For those who don’t already know, it is the end of an era. The man who pretty much wrote the Bible (as my pastor says) has passed away. Bruce Metzger worked with the nitty gritty study of the New Testament manuscripts. He worked with the editorial board for the United Bible Society’s Greek New Testament as well as leading the way for the English New Revised Standard Version. He was a giant in the field and his legacy will live on for a very, very long time. Two hundred years from now, lowly graduate students will be reading about the history of New Testament scholarship and textual criticism and he’ll be one of the handful of names they will have to remember.
He died of natural causes on Tuesday, February 13th. He was 93. See Michael Holmes’ obit on the SBL website and one on Princeton Theological Seminary’s website. See also Christianity Today for obits from Tabby Yang and Ben Witherington. The Evangelical Textual Criticism blog is soliciting memories here.
More here, here, here, here, here, and here. Dr. Metzger’s private book collection was also famous and there is a seller on Abebooks who is apparently selling works from it.
See a list of his (book) publications at the Library of Congress or Amazon.com. Here are some of his articles (I will be updating this periodically and if I find any of them available online, I’ll make the links):
| “English Translations of the Bible, Today and Tomorrow.” Bibliotheca Sacra 150 (1993): 397-414. [.htm, .html]
“Persistent Problems Confronting Bible Translators.” Bibliotheca Sacra 150 (1993): 273-284. [.html, .pdf] “Theories of the Translation Process.” Bibliotheca Sacra 150 (1993): 140-50. [.html, .doc] “Important Early Translations of the Bible.” Bibliotheca Sacra 150 (1993): 35-49. “The New Revised Standard Version,” in Scribes and Scripture: New Testament Essays in Honor of J. Harold Greenlee (ed. David Alan Black; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1992), 111-5. “The Processes and Struggles Involved in Making a New Translation of the Bible.” Religious Education 85 (1990): 174-84. “RSV : Ecumenical Edition.” Theology Today 34 (1977): 315-7. “Lexicon of Christian Iconography.” Church History 45 (1976): 5-15. “Trials of the translator.” Theology Today 33 (1976): 96-100. “Literary Forgeries and Canonical Pseudepigrapha.” Journal of Biblical Literature 91 (1972): 3-24. “Ancient Astrological Geography and Acts 2:9-11,” in Apostolic History and the Gospel (eds. W. Ward Gasque & Ralph P. Martin; Exeter: The Paternoster Press, 1970), 123-33. “Bibliographic Aids for the Study of the Manuscripts of the New Testament.” American Theological Library Association Summary of Proceedings 20 (1966): 51-62. “New Testament View of the Church.” Theology Today 19 (1962): 369-80. “Geneva Bible of 1560.” Theology Today 17 (1960): 339-52. “Hitherto Neglected Early Fragment of the Epistle to Titus.” Novum Testamentum 1 (1956): 149-50. “New Light from Old Manuscripts.” Theology Today 13 (1956): 72-86. |
