The Nestle-Aland and United Bible Societies' hand editions are recognised across the world as the standard texts of the Greek New Testament used by students, translators, ministers and biblical scholars. In 2011, a new committee was appointed to oversee the preparation of the next edition of each of these volumes, the twenty-ninth edition of Nestle-Aland (NA29) and the sixth edition of the United Bible Societies (UBS6). This included one of the founding directors of ITSEE, Professor David Parker, as the first-ever English member of this group of leading scholars representing different ecclesiastical and academic traditions. When Professor Parker moved to stepped retirement in 2017, with permission from the United Bible Societies he nominated Professor Hugh Houghton to continue as his representative on the board. Last month, however, the United Bible Societies appointed Professor Houghton as a full member of the editorial board charged with work on the forthcoming volumes and future hand editions.
Professor Houghton said:
"I have really enjoyed working with the committee over the last four years as David Parker's representative, but I did not expect to be appointed as an editor in my own right while David was still on the committee. Now I shall have to wear two hats at the meetings! I am very grateful to Professor Strutwolf for his kind invitation to join the Nestle-Aland committee and to Professor Schweitzer and the United Bible Societies' Committee on Translation Policy for endorsing my appointment to the committee of the UBS Greek New Testament. It is a great honour to be the second English scholar—and Anglican—to serve on these committees: not only does it further strengthen the relationship between ITSEE and our colleagues at other research institutes, but it shows that Birmingham continues to be a globally recognised centre for studying the text of the New Testament. I hope that through these editions and our more specialist work on the Editio Critica Maior we will be able to create resources which will support scholarship and the worldwide Church for generations to come."
Other connections between ITSEE and the editorial board include two of the UBS representatives, Dr Simon Crisp (an Honorary Fellow of ITSEE) and Dr Edgar Ebojo, who wrote a doctoral thesis on the manuscript known as Papyrus 46. Dr Dora Panella, who until last year was a postdoctoral research fellow at INTF working on these editions, completed a doctorate at Birmingham supervised by Professor Houghton and sponsored by the Midlands3Cities AHRC Doctoral Training Partnership.
Members of the Nestle-Aland and United Bible Societies' Editorial Committee at their meeting in February 2018.
(left to right: Professor Holger Strutwolf, Professor Christos Karakolis, Dr Klaus Wachtel, Professor David Trobisch, Professor Hugh Houghton, Dr Simon Crisp (UBS), Dr Florian Voss (UBS), Dr Dora Panella (INTF/UBS), Professor Stephen Pisano)