Carlo Martini, in memoriam
I was very sorry today to learn that Carlo Martini passed away. He was an important textual scholar who was best known for other things -- in particular for being in the very higher reaches of the Roman Catholic church hierarchy. He was the cardinal of Milan (Italy) and for a while was thought to be a candidate to be the next pope. He was 85 at his death. I never met him, but I long knew of him and actually had correpondence with him when I was a graduate student. He was a terrific scholar of the Greek New Testament, an expert in the Greek manuscripts. He wrote a very important book (in Italian) on one of the most important biblical manuscripts, codex Vaticanus. As one of the premier experts on the text of the New Testament, he was a member of the five-person committee that was responsible for editing the version of the Greek NT that is used everywhere throughout hte world today. Metzger was another member of the committee, and so they [...]