The Textual Transmission of the New Testament: Manuscripts, Variants, and Authority

Juan Chapa offers nuanced discussions of many topics that currently occupy the field of textual criticism, including debates over the dating of New Testament papyri, the preference for the codex, the liturgical use of texts, the presence of nomina sacra, textual variants, the establishment of the New Testament text, problems with the term original, and the challenge of textual fluidity. His unique approach illustrates how a Catholic perspective, the rule of faith, and the Latin textual tradition can inform our understanding of the origin, preservation, and authority of the New Testament text. Chapa’s work contributes a distinctively Catholic voice to the largely Protestant chorus that has dominated the field, thus filling a lacuna in contemporary text-critical conversations. Juan Chapa is Professor of New Testament at the Faculty of Theology of the University of Navarra. In addition to his work Letters of Condolence in Greek Papyri (1998) and numerous book chapters and articles in scientific journals, he has edited and published several Christian papyri belonging to the collection The Oxyrhynchus Papyri (Oxford), including several from the New Testament. Juan Hernández Jr. is Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at Bethel University in St. Paul, Minnesota and the author of the award-winning Scribal Habits and Theological Influences in the Apocalypse (2006), contributor and coeditor of Studies in the Text of the New Testament and Early Christianity (2015), and the translator of Josef Schmid’s landmark German work, Studies in the History of the Greek Text of the Apocalypse (2018) and Punctuation and Textual Structure of Revelation in the Editio Critica Maior Vol. 3.2 (2024).