The New Testament Apparatus and the Rise of the American Cold War

A New Testament apparatus criticus orders a vast material history within an array placed below a text that either prints a desired referent in the upper register or gestures toward that referent, conceptually. Relegating manuscripts to the role of data and extracting their variants, textual criticism masters past corruption while promising an ever-advancing present that never quite arrives. The apparatus therefore testifies not only to textual difference but also to extractive resource hoarding and the progress-at-any-cost epistemologies of modernity. Focusing on the International Greek New Testament Project’s “new Tischendorf” and the expeditions it prompted, this essay tracks the direct involvement of government, corporate, and intelligence entrepreneurs in “saving the New Testament” or, more accurately, advancing the Cold War interests of, among others, the Library of Congress, the United States State Department, Gulf Oil, and institutions like the Society of Biblical Literature and Exegesis.

Duke Scholars

Author Jennifer Wright Knust Religious Studies