What will Clark be Studying in Birmingham?

 

Whenever I head off to a new research project, inevitably anyone who knows about it is asked what I'm studying. For my family and friends, it's often a real struggle explaining the field that I work in. So, I thought the first post for this page should be to acquaint everyone with both the man I will work directly for and the topic I will be tackling.

To begin with, my doctoral supervisor, affectionately called my DoktorVater in German, is Professor Hugh Houghton (pictured above). Professor Houghton is the director of the Institute for Textual Scholarship and Electronic Editing at the University of Birmingham and is the foremost expert in New Testament manuscripts that contain commentaries from the early church fathers. He is versed in both Latin and Greek and is responsible for groundbreaking work in the digital editing of manuscripts as well as revealing new insights into how the books of the New Testament were used and understood by the church from the 6th century through the middle ages. Professor Houghton and I have had a working relationship from afar for several years now, as I have been a volunteer with his organization, transcribing ancient New Testament manuscripts for their projects. It is my immense pleasure to have the opportunity to work with him directly.

My area of research will concern the oldest existing commentary manuscripts of the book of Ephesians. What makes these manuscripts so interesting is that the biblical text (in this case Ephesians) was written in the center of the page, in most cases, while the scribe would then copy the commentary of a particular church father in much smaller print in the top, side, and bottom margins. In other cases, a line of the biblical text would be copied, followed by several lines of commentary, covering the entire page. Until now, most of the attention given to these manuscripts has been focused on the biblical text, looking for differences in wording and the like. This has left a large hole in our knowledge of what the commentary has to say about the book. My research will be to gather every commentary manuscript of Ephesians containing all or some of a specific commentator (a man named Oecumenius) and examine them. I will translate his work and by comparing them to one another, create the first critical edition of this commentary in modern times.

I am particularly excited to know what this church father thought of Ephesians 5, but also how he might have interpreted other important passages of the epistle. I am also very curious to find out if he quotes other biblical texts in his commentary and if his quotations match the verses we know today. I believe this research is important to the church because we stand on the shoulders of giants such as these men. It is a disservice to the body of Christ  to not hear what they have to say, and I feel it is my privilege to give them back their voice.

I hope that my explanation makes sense to everyone, and if you have any more questions please don't hesitate to contact me. If there's one thing that's true of all scholars it's that we love to talk about our research!

God Bless You!