A Surprise in Athens

            In 2015-2016, a team of researchers from the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts visited the National Library of Greece and brought to light 21 manuscripts in the collection there in Athens.  One of them – Lectionary 2012 – has not gotten very much attention,  That is unfortunate, considering that of all the manuscripts that CSNTM’s research has brought to the attention of the Institute for New Testament Research, this is one of the oldest.

            This sheet of parchment, glued to the cover of another, later lectionary, is from an uncial Gospels-lectionary that was probably produced in the 900s.  The reverse side cannot presently be viewed, since it is glued down.  On the side that is viewable, portions of two pages (on a single parchment sheet) with text can be seen.  

            If we look at the manuscript and begin to read the third column (to the right of where the sheet was once vertically folded), we encounter text from Matthew 27:6, beginning with εξεστιν at the end of the first tattered line, followed by βαλειν αυτὰ on the next line.  The text of this column continues to the beginning of Matthew 27:9, where διὰ Ιερεμίου is the last line of the column. 

            Shifting our focus to the first column of the manuscript (first, that is, in its present glued-down state), we see text from Matthew 27:53, beginning with –λθον at the end of the tattered upper edge of the parchment.  The text continues to the end of Matthew 27:54, and then – in the same line on which Mt. 27:54 ends – the text switches immediately to the beginning of John 19:31 with οι ουν Ιουδαιοι, continuing to the words τω σαβββάτῳ which constitute the last line of the column.  At the top of the second column, the first extant line is Πιλάτον ινα.  The middle of John 19:31 occupied the non-extant portion of the column (the descender of the ρ in ηρώτησαν has survived).  The text continues to the first part of John 19:34; the last line is αλλ’ εις των στρα–.    

            Thus, in this single-sheet manuscript fragment, we have (1) Matthew’s account of the purchase of the Field of Blood, (2) Matthew’s account of the centurion’s confession, “Truly this was the Son of God,” and (3) John’s report that when the soldiers came to Jesus to break His legs, they found Him already dead.  

            Here is a complete transcript, column by column, along with a more or less line-by-line English translation.  Bracketed letters in the transcription are not visible in the photographs.  Red letters are variations from the text of the passage as found in the Robinson-Pierpont Byzantine Textform.  Red crosses are features of the manuscript.

Lectionary 2012, in English.

Matthew 27:6-9a:

            [ε]ξεστ[ιν]

  βαλ[ε]ιν αυτα ·

  εις τον κορβαν[αν]

  επει τιμη αί

  ματος εστιν +

συμβούλιον δ[ε]

  λαβόντες η[γό]

  ρασαν εξ αυτ[ων]

  τον αγρον του

  κεραμέως · εις τα

  φην τοις ξένοι[ς]

  διο εκλήθη · ο α

  γρος εκεινος · α

  γρος αιματος ·

  εως της σήμερ[ον]

  τοτε επληρώ

  θη τω ρηθεν

  δια Ϊερεμίου

Matthew 27:53b-54 + John 19:31a:

                    –ηλθον

  εις τὴν αγίαν πό

  λην καὶ ενεφα

  νησθησαν πολλοις +

Ο δε εκατόνταρ

  χος και οι μετ’ αυ

  του · τηρουντες

  τον Ιν · ϊδοντες 

  τον σεισμον και

  τα γενόμενα ·

  εφοβήθησαν σφό

  δρα + λέγοντες ·  

  αληθως Θυ Υς ην

  ουτος + οι ουν Ϊου

  δαιοι · ϊνα μὴ μεί

  νη επι του στρου ·

  τα σώματα εν

  τω σαββάτω ·

John 19:31c-34a:

  Πιλάτον ίνα

  κατεαγωσιν αυ

  των τὰ σκέλει

  και αρθωσιν +

  ηλθον ουν οι στρα

  τιωται + και του

  μεν πρώτου

  κατέαξαν τὰ

  σκέλει καὶ του

  αλλου του συσταυ

  ρωθέν τος αυ

  τω + επι δε τὸν

  Ιν ελθόντες ως

  ειδον αυτον η

  δη τεθνηκότα

  ου κατέαξαν αυ

  του τὰ σκέλη +

  αλλ’ εις των στρα

         
            The extant text of this fragment differs from the Robinson-Pierpont Byzantine Textform only in matters of spelling; for all practical purposes, the two are identical.  This leads me to suspect that the writers who are responsible for spreading the claim that “No two New Testament manuscripts have the same text” have not examined very many fragmentary lectionaries.

            It would be interesting to examine this fragment with Multi-Spectral Imaging at the National Library of Greece (where it is kept as Collection-item 2460 ) to see the text on the other side.  It is interesting to see how this lection combined text from Matthew and John; perhaps a closer analysis of this kind of Good Friday lectionary-cycle could explain why the Alexandrian Text (in some of what are often called the “oldest and best” manuscripts) has a reading that resembles John 19:34 after  Matthew 27:49. 

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

Erasmus' Manuscript of Revelation

            Erasmus’ first edition of the printed Greek New Testament – it was released by the printer Johann Froben in 1516 – has several famous features.  One of them involves the way Erasmus treated the last six verses of Revelation.  Erasmus had only one Greek manuscript of Revelation when he compiled the text for his Novum Instrumentum (the official name of the first edition):  GA 2814, which had been loaned to Erasmus by Johann Reuchlin.  (For a long time, this manuscript was simply referred to as manuscript 1r.)

            Page-views of the entire manuscript can be now accessed at the website of the library of the University of Augsburg.  (You may need to reload the page once or twice to get to the page-views.)  

A page (31v) of the manuscript
of Revelation used by Erasmus,
now at the University of Augsburg.

            (Shown:  part of Andreas of Caesarea’s commentary, followed by Rev. 8:13, followed by some commentary and a heading (in red), followed by Rev. 9:1-5a.  (The text is accompanied in the margin by red > marks.)  Notice the textual variant in 8:13:  this manuscript reads αγγελου (“angel”) although the Byzantine text (and the Nestle-Aland compilation) reads αετου (“eagle”).  Oikoumenios (keep reading for more information about him) also used the reading “eagle” in his commentary on Revelation, stating, “The eagle in midheaven, looking sadly at the misfortunes of those on earth, you will understand is a kind of divine angel sympathizing with the plight of human beings.” (Cf. John N. Suggit’s translation.)   

            If you consult the final pages of the manuscript, you can see that at the foot of fol. 92v, most of the text of Rev. 22:16 appears, interrupted by, and followed by, Andreas’ commentary – and on the next extant page (93r), we find ourselves in the summary of the contents of Revelation with which Andreas ended his commentary.  On 93v, Andreas’ review of the contents of Revelation continues, and then on 94r, in entirely different handwriting (as if someone had noticed that the manuscript had been damaged, and made this replacement-page, although the entire loss was not detected), we find the last words of Andreas’ commentary.   There are a few more pages, but they are blank.  (It looks like 95v may have been prepared to hold a framed illustration which was never added.)    

           

            This fits the description that was supplied by Erasmus regarding the manuscript that he used as the main basis for his compilation of the text of Revelation.  Erasmus mentioned that he used a Greek manuscript which was deficient at the end:  in the course of correspondence with Edward Lee, Erasmus wrote: 

            In calce Apocalypsis in exemplari, quod tum nobis erat unicum, nam is liber apud Graecos rarus est inventu, deerat unus atque alter versus.  Eos nos addidimus secuti Latinos codices.  Et erant ejusmodi, ut ex his quae praecesserant possent reponi. 

            That is, in English:  “At the end of my exemplar of Revelation – of which I had only one, because Greek copies of this book are rare – a few lines were missing.  I added them, using Latin copies as the basis.  These lines were of the sort that could be reconstructed [in Greek] by consulting the preceding text.” 

            This accounts for the very unusual Greek text of Revelation 22:16b-21 in Erasmus’ compilation.  For these verses, Erasmus took in hand a copy of the Vulgate, and translated its Latin text of Revelation 22:16b-21 into Greek (beginning with ὁ ἀστήρ). 

            Erasmus’ reconstruction of this passage, however, does not match up with any Greek manuscripts at several points (at least, not with any Greek manuscripts made prior to his compilation).  Although the Textus Receptus went through several revisions in the 1500s, Erasmus’ retro-translation of Revelation 22:16b-21 survived the process; as a result, the Textus Receptus continues to perpetuate some Greek readings in this passage that originated with Erasmus.  Bruce Metzger (in a footnote on page 100 of The Text of the New Testament, third edition) wrote about some of them: 

            “For example ἀκαθάρτητος (Rev. xvii. 4; there is, however, no such word in the Greek language as ἀκαθάρτης, meaning ‘uncleanness’); ὀρθρινός (xxii. 16); ἐλθέ twice, ἐλθέτω (xxii. 17); συμμαρτυροῦμαι γάρ . . . ἐπιτιθῇ πρὸς ταῦτα (xxii. 18); ἀφαιρῇ βίβλου . . . ἀφαιρήσει (future for ἀφελεῖ!!), βίβλου (second occurrence) (xxii. 19); ὑμῶν (xxii. 21).”

            How significant are these variations?  Almost all of them are trivial.  If one takes in hand the KJV and the NASB, and compares the two, it appears that the most of the new readings invented by Erasmus made no difference in translation: 

            v. 18:  KJV:  “For” / NASB does not have “For.”

            v. 19:  KJV:  “the book of life” / NASB:  “the tree of life”

            v. 19:  KJV:  “and from the things which are written” / NASB:  “which are written.”  (That is, in the KJV, three things are referred to:  the book of life, the holy city, and the things written in this book.  Whereas in the NASB, two things are referred to:  the book of life and the holy city, which are written about in this book.)

            v. 20:  KJV:  “Even so, come” / NASB:  does not have “Even so.”      

            v. 21:  KJV:  “our Lord Jesus Christ” / NASB:  “the Lord Jesus.” 

            v. 21:  KJV:  “you all” / NASB:  “all.”

            Only the difference between “tree of life” and “book of life” yields a significant change to the meaning of the text.  Metzger, in his Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament (albeit not in all editions), proposed a theory to account for this:  “The corruption of “tree” into “book” had occurred earlier in the transmission of the Latin text when a scribe accidentally miscopied the correct word ligno (“tree”) as libro (“book”).” 

           If Metzger’s theory is true, the confusion between ligno and libro may have occurred much earlier – early enough to affect some early Latin texts and the Bohairic version.  All Greek manuscripts of Revelation, however – at least, all Greek manuscripts prior to Erasmus’ printed text – support the reading “tree of life.”

           

            Some more information about Erasmus’ manuscript of Revelation may be helpful.  For many years after Erasmus used it, its location was not publicly known, and there was some concern that it had been lost.  In 1861, however, it turned up, and the scholar who discovered it – Franz Delitsch – wrote a detailed essay (in German) describing its readings, and showing how tightly its contents match up with Erasmus’ compilation, leaving no doubt that it was indeed Codex Reuchlins, the manuscript used by Erasmus.  It was later given a new identification-number (GA 2814).  

           Accompanying the text of Revelation in 2814 is a commentary which was composed by archbishop Andreas of Caesarea in 611.  Contrary to a recent claim made by James White, this commentary is not written in Latin; it is Greek.  Prior to Andreas of Caesarea (this Caesarea is the same place as Kayseri in Turkey, not the Caesarea on the coast of Israel), a writer named Oikoumenios had also written a commentary on Revelation, in the late 500s.  The work of Oikoumenios was known to Andreas; he refers to it repeatedly.  There is not a lot of data about the setting in which Oikoumenios wrote, but one of his statements indicates the time when he wrote:  he stated specifically that more than 500 years had passed since John wrote the book of Revelation.  The time between the composition of Oikoumenios’ commentary, and the commentary by Andreas, cannot have been great. 

            Andreas’ commentary became something of a standard work. (Meanwhile the Latin commentary on Revelation by the fourth-century writer Tyconius similarly was widely used, despite Tyconius’ Donatist views.)  It was often copied with the text of Revelation itself, in a specialized format, which Metzger described in The Text of the New Testament:  “He divided the book into twenty-four λόγοι, or discourses, because of the twenty-four elders sitting on thrones about the throne of God (Rev. iv. 4).  He further reflected that the nature of each of the twenty-four elders was tripartite (σῶμα, ψυχή, and πνεῦμα), and therefore divided each λόγος into three κεφάλαια, making a total of seventy-two chapters for the entire book.”

            An English translation of Andreas’ commentary on Revelation, with an insightful introduction, was recently completed by Eugenia Constantinou.  It can be downloaded for free – although you might have to spend a few minutes tracking it down from a large collection of academic papers.  It is also available to purchase as a paper book.   The Greek text of Andreas’ commentary, extracted from Volume 106 of Migne’s Patrologia Graece series, is also online.                   

      

   

Post-script

            Some writers who tend to defend the Textus Receptus, such as Thomas Holland and Chris Thomas, have insisted that Erasmus did not reconstruct Revelation 22:16-21 from Latin, or at least that there is little evidence for such a reconstruction.  Jan Krans has issued a detailed and remarkably effective reply, and his general conclusions are confirmed beyond all doubt by the examination of the online page-views of 2814.

Parablepsis: When Nothing Is Something

             Parablepsis is what happens when a copyist’s line of sight drifts from one word or set of letters in his master-copy to the same (or similar) word or set of letters a little further along in his master-copy, accidentally skipping the words or letters in between.  When manuscripts share arrays of short readings that look like they were caused by parablepsis, it’s reasonable to posit a relationship of some sort between the manuscripts with those short readings.  Before looking into that further, let’s take a look at four examples of parablepsis that appear in the Gospel of Matthew in one of the most important manuscripts we have:  Codex Sinaiticus. 

● Matthew 7:27 – In the description of the fall of the house of the foolish builder, the scribe’s line of sight drifted from ποταμοὶ καὶ to ἄνεμοι καὶ, accidentally losing the phrase about the blowing winds.  The scribe of minuscule 579 made the same mistake in verse 25.  Another Alexandrian manuscript’s scribe made a worse mistake:  the scribe of minuscule 33 skipped from the words τη οικία ἐκείνη (“that house”) in verse 25 to to the same words in verse 27, skipping verse 26 entirely and producing a Greek sentence which says that when storms came to the wise man’s house, it fell with a great crash!

● Matthew 9:15 – The scribe of À skipped from the word νυμφίος at the end of Jesus’ question to the recurrence of the same word, losing the phrase “But days will come when the bridegroom will be taken away from them.” 

● Matthew 13:39 – The scribe of À skipped from the letters ο δε after διάβολος to the similar letters οι δε before θερισται, thus missing the phrase “the harvest is the end of the age.” 

● Matthew 21:19 – The scribe of À did not write the word ευρεν (“found”) between the word ουδεν and the word εν.  The omission could have been elicited by either homoioteleuton (“same endings” or by homeoarcton (“same beginnings”). 

            As far as I know, Codex Sinaiticus is the only manuscript that has all four of these readings.  If we were to find another manuscript, and all we knew about it was that it contained these three exact readings, I would strongly suspect that it was extremely closely related to Codex Sinaiticus.   As Kirsopp Lake wrote, “Whereas agreement in a correct reading is no criterion of similarity of origin, agreement in erroneous readings is a very good criterion.”  The odds seem extremely low that two copyists would make the same series of parableptic errors.  The thing to see is that by observing readings in manuscripts that can be accounted for by parablepsis, we can deduce that the manuscripts that share those readings are related to one another.

            Consider Matthew 12:47:  this verse is not in the English Standard Version, because the editors of the ESV relied so heavily on the Alexandrian Text.  But the absence of this verse is elegantly accounted for as a parableptic error; an early copyist’s line of sight jumped from the word λαλησαι (“to speak”) at the end of verse 46 to the same word at the end of verse 47, losing the words in between, which constitute verse 47.  Are the manuscripts that lack verse 47 closely related?  While there are a smattering of unrelated manuscripts that do not include this verse, the major Greek manuscripts for non-inclusion are Sinaiticus, Vaticanus, Codex L, and Codex Γ, and although Codex Γ’s text is Byzantine, the other three are flagship manuscripts of the Alexandrian Text.  Even Codex Γ reveals the influence of Alexandrian manuscripts in its ancestry; it includes a rare interpolation in Matthew 27:49 that is also attested by À, B, and L. (For more about Mt. 12:47, see this post.)  The ESV really should put this verse back in the text where it belongs.

            Now let’s aim this principle at some readings in the Byzantine Text that are shorter than their rival readings in the Alexandrian Text.  There are hundreds of such readings; here I will briefly focus on just 20 – five from each Gospel.

● Matthew 10:8 – If the text originally read Ασθενουντας θεραπεύετε νεκρους εγείρετε λεπρους καθαρίζετε (Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers), the shorter Byzantine reading can be accounted for by a parableptic error from -ετε to -ετε. 

● Matthew 13:40 – If the text originally read κατακαίεται, an accidental skip from κα- to κα- would account for the Byzantine reading.

● Matthew 19:24 – If the text originally read πλούσιον εισελθειν εις την βασιλείαν του θεου, a parableptic error from εισ- to εις could elicit the loss of the intervening letters, eliciting further the movement of εισελθειν to the end of the verse.     

● Matthew 24:38 – If the text originally read εν ταις ημέραις εκείναις, an accidental skip from –αις to –αις could result in the loss of the word εκείναις.

● Matthew 27:40 – If the text originally read και κατάβηθι, an accidental skip from κα- to κα- could result in the loss of the word και.

● Mark 2:21 – If the text originally read απ’ αυτου, an accidental skip from α- to α- could result in the loss of απ’.

● Mark 3:28 – If the text originally read και αι, an accidental skip from -αι to αι could result in the loss of αι.

● Mark 4:18 –If the text originally read ουτοί εισιν οι τον, an accidental skip from ο- to ο- could result in the loss of ουτοί εισιν.

● Mark 12:8 – If the text originally read εξέβαλον αυτον, an accidental skip from -ον to ον could result in the loss of αυτον.

● Mark 14:21 – If the text originally read Οτι ὁ μεν, an accidental skip from Ο- to ὁ could result in the loss of Οτι.

● Luke 11:20 – If the text originally read εγω εκβαλλω, an accidental skip from ε- to ε- could result in the loss of εγω.

● Luke 19:4 – If the text originally read εις το εμπροσθεν, an accidental skip from ε- to ε- could result in the loss of εις το.

● Luke 20:19 – If the text originally read εφοβήθησαν τον λαόν, an accidental skip from -ν to –ν could result in the loss of τον λαόν.    

● Luke 22:18 – If the text originally read απο του νυν απο, an accidental skip from απο to απο could result in the loss of απο του νυν.

● Luke 22:30 – If the text originally read τραπέζης μου εν τη βασιλεία μου, an accidental skip from μου to μου could result in the loss of εν τη βασιλεία μου.  (Many Byzantine manuscripts, including manuscripts used to form the Textus Receptus, have the longer reading here.)

● John 1:19 – If the text originally read οτε απέστειλαν προς αυτον οι, an accidental skip from

-ν to -ν could result in the loss of προς αυτον.

● John 1:50 – If the text originally read οτι ειπόν σοι, οτι ειδον, an accidental skip from -ι to -ι could result in the loss of οτι.

● John 4:3 – If the text originally read και απηλθεν παλιν εις την Γαλιλαίαν, an accidental skip from -ν to –ν could result in the loss of παλιν.

● John 11:30 – If the text originally read αλλ’ ην ετι εν τω τόπω, an accidental skip from ε- to ε- could result in the loss of ετι.

● John 21:21 – If the text originally read Τουτον ουν ιδων ο Πέτρος, an accidental skip from -ν to -ν could result in the loss of ουν.   

            There are many more textual contests in the New Testament in which (a) the Byzantine Text has a reading that is shorter than its rival Alexandrian reading, and (b) the shorter reading can be accounted for as a result of parablepsis.  For example, in the Byzantine Text, James 4:12 does not have the words και κριτής (“and Judge”), a short reading which can be explained if the verse originally began with Εις εστιν νομοθέτης και κριτης and an accidental skip was made from the -της at the end of νομοθέτης to the -της at the end of κριτης. 

From all this, we should draw two conclusions:

(1)  If is acknowledged that, say, half of these short Byzantine readings are the result of parablepsis, then unless we assume that scribes independently made the same mistake at the same point in the text ten times – which seems highly improbable – then they must echo an earlier ancestor-manuscript in which the text of these passages had been shortened via parableptic error. 

(2) Textual critics should use manuscript-evidence that represents different text-types, not just the Byzantine Text.  This is the only way to detect (and remedy) parableptic errors in which some text was lost but a sensible sentence was formed nevertheless.  It appears that most Byzantine Gospels-manuscripts are descended from a master-copy or master-copies in which some small snippets of the text have been lost via parablepsis.  It also appears, from other research, that most Alexandrian Gospels-manuscripts are descended from a master-copy or master-copies in which much more text has been lost via parablepsis.  To depend too heavily on one form of the text, merely because its oldest representatives lasted longer in Egypt’s low-humidity climate, or upon another form of the text, because it has circulated in a much higher number of manuscripts, is not our best option. 

News: Ancient Byzantine Gospels at Mount Sinai!

Georgian NF 19, 57v -
reconstructed lower writing.

       Last month, I briefly described many of the manuscripts in a collection of palimpsests (recycled manuscripts) that are being studied by the Sinai Palimpsests Project – including 15 Greek manuscripts of New Testament books.  Today, let’s take a closer look at parts of two specific manuscripts in the collection:  Georgian NF 19 and Georgian 49.  (NF = New Finds.) 
            The upper (i.e., most recent) writing in Georgian NF 19 is a copy of a book of hymns, or chants, in the Georgian language – the Iadgari of Mikael Modrekili.  It was produced in 980.  The parchment on which this copy of the Iadgari was written previously held text from at least 13 other compositions.
            Eight of those compositions are in the Palestinian Aramaic language.  The remaining seven are in Greek – including (1) a leaf from the Gospel of Matthew (containing Matthew 21:32-41), (2) a leaf from the Gospel of John (containing John 9:17-26), and (3) a leaf from the Gospel of Luke (containing Luke 8:12-20).

           These pages are clustered together and probably came from the same manuscript of the four Gospels, which has been assigned to the 500s.  All three are written in uncial script, formatted in two narrow columns per page, with 22 lines per column.  At the Sinai Palimpsests Project website, in the lower writing of Georgian NF 19, the text from Matthew is on fol. 56, the text from Luke is on fol. 57, and the text from John is on fol. 54.

            The text of the Gospels-manuscript that was recycled to provide parchment for the Georgian chant-book was essentially Byzantine.  Taking a close look at the text from Luke, for example, the only deviations from the Robinson-Pierpont Byzantine Textform are minor variants such as ακουοντες instead of ακουσαντες and συνπνιγονται instead of συμπνιγονται in verse 14. 

            The same textual character is present in Matthew:  in Matthew 21:35-41, the text of this manuscript is practically identical to the Byzantine Text.  Its text of John 9:17-31 is also very strongly Byzantine.

            Initial letters are enlarged and reverse-indented at the beginnings of verses 15, 16, 17, 18, and 19.  The Eusebian section-number ΠΒ (82) stands in the margin near the beginning of Luke 8:19, showing that these pages were once part of a manuscript that contained all four Gospels.

            Another manuscript in the collection, Georgian 49, contains five leaves that were recycled from a Greek copy of the Gospel of Mark (fol. 25, 26, 28, 29, and 30), and a leaf that was recycled from a Greek copy of the Gospel of John – but not the same Gospels-codex that was recycled to provide writing-material for Georgian NF 19.

            The text of Mark that appears in the lower writing of Georgian 49 was also formatted in two columns per page, but in columns of 25 lines, rather than 22.  A comparison of its text of Mark 10:46-47 and 10:49-51 reveals the following readings:

The Gospels-text in the lower writing
of Georgian NF 19 is unmistakably
Byzantine.

● v. 46:  the non-inclusion of ὁ after ἱκανοῦ.

● v. 46:  the Byzantine word-order and wording in the second half of the verse.

● v. 47:  the non-inclusion of ΙΥ (the customary contraction of Jesus’ name, Ἰησοῦ) after ΔΑΔ (the customary contraction of David’s name).  This might be the earliest Greek manuscript with this reading.  (Notice, however, the dots above ΔΑΔ which may represent a proof-reader’s expression of the detection of a scribal error; a correction may have been in the left margin.)

● v. 50:  αναστας (agreeing with Byz) instead of αναπηδήσας (the reading of B À L D).

● v. 51:  the Alexandrian non-inclusion of λέγει and inclusion of ειπεν.

● v. 51:  the Alexandrian word-order Τί σοι θέλεις ποιήσω.

            It would appear that the manuscript of Mark that was recycled to make Georgian 49 had a much higher amount of Alexandrian readings than the Gospels-manuscript that was used to make Georgian NF 19.  The text of John 11:29b-31a on fol. 54r in Georgian 49, however, contains only one significant variant-unit; it agrees with the Byzantine Text, and disagrees with the Alexandrian Text, via the non-inclusion of ετι in verse 30.

            This is just a sample of the harvest of textual data that is yet to come from the Sinai Palimpsests Project.  A guide to navigating the website is planned; in the meantime, allow me to walk you through it in the course of the next few paragraphs.

Byzantine readings continue
to dominate in the text of John
in Georgian NF 19.

            The manuscripts can be viewed, once one has been admitted entrance to the image-gallery by the stewards of the Sinai Palimpsests Project website.  Viewers should agree to the Terms of Use.  Once in the gallery, visitors will have the ability to browse through a list of the manuscripts, complete with descriptions of the texts in the lower writing and their locations.  You might want to have a pen and paper handy to jot down which compositions are in the lower writing of which pages of which manuscripts.

            When a specific page-view is accessed, some basic imaging-tools are available:  visitors have the ability to zoom in on details (in a no-nonsense, intuitive method), and to adjust the brightness, contrast, and color-saturation of the photograph; there are also options to rotate the page-view, to switch from full-color to grayscale, and to invert colors.  There is also a digital ruler; if you do not feel like measuring any of the letters in the manuscripts you can use the menu in the upper right corner to select “Hide ruler” and it will hide.

            In the same sub-menu in the upper right corner of each page-view, readers are given the option of switching from page view mode (which displays a single page in the main window but allows page-selection via a virtual rolodex below the main image) to gallery view mode (in which all of the manuscript’s pages are displayed in a grid of thumbnail-views).  (In page view mode, you might need to move the whole window north a bit to access the virtual rolodex’s controls.)

            More useful than all of these remarkable features, however, are the multi-spectral images of the pages, which can be accessed by selecting the three horizontal lines which appear in the menu in the upper left corner:  “Toggle the side panel,” a pop-up note will say when you do so.  (A special page is dedicated to explaining the use of different wavelengths and other technological aspects of multi-spectral imaging, including the special book cradle at Saint Catherine’s monastery.)

            After the side-menu appears and gobbles up the far-left fifth of your screen, another menu will appear which gives you the options of “Index” and “Layers.”  “Index” does nothing, as far as I can tell (no doubt something awesome is planned to go there eventually), so select “Layers.”  A series of images – all multi-spectral images of the same page, each one at a different wavelength – will appear.

            Viewers will need to check a little box to select specific wavelengths.  Some experimenting has shown that the most useful wavelengths for reading the lower writing in the palimpsests are toward the top (above the “raking light” setting); the ones toward the bottom are useful for getting an idea of what the page would look like without any writing on it.  Once a wavelength or multiple wavelengths are selected, the enhanced view can be digitally manipulated (by changing the contrast, brightness, etc.) so as to allow – though usually still requiring some effort – a much clearer look at the lower writing than would otherwise be possible.

            To the people of Arcadia, a charitable fund of Lisbet Rausing and Peter Baldwin, and to the Early Manuscripts Electronic Library, gratitude and congratulations are offered for making possible these exciting new discoveries about the text of the Bible, patristic compositions, the Byzantine liturgy, and other historically significant writings!

Sinaipalimpsests.org is a publication of St. Catherine’s Monastery of the Sinai in collaboration with EMEL and UCLA.

All images courtesy St. Catherine's Monastery of the Sinai.  

Used with permission. 

News: Manuscripts at Saint Catherine's

For at least the past five years, reports have circulated about the contents of palimpsests (recycled manuscripts) that were discovered in 1975 at Saint Catherine’s monastery.  National Geographic, Smithsonian Magazine, The Atlantic, ScienceBlog, Ancient-Origins, and the BBC have all told readers that major research is underway that involves ancient manuscripts and expensive manuscript-reading equipment. 

            Now the Sinai Palimpsests Project has a website, and visitors can easily get some sense of the scale of the work that is being done with the (relatively) newly discovered manuscripts.  The manuscripts at Saint Catherine’s include all kinds of compositions:  ancient medicine-recipes, patristic sermons, poems, liturgical instruction-books, Old Testament books, and much more. 

Fifteen continuous-text Greek manuscripts are among the newly discovered palimpsests.  All but one of these New Testament manuscripts have been given production-dates in the 500s or earlier.

Also among the new discoveries:

● Syriac manuscripts of Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Acts, and some of the Pauline Epistles from the 400s and 500s.

● Various New Testament books (including all four Gospels) written in Christian Palestinian Aramaic (formerly known as “Jerusalem Syriac”) from 500-700.

● A substantial manuscript of the Gospel of John in Caucasian Albanian (a virtually extinct language).

● A Latin copy of Mark in insular cursive from the 700s (implying a link between some manuscripts at St. Catherine’s monastery and some manuscripts subsequently used in Ireland). 

            So many of the palimpsests have been assigned production-dates in the 500s that it is tempting to surmise that what we are looking at here is part of a library that was donated to the monastery on the occasion of its official founding by Byzantine Emperor Justinian in 530.  

            Here is a list of most of the New Testament materials that are among the texts being studied by scholars associated with the Sinai Palimpsests Project and the Early Manuscripts Electronic Library.  Some materials are from the New Finds; some have been in the monastery’s library for a long time.  In this list, a “page” = a single side of a two-sided leaf.  Dates are approximate unless based on a colophon.  Yellow-highlighted texts are Greek New Testament materials.

● Arabic 514.  The copyists who made this manuscript recycled

Six pages of the Protevangelium of James in Syriac,

54 pages of the Gospel of Matthew, 

Eight pages of Acts,

Four pages of Hebrews,

Eight pages of Colossians,

88 pages from the Gospel of John (chapters 1-8, 12, and 17-21),

Six pages from First Timothy,

Two pages from Second Thessalonians,

Two pages from Ephesians, and

Two pages from the Gospel of John (chapters 5 and 6) in Syriac. 

The texts in these recycled pages are all in Syriac, and all have been assigned to the 500s.

● Arabic 588.  The copyists who made this manuscript recycled

Eight pages from the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, in Syriac. 500s.

11 pages from the Protevangelium of James, in Syriac.  500s.

● Arabic NF 28.   The copyists who made this manuscript of the Four Gospels in Arabic (Kufic script) in 850-900 (16 folios intact) recycled

20 pages of Exodus in Greek.  500s.

12 pages of Genesis in Greek.  500s.

● Arabic NF 8.  The copyists who made this manuscript of the Four Gospels in Arabic (Kufic script) in 850-900 recycled

            18 pages from a copy of Recipes for different diseases, a Greek medical text.  400-600.

            12 pages from a copy of Hippocrates, De diaeta I-IV, a Greek medical text.  500-600.

Four pages from a copy of Hippocrates, De morbis popularibus (Epidemiae), in Greek.  500-600. 

Eight pages from a copy of Hippocrates, Letters, a Greek medical text.  500s.

56 pages from a Greek copy of the Gospel of John.  500s.

18 pages from a Greek copy of the Gospel of Matthew.  500s.

Four pages from a Greek copy of Genesis.  500s.

12 pages from a Greek copy of Exodus.  500s.

Four pages from a Greek copy of Ecclesiasticus.  500s.

13 pages from a Latin copy of the Gospel of Mark (in insular cursive minuscule script).  700s.

Two pages from a Latin copy of Revelation (in half uncial script).  500s.

One page from a Latin copy of the Gospel of Luke (in Latin majuscule).  500s.

[115v of Arabic NF8 shows Greek letter from underwriting.]

[124r of Arabic NF 8 shows Greeks letters from underwriting in blank space.]

[The last page of Arabic NF 8 shows Greek letters from underwriting in blank space.]

  

● CPA NF frg. 12.  The copyists who made this manuscript of Psalms in 800-1000 (12 folios) recycled 24 pages of the book of Psalms in Christian Palestinian Aramaic (henceforth “CPA”).  500s-700s.

● CPA NF frg. 13.  The copyists who made this manuscript recycled one page from a copy of the Gospel of John in CPA.  1100s.

● CPA NF frg. 16. The copyists who made this manuscript recycled

Two folios from the Gospel of Luke (ch. 18) in CPA.  600s. 

Four pages from the Gospel of Luke in CPA.  400-700.

Two pages from the Gospel of Luke in Georgian.  Late 900s.

● CPA NF frg. 7.  The copyists of this manuscript of John Chrysostom’s Homily on the Prodigal Son, in CPA (7 folios) recycled eight pages from the Gospel of Luke, in CPA, 500-700.

● Georgian 10.  The copyists of this Georgian Apostolos (266 folios from 1000-1100) recycled 16 pages of a lectionary (Jerusalem type) in Georgian.  800-900.

● Georgian 49.  The copyists of this Georgian Menaion (119 folios from the 1200s) recycled

Four pages of the Gospel of Matthew, in Syriac.  500s.

Six pages of the Gospel of Mark, in Syriac.  500s.

Four pages of the Gospel of Matthew, in Syriac.  500s.

Six pages from the Life of Saint Pelagia, in Syriac.  500-700.

Ten pages from the Gospel of Mark, in Greek.  500s.

Two pages from the Gospel of John, in Greek.  500s.

Two pages from the Gospel of Luke, in Syriac.  800s.

Two pages from the Gospel of Matthew, in Syriac.  800s.

● Georgian NF 13.  The copyists of this Georgian collection of saints’ biographies from the 900s-1100 (107 folios) recycled

75 pages of the Gospel of John in Caucasian Albanian.  600-800.

90 pages of a lectionary, mainly from the New Testament, in Caucasian Albanian.  600-800.

Some pages of the Pauline Epistles in Georgian (Asomtavruli script).  600s.

12 pages of the Pauline Epistles in Armenian (Erkatagit script).  700-900. 

● Georgian NF 19.  The copyist who made this Georgian manuscript in 980 (61 folios) recycled

            Two pages of the Gospel of Matthew, in CPA.  500-700.

            Eight pages of a liturgy with New Testament readings, in Greek (minuscule).  800-1000.

Two pages of the Gospel of John, in Greek (majuscule).  500-600.

Two pages of the Gospel of Matthew, in Greek (majuscule).  500-600.

Two pages from the Gospel of Luke, in Greek (majuscule).  500s.

Two pages of a New Testament Lectionary, in CPA.  500-700.

[Greek lower writing is visible on 57r and 57v of Georgia NF 19.]

● Georgian NF 55. The copyists who made this Georgian manuscript in the 900s (78 folios) recycled

            66 pages of the Gospel of John in Caucasian Albanian.  600-800,

            41 pages of a New Testament lectionary in Caucasian Albanian.  600-800.

            Eight pages of the Pauline Epistles, in Armenian.  700-900.

            Two pages from Hebrews, in Armenian.  800-1000.

            Four pages from the Gospel of Mark, in CPA.  600-800.

● Georgian NF 71.  The copyists who made this Georgian Gospels-lectionary (8 folios) in the 900s recycled four pages of the Gospel of Matthew in CPA.  500-700.

● Georgian NF 90.  The copyists who made this Georgian manuscript (38 folios) in the 1000s recycled 16 pages of the Gospel of Matthew in Georgian.  500-700. 

● Greek 2053.  The copyists who made this Greek manuscript of Excerpts from Scripture (Acts & Epistles) (34 folios) in the 1200s recycled 16 pages from a Greek Synaxarion.  800s.

● Greek 212.  The copyists who made this collection of lections from the Greek New Testament (including Resurrection-readings) in the 700s or 800s) (114 folios) recycled many pages of a Greek Psalter.  700s.

● Greek NF M 98.  The copyists who made this Greek liturgical manuscript in the 1200s (2 folios) recycled four pages of the Gospel of Luke in Greek.  975-1025.

● Greek NF MG 29.  The copyists who made this Octoechos manuscript in the 800s recycled many pages (mostly fragmentary) from the Gospel of Matthew in Greek.  550-600.

● Greek NF MG 32.  The copyists who made this Greek Martyrologion (21 folios) in the 800s recycled eight pages of a Gospels-lectionary in CPA.  400-700.

● Greek NF MG 99.  The copyists who made this Greek liturgical manuscript in the 800s recycled

            12 pages from First Corinthians, in Greek.  425-475.

Two fragments from Colossians, in Greek.  425-475.

Four fragments from Philippians, in Greek.  425-475.

Two fragments from Romans, in Greek.  425-475.

● Syriac 2A.   The copyists who made this Syriac manuscript of the Four Gospels in the 500s (180 folios) recycled

            14 pages from the Gospel of Mark, in Syriac.  425-475.

22 pages from the Gospel of Luke, in Syriac.  425-475.

Four pages from the Gospel of John, in Syriac.  425-475.

● Syriac 30.  The copyists who made this Syriac manuscript of saints’ biographies in 779 (181 folios) recycled

            Eight pages of the Gospel of John, in Greek.  500s.

            44 pages of the Gospel of Mark, in Syriac.  450-600. 

69 pages of the Gospel of Matthew, in Syriac.  450-600.

            98 pages of the Gospel of Luke, in Syriac.  450-600.

            72 pages of the Gospel of John, in Syriac.  450-600.

Syriac 5 - Something else is there! 

● Syriac 5.  A Syriac manuscript of the Epistles of Paul (198 folios). 500s.

● Syriac 7. St.  The copyists who made most of this Syriac lectionary in the 1000s (73 folios) recycled

            Four pages of Hebrews, in Armenian (erkatagir script).  800s.

            Four pages of the Gospel of Matthew, in Greek.  500s.

● Syriac NF 11.  The copyists who made this manuscript of Cyril of Scythopolis’ Life of Sabas in Syriac (112 folios) in 850-1000 recycled

            Two pages of the Gospel of John in CPA (early script).  500-700.

            16 pages of the Gospel of Mark in CPA (early script).  500-700.

            20 pages of the Gospel of Matthew in CPA (early script).  500-700.

            18 pages of the Gospel of Luke in CPA (early script).  500-700.

● Syriac NF 23.  The copyists who made this Syriac Gospels-lectionary (14 folios) in 800-1000 recycled

            Eight pages of the Gospel of John, in Syriac (Old Estrangela script).  450-550. 

Eight pages of the Gospel of Luke, in Syriac (Old Estrangela script).  450-550.

One page from Ephesians, in Syriac (Estrangela script).  500s.

Two pages from First Thessalonians, in Syriac (Estrangela script).  500s.

Two pages from Titus, in Syriac (Estrangela script).  500s.

Six pages from Philemon, in Syriac (Estrangela script).  500s.

Two pages from Hebrews, in Syriac (Estrangela script).  500s.

● Syriac NF 3.   The copyists who made this devotions-book in the 1200s in Syriac (Melkite script) in the 1200s (164 folios) recycled four pages from Second Corinthians, in Syriac (Estrangela script).  500s.  

● Syriac NF 37.  The copyists who made this manuscript of Evagrius Ponticus’ On Prayer (6 folios) in Syriac in 850-1000 recycled

            Four pages of the Gospel of Matthew, in Syriac (Estrangela script).  500s.

            Six pages of the Gospel of Luke, in Syriac (Estrangela script).  500s.

            Two pages from the Gospel of John, in Syriac (Estrangela script).  500s. 

● Syriac NF 38.  The copyists who made this Syriac manuscript of John Climacus’ The Ladder of Divine Ascent, Letter to a Shepherd (Codex Climaci rescriptus) in 800-1000 (8 folios) recycled 16 pages from First-Second Corinthians, in CPA.  500-700.

● Syriac NF 39.  The copyists who made this manuscript of a composition by Diadochos of Photiki in Syriac (18 folios) in 800-1000 recycled

            Six pages of the Gospel of Matthew, in Syriac (Estrangela script).  500s.

Eight pages of the Gospel of Mark, in Syriac (Estrangela script).  500s.

18 pages of the Gospel of Luke, in Syriac (Estrangela script).  500s.

Four pages of the Gospel of John, in Syriac (Estrangela script).  500s.

● Syriac NF 42.  This Syriac Gospels-lectionary in CPA (8 folios) was made in the 1100s.

● Syriac NF 56.  The copyists who made this Syriac Gospels-lectionary (121 folios) in 933 recycled

            14 pages of the Gospel of Matthew in CPA.  550-700.

            66 pages of the Gospel of Mark, in CPA (calligraphic script).  550-700.

● Syriac NF 64.  The copyists who made this Syriac copy of Genesis (Peshitta version) in the 800s (4 folios) recycled four pages of Hebrews, in CPA.  600-800.

● Syriac NF 66.  The copyists who made this Syriac liturgical text in 800-1000 (8 folios) recycled 16 pages of Acts in Syriac (Estrangela script).  600-800.

            Stay tuned for more news about the Greek texts hiding in the lower writing of the palimpsests at Mount Sinai!