06_Biblica_1_D_Callan_Layout 1 05/11/12 12:20 Pagina 428 428 TERRANCE CALLAN The title of Eldon Jay Epp’s The Theological Tendency of Codex Bezae Cantabrigiensis in Acts suggests that it is an analysis of Acts as found in Codex Bezae Cantabrigiensis. However, that is not exactly the case. Rather, Epp’s actual goal was to identify theological tenden- cies of the “Western” tradition insofar as it is accessible from Codex Bezae. This involved discounting elements of the text that arose later than the second century 3. Although little attention has been given to understanding early manuscripts as a whole, this is worth investigating. During the first 1400 years of Christian history, before there were printed copies of the New Testament, it was available only in manuscripts. During this period most of the people in any given place probably did not have access to more than one copy of any biblical writing. As far as they were concerned, their copy simply was the writing 4. Since no two manuscripts of any writing agree with one another in every respect, readers’ understanding of these writings would have varied as their copies of them varied. This makes it interesting to ask how readers would have understood the earliest copies of 2 Peter. How would their understanding of it have varied because of the differ- ences among these copies? In what follows I will discuss each of the three earliest copies of 2 Peter in turn and consider what 2 Peter would have meant to the readers of each one. My concern will be the meaning of the manuscripts as they stand. For this purpose it does not matter whether the distinctive features of the manuscripts were produced by the scribes who wrote them or were found already in their ex- emplars. I will identify the most significant textual features of these copies of 2 Peter by comparing them with the text of 2 Peter in The Greek New Testament. Fourth Revised Edition 5. This is what I Studies and Documents 36; Leiden ‒ Boston, MA 2008) when he discusses the theological changes introduced by the scribes of papyrus manuscripts. 3 E.J. EPP, The Theological Tendency of Codex Bezae Cantabrigiensis in Acts (SNTSMS 3; Cambridge 1966) 27-28. Epp provides a review of subsequent in- vestigations on the same lines in “Anti-Judaic Tendencies in the D-Text of Acts: Forty Years of Conversation”, in ID., Perspectives on NT Textual Criticism. Col- lected Essays 1962-2004 (NTS 116; Leiden 2005) 699-739. 4 Cf. EPP’s, Theological Tendency, 13, statement that “these variant texts were for some Christians at some time and place the ‘original’ text”. 5 B. ALAND et al. (eds.), The Greek New Testament (Stuttgart 41993).