The need for a new Greek critical edition of the Orthodox Church Canons and the issues of textual criticism

The need for a new Greek critical edition of the Orthodox Church Canons and the issues of textual criticism

24 March 2018

Starting from the actual stage of development of the textual criticism of Greek texts, especially of the New Testament, I want to emphasize in this study the need of a new complete critical edition of the canons of the Orthodox Church. This necessity is imposed by the textual differences found in the manuscripts that can lead to different interpretations of particular canons and by the lack of a complete critical edition. The existing ones are either non-critical, incomplete, or they do not cover the whole tradition of manuscripts, sometimes not even the most important ones. In order to prove the need of a new critical edition of the canons, I have examined the most important existing editions by highlighting the positive and the negative aspects from the perspective of textual criticism. The editions that were examined in the present article are those of: Georgios A. Rhalles (rewpyioc A. PaAApc) and Michael Potles (MiyafA notAfc), the edition of Cardinal Jean Baptiste Pitra, the edition of Pericles-Pierre Joannou and the latest edition of Heinz Ohme.