Contents: * Introduction * The Procedure * The Results * Wisse's Groups and the Alands' Categories
The Claremont Profile Method (often "CPM") stands as the firstattempt in the history of New Testament Textual Criticism at a complete,comprehensive, and repeatable classification of manuscripts. The CPM wascreated in the 1960s for the International Greek New Testament Project(IGNTP). The IGNTP was preparing a critical apparatus of Luke, and neededa method to determine which manuscripts should be included. The resultwas the CPM, which eventually was used to classify some 1500 manuscriptsof Luke.
The reasons for the creation of the CPM are given by Eldon Jay Epp in"The Claremont Profile Method for Grouping New Testament MinusculeManuscripts" (first read to the Pacific Coast Section of the Societyof Biblical Literature, and now published in Eldon Jay Epp and Gordon D. Fee,Studies in the Theory and Method of New Testament Textual Criticism,Studies and Documents 45, Eerdmans, 1993, pp. 211-220). The method itself isfully detailed in Frederick Wisse, The Profile Method for Classifyingand Evaluating Manuscript Evidence, Studies and Documents 44, Eerdmans,1992. As both of these books are readily available, the procedure will onlybe sketched here.
It will be noted that Wisse often calls the CPM simply the "ProfileMethod." This should be strenuously avoided. Profile methods abound;Bart D. Ehrman's "Comprehensive Profile Method" is only thebest-known of the techniques based on manuscript profiling (the present author hasdeveloped three different ones by himself). Thus one shouldalways specify that one means the Claremont Profile Method.
The Claremont procedure is relatively simple. A section of text (typicallyone chapter of a Biblical book) is selected as a sample base. A group of manuscripts(preferably a large group) is collated over this sample, and their variantreadings recorded. The Textus Receptus is used as a collation base. Readingsare recorded as agreeing or disagreeing with the Textus Receptus. (It will benoted that this procedure does not assign any value to the Textus Receptus;it is simply a collation base. Any text could reasonably have been used.)Although it is not explicitly stated, it seems to have been the goal of theprofilers to break as many variants as possible into binaries (i.e. variantswhere only two readings exist).
From this collation set a series of "profiles" emerge. Each manuscriptcasts a profile -- an image of its agreements and disagreements with the TextusReceptus. The result is something like a binary stream of data, for exampleagree-agree-disagree-agree-disagree etc. This can be represented physically inseveral ways (this is one of the senses in which the word "profile"applies). One is to represent agreements by spaces and disagreements by crosses;in this case, the above profile becomes
__X_X
Or we could put agreements in the left column and disagreements in the right:
AA DA D
In any case, we have a "shape" of a manuscript. Where enough manuscriptshave similar shapes, we label this a "group profile." Manuscripts which havethis approximate profile belong to this group.
Having defined our profiles, we can simply compare any new manuscripts with theextant group profiles and quickly analyse the manuscript.
This was the procedure followed by Wisse and his colleague Paul R. McReynoldsfor Luke. Starting with several hundred manuscripts already on file, they createdgroup profiles and then set in to classify the manuscripts of Luke (using threechapters for their classifications).
The first result of the CPM was the analysis by Wisse and McReynolds of themanuscripts of Luke. This was in many ways a triumph. For the first time, solidand useful data on over a thousand manuscripts was available. Another benefit was thatthe Byzantine text was finally successfully analysed. Von Soden had noteda number of Byzantine subgroups (Kr, Kx, FamilyΠ, etc.). Althoughsome of these groups (e.g. Kr) had been verified by outside studies,no one had ever covered the complete Byzantine spectrum. The CPM allowed thiscomplete classification, in the process verifying many of Von Soden's groupswhile modifying others.
This appears to be the true value of the Claremont Profile Method: It succeedsas no other method does in "splitting hairs" -- in detecting and analysingsubtle differences between closely related textual groups. Thus it is very usefulin analysing the Byzantine text.
But problems appear as one moves on to larger groups. The classic exampleis Wisse's grouping Codex Bezae with the Alexandrian text. But the problem isactually more obvious in Wisse's so-called "Mixed" manuscripts. Thiscategory includes, among others, such crucial manuscripts as C WΘ 157 700 1071 -- manuscriptswhich ought to be classifiable (at the very least, Wisse should be ableto tell us what is mixed with what).
W. L. Richards's CPM-inspired study The Classification of the GreekManuscripts of the Johannine Epistles (SBL Dissertation Series 35, ScholarsPress, 1977) suffers the same problem: It finds three non-Byzantine groups(Family 2138, the mainstreamAlexandrian text, and Family 1739,respectively) -- but insists that all three are Alexandrian groups when infact Family 2138, at least, is non-Alexandrian.
The reason appears to be that the CPM does not have a definition of whatconstitutes a true group. It is not rigorous.There are no necessary and sufficient conditionsto group profiles into families, clusters, text-types. This doesn't matter whendealing with tightly-clustered manuscripts (which all show nearly identicalprofiles, alleviating the need for precise definitions), but it means thatthe CPM is ill-equipped to deal with amorphous groups such as the Alexandriantext, where all members of the group are mixed and there often is no true"group reading." (Here one is reminded of Colwell's belief thata text-type is a group of manuscripts and not a collection of readings.)
This should not be taken to mean that the CPM is worthless. Its value hasbeen demonstrated, both in the IGNTP Luke and in its analysis of the Byzantinetext. One must simply be aware of what the method cannot do.
One thing we can do to refine the CPM somewhat is to compare Wisse'sgroups in Luke with the Aland Categoriesof manuscripts. Although this is not its express purpose, the Alands'system is, in effect, a ranking of Byzantine influence. The followingtable shows a complete list of Wisse's groups, with the Aland categoryassigned to most of the witnesses of the group. Recall that Category I isthe least Byzantine and Category V the most; category IV, however, isnot a rating of Byzantine influence, and the many manuscripts the Alands do notclassify are usuallymore Byzantine than Category III but less Byzantine than Category V. Observe that,in some cases such as Group B, the Alands will assign different categories tostronger and weaker witnesses to the type. Note: Groups are listed inorder of the key witness or group name (e.g. Group B, Cluster 1675,with letters preceding numbers. Manuscripts have only been tested if they belongto the same type in all three of Wisse's test chapters in Luke.).
| Wisse Group Name | Aland Category |
| Group B | Category I (B, ℵ); II (L, 33, 579, 892, etc.), III (157, 1241, etc.); IV (D) |
| Kr | Category V |
| Kx | Category V |
| Group Λ | Category V (Λ, 199, 262, 1187, 1205, etc.) or uncategorized (161, 164, 166, 174, 211, 230, 709, 899, etc.) |
| M groups | Category V (M, 27, 159, 350, 410, 414, 443, 498, 692, 750, 1024, 1202, 1208, 1220, 1222, etc.) or uncategorized (10, 71, 349, 569, 609, 895, 947, 1047, 1091, 1170, 1194, 1237, 1386, 1413, 1415, 1458, 1466, 1484, etc.). |
| Π Groups | A (only) is Category III; the uncials (K, Y Π) and some minuscules (68, 220, 280, 365, 1056, 1200, 1313, 1319, 1355, 1375, etc.) are category V; most of the minuscules (e.g. 114, 175, 178, 265, 389, 489, 557, 581, 679, 706, 726, 931, 992, 1079, 1113, 1138, 1159, 1219, 1272, 1346, 1398, 1463, etc.) are uncategorized. |
| Group 1 | Category III (though "further study of the unusually numerous distinctive readings may indicate [category] II" for 1582) |
| Cluster 7 | 267 is Category V; all others uncategorized. |
| Group 13 | Category III |
| Group 16 | The manuscripts in this group are split between uncategorized (16, 693, 1528, 1588) and Category V (119, 217, 330, 491). |
| Group 22 | Most manuscripts of this group (22, 697, 791, 1005, 1192, 1210, 1278, 1365, 2372) are uncategorized; some (134, 149, 660, 924, 2670) are Category V. |
| Cluster 121 | Mostly Category V; 64 and 1665 are uncategorized |
| Cluster 127 | 2530 is uncategorized; all others are Category V. |
| Cluster 163 | All manuscripts are uncategorized. |
| Cluster 190 | 190 is Category V. The others are unclassified but have high Gregory numbers and may not have been examined by the Alands. |
| Cluster 276 | The four low-numbered members of the group (276, 506, 1011, 1057) are Category V; the high-numbered members (1666 and up) are unclassified. |
| Group 291 | With the exception of the final three members of the group (2346, 2603, 2728, some of which may not have been examined), all members of this group are Category V. |
| Cluster 343 | 343 and 494 are Category V; 716 is uncategorized. |
| Cluster 475 | 475 and 2373 are Category V; 2609 is uncategorized |
| Cluster 490 | 926, 1486, and 2321 are uncategorized; the other five witnesses are Category V. |
| Cluster 585 | 331 and 585 are Category V; 545 and 2375 are uncategorized. |
| Cluster 686 | The two witnesses 686 and 748 are both Category V. |
| Cluster 827 | 1050 is Category V; the other four are uncategorized. |
| Cluster 1001 | 782 is Category V; the other two are uncategorized. |
| Group 1167 | Most of the witnesses are Category V, though a few (1167, 1473, 2229, 2604) are uncategorized. |
| Cluster 1012 | 2096 is Category V; the other four are uncategorized. |
| Cluster 1173 | The two unmixed manuscripts are both Category V. |
| Group 1216 | Most members of the group are uncategorized, although 1243 is listed as Category III (!), while 477 and 977 are Category V. |
| Cluster 1229 | All manuscripts are uncategorized. |
| Cluster 1252 | 1252 and 2459 are Category V; 1533 is uncategorized. |
| Cluster 1442 | 987 and 999 are Category V; 1442 and 1450 are uncategorized. |
| Group 1519 | Mostly Category V; 871, 1321, and 1519 are uncategorized. |
| Cluster 1531 | 185 is Category V; all others are uncategorized. |
| Cluster 1675 | 1424 is Category III in Mark; 517, 954, and 1675 are uncategorized. |
| Cluster 1685 | 60 is Category V; 1454 and 1685 are uncategorized. |
| Cluster 2148 | All manuscripts are uncategorized. |