David C. Parker Explained

David Charles Parker OBE (born 1953) was the Edward Cadbury Professor of Theology (2005-2017) and the Director of the Institute for Textual Scholarship and Electronic Editing at the Department of Theology and Religion, University of Birmingham. His interests include New Testament textual criticism and Greek and Latin palaeography.

Quotes

Commenting on the text of the Greek New Testament, he said:

The text is changing. Every time that I make an edition of the Greek New Testament, or anybody does, we change the wording. We are maybe trying to get back to the oldest possible form but, paradoxically, we are creating a new one. Every translation is different, every reading is different, and although there’s been a tradition in parts of Protestant Christianity to say there is a definitive single form of the text, the fact is you can never find it. There is never ever a final form of the text.^[1]

Regarding a textual change in Codex Sinaiticus:

There is also a fascinating place in the codex in the Sermon on the Mount where we can see a change to the text altering the attitude to anger. Jesus says the person who is angry with his brother deserves judgement. But there is a variation on that. If you look at the page in Codex Sinaiticus you will see that somebody’s added a little word in the margin in Greek which changes it to “the person who is angry with his brother without good reason deserves judgement,” and there you’ve got two very different views of Christian life.^[1]

In consideration of the challenges of biblical text reconstruction, D. C. Parker said:

There is a sense in which there is no such thing as either the New Testament or the Gospels. What is available to us is a number of reconstructions of some or all of the documents classified as belonging to the New Testament - some of these reconstructions are manuscripts, say P75 or Codex Vaticanus; others are printed texts like Nestle-Aland. Textual criticism makes it clear that the text is in a sense inaccessible to us. The fact that the recovery of the original text is a task that remains beyond all of us sets a question mark against any claim that we can in any sense 'possess' the text literally or metaphorically.^[2]

Works

Books

• Book: Parker . David C. . Paul's Letter to the Colossians by Philip Melanchthon . Historic Texts and Interpreters in Biblical Scholarship . 8 . Sheffield . The Almond Press . 1989 . 9781850752103 . 20219850 . - translated with an introduction and notes
• Book: Parker . David C. . 3 . Codex Bezae: An Early Christian Manuscript and Its Text . Cambridge, UK . Cambridge University Press . 1992 . 9780521400374 . 21909160 .
• Book: Parker . David C. . 3 . Elliott . W. J. . W. J. Elliott . 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 One The Papyri . New Testament Tools and Studies . 20 . Leiden . E. J. Brill . 1995 . 9789004099401 . 54308733 .
• Book: Parker . David C. . 3 . Amphoux . Christian-Bernard . Christian-Bernard Amphoux . Codex Bezae: Studies from the Lunel Colloquium June 1994 . New Testament Tools and Studies . 22 (with . Leiden . E. J. Brill . 1996 . 9789004103931 . 33207845 .
• Book: Parker . David C. . 3 . The Living Text of the Gospels . Cambridge, UK . Cambridge University Press . 1997 . 9780521590624 . 35808327 .
• Book: Parker . David C. . 3 . Parker . T. H. L. . T. H. L. Parker . Calvini Commentarius in Epistolam ad Romanos . Ioannis Calvini Opera Omnia denuo Recognita et Adnotatione Critica Instructa Notique Illustrata, Series II Opera Exegetica Veteris et Novi Testamenti . Geneva . Droz . 1999 .
• Book: Parker . David C. . 3 . Mullen . R. L. . R. L. Mullen . Crisp . Simon . Simon Crisp . The Byzantine Text of the Gospel of John . Stuttgart . German Bible Society . 2007 .
• Book: Parker . David C. . 3 . Elliott . W. J. . W. J. Elliott . Schmid . U. B. . U. B. Schmid . 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 . New Testament Tools, Studies and Documents . 37 . Leiden . E. J. Brill . 2007 . 9789047421481 . 536021224 .
• Book: Parker . David C. . 3 . Houghton . H. A. G. . H. A. G. Houghton . Textual Variation: Theological and Social Tendencies? Papers from the Fifth Birmingham Colloquium on the Textual Criticism of the New Testament . Texts and Studies: 3rd series . 6 . Piscataway, NJ . . 2008 . 9781593337896 . 213384852 .
• Book: Parker . David C. . 3 . An Introduction to the New Testament Manuscripts and their Texts . Cambridge, UK . Cambridge University Press . 2008 . 9780521895538 . 191927155 .
• Book: Parker . David C. . 3 . Manuscripts, Texts, Theology. Collected Papers 1977-2007 . Βerlin & New York . De Gruyter . 2009 . 9783110211948 . 516213768 .
• Book: Parker . David C. . 3 . Codex Sinaiticus. The Story of the World's Oldest Bible . London & Peabody, MA . British Library & Hendrikson . 2010 . 9780712358033 . 655678731 .
• Book: Parker . David C. . 3 . Textual Scholarship and the Making of the New Testament . Lyell lectures, 2011 . Oxford . Oxford University Press . 2012 . 9780199657810 . 780482794 .

Edited by

• Book: Parker . David C. . 2 . Childers . Jeff W. . Jeff W. Childers . Transmission and Reception: New Testament Text-critical and Exegetical Studies . Texts and Studies . 4 . Piscataway, NJ . Gorgias Press . 2006 . 9781593333676 . 70701505 .

Journal articles

• Parker . David C. . 3 . The New Oxyrhynchus Papyrus of Revelation (P115) . New Testament Studies . 46 . 2000 . 159–74 . 10.1017/S0028688500000102 . 203366569 .
• Parker . David C. . 3 . Et Incarnatus Est . Scottish Journal of Theology . 54 . 2001 . 192–228 .
• Parker . David C. . 3 . The Quest of the Critical Edition . Variants . 1 . 2002 . 33–42 .
• Parker . David C. . 3 . A Comparison Between the Text und Textwert and the Claremont Profile Method Analyses of Manuscripts in the Gospel of Luke . New Testament Studies . 49 . 2003 . 108–138 .
• Parker . David C. . 3 . Through a Screen Darkly: Digital Texts and the New Testament . Journal for the Study of the New Testament . 25 . 2003 . 4 . 395–411 . 10.1177/0142064X0302500401 . 161146588 .
• Parker . David C. . 3 . The Text of the New Testament, by B.M. Metzger and B.D. Ehrman . Journal of Theological Studies . 57 . 2006 . 551–67 . - review article
• Parker . David C. . 3 . Textual Criticism and Theology . Expository Times . 118 . 2007 . 12 . 583–589 . 10.1177/0014524607081679 . 171034631 .

External links

• Web site: David C. Parker faculty page . 12 November 2018.
• Vetus Latina Iohannes. The Manuscripts in Electronic Transcriptions

Notes and References

1. http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/theoldestbible/pip/9vwi1/ BBC Radio 4 programme "The Oldest Bible"
2. Book: Parker, David C. . The Living Text of the Gospels . 1997-08-07 . Cambridge University Press . 978-0-521-59951-1 . en.