A Syntactical Analysis of oὖν in Papyrus 66 77 family: P66, a (except Jn 1:1-8:38), A, and B7. This is both coincidental, as these are some the best and earliest manuscripts, and intentional, as it is profitable to compare P66 to other witnesses in its text family. The aim, however, is not to find the most original reading—that is the goal of modern critical editions like NA27—rather, I will examine how one scribe, with his correctors, understood the syntax of the Gospel of John8. The vast majority of the occurrences of οὖν in P66 coincide with NA27, and no classification of οὖν rests on examples drawn only from P66. A brief look into the textual history of verses such as John 6:10 shows the difficulty in analyzing particles in a constructed text: εἶπεν [οὖν, δέ] ὁ Ἰησοῦς· ποιήσατε τοὺς ἀνθρώπους ἀναπεσεῖν (Then Jesus said, “Make the people sit down”.) Presented here is the text of NA27, but the textual record is varied. One cannot appeal to a “pure” Alexandrian reading because Alexandrian manuscripts contain δέ (A, Ψ), οὖν (P66, D), and others contain no particle (P75, B, L). The Caesarean (f1, f13) and Byz- antine (Θ, M) witnesses insert δέ while the Western text type supports both οὖν (D) and no particle (a). The external criteria favor the omission because the strength of early and reliable papyri and uncials, but a strong case could be made for any of these readings. These textual issues recur with οὖν, so that an objective syntactical analysis of οὖν is not always possible with a constructed text. Moreover, if one follows one manuscript at one point and then another manuscript at another point, one makes syntactical arguments based on a non-existent syntactical arrangement9. 7 There is not sufficient space to discuss the characteristics and textual histories of all these manuscripts. Good introductions can be found in Aland - Aland, Text of the New Testament; Comfort - Barrett, Complete Text; B. M. Metzger - B. D. Ehrman. The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration (4th ed. New York 2005). 8 The proposition for the manner of textual corrections has little bearing on our inter- pretation of the text. See the reconstructions by G. D. Fee, “The Corrections of Papyrus Bodmer II and Early Textual Transmission”, NovT 7 (1965) 247-57; G. D. Fee, “Corrections of Papyrus Bodmer II and the Nestle Greek Testament”, JBL 84 (1965) 66-72; E. F. Rhodes, “The Corrections of Papyrus Bodmer II”, NTS 14 (1967-68) 271-81; E. Colwell, “Methods in Evaluating Scribal Habits: A Study of P45, P66, P75” in E. C. Colwell (ed.), Studies in Methodology in Textual Criticism of the New Testament (NTTS 9: Grand Rapids 1969). See also K. Aland, “Neue neutestamentliche Papyri III”, NTS 20 (1974) 357-81. 9 V. S. Poythress, “Testing for Johannine Authorship by Examining the Use of Con- junctions”, WTJ 46 (1984) 350, notes the challenge, “Finally, we must bear in mind that occurrences of de, kai, oun, and asyndeton are subject unusually frequently to corruption in the course of textual transmission. We should treat a given occurrence as a clear violation of a rule only when the external text-critical evidence is strong”. His approach is to adopt the syntax that most closely agrees with the general syntactical pattern of the Gospel, which approach reinforces the uniformity of the Gospel’s syntax.