To follow up on P. Williams's note re: textual criticism in British
universities. To my knowledge, the University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill is the only research university in the U.S. where a student can study
with someone who has been active in the field of textual criticism. That
may change, if Kim Haines Eitzen begins accepting students to work with her
at Cornell (none so far, I believe) or if AnneMarie Luijendijk starts taking
students at Princeton (about that, I don't know). Are there others?

Sticking with UNC, doing a degree here means working more broadly in
Religious Studies, and within Religious Studies, it means becoming
proficient in the broader area of Ancient Mediterranean Religions. In other
words, this is not a degree in the narrow field of textual criticism, or
even in New Testament per se. The NT here is seen as some of the literature
of early Christianity, and early Christianity is seen as one of the
religions of the Roman world (along with Judaism and so-called "pagan"
religions). It is generally understood, here, that if you want to know
about early Christianity, or the NT within early Christianity, or textual
criticism within the field of NT studies - you need to know about the
broader context, at every point.

I see this as an enormous benefit for the textual critic. For too
many years, too many textual critics had a myopic focus on the problems of
the NT textual tradition without realizing the broader implications (and
evidence!) from nearby fields (exegesis, history of theology, social history
of early Christianity, etc.). In any event, if what you want to do with
your life is collate manuscripts of 1 Peter or to spend three years studying
only the textual tradition of Galatians, and you aren't interested in
broader related issues (historical, literary, religious) - then UNC is not
the place for you! But if you want a more rounded education that is
contextually oriented, broad and deep at the same time, this is a good
place.

Students can, of course, do specialized dissertations here, and have
done so over the years (in a range of areas, not just textual criticism).
To see the kinds of issues that can be addressed, look at the books (revised
dissertations), all of them important I think, of Rod Mullen, Kim
Haines-Eitzen, and Wayne Kannaday.

It is also possible to do a more strictly NT degree at Duke (cross
town neighbor/rival; the degree there is more traditionally NT exegesis) and
to do a dissertation on textual criticism with me (jointly supervised). At
least that's been done before.

-- Bart Ehrman

Bart D. Ehrman
James A. Gray Professor
Department of Religious Studies
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill