University of Birmingham project will examine hundreds of manuscripts which have not previously been considered in establishing the biblical text.
Hugh Houghton, Professor of New Testament Textual Scholarship at the University of Birmingham, has been awarded €2.5 million as an Advanced Grant from the European Research Council (ERC).
The grant will fund a five-year project that will catalogue and analyse manuscripts of early Christian commentaries. These comprise well over one thousand documents which preserve ‘indirect’ evidence for the text of the New Testament.
The new project relies on advances in manuscript digitisation and state-of-the-art databases to undertake the first comprehensive analysis of commentary manuscripts. If the initial findings are matched in other biblical books, the project will create a new class of witness (a historical artefact that provides evidence for the wording of the Bible) to the Greek New Testament.
Although early Christian writers such as John Chrysostom, the fifth-century archbishop of Constantinople, have long been considered important sources for the history of the biblical text, the individual manuscripts of their writings do not appear in editions of the New Testament.
This project offers the opportunity for a comprehensive evaluation of this evidence, which will shed new light on the history of the biblical text.
Professor Houghton has a remarkable track record in discoveries relating to the New Testament. As a postdoctoral researcher at Birmingham, he identified two previously unrecognised manuscripts of the earliest Latin version of the Gospels. In 2017, he published the first translation of the ancient gospel commentary by the fourth-century Fortunatianus of Aquileia, rediscovered in an anonymous manuscript in Cologne Cathedral.
This was followed by a groundbreaking complete edition and translation of Codex Zacynthius, the oldest Greek catena commentary, made possible by multispectral imaging. His most recent research project added 35 new witnesses to the official register of Greek New Testament manuscripts and found 23 previously unknown biblical commentaries compiled from extracts of earlier writers. He is one of the editors of the United Bible Societies’ Greek New Testament and last year produced a textual commentary on the variant readings in each of the New Testament books.
This is the third ERC project awarded to Professor Houghton at Birmingham. In 2011 he won a Starting Grant, focusing on the Latin Bible, followed by a Consolidator Grant in 2018. His success in achieving this Advanced Grant makes him one of a handful of researchers who have received funding at all three levels offered by the European Research Council since its establishment in 2007.
I am delighted that the award of this funding will enable us to address this question in a way that has not been possible up to now.
“Each of my ERC projects has built on advances made in the previous one,” explained Professor Houghton. “The Consolidator Grant made us aware of the inconsistent treatment of commentary manuscripts in editions of the New Testament, and I am delighted that the award of this funding will enable us to address this question in a way that has not been possible up to now. What is more, colleagues from the earlier projects have gone on to academic positions across Europe, showing how these funding schemes develop the next generation of researchers.”
Professor Houghton is one of 319 leading researchers across Europe who have been awarded a share of €838 million in the ERC’s latest round of Advanced Grant funding.
The Advanced Grants give senior researchers the opportunity to pursue ambitious, curiosity-driven projects that could lead to major scientific breakthroughs. The grants are part of the EU’s Horizon Europe programme.
The Department of Theology and Religion at the University of Birmingham came 3rd in the 2021 UK Research Excellence Framework based on its internationally excellent research outputs and is 31st globally in the QS University Subject rankings 2026. It has been home to numerous externally funded research projects, including multiple European collaborations.
Work on the project will begin around the end of 2026.
For more information, please contact Ellie Hail, Communications Officer, University of Birmingham at e.hail@bham.ac.uk or alternatively on +44 (0)7966 311 409. You can also contact the press office on +44 (0) 121 414 2772.
Professor of New Testament Textual Scholarship
University webpage of Professor Hugh Houghton, Professor of New Testament Textual Scholarship at the University of Birmingham.
