It’s time
once again for hand-to-hand combat!
Today’s combatants are Codex Bezae and minuscule 1324. The arena is Luke 8:19-25.
Codex Bezae, also
known as Codex 05 and as Codex D, is named after
Theodore
Beza, an important Protestant theologian and textual researcher of the
1500’s who owned the manuscript, and who donated it to Cambridge University in
1581, where it resides to this day.
(Because it is at
Cambridge,
it is also known as
Codex Bezae Cantabrigiensis.)
Readings
from Codex Bezae were cited, albeit inaccurately, in the footnotes of
Stephanus’ 1550 edition of the Greek New Testament. This poses a problem for those who claim that
the
Textus Receptus was compiled
using only late manuscripts, because Codex D is not late. It has been assigned to the end of the 300’s
or early 400’s by
David
C. Parker (though earlier researchers considered it a century younger). It is the primary Greek support for what
has been called the “Western” text of the Gospels.
Codex
Bezae is a Greek-Latin manuscript; it contains not only the Greek text of
(most of) the Gospels and Acts, but also the Latin text, on alternating pages,
so if one opens the codex to any undamaged portion, the Greek text of a passage
will be on the page to the reader’s left, and the Latin text of approximately the
same passage will be on the page to the reader’s right. (Also, a Latin page containing a snippet of
text from the end of Third John survives, testifying that the codex originally
had more books than it does now.)
Minuscule
1324 is a Greek Gospels-manuscript from the 1000’s, and is part of the
collection held by the Jerusalem Patriarchate; it is catalogued as Panagios
Taphos 60. Before the text of the Gospels
begins, 1324 has the
Eusebian Canon-tables, elaborately decorated, and before
the canon-tables is
Ad Carpianus (a
letter from Eusebius to Carpian, which serves as a manual on how to use the
canon-tables to find parallel-passages in the Gospels).
Miniscule 1324
is a beautiful manuscript, neatly written and finely illustrated. Each Gospel in Codex Bezae begins with red
text (see
Matthew,
John,
Luke, and
Mark), and its lettering is sufficiently neat, but the
artistry in 1324 is far more impressive; each Gospel in 1324 has a full-page
illustration of its author, and an intricately detailed headpiece (see
Matthew,
Mark,
Luke,
and
John). (In these pages, by the way, notice the use
of a metobelus-mark (÷) to signify the beginning of a section of text, rather
than a textual variant.) In addition,
the parchment of the pages on which the chapter-lists for the Gospels are
written has been dyed purple – a rare and sumptuous feature.
But how will the text of 1324
perform in the ring against an opponent that is 600 years older? Let’s find out by comparing the text of Luke
8:19-25 in each manuscript to the text of the 27
th edition of the
Nestle-Aland
Novum
Testamentum Graece.
First, the rules
of the ring: each non-original letter in a manuscript’s text is counted
as a point, and each original letter that is absent in a manuscript’s text is counted
as a point; the winner will be the manuscript with fewer points. Transpositions are mentioned but not counted
if no text is lost. Contractions are not
considered variants. Itacisms, iota
adscript/subscript, and movable-nu
variants will be listed and counted, but a separate calculation will be made
which does not take them into consideration. (These inconsequential variants
are indicated by underlined verse-numbers.)
Here is a
comparison of 1324’s text to the text of NA27:
19 – 1324 reads Παρεγένοντο
instead of Παρεγένετο (+2, -1)
19 – 1324 reads αυτωι instead of αὐτῷ (+1)
20 – 1324 reads Καὶ
before ἀπηγγέλη instead of δὲ after
it (+3, -2)
20 – 1324 reads λέγοντων
after αὐτῷ (+8)
20 – 1324 reads σε θέλοντες instead of θέλοντες σε (transposition)
21 – 1324 reads αὐτόν at the end of the verse (+5) [This
Byzantine reading is not noted in NA27.]
22 – no variants.
23 – 1324 reads ἀφύπωσε instead of ἀφύπωσεν (-1)
23 – no variants.
24 – 1324 reads Καὶ
before προσεθόντες instead of δὲ
after it (+3, -2)
24 – 1324 reads ἐγερθεὶς instead of διεγερθεὶς
(-2) [This Byzantine reading is not noted in NA27.]
24 – 1324 reads ἐπετίμησε instead of ἐπετίμησεν (-1)
24 – 1324 reads ἀνέμωι instead of ἀνέμῳ (+1)
24 – 1324 reads τωι instead of τῳ (+1)
24 – 1324 reads μεγάλη
after γαλήνη (+6)
25 – 1324 reads ἐστιν
after ποῦ (+5)
25 – 1324 reads τωι instead of τῳ (+1)
25 – 1324 reads αυτωι instead of αὐτῷ (+1)
Thus,
in
these six verses, 1324 has 37 non-original letters, and is missing 9
original letters, for a total of 46 letters’ worth of corruption. When inconsequential orthographic variants
are removed from the equation, 1324 has 32 non-original letters, and is missing
7 original letters, for a total of 39 letters’ worth of corruption.
19 – D reads αυτου after μήτηρ (+5)
19 – D reads οτι after αυτω (+3)
20 – D reads εξω εστήκασιν instead of εστήκασιν εξω
(transposition)
20 – D reads ζητουντες
instead of ιδειν θέλοντες (+5, -9)
21 – D does not have προς
after ειπεν (-4)
21 – D reads αυτοις
instead of αυτους (+1, -1)
21 – D reads οι
before αδελφοι (+2)
22 – D does not have και
after ημερων (-3)
22 – D reads αναβηναι
αυτον instead of αυτος ενεβη (+6, -3, assuming a transposition)
23 – D reads λελαψ
instead of λαιλαψ (+1, -2)
23 – D reads πολλη
after ανεμου (+5)
24 – D reads κε κε (i.e., κυριε κυριε) instead of
επιστατα επιστατα (+4, -16) [This could fairly be counted as +10, -16.]
24 – D reads ἐγερθεὶς instead of διεγερθεὶς
(-2)
24 – D reads επετειμησεν
instead of επετιμησεν (+1)
24 – D does not have του
υδατος (-9)
25 – D reads εστιν
after που (+5)
Thus Codex
D has 38 non-original letters in Luke 8:19-25, and is missing 49 original
letters, for a total of 87 letters’ worth of corruption. When inconsequential orthographic variants
are removed from the equation, Codex D has 36 non-original letters, and is
missing 47 original letters, for a total of 83 letters’ worth of
corruption.
Let’s go to
the scorecards. When accretions are
compared, 1324 wins: it has only 32,
whereas D has 36. (Even if itacisms and
such were considered, 1324 still wins by one.)
And when omissions are compared, 1324 virtually knocks Codex Bezae out
of the ring: 1324 omitted 7 original letters but Codex D omitted 47! The clear winner: minuscule 1324!
Some Post-Fight
Analysis
This
comparison, though anecdotal, suggests that a few common axioms should be challenged
or significantly adjusted:
● The oldest manuscripts should be preferred
. . . right?
It seems perfectly
reasonable to think that the older a manuscript is, the better its text is likely
to be. Every time the text was copied,
there was a risk of the introduction of new corruptions. The older a manuscript is, the fewer
generations of copies are likely to be between it and the autograph.
However, the
force of this mere likelihood shrinks when one observes the liberties that were
taken by the copyists in the Western textual tradition in the second and third
centuries. Situated in locales where
Greek and Latin competed to be the lingua
franca, Western copyists prioritized the meaning of the text, and were not averse
to replacing original expressions with different expressions that seemed to
them to be more precise, more reverent, and less vulnerable to
misunderstanding.
An
example: in
Mark 7:19,
Jesus says that after a man has eaten food, what remains – that is, dung –
“goeth out into the draught,” as the KJV
puts it. The “draught” (
Greek ἀφεδρῶνα) is
a latrine or toilet. Some English
translators, softening Jesus’ earthy reference, translate this as “sewer” (see
for example the MEV,
NET, NLT, and
NRSV). Some others are yet more evasive,
simply saying that the food is eliminated or expelled from the body (see for
example the NKJV,
ESV,
CSB,
NIV, and
NASB). Just as our modern English translators have
tended to avoid Jesus’ reference to a latrine or toilet in Mark 7:19, so did
the person or persons responsible for the Western Text: Codex D replaces the latrine with a sewer,
reading οχετον (i.e., “sewer”).
One might
say that if the text of the Gospels were translated into English using a
“dynamic equivalence” technique, occasionally resorting to paraphrase, and then
translate the resultant English text back into Greek, the result would be
similar to the Western Text. Very many
alterations to the form of the text resulted as copyists attempted to maximize
what they perceived to be the meaning of the text – and this was happening in
the 100’s and 200’s (not, as far as the Gospels-text is concerned, as a
one-time revision, but as an ongoing process).
There is thus no reason to expect that manuscripts fished
out of a transmission-stream heavily contaminated by Western corruptions will
have fewer corruptions than manuscripts
from some other transmission-stream, regardless of their ages.
If the editors of the Textus Receptus had trusted their earliest available manuscript in the 1500’s, then instead of introducing 33 letters’ worth of corruption (working from the premise that NA27’s compilation of Luke 8:19-25 is completely correct), they would have introduced 83 letters’ worth of corruption.
● Scribes tended to add rather than omit . .
. right?
In Luke
8:24, 1324 displays a harmonization:
“great” (μεγάλη) was added to “calm” (γαλήνη), which brings the passage
into closer agreement with the parallel-passage in Matthew 8:26 and Mark 4:39. Yet, on balance, when compared to Codex D – a
manuscript 500 years older – 1324 has slightly fewer accretions in Luke
9:19-25. If (as Daniel Wallace has
claimed) copyists were applying “If in
doubt, don’t throw it out” as a basic principle, and were thus expanding
the text for 600 years (from 400 to 1000), how is it that the Byzantine
manuscript from the 1000’s has a text of Luke 8:19-25
with fewer
accretions than a text from the early 400’s?
The more
the text-critical canon, “prefer the
shorter reading” is tested, the more its wrongness is demonstrated. Yet the critical text of Nestle-Aland/UBS
still agrees quite closely with the Westcott-Hort 1881 compilation, for which
this canon was constantly in play.
● The Western Text of the Gospels is
characterized by expansion and elaboration . . . right?
The Western Text, according to
the late Bruce Metzger (see p. 213, The
Text of the New Testament) “is usually considered to be the result of an
undisciplined and ‘wild’ growth of manuscript tradition and translational
activity.” I draw your attention to the
word “growth.” A better term might be
“change,” because it is not unusual at all to find readings in the Western Text
that are shorter than their
rivals. In the six verses studied here, inasmuch
as Codex D’s text has 36 non-original letters, and is missing 47 original
letters, its text is 11 letters shorter than the original text (using NA27 as
the basis of comparison).
In one
variation-unit in this passage, the text of D is shorter because of the
excision of perceived superfluity: in
verse 24, the phrase “of the water” has disappeared, and one can picture a Western copyist thinking, “There’s
no need to say that the waves were made of water.” The same phenomenon is observable in modern
paraphrases; look in the CEV, the Easy-To-Read Version, the God’s Word
translation, the hyper-paraphrase known as “The
Message,” and the New American Bible for examples.
Therefore,
when encountering a Byzantine reading that is longer than its Western rival, we
should consider the intrinsic character of the Byzantine reading, and ask, “Could a translator consider the content of
this variant superfluous?” and if the answer is “Yes” then the Western
reading should be considered suspect.
Perhaps one could go further and say that the same approach should be in
play when comparing Byzantine and Alexandrian readings – and it does not seem absurd to suggest that when Alexandrian and Western witnesses support the non-inclusion of a superfluous-seeming
word or phrase, we may be seeing the effects of the same scribal tendency in both
transmission-streams.
● The Textus Receptus is essentially a late medieval text . . .
right?
Setting aside itacisms and other
such variations, the Textus Receptus reads
just like 1324 in Luke 8:19-25, with a few exceptions:
22 – TR reads Καὶ εγένετο instead of Ἐγένετο δε (+3, -2)
24 – TR
reads προσεθόντες δὲ instead of Καὶ προσεθόντες (agreeing with NA27)
24 – TR
does not read μεγάλη after γαλήνη
(agreeing with NA27)
Which means that the Textus
Receptus is slightly more accurate in Luke 8:19-25 than 1324’s text. If one were to select any medieval Byzantine
manuscript at random, its text of Luke 8:19-25 would very probably trounce the
text of Codex D in a direct comparison.
_______________
Readers are invited to double-check the data and calculations in this post.
