No manuscripts from Late Antiquity are identical. Variance in content and wording is simply a given. Contrary to ‘old’ philology, ‘new’ philology focuses on single manuscripts and does not view the scribe as a copy machine but an active redactor, reader, and interpreter of the text. Where old philology aims to leave behind textual redactions in order to reach the original composition of the first author, new philology instead embraces the ‘left-over products’ and aims to interpret the manuscript as a whole in order to study the work of the last author. Examples of a new philology approach will be given from our earliest Christian manuscripts.

Organized by the research units in New Testament Studies and Christianity in the Orient.