Video Lecture: How Manuscripts Were Made

Lecture 03 in the series Introduction to New Testament Textual Criticism is now online:
The Structure of New Testament Manuscripts And How They Were Made

In this brief lecture, I describe what a leaf is, what a quire is, Gregory's Rule, cancel-sheets, multi-quire codices, ruling, catchwords, correctors, trimming, binding, palimpsests, and more.

With captions!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5iIyVE39Qg

Here is an excerpt:

             Today, we will take a closer look at how a codex was made, once the papyrus or parchment or paper had been provided. 

 . . . 

One sheet of parchment = a bifolium, a sheet folded vertically in the middle.

Half a bifolium = a folio = a leaf.  

This has an effect on how pages are numbered:  it used to be the norm for the folios of a handmade book to be numbered.  Now it is the norm for the pages of books to be numbered; they are paginated rather than foliated.

 When a codex lies open:  the page on the left is called the verso, and the page on the right is called the recto.  One leaf, or, one folio, of a Greek manuscript, has a front – “recto” – and back – “verso.”  (For manuscripts in languages read from right to left and back to front, such as Hebrew or Syriac, this is reversed.)  So the best way to refer to the pages of ancient manuscripts is not to refer to a page-number, but to refer to the folio, recto or verso. 

            When we are dealing with a single fragment of a single text that can be identified, the part of the text that comes first in the composition is regarded as the recto. 

A gathering = several sheets stacked upon each other, and folded vertically down the middle.

Sometimes a gathering is made from a stack of three sheets, and this is called a ternion.

Sometimes a gathering is made from a stack of five sheets, and this is called a quinion.

But usually a gathering is made of four sheets, called a quaternion, for a total of 16 pages.  This kind of gathering is the standard quire.  (Q-u-i-r-e.)

 You could say that if a man in ancient times wanted to obtain four folded sheets of parchment to make a 16-page booklet for a group of singers at the cathedral, he wanted to acquire a quire for a choir. 

            Some early codices had quires made of much more than four sheets.  A codex can be made with only one quire, folded in the middle.  Such a codex is, understandably, called a single-quire codex.  This kind of book has two disadvantages:  the more pages are folded together, the more “creep” there is – the part that sticks out in the middle-pages past the edge of the lowest and uppermost page when the quire is folded.  Also, the thicker a single-quire codex is, the harder it is to keep it closed, and to make its pages lay flat. 

             When the sheets of a quire were stacked together, it was customary for the book-maker to arrange the parchment so that the parchment page that was from the outside of the animal, where the hair had been, faced another page from the outside of the animal, and the opposite side of the page, from the inside of the animal, faced another page from the inside of the animal. 

             This custom, which could be summed up as, “Hair faces hair, flesh faces flesh,” is called “Gregory’s Rule,” because it was first detected by C. R. Gregory.  Papyrus is a plant and thus papyrus-pages have neither hair nor flesh, but papyrus sheets in a codex tended to be arranged using the same principle, so that the smoother side of each folio faced the smooth side of the next folio, and the rougher sides of the folios faced each other.

            To avoid the problems that arose with single-quire codices, the Multi-Quire Codex was invented:  instead of beginning as one stack of sheets, the book began as two or more stacks of sheets, folded in the middle.  These booklets, each consisting of one quire, were then sewn to each other to form a book, which was usually given a protective binding or cover of some sort.  In some case, the book was kept in a special leather pouch or satchel.      

            The multi-quire codex had some advantages over scrolls.  For example:  when reading a codex, it is much easier to page through a codex of the Gospels and  compare parallel-passages, than with a scroll.  Also, if one folio of a codex is damaged, it can be removed and replaced.  Scrolls can be repaired too, but it’s more trouble. 

            When making a codex, if the main copyist were to make a mistake so bad that it ruined the entire page, the proof-reader, or whoever noticed the mistake, could remove the individual sheet, and replace it with one in which the mistake had been corrected.  This meant replacing not only the text on the page where the mistake had appeared, but also the text on the other folio on the sheet – four pages of text in all.  Such a replacement-page is called a cancel-sheet.           

            Before a copyist wrote the text on a page, the page first had to be ruled – that is, the page need to be marked with lines for the copyist to follow.  Some codices have the text arranged in just one column on each page; some codices have the text in two columns.  Codex Vaticanus is almost unique by having the text formatted in three columns on most pages, although in its Old Testament portion, in the Books of Poetry, the format is two columns per page.  If a manuscript was intended to feature commentary-material in the margins, this usually had to be anticipated and the page-format had to be adjusted accordingly. 

            Some manuscripts appear to have been prepared quire by quire before the quires were sewn together.  Quires were typically numbered.  It was not unusual, at the end of a quire, for the copyist write the first word of the next quire.  These are called “catchwords,” and along with the quire-numbers, they helped the person who assembled the book – and people who later repaired the book – avoid getting the quires in the wrong order.  But sometimes the quires got mixed up anyway. 

            There was more to the production of a book besides the reproduction of the text of its exemplar.  If a manuscript was the product of a scriptorium – a center for producing manuscripts – then after the initial production of the quires, a supervisor proof-read the work of his assistants, correcting their mistakes.  The proof-reading supervisor is called the diorthotes.  

            Embellished letters were often written in different ink – red, or golden – after the main text was written.  If there were illustrations, some space had to be left for them.  In some manuscripts, the space has been left for illustrations, but the illustrator

apparently never showed up.  And some manuscripts have apparently cannibalized illustrations from other manuscripts:  pictures have been cut from other parchment pages, and have been glued down onto pages in a manuscript. 

             Another thing to consider, when we look at what went into the production of a manuscript, is that we are not always looking at the result of a single production-event.  Some manuscripts were made by more than one copyist, and the larger a manuscript is, the more likely this is to be the case. 

             Sometimes, the text of a manuscript was adjusted to conform to a different exemplar.  In cases where this was attempted, the person who made the adjustments is called a “corrector,” whether or not he was indeed making the text in the copy more like the original text.  A corrector might work on a manuscript before it left the scriptorium, or hundreds of years later.

             A manuscript might be damaged, and also be repaired, long after its initial production.  A manuscript might be supplemented with lectionary-related material long after it was first made.  And sometimes, if the script that had been initially written on the page had faded, a later copyist might trace over, or “reinforce,” the old lettering.  So we need to be on the lookout for indications of changes that a manuscript has undergone after it was made.

              This can involve not only alterations to the text, but also physical changes to the book.  Books and their binding were occasionally damaged, whether by fire or water or simple wear-and-tear, and they needed to be repaired.  Sometimes, the pages were re-trimmed, and in some cases,  the person doing the trimming was careless, and trimmed away not only some material in the outer margins, but also lines of text.

            Sometimes the covers of New Testament manuscripts feature a layer of padding on the inside, and sometimes this padding was made of pages from discarded manuscripts.  In some rare cases, the cover of a New Testament manuscript may contain pages of another New Testament manuscript.

         But being turned into binding-padding is not the most drastic post-production change that could happen to a manuscript.  Some manuscripts were recycled.   There were times and places where parchment was scarce or expensive or both, and if a copyist possessed a parchment book that he did not consider valuable, he might dismantle it, and wash or scrape the ink off of its pages, in order to obtain its parchment.  Why would anyone recycle a New Testament manuscript? 

            (1) The manuscript might be written in an unfamiliar language.  A Latin-speaking copyist might not see a Greek manuscript of the Gospels as valuable if he did not read Greek.  

            (2) The manuscript might be considered surplus.  A pragmatic Greek-speaking copyist might not consider a Greek manuscript of the Gospels as valuable if he worked at a monastery where there were dozens of Greek manuscripts of the Gospels on hand. 

            (3)  The manuscript might have been damaged.  A copyist might possess a manuscript that has been damaged beyond repair, but still have some intact pages which could be re-used.  Why throw away valuable parchment when it can be made into useful parchment by scraping off the ink?

             For whatever reason, copyists recycled quite a few manuscripts of books of the New Testament, washing and scraping off the ink, which rendered the parchment blank so that it could be re-using as material to hold a different text.  At least, it looked blank for a while – but in the course of time, the ink that had bonded to the parchment became perceptible again.  Because the parchment of these manuscripts have been scraped twice – once in the initial production, and again when they were recycled – they are called palimpsests, from the Greek words for “scraped again.” 

            On a palimpsest, the earliest layer of writing is called the lower writing, and the more recent layer of writing is called the upper writing.  The parchment of some palimpsests has been recycled more than once, which can present a challenge to those trying to read the earliest layer of text.  A relatively new method of detecting the lower writing, involving some special equipment, is called Multi-Spectral Imaging. 

             For details about a specific single-quire codex, visit the University of Michigan’s website that describes the structure of P46.  Just search for University of Michigan Papyrus 46 Codex.  All of the pages about P46 there are worth exploring. 

             I also recommend watching the video, 7 minutes and 35 second long, at YouTube, called “C-SPAN Cities Tour - Ann Arbor: P46 - The Pauline Epistles.”

             For some additional general information about the structure of a codex, watch the video, 2 minutes and 8 second long, The Structure of a Medieval Manuscript, made available at YouTube by the Getty Museum.

            For information about ruling a page – arranging the lines and margins – watch the video, Making Manuscripts:  The Page, one minute and 40 second long, made available at YouTube by the British Library.

            And, finally, for more information about what can be done with Multi-Spectral Imaging, watch the video, 5 minutes and 16 seconds long, Codex Zacynthius MS Add. 10062, Recovering the Text of the Oldest New Testament Catena Manuscript, made available at YouTube by the Cambridge University Library.

 

Glossary of Textual Criticism: N-Z

Nomina sacra (singular:  nomen sacrum):  sacred names which were usually written in contracted form by copyists.  Usually the contractions consist of two letters – the first letter of the word and the final letter – but in some manuscripts the contractions have a three-letter form.  The terms Κυριος (“Lord”), Θεος (“God”), Ιησους (“Jesus”), and Χριστος (“Christ”) are almost always contracted, with a horizontal line written over them.  References to the three Persons of the Trinity – Πατηρ (“Father”), Υιος (“Son”), and Πνευμα (“Spirit”) – are also contracted in most manuscripts.

            With less uniformity, terms that were associated with titles of Christ are also contracted, such as “Man” (due to the title “Son of Man”), “David” (due to the title “Son of David”), and “Savior.”  Most copyists also contracted the words “Israel,” “Jerusalem,” “Mother,” and “Cross.” 

   

Novum Testamentum Graece:  A compilation of the Greek text of the New Testament equipped with (a) symbols in the text which convey specific kinds of textual variants, and (b) a basic textual apparatus listing the main support for the adopted reading, and for rival readings.  Eberhard Nestle published the first edition of NTG in 1898, drawing on three independent, but similar, compilations by other scholars (specifically, Tischendorf, Westcott & Hort, and Weymouth).  In 1927, Eberhard Nestle’s son, Erwin Nestle, took over the task of editing the thirteenth edition of the compilation, changing the textual apparatus so as to include a more detailed presentation of evidence, listing manuscripts, versions, patristic writers, compilations by earlier editors, and theoretical recensions that had been posited by researcher Hermann von Soden.

            Kurt Aland was given supervision of the compilation in 1952, and its textual apparatus was expanded considerably.  The NTG achieved relative stability in 1979, and was now known as the Nestle-Aland NTG.  The text of the 26th edition was basically retained in the 27th edition, although the textual apparatus was changed (and some Byzantine witnesses were removed from the apparatus) and miscitations were corrected.  In the 28th edition (2012), only about 35 textual changes were introduced, all confined to the General Epistles.

            The 28th edition of NTG, though technically an eclectic compilation, has a very strong Alexandrian character, differing only slightly from the 1881 compilation of Westcott and Hort.       

Nu ephelkustikon:  The Greek letter nu (ν) placed at the end of a word before another word that begins with a vowel, and at the end of sentences.  Also called moveable nu.

Overline:  A horizontal line added above characters to signify that the letters underneath it are to be read as numerals or as a nomen sacrum.   An overline at the end of a line of text represents the letter nu.

Paratext:  Features in a manuscript other than the main text, such as illustrations, notes, canon-tables, chapter-titles, arabesques, and marginalia. 

           

Paleography:  The science of studying ancient handwriting and inscriptions.  Paleography is useful for estimating the production-dates (and in some cases the locale) of manuscripts by making comparisons between the handwriting they display and the handwriting of dated documents.  Paleographers also study inks and paratextual features of manuscripts.  Paleographically assigned production-dates should generally be given a range of 50 years both before and after the assigned date, on the premises that (a) copyists tended to write in basically the same script throughout their careers, (b) a typical copyist’s career lasted 50 years, and (c) we cannot determine if a copyist wrote a specific manuscript at the beginning, or end, of his career. 

Palimpsest:  A manuscript which has been recycled, and contains two (or more) layers of writing.  The parchment of a palimpsest has been scraped once, in its initial preparation, and later scraped again, when someone scraped off, or washed off, the ink, in order to reuse the newly blank parchment to hold a different composition.  (The word is derived from Greek:  palin, again, and psaw, scrape.)  The text that was written first on a palimpsest is called the lower writing; the more recently written text is called the upper writing.   The application of ultraviolet light (and multi-spectral imaging) can in some cases make the lower writing much more visible than it appears to be in normal light. 

Papyrus:  (plural:  papyri)  Writing-material made from tissues derived from the inner layer of papyrus plants.  Papyrus-material tended to rot away in high-humidity climates, which is why practically all surviving New Testament papyri were found in Egypt, where the humidity-level is lower.  Manuscripts made of papyrus (such as Papyrus 5, part of which is shown here) are also called papyri.

Parablepsis:   The phenomenon which occurs when a copyist’s line of sight drifts from one set of letters to an identical or similar set of letters, skipping the intervening text.  This may occur due to homoioarcton, homoeoteleuton, or simple inattentiveness.

Provenance:  The place from which a manuscript came. 

Quire:  A collection of bifolia (usually four) which have been stacked and folded together in the process of codex-production.

Recto:  The side of a leaf in a manuscript that is viewed when the outer margin is to the viewer’s right.

Rubric:  Text written in red, usually found in the margins, mainly serving to label portions of the main text.  Rubrics may include chapter-titles, the lectionary apparatus, and miscellaneous notes.

Ruling:  Horizontal lines and vertical borders added to writing-material as guidelines for the text which was intended to be written upon it.  Hundreds of different ruling-patterns have been identified.  They vary in complexity, depending on how much supplemental material was intended to accompany the main text.       

Scriptorium:  A manuscript-making center, usually located in a monastery.

Stichometry:  A calculation of the number of standard lines (about 15 or 16 syllables), or stichoi, of text in a book or book-portion.  The conclusions of New Testament books are sometimes accompanied by notes mentioning the book’s length, in line-units.   This suggests that such manuscripts were copied by professionals who were paid on a per-stichos basis. 

Singleton:  a single folded bifolium in a manuscript – a quire consisting of a single sheet. 

Staurogram:  A combination of the Greek letters tau and rho, thought by some researchers to be a pictogram of Christ’s crucifixion.

  

Textual Apparatus:  Notes in a compilation, listing variants and the witnesses that support them.  Witnesses are usually listed in the order of uncials, minuscules, versions, and patristic references.  In the textual apparatuses of the Nestle-Aland Novum Testamentum Graece and the UBS Greek New Testament, Byzantine witnesses tend to be presented collectively.

Textus Receptus:  This term is generally used to refer to the base-text of the 1611 King James Version.  It is also used to refer to any of the compilations of the Greek text of the New Testament published in the 1500s and early 1600s, beginning with Erasmus’ first edition in 1514, continuing with the Complutensian Polyglot, several editions by Stephanus, several editions by Beza, and the 1624 and 1633 editions by the Elzevirs, the last of which was declared to be “the text received by all.”  These compilations were not entirely identical but all contained a basically Byzantine text influenced by readings selected from the editors’ materials, which included important witnesses such as minuscule 1, minuscule Codex Bezae (D), Codex Regius (L), and Codex Claromontanus.  

            The 1551 edition issued by Stephanus is notable for the introduction of verse-numbers, essentially the same enumeration still used in most English New Testaments.

UBS Greek New Testament:  A compilation of the Greek text of the New Testament prepared by a team working for the United Bible Societies.  Now in its fifth edition (2014), the UBS Greek New Testament contains the same text presented in the 28^th edition of the Nestle-Aland Novum Testamentum Graece.  The textual apparatus of the UBS Greek New Testament covers far fewer variant-units (about 1,400), but in far greater detail.  Bruce Metzger (1914-2007), a member of the UBS compilation-committee, wrote A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, explaining the committee’s text-critical general approach and specific decisions.   

Uncial:  A manuscript in which each letter is written separately and as a capital.  These are also known as majuscules.  Many uncials, are identified by sigla (singular:  siglum) such as the letters of the English alphabet, letters of the Greek alphabet, and, for Codex Sinaiticus (À), the Hebrew alphabet.  All uncials are identified by numbers that begin with a zero. 

Verso:  The side of a leaf in a manuscript that is viewed when the outer margin is to the viewer’s left.

Watermark:  In medieval paper, a design embedded in the fibers of the paper, visible when a page is held up to light.  Watermarks often indicate where the paper was made.

Western Order:  The arrangement of the four Gospels as Matthew, John, Luke, and Mark.  This order is found mainly in representatives of the Western Text, such as the Old Latin Gospels and Codex Bezae.

Western Text:  A text-form, or forms, characterized by expansion, harmonization, and simplification in comparison to other text-types.  Codex Bezae and the Old Latin version are the primary and most extensive witnesses to Western readings, but several early patristic writers frequently utilize Western readings as well. 

Zoomorphic Initial:  An initial which takes the shape of an animal or bird.

            If readers would like to suggest other terms that should be considered for inclusion in this glossary, you are welcome to do so in the comments.