The Gospel According to John in the Byzantine Tradition

Introduction to the Electronic Edition

This edition of the Byzantine text of John has a claim to be both the first printed edition of any part of the New Testament to have been produced from start to finish using electronic technology, and the first genuine electronic edition to be finished, as well as the first to be published in both a printed and an electronic form.

• The Gospel according to John in the Byzantine Tradition, edited for the United Bible Societies by Roderic L. Mullen with Simon Crisp and D.C. Parker, and in association with W.J. Elliott, U.B. Schmid, R. Kevern, M.B. Morrill, C.J. Smith, Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 2007.

The details of its origins and scope are described in the Introduction to the Printed Edition. A little more will be said here about the relationship between this edition and those produced by the International Greek New Testament Project.

A number of the electronic transcriptions made for this project are shared with the edition of the majuscule manuscripts of John (www.iohannes.com).

• The New Testament in Greek IV. The Gospel According To St. John, edited by the American and British Committees of The International Greek New Testament Project. Volume Two, The Majuscules, edited by U.B. Schmid with W.J. Elliott and D.C. Parker.

This does not necessarily mean that the transcription will appear in an identical way in each edition. Since each critical apparatus was compiled independently of the other, the way in which the variant readings in a manuscript are displayed may sometimes differ.

The edition permits the viewing of the material in several ways:

1. The apparatus provides verse-by-verse viewing of an apparatus with the opportunity to see the whole text of the verse in any witness. This may be viewed in two different ways:
   • a. With only the base text above the apparatus.
   • b. With both the base text and the text of the Patriarchal Edition above the apparatus.
2. Each witness may be viewed in its entirety. For some, the original page layout is indicated. For others, there is less formatting information. The section Transcription Details provides detailed information about the making and content of each witness file.
3. Finally, it is possible to read the base text without apparatus, in a comfortable reading format.

Although the apparatus of the printed edition and the apparatus of this electronic edition are generated from the same files, they are not identical, since the differences in production of print and electronic editions led to changes being made independently in each at the final stages. However, they are substantially identical.

In addition to the text of all witnesses, this electronic edition contains a list of sources for all the patristic citations, linked from each verse. This permits the user to consult the source of the edition's evidence.

The transcriptions may be placed in six categories:

1. Text-only majuscule manuscripts, indicated by their Gregory-Aland number (which begins with a zero). The essential principles of transcription are set out in the IGNTP edition of the manuscripts.
2. Text-only minuscule manuscripts, indicated by their Gregory-Aland number.
3. Commentary manuscripts. These are indicated by their Gregory-Aland number with the letter K at the beginning of their siglum (for the German "Kommentar"). All but one of these (0141) are minuscule manuscripts.
4. Lectionary manuscripts, indicated by their Gregory-Aland number with the initial upper-case L. Where a lectionary contains a passage more than once and there is a variation in text between the lections, the different readings are indicated by a numeral. Note that the number refers to the reading, not to the lection. For example, where there are two forms of text at two places in the manuscript, the number (2) might refer to a second form of text in the second lection on one occasion and the third lection on the other.
5. Patristic citations. Here a superscript letter distinguishes between different forms in which the father cites it. The abbreviations used are
   • a. Bas = Basil of Caesarea
   • b. GrNy = Gregory of Nyssa
   • c. GrNaz =Gregory of Nazianzus
   • d. CyrJ = Cyril of Jerusalem
   • e. Chrys = John Chrysostom
   For the criteria for selection of these writers as significant to the early Byzantine text, see the Introduction to the Printed Edition.
6. Printed texts (Patriarchal Edition and Nestle-Aland 27) without accentuation.

Note the following conventions in the transcriptions:

• Brackets [ and ] indicate reconstructed missing text
• Dots beneath letters indicate that they are uncertain
• Brackets ( and ) indicate ligatures and abbreviations

For further details, see the Introduction to the Printed Edition.

Corrections in manuscripts are shown in the following way. The text of the first hand appears in blue (as "OM" if it has nothing). A single click on the blue lettering will produce a box stating the first hand text (indicated with *), and the corrector.

The transcriptions of lectionaries place the text in its canonical order and not in the order of lections in the manuscripts.

The transcriptions of patristic citations place the text in its canonical order. "Absent" in the patristic text transcriptions indicates that the author nowhere cites the text.