The ECM of Mark was published at the end of July! It is available to order through the German Bible Society’s website.

The complete title is Novum Testamentum Graecum: Editio Critica Maior, Volume I: The Synoptic Gospels, book 2: The Gospel of Mark. This numbering might be confusing since the Catholic letters were titled ECM IV and Acts was designated as ECM III. The INTF has been working on the Synoptic Gospels (ECM volume I), and Mark is book two of volume I, or ECM I.2 for short. We are now working on ECM Matthew which will be published as ECM I book 1, or ECM I.1. Here's an overview of the ECM volumes, bearing in mind only the Catholic Letters, Acts, and Mark have been published:

Volume I: Synoptic Gospels

Volume II: The Gospel of John

Volume III: Acts

Volume IV: Catholic Letters

Volume V: Paul's Letters

Volume VI: Revelation

Like ECM Acts, there are three parts to ECM Mark: (1) text and apparatus, (2) supplementary material that explains which manuscripts were selected and has introductions to the versions and other detailed information, and (3) a collection of studies on the text of Mark in different manuscript traditions. Part 3, Studies, is where the "Text-Critical Commentary" can be found.

Image of the Three Parts of ECM Mark

As promised in a previous blog post, we now present links to digital tools and downloads that accompany the printed edition and offer access to the data behind the edition.

Here is the link to CBGM Mark 3.5. This is the third phase of the CBGM for Mark. The .5 indicates we  have made several changes to the local stemmata in the current phase, but did not systematically go through all the variants again to bring it to a new phase. A local stemma of variants has been established at each variant passage. What we called “Genealogical Queries” for Acts and Catholic Letters, we are now just calling “CBGM” since the former term didn’t really take off.

The start page of the CBGM (see below) also has instructions for the CBGM Docker, containing now both Acts and Mark. The CBGM for these two books can be downloaded onto your own computer and you can edit the local stemmata. I’ve already posted a video tutorial on how install Acts CBGM, but the Docker image now also includes Mark CBGM.

Image of the CBGM start page

The Greek text and apparatus of the ECM of Mark is also available online (the digital ECM). Clicking on a manuscript in the apparatus of Mark calls up its transcription. The “Text-Critical Commentary,” published in the Studies volume (3), is also available free online. All passages with a commentary will display a highlighted speech bubble. For example, go to Mark 1:1, word address 12-16, and click on the speech bubble (see image below). It will bring you to the commentary for that passage and you can read why υἱοῦ τοῦ θεοῦ, a Byzantine reading, was adopted over υἱοῦ θεοῦ as the initial text. Users are also invited to comment on passages in the NTVMR forum, which Klaus Wachtel also mentioned at the end of his blog post on the Text-Critical Commentary.

Returning to the apparatus, if you click on the circle icon (see image below), this brings you to the CBGM for this passage.

The Patristic database has been updated to include Mark (see image below). Now both Acts and Mark are available.

Image of Links to the Text-Critical Commentary, CBGM, and the Patristic Database in the digital ECM

Last but not least, the ECM Mark page on the INTF's website now has lists of textual changes between the ECM of Mark and the text of Mark in NA28 and split lines in ECM Mark.

In ECM Mark there are:

33 textual changes. Interestingly, 21 of these changes are in accordance with the Byzantine text. If you’re curious about the reasons these readings were chosen, the textual commentary can help shed some light on these decisions.

There are also 126 split lines in ECM of Mark. In most of the split lines (107 to be exact), the Byzantine text is one of the variants given equal weight as the Ausgangstext.

With its comprehensive apparatus based on full transcriptions of 209 Greek manuscripts and a text newly established on the basis of a systematic method—the CBGM—ECM Mark intends to offer an enduring contribution to the field of textual criticism. It is our hope that researchers will take advantage of the free transcriptions (on the NTVMR) and access to the editorial textual decisions (via the CBGM and Text-Critical Commentary).

Although these tools (1) the CBGM, (2) the CBGM Docker container, (3) the digital ECM, (4) the Text-Critical Commentary, and (5) the Patristic database may seem daunting at first, they offer a wealth of material; it is worthwhile to take the time to explore them and discover how they might be beneficial for your own research.

In the Preface to the Studies volume of ECM Acts, Holger Strutwolf said: “The ECM does not see itself as an end at all, but rather as opening a new phase of text-critical work on the New Testament” (ECM III/3, Preface). The same continues to be true for ECM Mark.