAP)
95r–v	Hypothesis to 1 Corinthians (ARG)	134v–135v	2 Thessalonians
95v–96r	Chapter list to 1 Corinthians (CAP)	136r–v	Hypothesis to Hebrews (ARG)
96r–106v	1 Corinthians	136v–137r	Chapter list to Hebrews (CAP)
106v–107r	Hypothesis to 2 Corinthians (ARG)	137r–146v	Hebrews
107r–v	Chapter list to 2 Corinthians (CAP)	146v–147r	Hypothesis to 1 Timothy (ARG)
107v–115r	2 Corinthians	147r–v	Chapter list to 1 Timothy (CAP)
115r–v	Hypothesis to Galatians (ARG)	147v–150v	1 Timothy
115v	Chapter list to Galatians (CAP)	150v–151r	Hypothesis to 2 Timothy (ARG)
116r–119v	Galatians	151r	Chapter list to 2 Timothy (CAP)
119v	Hypothesis to Ephesians (ARG)	151r–153r	2 Timothy
120r	Chapter list to Ephesians (CAP)	153v	Hypothesis to Titus (ARG)
120r–124r	Ephesians	153v–154r	Chapter list to Titus (CAP)
124r–v	Hypothesis to Philippians (ARG)	154r–v	Titus

Among the many items represented in GA 181 and Zacagni's edition, Dahl identified six primary features as central to the Euthalian tradition, items arrayed around a specific arrangement of Paul's fourteen letters with Hebrews located between 2 Thessalonians and 1 Timothy. Five of these items – the corpus prologues (PROL), lection lists (LECT), kephalaia or chapter lists (CAP), and the two quotation lists (TEST I and II) – were, according to Dahl, original to the initial edition; all other features were added subsequently.²⁰ Dahl's description of the earliest layers of the edition disentangles the later accretions from the earlier forms and even identifies the theoretical edition of Paul that stands behind the EUTH edition, which he attributes to Pamphilus, the teacher of Eusebius (PAMPH).

Focusing on the Pauline portion of the tradition, Dahl began his analysis with the prologue (PROL). This text, expertly translated into English by Vemund Blomkvist, helps us to understand the type of thing that the apparatus is and the image of Paul that it inculcates.²¹ First, the prologue situates itself as a work of scholarship in the vein of Origen and Eusebius. This text and the other aspects of the apparatus it mentions are not as formally innovative as the tabular and cross-reference systems of the Hexapla and the Eusebian apparatus to the Gospels, but like these tools, the Euthaliana are designed to enable complex interpretive activities across biblical works.²²

The introduction to the prologue identifies itself as ἱστορία, that is, a work of scholarship, an apt description of a text concerned to summarize Paul's life, the content and arrangement of his letters, and the chronology of his activities. In addition to its use of the narrative of Acts and the letters themselves, the prologue refers to Eusebius three times, explicitly referencing two of his major works: the canons of the Chronicon (ἐκ τῶν χρονικῶν κανόνων), a set of tables that trace a global history by decade from Abraham,²³ and the Historia ecclesiastica (ἐκκλησιαστικῆς ἱστορίας).

These references locate the prologue within the tradition of Caesarean scholarship.²⁴ Its author's concerns are similar to Eusebius's: chronology in service of a particular argument. In this case, the point is that the serial order of Paul's life is an example of faithfulness and that the arrangement of his letters in this specific order “includes every aspect of proper social conduct arranged according to progress” (οὕτως ἡ πᾶσα βίβλος πϵριέχϵι παντοῖον ϵἶδος πολιτϵιῶν προσαύξησιν). The order of the letters reflects the levels of understanding of Paul's audiences and also the stages of spiritual growth for readers as they work from Romans to Philemon, moving from the more naturalistic theology of Paul's longest letter to the more concrete change from slave to co-worker in the person of Onesimus in the shortest.²⁵

The prologue wants us to see an underlying narrative amenable to spiritual progress and to understand the apparatus in the context of Caesarean scholarship. This view is reinforced by its mention of three other features: the chapter lists (what Dahl calls CAP), the quotation lists (ἀνακϵφαλαίωσις θϵίων μαρτυριῶν; TEST I and II), and the lection lists (ἀνακϵφαλαίωσις τῶν ἀναγνώσϵων; LECT).²⁶ The prologue begins to show us how the Euthaliana mobilize the New Testament as a way to facilitate its own understanding.²⁷

The next items that Dahl views as original to the EUTH edition is the lection list (LECT), a multipart and integrated set of textual divisions. Using Philippians in GA 88 (twelfth century, Naples, Biblioteca Nazionale MS II. A. 7, diktyon 45985, 61r), a fulsome copy of the Euthalian tradition, as an example, the structure of the lection list looks like this (Figure 1):

Figure 1. Lection list of Philippians in GA 88, 61r, courtesy of the Biblioteca Nazionale di Napoli.

Table

ϵν τη προς φιλιππησιους ϵπιστολη αναγνωσϵις β. κϵφαλαια ζ. στιχων ση.	In the Letter of the Philippians there are 2 readings, 7 chapters, and 208 lines.
αναγνωσις α κϵφαλαιων δ. α β γ δ. στιχων ρκ	Reading 1: 4 chapters 1, 2, 3, 4; 120 lines
αναγνωσις β. κϵφαλαιων γ. ϵ ϛ ζ . στιχων πη	Reading 2: 3 chapters 5, 6, 7; 88 lines

This section on Philippians is part of a longer list that contains information on each Pauline letter, situated in GA 88 as a preface to the Pauline corpus located after the Praxapostolos (60v–61r). The list offers three different textual divisions for each work of varying scope, the reading (ἀνάγνωσις) being the largest and the line (στίχος) being the shortest.²⁸ The entries of letters that have quotations also include information on how many quotations are in each ἀνάγνωσις. For example, the third reading in Romans has 26 quotations (μαρτυριων κϛ), running from the 11th (ια) to the 36th (λϛ) of the total 48 quotations (μη) in the letter (Figure 2).

Figure 2. Enumeration of quotations in Reading 3 of Romans GA 88 60v column b, courtesy of the Biblioteca Nazionale di Napoli.

Table

[αναγνωσις γ. κϵφαλαιων γ. ιδ ιϵ ιϛ.]	[Reading 3. 3 chapters. 14 15 16.]
μαρτυριων κϛ . ια ιβ ιγ ιδ. ιϵ ιϛ ιζ. ιη ιθ κ. κα κβ κγ κδ κϵ κϛ. κζ κη κθ λ . λα λβ λγ λδ λϵ λϛ. στιχων ρπϵ	26 quotations . 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36. 185 lines

The lection list break up the text each of letter into various lengths, while also integrating with the two other primary features of the EUTH edition as Dahl saw it: the chapter lists (CAP) and the quotations lists (TEST). The lection list is a representation of the text in numerical form, an abstraction that presents perceptions of order, division, and intertextual relationships. It attempts to implement a transcendent structure around the content of the text, and its details sometimes re-appear in the subscriptions to individual letters. For example, the subscription to Philippians in GA 88 (101r) reads “Letter of the apostle Paul to the Philippians, written from Rome via Epaphroditus. 2 readings, 7 chapters, 208 lines” (Figure 3).

Figure 3. Subscription to Philippians in GA 88 (101r), courtesy of the Biblioteca Nazionale di Napoli.

The chapter list (Figure 4) is related to the lection list insofar as both preserve seven kephalaia for Philippians.²⁹ The chapter list gives more detail on one of the segments in the lection list by giving each kephalaion a title, constituting summaries of the content of each section, and offering a brief summary of the work in a series of terse declarations. For example, kephalaion 5, which covers all of what we now know as Philippians 3, is entitled “regarding spiritual life, not in the flesh, which is an imitation of the death of Christ,” summing up the theological core of the letter.³⁰ In the chapter lists, which usually precede each individual letter, it is Paul who is the main character: his name is usually in the title of the list, and he is the implied agent in each clause, the one doing the exhorting, thanking, or praising.³¹

Figure 4. Chapter list to Philippians in GA 88 (99r), courtesy of the Biblioteca Nazionale di Napoli.

Table

Kϵφαλαια της παυλου προς φιλιππησιους ϵπιστολης .	Chapters of the Letter of Paul to the Philippians
α. Ευχαριστϵια υπϵρ φιλιππησιων αρϵτης . και ϵυχη τϵλϵιωσϵως	1. Thanksgiving for the virtue of the Philippians and a prayer for perfection
β. Διηγησις της αυτου διαγωγης αγωνιστικης και της προθυμιας	2. Narrative of his life in struggle and of his zeal
Γ. Παραινϵσις της [ϵν θϵου και] κατα θϵον ομονοιας ϵνθϵου ζωης	3. Exhortation [in God and] according to God and to a life in God
Δ. Πϵρι τιμοθϵου και ϵπαφροδιτου . ους απϵστϵιλϵ προς αυτους	4. Regarding Timothy and Epaphroditus, who he sent to them
Ε. Πϵρι πν(ϵυματ)ικου βιου του μη ως ϵν σαρκι . ος ϵστι μιμησις θανατου χ(ριστο)υ	5. Regarding the spiritual life, not in the flesh, which is an imitation of the death of Christ
Ϛ. Παραινϵσις ιδιαι τιμων και κοιναι παντων	6. Exhortation(s), specific to some people and (others) common one for everyone
Ζ. (Α)ποδοχη της αποσταλϵισης αυτω διακονιας	7. Praise of the contribution sent to him

Like the chapter lists, the statements about the location of quotations within the readings enumerated in the lection list correspond to the numbering of quotations in both the short (TEST I) and long quotation lists (TEST II). These lists offer the same information on the citations in each of Paul's letters in different forms. The short list gives the total number of quotation in each letter, followed by a list of quoted texts, arranged according to the order of the Old Testament, moving to the New Testament, then other early Christian literature and “profane” traditions. The number of quotations to each work in that letter is then listed after the title, followed by the serial arrangement of the quotation in that work. Like the lection list, the short quotation list covers the entirety of the Pauline corpus from Romans to Philemon and is usually located en bloc as a preface before the start of Romans. A good example for how the short list works is the segment from Galatians in GA 88 (Figure 5):

Figure 5. Galatians short quotation list in GA 88 (61v), courtesy of the Biblioteca Nazionale di Napoli.

Table

ϵν τη προς γαλατας ϵπιστολη ια	In the Letter to the Galatians: 11
γϵνϵσϵως δ. α β ζ θ	Genesis 4: 1, 2, 7, 9
λϵυιτικου α. ι	Leviticus 1: 10
δϵυτϵρονομιου β. γ ϛ	Deuteronomy 2: 3, 6
αμβακου προφητου α. δ	Habakkuk the prophet 1: 4
ησαιου προφητου α. η	Isaiah the prophet 1: 8
ιϵζϵκιηλ προφητου και δϵυτϵρονομιου α. ϵ	Ezekiel the prophet and Deuteronomy 1: 5
μωυσϵως αποκρηφου α. ια^32	Apocryphon of Moses 1: 11

The list relays that there are eleven quotations and then identifies their number alongside the work that is quoted, including one instance of a composite citation of Ezekiel and Deuteronomy and one instance of a quotation of the Apocryphon of Moses. We do not learn where precisely in Galatians these quotations appear (only their serial relationship to one another) nor do we learn where in Leviticus, for example, quotation 10 comes from. We can find more about the distribution of quotations in Galatians, though, if we flip back to the lection list, where we learn that 6 quotations appear in the first ἀνάγνωσις and 5 appear in the second. The number of quotations (μαρτυρία) and chapters (κϵφαλαία) enumerated in the lection list correspond to the information in the quotation lists (TEST I and II) and the chapter list (CAP), suggesting that these items were designed to be used as an interrelated suite of tools. If you wish to find out more precisely where the quotations exist in relation to the main text, you must flip to the text itself where the sources of citations often appear in the margins. In the case of GA 88, only select texts are referenced, like Isaiah at Gal 4:27, the eighth quotation in the work (Figure 6).³³

Figure 6. Marginal quotation notation of Isaiah in Gal 4:27 in GA 88 (94v), courtesy of the Biblioteca Nazionale di Napoli.

The long quotation list, what Dahl calls TEST II, reconfigures the data in the short list and offers further detail. Instead of arranging quotations against a list of works, the long list presents quotations in the order of the entire Pauline corpus, the title of the quoted work and the number of times it's been quoted in the corpus up to that point, and the entire text of the quote itself as it appears in the target text. Essentially the long list takes the substance of the short list and presents the information following the order of each letter, adding the text of the quotation (as it appears in Paul's letters, not the source traditions) and treating the Pauline letters as a single work. The long list usually appears as a preface before Romans. For example, the first entry in Galatians, a quotation of Gen 15:6 in 3:6 (one of six quotation in Gal 3:6-13, according to the lists) reads (GA 88, 64r–v):

α. γϵνϵσϵως θ. ϵπιστϵθσϵ δϵ αβρααμ τω θϵω, και ϵλογισθη αυτω ϵις δικαιοσυνην

1. Genesis 9. And Abraham believed in God and it was accounted to him as righteousness.

In other words, this is the first quotation in Galatians, the ninth from Genesis in the Pauline corpus so far, and the text reads “And Abraham believed in God and it was accounted to him as righteousness.”

Dahl viewed each of these five items – the prologue, lection list, chapter lists, short quotation list, and long quotation list – as original to the early stages of the EUTH edition. These items offer “meta-information” on the biblical text, its structures, and its relationship to Jewish scripture.³⁴ They are interconnected.³⁵ For Dahl these items are the work of a “chief editor” perhaps connected to “a scriptorium associated with the library in Caesarea Maritima,” which gives a picture of a centrally produced work intimately connected to the intellectual world of Eusebius, Origen, and Pamphilus.³⁶

But we have yet to mention another item printed in Zacagni's 1698 edition, one that is the most ubiquitous aspect of the Euthaliana in the manuscripts: the hypotheses or prefaces to each work, what Dahl calls the argumenta (ARG). He viewed these texts as unoriginal to the EUTH edition. They are so pervasive that, according to Dahl, they should not be thought of “as an addition to the EUTH-apparatus, but rather [as] an affiliation of two different editions of the Apostolos.”³⁷

The hypotheses usually precede the letter they preface, but on occasion they are arrayed in a string before or after the Pauline corpus (e.g. GA 33, Paris, BnF grec 14, diktyon 49574, ninth century, 73r–76, where all the Pauline hypotheses appear after Philemon and before Acts). Regardless of location, though, the hypotheses represent the stuff of another edition for Dahl; they are material that has been comingled with authentic Euthalian paratexts.

In terms of content, the hypotheses offer information on the provenance and a summary of the work. For example, the preface to Galatians notes that the letter is sent from Rome after Paul had seen and taught them and that the letter was necessary because after Paul had left, “they were led by some people to be circumcised,” a fact that tracks with the occasion for the letter in the prologue that it was written “against those who had defected to Judaism.” The hypothesis concludes with a summary of the message, culminating in the call to “have faith in Christ, and to know that grace in Christ makes circumcision according to the flesh useless.”³⁸

Widely transmitted, the hypotheses inflate the number of manuscripts that transmit Euthalian material because many manuscripts catalogued by Louis Charles Willard in his PhD thesis (partially supervised by Dahl) only preserve the hypotheses or the hypotheses with the chapter lists.³⁹ Dahl sees the wider distribution of the hypotheses and their shared perspective with the short “Fourteen Letters of Paul” text (διὰ τί παύλου ἐπιστολαὶ δϵκτέσσαρϵς λέγονται) as evidence of a once-discrete “argumenta-edition,” one that became entangled with the Euthaliana.⁴⁰

Other items also accrue alongside the core, interconnected elements of the tradition. Taking their cue from the central Euthalian features that are deeply text immanent, mustering and abstracting information from the biblical text to craft a holistic narrative about the New Testament's main epistolary sub-corpus, these features explicate questions left unanswered by the text and the existing paratextual superstructure. They fill gaps. For instance, the Travels of Paul (ἀποδημίαι παύλου, what Dahl calls APOD), often connected with the hypothesis to Acts, narrates Paul's peregrinations, abstracting this information from Acts and providing a context for his letter writing. Another example is the Martyrdom of Paul (μαρτύριον παύλου τοῦ ἀποστόλου), a text that Dahl views as an addition to the EUTH edition and which he divides into three subsequent versions (MART I–III).⁴¹ Like the ἀποδημίαι text, the martyrdom story fills a troubling gap in Acts’ narrative, namely no notice on Paul's death.

These additions, as Dahl saw them, are only part of the larger paratextual ecosystem that developed around the core Euthalian traditions. Multiple other texts exist alongside the Euthaliana in the manuscripts, including introductions to the various lists, stichometric notations, subscriptions, the inscription on the Athens altar (Acts 17:23), a text on Paul's voyage to Rome (πλοῦς παύλου ἀποστόλου έπὶ ῥώμης), a list of cities where Paul wrote his letters, a list of Paul's letters organized by co-worker, and a list of letters that begins τάδϵ ἔνϵστιν παύλου ἐπιστολαί.

The EUTH edition as Dahl sees it has a complicated history, which “implies changes, omissions and additions.”⁴² The manuscripts offer access to the underlying edition but they differ significantly from the “originals.” Dahl's approach – and the approach of most scholars to date – has been to use the manuscripts and their features to reconstruct the earliest form of the edition, to explore the Euthaliana in their original context, whatever that might be. This way of working tracks with the eclectic approaches that dominate New Testament textual criticism, which seek to reconstruct an initial text from the mass of texts preserved in the manuscripts. But what happens when we set the idea of an edition aside? What new questions do the manuscripts open up to us? What if we start from the manuscripts and not what we have remade from them?

Examples from the Euthalian tradition

To begin to answer some of these questions, I want to consider three very different forms of the Euthaliana and what they reveal about the people who made and used the manuscripts that preserve them. The first is the oldest manuscript to preserve Euthalian features. GA 015 or Codex H, is a sixth century parchment manuscript whose 41 remaining leaves are scattered in Paris, Turin, Kyiv, Athos, Moscow, and St Petersburg.⁴³ The first Euthalian feature it contains are marginal notations for quotations, copied in red ink as prescribed for the chapter divisions in the prologue to the chapter list. For example, the quotation to Ps 23:1 at 1 Cor 10:26 is demarcated from the main text by two diplai in the left margin and by a note in the right margin in red ink that reads “11 Psalm 23” (ια ψαλμου κγ), signalling that this is the eleventh quotation in 1 Corinthians and that it is from Psalm 23 (Figure 7). Although the quotation lists are not preserved in this manuscript (and perhaps never were), the information from the tables is distributed in the margins, alerting readers to antecedent materials.

Figure 7. Quotation to Psalm 23 in 1 Corinthians 10:26 in GA 015, Bibliothèque nationale de France.

These in-text annotations are not Codex H's only Euthalian feature. The colometric arrangement of its text is also connected to the tradition (Figure 8). In the prologue to Acts, the compiler notes that he previously “read and wrote the apostolic books in verses (στιχηδόν),” a description that may align with the text division of this witness, where the start of each new sense unit or clause extends into the left margin. The colophon to 015, which ties its production to the library of Caesarea and Pamphilus, also notes that “I wrote and edited the volume of Paul the apostle, arranging it in verses (στϵιχηρὸν) according to my abilities.”⁴⁴ Although details are elusive, these descriptions imply some intervention in the text's formal arrangement. In his 1889 edition of 015, Henri Omont describes this breakdown of sense units as “la méthode euthalienne,” making this manuscript the prime witness to the copying practices traceable to the compiler of the tradition.⁴⁵ Although the details of the format intended by compiler remain unclear, the Euthalian tradition extends in some instances to the layout and arrangement of the text which also has a paratextual valence insofar as it impinges upon reading traditions.⁴⁶

Figure 8. Colometric arrangement of 1 Cor 10:27-29 in GA 015, Bibliothèque nationale de France.

Additionally, 015 preserves fragments of the chapter lists for Galatians, Hebrews, 1 Timothy, and Titus. These examples align with the wording and structure of later witnesses to the lists, including the sub-divisions of chapters in Hebrews. It is also a witness to subscriptions that contain information corresponding to the lection list. For example, the subscription to Hebrews reads “letter of the apostle Paul to the Hebrew, written from Italy via Timothy, 703 lines” (Figure 9). The mention of 703 lines aligns with the information in the lection list, which states that Hebrews has “3 readings, 22 chapters, and 703 lines.”⁴⁷ Information from the lection list becomes embedded in the works’ titular traditions even in copies where no lection list is preserved – Euthalian material weaves its way into the corners of the New Testament and becomes one of the defining text structuring agents in the Greek tradition.

Figure 9. Subscription to Hebrews in GA 015, Bibliothèque nationale de France.

The final connection to the Euthalian tradition in 015 is the colophon, which is preserved in only a handful of other Greek manuscripts (Figure 10).⁴⁸ As noted above, the colophon discusses the arrangement of text in the first person, while also recording standard notices of diffidence in ability. It also notes that “the book was compared with a copy in the library of Caesarea, written in the hand of the holy Pamphilus,” showing a connection to venerable institution and scholar.⁴⁹ It concludes with a call and response, where the governing voice shifts from the anonymous compiler to a punctuation mark that warns against lending the manuscript: “I am the coronis, teacher of the divine doctrine. If you lend me to anyone, you should take a book in return, because borrowers are evil.”⁵⁰

Figure 10. Colophon in GA 015, Bibliothèque nationale de France.

This earliest witness to the Euthaliana already shows a tradition that can be reconfigured, a form of flexibility where its possible configurations are selectively represented in each new copy and where the presence of the Euthalian paratexts authorizes further intervention in the manuscript. Of course 015 is fragmentary and no part of Romans is preserved, but there is no evidence that any of the prefatory lists or prologue existed. It is relatively common in the later manuscripts to have both subscriptions and in-text quotation markers without the corresponding lists. We can confidently say that none of the hypotheses were included.

GA 015 is also evidence that the presence of Euthalian material underwrote further engagement with these works from later readers and scribes. There are multiple (mostly indecipherable) medieval hands in the manuscript that appear to comment on particular texts, note feast days, and other personal notes, often reflecting the complex post-production life of this manuscript. The “official” use of the margins for Euthaliana in the manuscript's first production layer created the permission structure to continue to use this space for various purposes, especially in a manuscript with such ample marginal space that was in use for centuries.⁵¹ In these manuscripts we glimpse their post-production lives, gain insight into the people who used them, and find evidence for the changing social conditions of their owners. In Codex H we can trace the life of a deluxe, expensive codex, from prized book to cartonnage scrap and recycled flyleaves. Not every manuscript ends up behind a glass case in the British Library.

A very different example of the Euthalian tradition can be found in GA 102 (Moscow, State Historical Museum, Sinod. gr. 5 [Vlad. 412]; diktyon 43630), a copy of Paul and the Praxapostolos completed in 1444, followed by multiple tracts from patristic writers like John Chrysostom, Gregory of Nazianzus, and others.⁵² It contains multiple standard Euthalian elements, including the prologue to Paul (starting immediately after the end of Jude), hypotheses that preface each letter, and chapter lists. The quotation lists, lection list, and Pauline biographical texts are not present, even though quotations are selectively marked in the text, like the quotation of Hab 2:4 in Rom 1:16.

Important aspects of the Euthaliana are preserved here, but the text of GA 102 is structured not primarily by the Euthalian divisions; stichoi are not mentioned in the subscriptions and chapter divisions do not appear among the main text. Instead the text is divided by the Orthodox liturgical system. For example, at Rom 1:18, where the first Euthalian chapter usually occurs, we see no indication of its existence. In its place we get a note immediately before αποκαλυπτϵται that reads τϵλος της γ (“end of the third”), referring here to the liturgical pericopae of Romans. An accompanying δ (4) appears in the margin, signalling a new section of some kind. We also see a notation in the upper margin that confirms a new liturgical section begins at Rom 1:18: τη δ της α ϵβδομου. Αδϵλφοι αποκαλυπτϵται οργη θυ (“the fourth [reading] of the first week: ‘brothers, the wrath of God is revealed’”). The note relays the time the text should be read, in this case, the fourth day of the first week after Pentecost,⁵³ the opening address of the reading (“brothers”), and the incipit of the text itself. While Euthalian material persists in this fifteenth century copy, it is no longer the organizing principle that structures the text and its reading – the liturgical calendar now preponderates, embedding itself alongside equally ancient material. The liturgical orientation of the manuscripts is further supported by a list of feast days that head the entire codex (1v–2v).

GA 102 also demonstrates how traditions of textual organization within the Pauline corpus and New Testament more widely develop beyond the Euthaliana. Following the list of feast days, the codex is prefaced by a “Precise table of the contents of this book: of saint Paul” (πιναξ ακριβης του παροντος βιβλιου: του αγιου παυλου; 1r). The list includes Acts and the Catholic letters (also part of the Euthalian tradition) and the letters of Paul. Each entry consists of the title of the work and its incipit. For example, Philippians’ entry reads “Letter of Paul to the Philippians, which begins ‘Paul and Timothy, slaves of Jesus Christ’” (παυλου ϵπιστολη προς φιλιππησιους: ου αρχη παυλος και τιμοθϵος δουλοι ιυ χυ). This pinax resembles lists in the Euthalian system, like the list of cities where Paul wrote his letters, the τάδϵ ἔνϵστιν text, or the διὰ τί list. But it differs in that it heads the entire codex, includes the incipit, and moves Hebrews to after Philemon, an arrangement that differs from the location of Hebrews in the quotation and lection lists. The impulse to reorder the New Testament's epistles continue unabated, and these new paratexts are situated alongside the Euthalian material, creating multiple possible avenues for engaging these works.

The final manuscript I want to examine here is GA 619 + 2952, a copy of the Praxapostolos and Pauline letters completed in 984 (Florence, BML Conv. Soppr. 191; diktyon 15883).⁵⁴ Like the preceding examples, it too contains typical Euthalian elements, like the prologue (72r), the “travels of Paul” text (ἀποδημίαι παύλου, 73r), the martyrdom of Paul (μαρτύριον παύλου τοῦ ἀποστόλου, 74v), and hypotheses (e.g. 75r for Romans). The letters do not have chapter or quotation lists, but the titles of the Euthalian chapters appear in red ink in the upper margin of the page where they appear, linked to a corresponding number in the right margin between text and catenae. Quotations are also marked in the margins of the text, sometimes through the use of diplai and sometimes by the name of the quoted work. For example, the quotations of Gen 25:23 and Mal 1:2 in Rom 9:12–13 are highlighted in the left margin in red ink (103r). They are not numerated.

GA 619 maintains parts of the Euthalian system while simultaneously altering and omitting key aspects. This manuscript also contains additional paratexts, most notably the same liturgical reading system as GA 102 and a marginal commentary, cross-referenced to particular lexemes in the main text. The comments are associated with the pseudo-Oecumenian catena tradition (CPG c165),⁵⁵ and focus on exegetical comments related to small textual segments. For example, the sixth note in Philemon (301r) is attached to verse 2b, which sums up the intended recipients of the letter: “and to the church in your house.” The corresponding note in the right margin clarifies: “he proclaims to the entire household, including slaves” (πασαν της οικϵιαν παρακαλϵι και δουλους). The comment clarifies the intended recipients of the letter, pointing out that the church that meets in the home of Philemon, Apphia, and Archippus would have included enslaved people, a point relevant to the interpretation of this terse, yet complex letter.

In the form of the Pauline letters preserved in GA 619, the Euthalian material is overshadowed by the explicit commentary found in the upper, lower, and outer margins of nearly every page. The catena take centre stage, with multiple cross-references on each page, and the liturgical divisions remain the most common segmentation device even though the location of Euthalian kephalaia are also reported. Dahl saw the combination of Euthalian material and pseudo-Oecumenian comments as, once again, the intermingling of two distinct editions,⁵⁶ and this may indeed be so at some point back in the transmission. But it is more profitable to see GA 619 as yet another example of how the Euthalian material persists, while at the same time making space for other approaches to and configurations of the text. Instead of bracketing off these items from one another, we need to explore how they interact and what happens to our interpretations when we read Paul under varying paratextual conditions.

Although this has been a brief and selective overview, we can already see that this type of exploration raises critical questions that differ from the questions operative in Dahl's work, for example. When we turn to the manuscripts as overlooked evidence for the ways that paratexts frame reading experiences, we gain insight to the ways that scholars, scribes, readers, and communities made, read, interpreted, and used their sacred traditions. Dahl's approach to the Euthaliana remains a useful one; we can learn about the hypothetical points in transmission of the New Testament where once discrete features come together, considering the social, political, and theological motives that made these new combinations possible. The idea of the “edition,” as opaque as it is in most discussions and as anachronistic as it can tend to be in some text critical discourse,⁵⁷ remains a valuable framework for reconstructing the generative phases of scholarly activity with these works. Approaching the Euthalian material as an edition is undergirded by the same critical concerns as those who approach the New Testament's manuscripts as a data source for reconstructing its earliest text.

But when we set aside this preoccupation for a moment and turn our attention to the manuscripts as they stand, new critical possibilities arise, ones that take seriously the totality of a manuscript as a physical and textual object. This move allows us to address the observation of Elizabeth Einstein, who, commenting on early print culture, notes that “when ideas are detached from the media used to transmit them, they are also cut off from the historical circumstances that shape them, and it becomes difficult to perceive the changing context within which they must be viewed.”⁵⁸ Ironically, this is what the discourse on ancient editions of Paul does: it divorces Euthalian features from their physical contexts, a move that can easily obscure the very historical realities that Dahl and others are interested in.

Turning to the manuscripts enables us to begin to trace the confluence of considerations that led to the production of a manuscript in a particular form, including its intellectual, material, scribal labour, and sociological variables. The reception of the Euthalian tradition and its subsequent combination with other paratextual creations comes to the forefront. When we explore the tradition in this way, we see not a history of a disembodied edition produced by an ancient scholar of note, but a history of tangible human choices, small decisions made by thousands of anonymous scribes, craftspeople, and readers that left their mark on their sacred traditions. We see how the New Testament was used to organize and explain itself beyond the confines of the first century or even late antiquity.

Beginning with the manuscripts is important because we are now at a place where we finally have relatively easy access to nearly every copy of the Greek New Testament that we know of.⁵⁹ We do not have to rely on outdated catalogues, incomplete transcriptions, or extended trips to Münster (even though it is a nice place to visit). This change in access to manuscripts requires a fresh look at these artefacts and their individual complexities, something I have done in broad outline here. It is time to expand on Willard's important work with Euthalian manuscripts via microfilm in 1960s, to start afresh with new material, modes of access, images, and data. We have only just begun to explore the Euthaliana through their own manuscript matrix, artefacts that are nearly fathomless in their physical, textual, and paratextual peculiarities. They are highly replete. If we are to understand the hypothetical traditions they represent, we must first begin to understand them in their own right, to see how late ancient scholarly work continued to impinge upon scriptural encounters into the Middle Ages, European Humanism, and beyond.

The Euthalian apparatus is a product enabled by the previous scholarship of Origen and Eusebius and it works to make us see it in that context, as the product of late ancient libraries, lucubration, and textual scholarship. The Euthaliana show us what the tools developed by Origen and Eusebius can do – they sponsor new scholarship that orders, abstracts, and reworks old texts. But that tradition of scholarship did not end with the Euthaliana. This ubiquitous and persistent constellation of features underwrote the ongoing changes to the Pauline corpus from late antiquity onward. And although in North American and European religious and scholarly contexts we have mostly ignored the Euthaliana, its influence over the tradition lasted for a millennium. We are now starting, with the help of Nils Dahl, to recover its importance in our engagements with these ancient texts. We should not think of the Euthalian tradition as an isolated work but as part of a larger history of engagement with the biblical text that continues today. As Dahl himself noted “research has been too dependent on the printed editions,”⁶⁰ a reality that we can now remedy when we combine our increased access to the manuscripts with a philological sensibility that takes them seriously as valuable in their own right.

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

Research for this publication received support from the TiNT project, funded by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement no. 847428). This paper was initially given at the Faculty of Theology of the University of Oslo as the 2022 Dahl Lecture. I maintain some conventions of the oral address.

Notes

1 Dahl produced multiple exegetical and theological studies, and participated in the intellectual life of the Lutheran church, but the most substantial of his contributions are, at least to my mind, those that work with manuscripts, textual history, and paratexts. See Hansen, Nils Alstrup Dahl for an overview of his biography and (most of) his published works. For a good example of his more theologically oriented studies, see Dahl, The Crucified Messiah and Dahl, Studies in Paul.

2 E.g., Dahl, “Ephesians and Qumran,” 107–44; Dahl, “0230 (=PSI 1306),” 79–98.

3 Of course, more classical forms of historical-critical scholarship that focus on the interpretation of the New Testament in the context of the first century are also legitimate, but it is not the only, or even necessarily the most important, kind of scholarly endeavour.

4 On issues associated with the uncritical acceptance of the reality of “editions,” at least as it related to the Hebrew Bible, see Van Seters, The Edited Bible, who argues to the contrary “that there was never in antiquity anything like ‘editions’ of literary works that were the result of an ‘editorial’ process, the work of editors or redactors” (p. 398). See also Einstein, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change, 11 who states: “What is the ‘average edition’ turned out between 1400 and 1450? The question verges on nonsense. The term ‘edition’ comes close to being an anachronism when applied to copies of a manuscript book.” Johnson, Readers and Reading, 179–80, examining the notion of edition in ancient Roman traditions, is careful to distinguish between ancient editions (“that unique copy belonging to the ancient scholar”) and modern editions. I accept that ancient and medieval scholars sometimes produced and used manuscripts of works that served special configurations of a text, but then every manifestation of a work becomes an edition in this sense and the potential for anachronism and misunderstanding still persists if we insist on using the word “edition.”

5 Dahl, “Euthalian Apparatus,” 231.

6 See Allen and Rodenbiker, “Titles of the New Testament”; Allen et al., “The New Testament in Virtual Research Environments.” See the project website at www.kephalaia.com (accessed 31 October 2022).

7 Zuntz, Ancestry, esp. 77–121. See also Hemmerdinger, “Euthaliana,” 349–55. For work by Dahl and his ilk, see Dahl, “Euthalian Apparatus,” 231–75; Willard, Critical Study; Blomkvist, Euthalian Traditions.

8 Other recent examples of engagement with the Euthalian material (and Dahl's work on it) can be seen in Petroelje, Pauline Book, 82–8 and Fewster, “Finding your Place.”

9 And his focus was almost entirely on the Pauline material, not on the Praxapostolos tradition (Acts and Catholic Letters).

10 Dahl uses the language of “edition” in multiple studies, including Dahl, “0230,” where he argues that “early editions of biblical texts is a neglected field of study” (p. 227); and Dahl, “Welche Ordnung,” where he argues that the Muratorian Fragment order of the Pauline letters differs from the “canonical order of the first edition [erste Ausgabe] of the Pauline Corpus” (p. 43) because it attempts to build a seven-form corpus on the model of the letters in Revelation 2–3.

11 Dahl, “0230,” 215 (emphasis original). Dahl views the study of “editions” as an aspect of reception, as part of a broader understanding of “the history of piety,” something particularly important to Protestantism: “the importance of editions can even be illustrated by the various types that have been predominant in Protestantism, from Luther to the present day” (“Euthalian Apparatus,” 234). I suspect that Dahl's interest in ancient editions stems from his theological understanding of more modern instantiations.

12 E.g. Scherbenske, Canonizing Paul, 116–74, who takes Dahl's assertion that editions are key to understanding the development and reception of Paul's letters as his starting point: “since editions of Paul's letters were the very tradents of Pauline traditions, they frames the lineaments of the disputes” (p. 2). Gamble, Books and Readers in the Early Church also uses this language, especially when talking about reconstructed second century collections of Paul's letters: “these second-century collections derive from early editions of the corpus Paulinum that were shaped by ideas about the number of letters or addressees and about the order of the letters and that had distinctive textual complexions” (100). See also Petroelje, Pauline Book, 75–103.

13 See, for example, Trobisch, First Edition, who explores the history of the “final redaction” of the “canonical edition” of the Bible, something that views as definitely “published.” His main augment, which I am ultimately unconvinced by is that “the history of the New Testament is the history of an edition, a book that has been published and edited by a specific group of editors, at a specific place, and at a specific time” (p. 6).

14 Dahl, “Euthalian Apparatus,” 231 himself notes that the Euthalian apparatus eventually comes into contact with most other paratexts found in the manuscripts: “My interest [in the Euthalian apparatus] grew even more after I began to work with Early Church editions of Paul's letters and realized how much of what is found in Greek in the apparatuses for Paul's letters sooner or later was connected to the Euthalian apparatus.”

15 A term borrowed from Robinson, Euthaliana.

16 This approach can be construed as part of a larger discourse on New Philology, which prizes the realia of the existing evidence as the primary source of evidence before working to reconstruct “originals” of one kind or another. For a good discussion of the nuances of New Philology, see Lied, Invisible Manuscripts, 22–32.

17 Zuntz, Ancestry, 84, after describing the functions of the Lection List and its “readings,” “chapters,” and “lines,” acknowledges the boring nature of his own description: “I cherish no allusions with regard to the dullness of the analysis just completed.”

18 Additionally, there is no agreement on the identity of the tradition's initial compiler, be it Euthalius or another figure associated with the tradition. Zacagni was the first to attribute the work to Euthalius, but Ehrhard, “Codex H” attributed the work to Evagrius of Pontus and Zuntz, “Euthalius = Euzoius?” suggested Euzoius, among other proposals. A major issue with exploring the Euthaliana, especially as an edition, is that there exists no consensus as to the identity of its compiler or the date and location where it was made. This lack of consensus contributed to critical disinterest in the material for most of the mid- to late-twentieth century. See Scherbenske, Canonizing Paul, 118–20; Blomkvist, Euthalian Traditions, 8–33.

19 Dahl, “Euthalian Apparatus.” See also Allen, “Early Textual Scholarship”; Blomkvist, Euthalian Traditions, 8–10; Willard, Critical Study, which is a monograph-length description of the system. And, earlier, see von Soden, Die Schriften des Neuen Testaments, vol. 1/1, 637–82, who also refers to the work of Euthalius as an Ausgabe; and the edition of Zagacnius (or Zacagni), Collectanea monumentorum veterum ecclesiæ græcæ, 403–708. On the Euthaliana in the context of late ancient textual scholarship, see Fewster, “Finding Your Place”; Scherbenske, Canonizing Paul, 122–57.

20 As it is laid out in its fullest form in Zacagni's edition (and some of the manuscripts that underlie it, like GA 181 and 623), the earliest Euthalian edition is buried under detritus that must be excised if we are to recover the unadulterated Euthalius. Dahl, “Euthalian Apparatus,” 233–4 also suggests the editor worked with pre-existing material “in the form of lists and/or notes on the New Testament text,” which suggests that the “Euthalian edition” as Dahl sees it, is already the product of reworking and revision.

21 Blomkvist, Euthalian Traditions, 99–111. Scherbenske, Canonizing Paul, 6 argues that prologues are especially relevant because they are “the primary locus for transmitting the editor's hermeneutic.”

22 Another innovative form for larger paratextual traditions on the Pauline letters can be found in the work of Priscillian of Avila in Latin. See Lang, “Arts of Memory.”

23 On the Chronicon and its afterlives, see Grafton and Williams, Christianity and the Transformation of the Book, 133–77; Riggsby, Mosaics of Knowledge, 218–21. Crawford, The Eusebian Canon Tables, 106–9 suggests that the Chronicon had both apologetic and scholarly functions, noting that it functioned with a sense of openness to the “ineliminable uncertainty intrinsic to historical investigation” (107).

24 Others have made similar arguments that tie the Euthaliana to a Caesarean context; see, for example, Fewster, “Finding your Place.”

25 See Blomkvist, Euthalian Traditions, 207–11 for further comment on this point. Scherbenske, Canonizing Paul, 124 suggests that the outline of Paul's life in the prologue also follows a pattern of repentance, conversion, and salvation, suggesting an exhortative function (παραινέσις) of some of the material. I disagree that the Euthaliana were designed for “catechetical instruction” as he assumes, but Paul's life and the arrangement of his writings are structured to encourage a particular form of faithful pedagogy. See also Petroelje, Pauline Book, 88.

26 Blomkvist, Euthalian Traditions, 212 is unsure if the phrase “the most accurate divisions of the readings” (ἠ τῶν ἀναγνώσϵων ἀκριβϵστάτη τομή) refers to the lection list, but I cannot come up with a more likely referent.

27 Dahl identifies multiple diachronic layers in the prologue, arguing that it is a “critical revision of one or two earlier editions” (“Euthalian Apparatus,” 240), perhaps a revision of the prologue of Pamphilus's edition. Blomkvist, Euthalian Traditions, 196–7 concurs with Dahl's view that we can reconstruct redactional layers within the prologue, based on its structural variance from other ancient examples of the genre. The details of the relationship between these editions and their content is unclear. Nonetheless, the concept of edition is central to Dahl's view of the transmission of the Pauline corpus: “no manuscript or exact copy of the edition of PAMPH and/or EUTH is known today. The history of transmission is to a large extent a history of omissions and editions” (“Euthalian Apparatus,” 241). In other words, no pure copies of these editions exist, but we can reconstruct them in part by mining the content of their paratexts. Editions are as essential to the history of the New Testament as they are ephemeral in the manuscript tradition, and their development can be traced, at least in outline, in the remnants of the material, according to Dahl.

28 On stichoi in the Euthalian tradition see Harris, “Stichometry II.”

29 The chapter lists for each letter correspond to the number of chapter (κϵφαλαία) for each work in the Euthalian corpus. In other words, the chapter lists and lection list agree on the number of chapter in each work, with the exception of Acts.

30 Some chapter lists for different works do have sub-divisions (ὑποδιαιρέσϵις), additional divisions not mentioned in the lection list For example, see my observations on Acts’ chapter lists in Allen, “Early Textual Scholarship.”

31 On the technical and generic language of the apparatus, see Hellholm and Blomkvist, “Parainesis as an Ancient Genre-Designation.”

32 This last entry is not present in GA 88 as far as I can tell, but the first line of the second column is unreadable in the images I have accessed.

33 The note left of column a here reads η | ησαιου | θ η and the text of the quotation is not otherwise formally demarcated from the main text.

34 Dahl, “Euthalian Apparatus,” 242–3.

35 Dahl nuances this view in places. For example, he suggests that the chapter lists as we know them were part of an edition connected to the hypotheses that precede each letter (“Euthalian Apparatus,” 245).

36 Ibid., 244.

37 Ibid.

38 Translation from Blomkvist, Euthalian Traditions, 78–9.

39 Dahl “Euthalian Apparatus,” 253 and Willard, Critical Study, 158–69 (the most serious manuscript survey to date) report that 99% of all manuscripts of the Catholic Epistles, 90% of Paul, and 80% of Acts have the hypotheses.

40 Dahl, “Euthalian Apparatus,” 255. Dahl even suggests that the manuscripts related to GA 181, the manuscript at the base of Zacagni's edition, “must have been based on an edition in which the original prologue edition was fused together with an argumenta-edition that had also contain chapters” (p. 257).

41 Dahl, “Euthalian Apparatus,” 250–3.

42 Ibid., 250.

43 015 was disassembled in the Great Lavra Monastery on Mt Athos and used as binding material or flyleaves in subsequent manuscripts, making its way to major European institutions in the covers of other manuscripts. For example, Duplacy, “Manuscrits,” 169 notes that the folia at the State Historical Museum in Moscow were found in the binding of Vlad. 140, which Arseny Sukhanov had taken from the Great Lavra in 1655. Its 41 folios are held in Paris, BnF coisl. gr. 202 (diktyon 49341); suppl. gr. 1074 (diktyon 53738); Athos, Lavra, s.n. (diktyon 26927); Kyiv, Vernadsky National Library Φ. 301 (KДA) 26п (diktyon 37341); Turin, Biblioteca Naz. Uni. Torino B. I. 5 (A.1) (diktyon 63625); Moscow, State Historical Museum Sinod. gr. Vlad. 563 (diktyon 43625); Moscow, Russian State Library Φ. 270 (gr. 166,1) (diktyon 44350); St Petersburg, Nat. Lib. Rus. Φ. № 906 /Gr. 14 (diktyon 57082). The most recent partial edition is Omont, Notice. Scherbenske, Canonizing Paul, 117 suggests that 015 is associated with “an edition of the Corpus Paulinum fashioned by a certain Euthalius,” drawing again upon editorial language to describe its relationship to a broader hypothetical tradition.

44 See text and translation in Blomkvist, Euthalian Traditions, 16.

45 Omont, Notice, 7. The division of sense units in this manner is further expounded in the Armenian version of Euthalian material. See Conybeare, “On the Codex Pamphili,” 243–44.

46 For a good overview of the complexities of this question, see Scherbenske, Canonizing Paul, 147–50. Additionally, the significance of the layout in 015 has yet to be fully explored. Dahl, “0230,” 227 even notes that “I am inclined to think that the task [of examining the colomentric layout of these manuscripts] can be accomplished but will certainly not have time for it until well after my retirement, if ever.”

47 The same is true of the subscription to Titus, which notes that the work has 97 lines.

48 On the colophon and its transmission, see Murphy, “On the Text of Codices H and 93.”

49 The role of Pamphilus in the library of Caesarea is relayed by Jerome in his De vir. ill. He even refers to the library of Caesarea as the bibliotheca Origenis et Pamphili (De vir. ill. 112). See also Gamble, Books and Readers, 155–61; Grafton and Williams, Christianity and the Transformation of the Book, 192–5. On the library of Caesarea, see Frenschkowski, “Bibliothek von Cäsarea,” esp. 68–76 on Jerome's description in particular; see also Carriker, Library of Eusebius.

50 Other colophons reference Caesarea and Pamphilus as well, like the post-production colophon to Esther in Codex Sinaiticus. See Devreesse, Introduction, 122–5; Frenschkowski, “Geschichte,” 86–91.

51 There were multiple post-production engagements with 015 prior to its disassemblage, including re-inking, accentuation, corrections, tachygraphic notes, and artworks. On some of these see Dobrynina, “On the Dating of Codex H.” On the use of margins as a generative space for scholarship see Kwakkel, “The Margin as Editorial Space.”

52 See the entry in Pinakes for a full overview of its contents: https://pinakes.irht.cnrs.fr/notices/cote/43630/ (accessed 31 October 2022). The images are available at https://ntvmr.uni-muenster.de/manuscript-workspace?docID=30102 (accessed 31 October 2022).

53 See Gregory, Textkritik, 347.

54 Images available at http://mss.bmlonline.it/s.aspx?Id=AWOS3yVeI1A4r7GxMdbd&c=ACTUS%20APOSTOLORUM%20ET%20PAULI%20EPISTOLIS#/book (accessed 31 October 2022).

55 See Parpulov, Catena Manuscripts, 149; Staab, Die Pauluskatenen, 150–60. On the format of Pauline catenae, see Morrill and Gram, “Parsing Paul.”

56 Dahl, “Euthalian Apparatus,” 252–3.

57 See Van Seters, Edited Bible, 400: “the notion of the ancient editor was created out of an obvious anachronism and then developed in the interest of literary and text-critical theories, with the result that it has become devoid of all contact with reality.”

58 Einstein, Printing Press, 24.

59 This is not to mention the fact that new imaging technologies, like multi-spectral imaging (MSI) are becoming the norm for manuscript digitization. MSI for example captures significantly more data than a traditional digital photograph or digitized microfilm. We are continuing to have greater access to the textual and material dimensions of our manuscript patrimony, something that will increase the relevance of the type of study I have suggested here. For an example of how new imaging technologies lead to new scholarship, see Houghton and Parker, eds., Codex Zacynthius, which even boasts a picture of their MSI imaging setup on the back cover.

60 Dahl, “Euthalian Apparatus,” 233.