Biblical scholarship usually engages with reconstructed texts without taking into account the form and material culture of the manuscripts that transmit the texts used in reconstruction. This article examines the influence of paratexts on biblical studies and reception history, using the book of Revelation as a test case, in an effort to rediscover the significance of transmission for comprehending the ways in which past reading communities engaged their scriptural traditions. The liminal features of manuscripts that are often ignored in modern editions are an integral part of the artefact that influence and shape a text’s reading. This study argues that paratexts represent an underdeveloped resource for reception history, insofar as the relationship between text and paratext is rarely taken into consideration by modern interpreters. Material culture, textual transmission, reception history, and exegesis are integrally linked processes.

In this article I catalogue and analyse every form of the title – inscriptions, subscriptions and kephalaia – that appears in the New Testament papyri, bringing together this material for the first time. The titles provide new evidence for examining questions related to traditions of entitling in antiquity more broadly and offer a space to consider the dynamic relationships between medium, materiality, book-forms, paratextuality and interpretation, both in antiquity and in our own scholarly culture that stands between print and digital forms. The material also highlights interesting divergences in labelling strategies between the titles of works in the various New Testament sub-corpora and suggests that the kat’ andra formula is not the only way to entitle a Gospel.

The Book of Revelation and Early Jewish Textual Culture explores the relationship between the writing of Revelation and its early audience, especially its interaction with Jewish Scripture. It touches on several areas of scholarly inquiry in biblical studies, including modes of literary production, the use of allusions, practices of exegesis, and early engagements with the Book of Revelation. Garrick Allen brings the Book of Revelation into the broader context of early Jewish literature, including the Dead Sea Scrolls and other important works. Arguing that the author of the New Testament Apocalypse was a 'scribal expert, someone who was well-versed in the content of Jewish Scripture and its interpretation', he demonstrates that John was not only a seer and prophet, but also an erudite reader of scripture.

This article explores the relationship between manuscripts of ancient religious literature and aesthetic cognitivism, a normative theory of the value of art. Arguing that manuscripts both contain and constitute works of art, we explore paratextuality as a phenomenon that connects manuscript studies to both qualitative and quantitative sides of aesthetic cognitivism. Focusing on our work with a single unpublished gospel manuscript (Dublin, CBL W 139) in the context of a larger project called Paratextual Understanding, we make that case that paratexts have aesthetic functions that allow them to contribute to the knowledge yielded by the larger literary work of which they are a part. We suggest a number of avenues for further research that engages with material culture, non-typography, paratexts, and the arts.

This article examines two aspects of the ubiquitous, but oft-overlooked, set of paratexts known as the Euthalian Apparatus. The Euthalian apparatus supplements Acts, the Pauline Epistles, and the Catholic Epistles in a variety of manuscripts, framing these works with prefaces, cross-references, lists of various kinds, and biographic texts relating to Paul. To begin to understand this variable system as a work of late-ancient textual scholarship, transmitted in hundreds of medieval manuscripts, I examine the two quotation lists provided for Acts, focusing on their various presentations in the manuscripts, using GA 1162 as an example. Examining these lists enables us to better understand the reception of Acts’ use of Jewish scripture, Acts’ reception in late-ancient scholastic contexts, the transmission of quotations, and the complexity involved in defining the boundaries of canonical ideologies.

This article critically examines the functionalities and significance of three prominent digital tools that have become central to the study of Greek New Testament manuscripts. The design, functionalities, and significance of the New Testament Virtual Manuscript Room (NTVMR), the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts (CSNTM) digital library, and the Pinakes database have a hand in shaping the research questions of the field. As such, it is important to understand what these tools do, how they function, and how they might develop further to address the needs of the field. The analysis of these tools leads to fundamental questions about using digital representations as proxies for primary sources, challenges for managing the materiality of artefactual and digital objects, the collaborative nature of digital scholarship, and the implicit interpretations of the Greek New Testament tradition inherent in digital workspaces.