The Gruppierung nach Übereinstimmungsquoten table found in each of the four Text und Textwert (= TUT) volumes on the gospels offers a good high-level sense of the closest textual relationships in the Greek tradition. Unfortunately, this useful table is not present in the TUT volume of Acts. Recently, I have written a Python script to parse the Verzeichnende Beschreibung data and compute Gruppierung data for Acts (see below).
[Note: The list below has been revised in a more recent post.]
Here are the top 10 closest Greek MSS to Bezae in Acts based on the generated Gruppierung data (NA28 readings in plaintext, special readings in bold, work shown here):
GA | Non-Majority % | Total % | Teststellen |
1853 | 66.7% (6/9) | 37.5% (27/72) | 4 18.4 46 57 62 72.4 |
XII | Athos | acts paul | |
1646 | 66.7% (4/6) | 36.1% (26/72) | 21 26 61 72.4 |
1172 | Athos | gospels acts paul | |
1610 | 66.7% (4/6) | 33.3% (20/60) | 18.4 46 57 62 |
1463 | Athens | acts paul | |
1893 | 62.5% (5/8) | 33.9% (20/59) | 23 42.4 46 57 74 |
XII | Jerusalem | acts paul revelation | |
2201 | 60.0% (3/5) | 32.8% (19/58) | 23 46 57 |
XV | Elassona | gospels acts paul revelation | |
623 | 60.0% (6/10) | 32.1% (17/53) | 23 26 42.4 46 57 62 |
1037 | Vatican | acts paul | |
619 | 58.3% (7/12) | 30.9% (17/55) | 23 26 42.4 46 57 61 74 |
X | Florence | acts paul | |
913 | 57.1% (4/7) | 35.4% (23/65) | 18.4 46 57 62 |
XIV | London | acts paul | |
1162 | 57.1% (8/14) | 34.7% (25/72) | 18.4 23 26 42.4 46 57 61 74 |
XI | Patmos | acts paul | |
436 | 55.6% (5/9) | 34.7% (25/72) | 18.4 42.4 46 57 62 |
XI/XII | Vatican | acts paul |
I am following the same method used in the gospels (e.g. see John vol. 1, pp. 50-53; Luke vol 1., p. 25; Mark vol. 1, p. 44 in order of helpfulness, note Matthew has same description as Luke) with a few modifications:
- Due to Bezae’s free character, basing agreements on exact matches tends to exaggerate Bezae’s distinctiveness with the result that it may appear more isolated. (see Epp, “Textual Clusters,” 2013) To mitigate this effect, I am including TUT‘s “variant” agreements (denoted as capital letters) as matches (unlike the TUT calculations which exclude these). For example, at Teststelle (= TS) 8 (Acts 2:31) I am counting Bezae’s “singular” variant 2B (ενκαταλειφθη) as an agreement with the initial-text reading 2 (εγκατελειφθη), though this TS is not included in the Haupliste. The result is that in my calculations Bezae has 13 agreements with the initial text (including two additional TSS 2 and 57), rather than the 11 listed in the Hauptliste (4, 8, 21, 23, 26, 46, 58, 61, 62, 74, 75).
- Also unlike the TUT Acts volume, I am not counting Bezae’s five 1/2 readings (10, 35, 52, 55, 76) or its 1/2 variant (1/2L) as initial-text readings.
- Note that as in the Hauptliste, special readings do not include singular readings. For Bezae there are nine non-singular, special readings (‘15.4’, ‘18.4’, ‘25.3’, ‘42.4’, ‘44.4’, ‘49.4’, ‘68.3’, ‘71.3’, ‘72.4’)