THE NEW TESTAMENT TEXT, PARATEXTS, AND RECEPTION HISTORY
This chapter demonstrates that New Testament texts, whether in manuscripts or printed editions, are supplemented and constrained by "paratexts"-extra-textual features such as chapter numbers and titles, subheadings and notes, introductions and colophons, or glosses and critical apparatuses, which also reflect technological, practical, and interpretive change. The texts, paratexts, and receptions are thoroughly intertwined, a situation that contributes to textual as well as interpretive multiplicity. Ancient, medieval, and modern criticism, commentary, and use intensifies this phenomenon: "improvements" are added and then copied, layers of tradition accumulate, "corruptions" are preserved or strategically discarded; and passages are reconfigured theologically, epistemologically, liturgically, and materially to serve some new purpose. Every copy, whether copied by hand, printed on paper, or displayed digitally, is therefore both a storehouse of human creativity and a material record of what was wanted and possible at some given time.
