Manuscripts Within Manuscripts: They Are Real!

Dr. Erik Kwakkel

            Regarding the previous post and the discovery of a manuscript-page containing John 7:50-8:12 within the binding of a printed book from the 1600’s – Happy April Fools Day!  There were some clues:  there is no research library in Christiania (Christiania is a small commune in Copenhagen); the subtitle to Hevelius’ Selenographia has the word Luna, not Lura (a Swedish word for “fool”); the initials of the Photomagnetic Hyperspectral Ultraviolet Light Scans (PHULS) can be pronounced “fools,” and there is no German periodical called the Zeitschrift des Lachens (“Journal of Laughter"). 

            Although this discovery was fictitious (including the digitally created picture), other discoveries – in which manuscripts are found within the bindings of other manuscripts, or within the bindings of printed books – are real, and the likelihood is very high that we are going to see more of them.  

            Rearrange the letters in the name of the fictitious Kirk Walkeek, and you can make the name of the real Dr. Erik Kwakkel of Leiden University, who, along with Dr. Joris Dik (whose name shares the same letters as the fictitious Jodi Kris) of Delft University of Technology, is developing technology and techniques which can read text on materials within book-bindings, using macro x-ray fluorescence spectrometry (MA-XRF) without dismantling the binding itself. 

Dr. Joris Dik

            Binding-materials have already been the source of several Greek uncial fragments, such as
            ● 0311 (which has text from Romans 8:1-13, and the earliest witness to the non-inclusion of εκ νεκρων in 8:11a),
            ● 0312 (which has text from Luke 5, from the late 400’s),
            ● 0313 (which has text from Mark 4:9 and 4:15 – from the late 400’s, with a distinct Byzantine reading),
            ● 0314 (which has text from John 5:43, from the late 400’s), and
            ● 0315 (which has text from Mark 2:9, 2:21, 2:25, and 3:1-2 – from the 300’s or 400’s!) – all fragments obtained by Christopher de Hamel.  (For some more information about 0313 see my report about it from 2015,)

This isn't real
either.  But
something like
 it is  –
wait and see.

            Kwakkel, who blogs about his work at https://medievalbooks.nl/ , also shares many images that he encounters in the course of his research at http://erikkwakkel.tumblr.com/ (often with brief analytical notes), as well as images and notes contributed by other researchers.  

            Entries from an earlier blog, now a sort of archive, can be found at the Turning Over a New Leaf project, found at https://medievalfragments.wordpress.com/ and assorted images related to the project – hundreds of them – can be found at Flickr. Several of his lectures are also available online, such as this one about  professional medieval book-production. 

            It is just a matter of time, I suspect, before the remains of a Greek manuscript will be found embedded within a book-binding.  (If one could aim a MA-XRF machine at book-bindings in the Vatican Library, the discovery would probably be made within a week.)   If the book is not very important, the Greek manuscript will probably be physically extracted.  But if the case is otherwise, or if there is a significant risk of damage involved in the extraction-process – for example, the risk of tearing apart a page secured by glue – then perhaps textual critics should create a new category of evidence:  besides papyri, uncials, minuscules, lectionaries, versions, and patristic quotations, I recommend that the symbol “r” (“remnant” or “recycled” or, in Dutch, “rest” or “remainder”) should be affixed to whatever uncial-number or minuscule-number is assigned to a fragment that remains embedded within another book – so as to convey that there is a lack of direct accessibility to such manuscripts that is not a factor with the others.

            Who knows how many libraries within libraries there are, hidden within the bindings of books?  There’s only one way to find out.
            

The Other Recently Discovered Fragment of the Gospel of Mark

          Lately there has been much ado about a small Greek fragment of the Gospel of Mark (the existence of which was reported in February of 2012 but which is still unpublished), which, according to various reports, was extracted from the papyrus lining of an ancient Egyptian mummy-mask, and which might have been produced in the first century.  Hardly anyone, however, seems to have noticed the discovery of another fragment from the Gospel of Mark which is relatively early, and which, unlike the elusive first-century fragment, has been published with photographs.  

Visit CSNTM to see 0313 in color and in ultraviolet.

          The fragment to which I refer is 0313, a small piece of a codex produced in the 300’s or 400’s.  As Peter Head reported in 2008 in the Journal of Theological Studies, 0313 was one of several fragments which had come into the possession of Dr. Christopher de Hamel.   (An additional report, describing the photographing of these fragments, was entered at the CSNTM site.)  The contents of 0313 were identified by Dr. Dirk Jongkind.  Head initially described it as “late fifth century” but a production-date in the 300’s cannot be ruled out.  This little scrap is thus one of the ten oldest Greek manuscripts that contain text from the Gospel of Mark.

          The text of 0313 from Mark 4:9 is (first line) Ο ΕΧΩΝ ΩΤΑ ΑΚΟΥΕΙ[Ν] [Α-] (second line) ΚΟΥΕΤΩ.  This is a notable feature, because 0313 thus confirms the early existence of a Byzantine reading that is not supported by the best representatives of the Alexandrian Text (À and B).  This reading is not supported by Codex D, either.  À*, B, and D support ΟΣ ΕΧΕΙ in Mark 4:9 instead of Ο ΕΧΩΝ.  (In addition, D, along with some Old Latin copies, has an entire extra phrase in Mark 4:9.)  

          When this passage is compared to the parallel-passages in Matthew 13:9 and Luke 8:8 (where the text reads Ο ΕΧΩΝ), it becomes clear that the adoption of the Alexandrian-Western reading of Mark 4:9 yields a Minor Agreement.In other words, if one builds on the premise that Matthew and Luke both used Mark, then one would need to posit that Matthew and Luke both read Ο ΕΧΩΝ and then each one replaced this with ΟΣ ΕΧΕΙ.  The simpler scenario is that they each wrote ΟΣ ΕΧΕΙ because they both read ΟΣ ΕΧΕΙ.  Unfortunately, this intrinsic evidence in favor of the Byzantine reading in Mark 4:9 is not mentioned in the apparatus of the UBS Greek New Testament, and it is not noted in the apparatus of the 27^th edition of the Nestle-Aland Novum Testamentum Graece, either.

          On the other side of the fragment, text from Mark 9:15 is found: 

ΤΗΝ ΟΔΟΝ.  ΟΠΟΥ ΣΠΙΡΕ

Ο ΛΟΓΟΣ· ΚΑΙ ΟΤΑΝ ΑΚΟΥ.

          0313 has the usual text of Mark 4:15, which allows us to perceive that we are indeed looking at a manuscript of Mark, rather than Matthew or Luke.  It also means that 0313 is a more accurate witness to the text of Mark 9:15 than Codex Vaticanus, which has an anomalous reading in this passage.

          If ΟΣ ΕΧΕΙ is the original text of Mark 4:9 (implying that À and B contain (part of) a Western reading at this point), then 0313 is among the earliest extant manuscripts of the original text of the verse.  Even little fragments can contribute to our knowledge of the text.  He who has ears to hear, let him hear!

          (In related news, I hope that you all have seen Christopher de Hamel’s clearly written and opulently illustrated  book, The Book. A History of the Bible.)

UPDATE (2019) - 0313 is now part of the manuscript-collection of the Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C.