Lectionary 1276

A fragment of Lect 1276,
with the Gospels-text
artificially enhanced.

           Around 5,600 Greek manuscripts of the New Testament – ranging from small fragments to full 27-book collections – are known to exist.  About 2,500 of them are lectionaries.  Yet although lectionaries constitute over 40% of our New Testament manuscripts, the study of lectionaries is perhaps the most neglected area in New Testament text-critical research.   Lectionaries are considered so unimportant in some circles that the textual apparatus of the recently published Tyndale House edition of the Greek New Testament does not ever cite a lectionary.  There is a reason for some of this neglect – or avoidance – of lectionaries:  in the case of at least eight out of ten lectionaries, if you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all – basically the same form of text, divided into the same segments, assigned to the same days and occasions, with only minor anomalies such as the inclusion of a special feast-day to honor a local cleric or a bishop’s patron saint.

            The lectionary we are examining today is different:  lectionary 1276 is a small fragment that was published in 1900 by Charles Taylor, as part of the immense research-project involving the materials obtained by him and Solomon Schechter from the Cairo Genizah.  Being only a small fragment, lectionary 1276 does not contain much text; only a few lines from Matthew 10:2-4 and 10:11-15, and John 20:11-15 are extant.  But what makes Lectionary 1276 special is its age:  its online profile at the website of Cambridge University states, “The upper script” – that is, the writing in the Hebrew composition for which the lectionary’s parchment was recycled – “is Hebrew with sparse Palestinian vocalisation, and has been dated to the 8th or 9th century by Allony and Diez-Macho (1958-1959: 58). The under script is a Greek biblical majuscule that has been dated to between the 6th and 9th centuries.  Tchernetska (2002: 248-249) believes that the 6th-century date is more likely.”  Natalie Tchernetska is not the only researcher to prefer a production-date in the 500s for lectionary 1276; Carroll D. Osburn also accepted this dating in his 1995 essay The Greek Lectionaries of the New Testament.  If this is the case, Lectionary 1276 is not only one of our earliest Greek lectionaries, but I reckon that it is among the 20 oldest Greek manuscripts of any kind which preserve the passages that it contains.

Another piece of Lect 1276,
with the Gospels-text
artificially enhanced.

            The identification of this manuscript as a lectionary is elicited by three features:  first, it has text from Matthew 10 and John 20, and it has the title “Gospel According to Matthew” written above the excerpt from Matthew; in addition, Taylor noted that there appears to be the remains of a sub-title which means “for the fifth day,” which is not unusual in lectionaries preceding readings assigned to Thursdays.

            Since lectionary 1276 is a palimpsest, it is not easy to discern its contents via a simple view of the fragment.  However, if one accesses the online page-views at Cambridge University's digital library, selects “Open with Mirador” from the sub-menu (accessible after pressing the three-bar button), toggles the side panel (again using the three-bar button), rotates the view, and adjusts Contrast to about 140% and Brightness to about 120%, it becomes much easier to perceive the Greek uncial letters through the Hebrew writing.                         

            What kind of text was in this lectionary?  With so little text to work with, it is not easy to make a sure assessment; nevertheless, it appears to be Byzantine, in consideration of the following readings.

The text of Lect 1276,
based on Charles Taylor's
transcription.

            ● In Matthew 10:3, Lect 1276 supports Θαδδαῖος ὁ ἐπικληθεις Λεββαῖος.  This reading is not supported by Vaticanus, Sinaiticus, or Bezae; B and À read Θαδδαῖος and D reads Λεββαῖος.  Metzger asserts that the Alexandrian and Western readings have been combined to produce the longer reading, and Willker concurs, calling the Byzantine reading “an obvious conflation.”   However, a few things weigh against this:  first, no such conflation is in the Byzantine Text in Mark 3:18, where the Alexandrian text names Thaddeus and the Western text names Lebbaeus.  If the Alexandrian reading is nothing but a replacement of Λεββαῖος with Θαδδαῖος, or vice versa, then one of these readings accounts for the other as a simple name-substitution.  But the Western reading is accounted for by the Byzantine reading, if an early copyist’s line of sight skipped from the end of Λεββαῖος to the end of Θαδδαῖος, causing the loss of the phrase “who was surnamed Thaddaeus.”  The support for the Byzantine reading is very broad; it includes Σ L Δ W Θ 157 700, and the Peshitta, and it is quoted, c. 380, in the Apostolic Constitutions (VI:14) and by Chrysostom.  Its presence in Lectionary 1276 adds to the extent of its early attestation.       
            ● In Matthew 10:11, Lect 1276 supports δ’ αν πόλιν η κώμην.  Codex D has a drastically different word-order; f¹ does not include η κώμην, and f¹³ puts η κώμην after εισέλθητε, indicating that Lect 1276’s text is neither Western nor Caesarean.  Yet, it does not strictly agree here with the Alexandrian and Byzantine form of the verse either; as Taylor observed, εισέλθητε is not in the manuscript (although he added it in his reconstruction). 

            ● In Matthew 10:13, Lect 1276 supports the usual reading ἐλθάτω, disagreeing with D which reads εστε, and with S Ω 28 which read εισελθάτω.

            ● In Matthew 10:13, Lect 1276 disagree with D again by including αξια; D replaces η αξια η with γε. 

            ● In Matthew 10:13, Lect 1276 agrees with Β À W, disagreeing with almost all other witnesses, by reading εφ instead of προς. 

            ● In Matthew 10:13, Lect 1276 reads –καμψε– which implies that when pristine, the text read ανακάμψει (as Luke 10:6 reads); Taylor observed that the minuscule 243 shares this reading, diverging from almost all other witnesses which support επιστραφήτω.

            ● In Matthew 10:14, Lect 1276 supports the inclusion of μη δέξηται, disagreeing with B*.

            ● In John 20:11, Lect 1276 supports the spelling ϊστήκει, agreeing with À L A N W Δ, and disagreeing with B D^supp K and most manuscripts, which read ειστήκει.         

            ● In John 20:11, Lect 1276 supports the normal reading προς, disagreeing with À (which reads εν).

            ● In John 20:11, Lect 1276 supports the word-order εξω κλαιουσα, agreeing with B L N W and disagreeing with Π Μ Κ Θ Ψ and most manuscripts.

            ● In John 20:13, Lect 1276 does not support the inclusion of τινα ζητεις which is read by A D 579 1424.

            ● In John 20:13, Lect 1276 does not support τεθείκασιν (read by W) or τεθείκαν (read by D); it has a word that begins with epsilon, probably the normal reading εθηκαν.

            ● In John 20:15, there does not appear to be room for τινα ζητεις; however the manuscript is very difficult to read at this point.

            All in all, while Lect 1276 has only a limited amount of text, and tends to agree with the Alexandrian Text on some small points, and has anomalous readings in Matthew 10:11 and 10:13, it agrees with the Byzantine Text at the major variant-unit in Matthew 10:3.   It does not show any close association with the Western and f¹ forms of the text.

Readers are invited to double-check the data in this post.

093: A Byzantine Fragment of Acts from the 500s in Egypt

            Today, let’s take a close look at part of 093 – a small fragment that contains text from Acts 24:22-26, and text from First Peter 2:22-3:7.  (I will focus here especially on the text from Acts.  093 is a palimpsest with an interesting history:  it was among the approximately 193,000 fragments that had been stored in the Genizah of the Ben Ezra Synagogue in Cairo over the course of centuries.  (The story of how researchers Charles Taylor and Solomon Schechter discovered this immense collection of materials and, in 1896-1897, arranged for its transportation to Cambridge University for continued study, can be found online.) 

            Charles Taylor published a transcription of the text from Acts in 093 in 1900, along with a short summary of the text from First Peter, and some other texts.  He also noted that the upper writing on the palimpsest consisted of Hebrew extracts from the Bereshith Rabbah (ch. 45, 47,and 98). The lower writing contains most of Acts 24:22-26 on one page in two columns of 24 lines each.  The text on the verso is mostly illegible but Taylor made out words from the tops of the two columns:  from Acts 24:26, οτι χρηματα / δοθησεται, and from Acts 24:27, ελαβεν διαδο / χον ο Φηλιξ  / Πορκιον Φη / στον.  (This manuscript is identified in the catalog of Joseph van Haelst as item 487; in the Taylor-Schechter Collection it is in Collection 12, 189 and 208.  For a while, 093 was identified with the siglum ﬥ.)

Green lines:  093 disagrees with Alex.
Red lines:  093 disagrees with Byz.

            The smattering of text on the verso does not allow much insight regarding the type of text of Acts that 093 contains, inasmuch as the Alexandrian Text and the Byzantine Text are in exact agreement in those parts of Acts 24:26 and 24:27.  When we turn to the much more extensive text on the recto, however, there can be no doubt:  093’s text of Acts is Byzantine:  except for its inclusion of the contracted sacred name Ιν after Χν in verse 24, and the reading λαβων instead of μεταλαβὼν in verse 25, the text from Acts in 093 agrees perfectly with the Robinson-Pierpont Byzantine Textform.  (The Textus Receptus differs from RP2005 in this passage in two places; the TR includes αυτου after γυναικι in 24:24, and reads δε between αμα and και in 24:26.)

            Meanwhile, 093 disagrees with the Nestle-Aland compilation at the following seven places:
● 1.  In verse 22, there is a word-order variant:  ανεβαλετο αυτους follows Φηλιξ, instead of the Alexandrian reading in which ανεβαλετο δε αυτους precedes ὁ Φηλιξ.

● 2.  In verse 22, after οδου, 093 reads ειπων, not ειπας.

● 3.  In verse 23, before τω, 093 reads τε. 

● 4.  In verse 23, after τηρεισθαι, 093 reads τον Παυλον instead of αυτον.

● 5.  In verse 23, before αυτω, 093 reads η προσέρχεσθαι.

● 6.  In verse 24, before γυναικι, 093 does not read ιδία. 

● 7.  In verse 25, after μέλλοντος, 093 reads εσεσθαι.

            Two points are illustrated by this evidence. 

            First, contrary to the much-repeated claim that the Textus Receptus is a late medieval compilation (as opposed to an essentially early form of the text with a relatively small stratum of late medieval readings), 093 confirms that the Byzantine Text of Acts – at least, Acts 24:22-26 – existed in the 500s, around a thousand years before Erasmus, Stephanus, and Beza made their compilations.

            Second, there is some reason to suspect that apparatuses in some widely used Greek New Testaments cannot be trusted to present evidence in an even-handed way in cases where Byzantine readings receive early support:  

                 ● Of the seven reading in Acts 24:22-26 that are supported by 093 and the majority of Greek manuscripts, the Nestle-Aland apparatus (in NA27) fails to record four of them (#2, 3, 4, and 6). 

                 ● In the United Bible Societies’ Greek New Testament (4th ed.) only one variant-unit is covered in the verses that are extant in 093:  the contest between Ιν Χν and just Χν in 24:24.  In this case the theoretical mechanics of the “expansion of piety” have been rejected in favor of strong early support (including support from 093) for the longer reading. 

                 ● In the apparatus of the Tyndale House edition of the Greek New Testament, only one textual contest in the passage that is extant in 093 is mentioned:  the contest in Acts 24:24 between the inclusion or non-inclusion of ιδια before γυναικι, and the inclusion or non-inclusion of αυτου after γυναικι.  The reading found in 093 is mentioned as a reading supported by C* L P 1424, but 093’s support is not mentioned.  The compilers of the Tyndale House edition of the Greek New Testament apparently never looked at 093.  (A list of consulted witnesses in an appendix of THEGNT does not mention 093, although over a dozen manuscripts younger than 093 are listed.)   

            Third – provisionally accepting the classification of the fragmentary text from First Peter 2:22-3:7 as Alexandrian – it was possible for a Byzantine text of Acts to appear in the same manuscript as an Alexandrian text of First Peter in Cairo, Egypt.  While it cannot be demonstrated that 093 was produced in Egypt, the presence of an Alexandrian text of First Peter in the manuscript favors this possibility, and the presence of 093 among the genizah’s fragments also indicates that the Byzantine Text of Acts in the 500s was used in a broad range of territory. 

            093 is not the only manuscript with texts from the New Testament that was discovered in the Cairo Genizah.   A few palimpsests were discovered to have material from the New Testament in their lower writing, in Palestinian Aramaic; these texts were studied, and published, by the scholarly sisters Agnes Smith Lewis and Margaret Dunlop Gibson, with assistance from J. R. Harris – including a palimpsest-fragment with Palestian Aramaic text from John 14:25-15:16.  The Syriac specialist G. H. Gwilliam published the contents of five palimpsest-fragments (assigned to the 700s) in 1893, containing text from chapters 4 and 5 of Numbers, and from Colossians 4:12-18, First Thessalonians 1:1-3 and 4:3-15, Second Timothy 1:10-2:7, and Titus 1:11-2:8.  Michael Sokoloff and Joseph Yahalom brought such investigations up to date in 1979, and expanded upon them, in a detailed essay in Revue d’Histoire des Textes, “Christian palimpsests from the Cairo Geniza.”  (Fragments of manuscripts of the Hexapla from the Cairo Genizah, by the way, can be viewed at the Greek Bible in Byzantine Judaism website.)

            A few other palimpsest-fragments in the Cairo Genizah contain some New Testament passages.  (One fragment contains Syriac text from Second Corinthians 3:2-15; another fragment contains Syriac text from chapters 3 and 4 of First Thessalonians.)  The lower writing on yet another fragment consists of the remains of an early (600s or 700s?) Greek uncial lectionary, now catalogued as lectionary 1276, a.k.a. Taylor-Schechter 16.93, containing excerpts from Matthew 10:2-15 and John 20:11-15.  We may take a closer look at lectionary 1276 in a future post.

Readers are invited to double-check the data in this post.

How Early Is the Basic Lection-Cycle?

            For several significant textual variants -- Mark 16:9-20, John 7:53-8:11, and Luke 22:43-44, for example -- solutions have been proposed which involve the idea that the unusual treatment of these passages in early lection-cycles contributed to their loss in part of the transmission-stream.  Some other variants, such as the non-inclusion of John 9:38-39a in some early witnesses -- have also been accounted for as having been elicited by special factors involving the presentation of the passage in a lector's copy.  (A lector was the person entrusted with the task of reading Scripture in early Christian worship-services.)  The usual, almost predictable, answer to such theories has been along the lines that the lectionary did not develop early enough to have such a strong impact on the text of the Gospels.

            However, one would not need a fully developed annual cycle of lections for every day of the year in order to account for a few significant losses.  The annual observances of major feast-days -- Easter-week, Pentecost, Christmas, Ascension-Day, and memorials of the apostles and a few martyrs -- are all that would be necessary.  There is nothing implausible about the idea that regular annual observance of major feast-days was already customary in the mid-100s.

            In 1900, a researcher named Charles Taylor published some finds from the Cairo Genizah (a fascinating subject for its own sake, but that's not our main subject today).  The manuscripts that he published included fragments of a Greek lectionary, containing text from Matthew 10 (and part of the lection's title) and John 20.  The production-date of this manuscript was assigned to the 500s, making it one of the earliest lectionaries (or, fragments from a lectionary, at least) known to exist.

Taylor's lectionary -- lectionary 1276 -- is a palimpsest; that is, it consists of recycled pages.  Someone who needed parchment obtained pages from a Greek lectionary, washed off the lettering, and reused the parchment to write a Hebrew composition.  (Whoever this person was, he also obtained pages from a copy of Acts and First Peter -- other pages of the Hebrew composition are palimpsests with text from those books underneath the Hebrew lettering; those pages constitute the uncial manuscript 093, which Taylor also published.)  Centuries later, part of the Greek lettering, which was not entirely washed away, remains legible.  

This picture of the fragments of Lectionary 1276 is based on the plates in Charles Taylor's book, Cairo Genizah Palimpsests.  The presentation of these fragments begins on page 89 (digital page-number 104).