TC Girl

Aasgard, Reidar. “Brothers in Brackets? A Plea for Rethinking the Use of [] in NA/UBS.” JSNT 26.3 (2004): 301-321.


It’s Ash Wednesday, and what better way to start Lent than with an article about… brackets! Yes, today I’m looking at Reidar Aasgard’s article “Brothers in Brackets? A Plea for Rethinking the Use of [] in NA/UBS.” Ok. Time for some honesty: This has to be the worst title I have ever seen for an article. It screams, “Don’t read me! I’m boring!” And… well, it’s actually kind of amusing. How can you resist reading an article with such a dull title?


Aasgaard has a bone to pick with editorial committees responsible for the Nestle-Aland Novum Testamentum Graece and UBS Greek New Testament texts. You see, critical editions of the NT are infamous for using confusing and ambiguous classification systems. Any first year Greek student can tell you this. Aasgaard is particularly concerned with the use of brackets (yes, these: [] – but not these: [[]]) to indicate material of questionable authenticity (301).


So, I checked the bracket definition in NA27 (2001), page 6*:

“Square brackets in the text ([ ]) indicate that textual critics today are not completely convinced of the authenticity of the enclosed words (cf. Mt 18,19; Ac 16,; for word order, 1 Cor 10,20). These passages are always noted explicitly in the apparatus so that the reader may evaluate them independently. The reading given in the text shows the preference of the editors. For practical reasons the evidence given in the apparatus always includes the support for the reading in the text. Square brackets always reflect a great degree of difficulty in determining the text.”


Anyway, Aasgaard decides to find out whether or not these brackets are still necessary. He counted every single occurrence of brackets and calculated their average occurrence in various texts (Gospels, Paul’s undisputed letters, etc.). He takes examples from NA/UBS where the use of adelfoi is bracketed and attempts to demonstrate that – in a few cases - a conclusion about the authenticity can be easily reached (thus rendering the brackets unnecessary). He even suggests places where brackets should be added (noting inconsistencies in the assignment of brackets by the editorial committee, 318).


His conclusions are helpful. For instance, when evaluating a text in brackets, it is best to look for similar bracketed occurrences before making any decision as to its authenticity (or lack thereof, 319). He also suggests methods that are pretty generic, like using both internal and external criteria (320). But he’s right – consistency in bracketing isn’t something that seems to have been a concern for the NA and UBS editors.


Well, that’s it for today. TC Girl thinks Aasgaard needs to go with something a bit more upbeat next time... like, "NA/UBS: A Veritable Bracketing Hell!"


Cheers!