Novum Testamentum 59 (2017) 297-319 brill.com/nt © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2�17 | doi 10.1163/15685365-12341568 Textual History and Reception History Exegetical Variation in the Apocalypse Garrick V. Allen Dublin City University, Ireland garrick.allen@dcu.ie Abstract This article explores the possibility of examining reception history within the textual history of the New Testament, focusing on the book of Revelation. Both intentional alterations located in particular manuscripts and reading practices gleaned from slips of scribal performance are indicative of reception. Attempts to facilitate a certain understanding of a locution constitute acts of reception embedded in Revelation’s early textual history. The article concludes by analysing the social dynamics of the milieus in which exegetical textual alterations were tolerated, suggesting that the work of informal scribal networks provides modern researchers access to evidence for reception. Keywords Apocalypse – Codex Sinaiticus – exegetical variation – 11 – reception history – Revelation – scribe – textual history The Greek manuscript traditions of New Testament works have long been con- sidered the region of a rarefied group of experts, critics who “bring rare gifts to a secret god.”1 This perspective is all the more common when the objects of study are the Greek manuscripts of the book of Revelation, owing largely to the peculiarities of its textual history and the strangeness of its literary form.2 * The author is a research associate of the School of Ancient Languages, University of Pretoria. 1  D.C. Parker, The Living Text of the Gospels (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997) 2. 2  See J.K. Elliott, New Testament Textual Criticism: The Application of Thoroughgoing Principles: Essays on Manuscripts and Textual Variation (NTSup 137; Leiden: Brill, 2010) 14-1; Juan