David Charles Parker
OBE (b.1953) was the
Edward Cadbury Professor of Theology
Edward Cadbury Professor of Theology is a senior chair in theology at the University of Birmingham. It was founded in 1940 and was named for Edward Cadbury who helped fund the setting up of the university's theological department. The chair has be ...
(2005-2017) and the Director of the Institute for Textual Scholarship and Electronic Editing at the Department of Theology and Religion,
University of Birmingham
The University of Birmingham (informally Birmingham University) is a Public university, public research university located in Edgbaston, Birmingham, United Kingdom. It received its royal charter in 1900 as a successor to Queen's College, Birmingha ...
. His interests include New Testament
textual criticism
Textual criticism is a branch of textual scholarship, philology, and of literary criticism that is concerned with the identification of textual variants, or different versions, of either manuscripts or of printed books. Such texts may range in da ...
and Greek and Latin
palaeography
Palaeography ( UK) or paleography ( US; ultimately from grc-gre, , ''palaiós'', "old", and , ''gráphein'', "to write") is the study of historic writing systems and the deciphering and dating of historical manuscripts, including the analysi ...
.
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.[BBC Radio 4 programme "The Oldest Bible"]
/ref>
Regarding a textual change in
Codex Sinaiticus
The Codex Sinaiticus ( Shelfmark: London, British Library, Add MS 43725), designated by siglum [Aleph] or 01 (in the Gregory-Aland numbering of New Testament manuscripts), δ 2 (in the von Soden numbering of New Testament manuscript ...
:
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.
Works
Books
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Edited by
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Journal articles
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References
External links
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''Vetus Latina Iohannes. The Manuscripts in Electronic Transcriptions''
{{DEFAULTSORT:Parker, David C.
British biblical scholars
British theologians
1953 births
Academics of the University of Birmingham
New Testament scholars
Officers of the Order of the British Empire
Fellows of the British Academy
Living people