Codex Vaticanus: From Where?

           The provenance of a manuscript, when it can be ascertained, is an important thing to know.  For instance, when Codex W came to light in Egypt, the discovery of its essentially Byzantine text of Matthew and most of Luke (alongside the mainly Alexandrian text of the opening chapters of Luke and most of John) shows that before the mid-400s (working on the premise that Codex W has been correctly dated to the early 400s), showed that a well-developed Byzantine Text of the Gospels existed in Egypt by the time Codex W was made.

          Many textual critics consider no manuscript more valuable than Codex Vaticanus.  But what is Codex Vaticanus’ (Codex B, 03) provenance?   It has been at the Vatican Library ever since the Vatican Library was founded in 1475 (using earlier library-collections) under Sixtus IV.   There is no record of Codex Vaticanus’ presence in Rome prior to that time.  Sepulveda drew attention to Codex Vaticanus in the 1530s, and informed Erasmus of some of its readings. 

Basil Bessarion

          Is there anything we can say about where Codex Vaticanus was before that?  Perhaps.  It may have been in the possession of Basil Bessarion (1403-1472), who lived a very interesting life in the 1400s.  Born in Trebizond (modern Trabzon on the Black Sea), he became a monk and worked his way up through the ranks, so to speak, becoming metropolitan of Nicea in 1437.  In the same year, Bessarion traveled to Italy to take part in the Council of Ferrara-Florence.  By 1440, Bessarion had become a Cardinal and had even composed and signed a statement of unity (Oratio dogmatica de unione) which was perhaps the strongest formal expression of a desire for the reunion of the Western Roman Catholic Church with the Eastern Orthodox Church church since the earlier schism about the filioque clause.   After the fall of Constantinople in 1453, and the fall of Trebizond in 1461, Bessarion’s efforts to promote a formal ecclesiastical reunion foundered, but his influence in the West continued to rise.  He nearly became pope, but apparently some bishops were averse to giving such a position to a man who was from the East. 

          In 1468, Bessarion donated his personal library (which included more Greek manuscripts than any other library at the time) to the Republic of Venice, and this became the core of the Biblioteca Marciana (a.k.a. the Sansovino Library).  Among the volumes which can now be found at the Biblioteca Marciana is the manuscript known as Codex Venetus Marc. Gr. 6 (Old Testament Manuscript 122), in which, according to T.C. Skeat (in the essay “The Codex Vaticanus in the Fifteenth Century”), the text of Esther, Sirach, Judith, and Tobit was copied from Codex Vaticanus.  Skeat goes on to say that Codex Venetus Marc. Gr. 6 was among the manuscripts that had been owned by Bessarion. 

          If Bessarion was responsible for bringing Codex Vaticanus to Rome, this elicits another question:  where was Codex Vaticanus before that?  If we look at the data in Euthaliana, by Joseph Armitage Robinson, published in 1895 as Text & Studies, Vol. 3, (beginning on digital page 448 of the download) we will see proof, in a sub-chapter titled “Chapters of the Acts in À and B,” that the chapter-numbers in part of the book of Acts in Codex Sinaiticus (up to 15:40) are the same as the chapter-numbers in the book of Acts in Codex Vaticanus.  

          Robinson reasoned:  “Where did this system of numbers, common to À and B, come from?  The two codices have got hold of it quite independently of one another.  It cannot have been copied from B into À, for À has one number (M) [i.e., 40] which is not found in B : nor can it have been copied from À into B, for nearly a third of the numbers (from MB onwards) are not found in À.  We must go back to a common source – some MS which gave its numeration to them both :  and this seems to imply that the À and B were at an early stage of their history lying side by side in the same library.”

          What library?  Probably the library at Caesarea.  Sinaiticus was probably made there (not by Eusebius, but slightly later when Acacius was bishop).  J. R. Harris argued for a connection between Sinaiticus and Caesarea in 1893 in his composition “Stichometry” in the chapter “The Origin of Codices À and B,” on the basis of a small detail in Sinaiticus’ text.

    In Matthew 13:54, the scribe of À initially wrote Ἀντιπατρίδα instead of πατρίδα.  Antipatris (mentioned in Acts 23:31) was not far from the city of Caesarea, and the scribe’s thoughts may have wandered a bit, eliciting this blunder in À.  Harris put his suspicion this way:  “It is to my mind much the same as if a printed text of Shakespeare should put into Mark Antony's speech the line “I come to Banbury Caesar, not to praise him.”  Such a text would probably be the work of Oxford printers.”  (Harris’ meaning may be better appreciated if one understands that the town of Banbury is about 20 miles northwest of Oxford, and Antipatris is about 25 miles from Caesarea.)          

          One could augment Harris’ argument by pointing out two other readings in À: 

          —  In Luke 24:13, Codex À says that the distance between Emmaus and Jerusalem was 160, rather than sixty, stadia.  (I go into detail about this reading in the blog-post here.)  This reading almost certainly originated after Nicopolis was recognized (incorrectly) as being the same place as Emmaus, as Eusebius mentioned in his composition Onomasticon. 

          — In Acts 8:5, the scribe wrote Καισαριας where he should have written Σαμαριας.

          If Caesarea was the place where Sinaiticus was made, what evidence is there that Vaticanus (which supports none of À’s readings in Matthew 13:54, Luke 14:13, and Acts 8:5) was also produced there?  One item may point in this direction:  One of Bessarion’s better-known manuscripts, known as minuscule 205, was made for Bessarion in the 1400s by John Rhosus.  Its Gospels-text is Caesarean, agreeing at many points with the Armenian version.  205 was copied from 2886 (formerly called 205^abs); re-numbering was called for after Alison Sarah Welsby showed in 2011 that earlier scholars who had stated that 205abs was copied from 205 had gotten it backwards (at least, as far as the text of the Gospel of John is concerned).

          But there is another possibility.  Codex Vaticanus’ nearly unique format (having most of its text, other than the books of poetry in the Old Testament) written in three columns of text per page.  And B. H. Streeter wrote (on p. 113 of The Four Gospels – A Study of Origins, 1924 ed.), “It is stated in the Menologies – short accounts of a Saint for reading on his day – that Lucian bequeathed his pupils a copy of the Old and New Testaments written in three columns in his own hand.”  (The day assigned to Saint Lucian is either January 7 or October 15.)  Bruce Metzger (in Chapters in the History of New Testament Textual Criticism, in the chapter The Lucianic Recension of the Greek Bible, p. 6) refers to the same report, and adds the detail that the Menaeon states this three-column manuscript written in three columns per page ended up at a church in Nicomedia.   And prior to becoming cardinal of Nicea, Bessarion may have encountered it (and obtained it) there, and took it to Italy. 

          It is not impossible, considering that the three-column format is nearly unique to Vaticanus and the manuscript attributed to Lucian – that they are one and the same.  This would imply that Lucian of Antioch, rather than being the initiator of a recension that begat the Byzantine Text of the New Testament, perpetuated the mainly Alexandrian text he found in exemplars at Caesarea which had been taken there from Egypt about a hundred years earlier by Origen.  If these MSS were also the ancestors of Codex Sinaiticus, then the genealogical connection between Sinaiticus and Vaticanus does not go back to the second century (as Hort seems to have thought) but to the third century. 

          To review the steps in Vaticanus’ history that have been suggested:
          (1)  Vaticanus was produced at Caesarea under the supervision of Lucian of Antioch, no later than 312 (when Lucian was martyred), using as exemplars manuscripts that had been brought to Caesarea by Origen in 230-231.

          (2)  Before Vaticanus was taken from Caesarea to Nicomedia, its text in Acts was supplemented with chapter-numbers from the same non-extant source which supplied the chapter-numbers to Acts in Codex À.  

           (3) Vaticanus was taken to Nicomedia.  (Meanwhile, Codex Sinaiticus was taken to St. Catherine's monastery.)  Much later, in the 1400s, Bessarion acquired it and took it with him to Italy, where, via means unknown, it was placed in the collection in the Vatican Library.   

 

John 1:18 - Sinaiticus: The Devil in the Details

John 1:18 in Codex Sinaiticus
(replica)

           In the two previous posts, I examined (a) the meaning of the term μονογενὴς, concluding that “only begotten” is an entirely proper rendering, and (b) some early patristic and versional evidence for rival forms of John 1:18, especially the contest between “only begotten Son” and “only begotten God.”  Although a simple count of manuscripts overwhelmingly favors “only begotten Son,” (1,630 versus 7) the patristic evidence indicates that in the early centuries of the church, things were not so lopsided.  My findings generally align with the observation made by Paul McReynolds:  ““There are eleven writers, with thirty-nine citations, who support μονογενὴς θεός,” and “There are 20+ Fathers, with 40+ citations, who support the ὁ μονογενὴς υἱός reading.”  In addition, McReynolds listed 14 Latin authors, with 41 citations, who support υἱός; only Hilary of Poitiers is listed as conceivable (but highly unlikely) Latin support for θεός,

            Today, I want to pause the general discussion orbiting the textual contest in John 1:18 in order to focus on the contents and character of the text in Codex Sinaiticus, one of the manuscripts that favor μονογενὴς θεός (without ὁ). 

            Although Sinaiticus is usually considered to be a flagship manuscript of the Alexandrian Text, in John 1:1-8:38, its text is not Alexandrian; it is Western.  This was shown by Gordon Fee (in Codex Sinaiticus in the Gospel of John: A Contribution to Methodology in Establishing Textual Relationships, in New Testament Studies 15, 1968-69).  This elicits a question:  if  ὁ μονογενὴς υἱός is the Western reading of John 1:18 – as Hort emphatically asserted – then why is something else (μονογενὴς θεός) found in Sinaiticus?  (Here is the relevant quote from Hort:  “It comes out with perfect clearness that υἱός is one of the numerous Ante-nicene readings of a ‘Western’ type (in the technical not the strictly geographical sense of the word).”)  Finding θεός in John 1:18 in the Western portion of À is a bit like finding a lemon growing on an orange tree. 

            The answer has something to do with the background of Codex Sinaiticus – but before we investigate that, let’s take a look at some anomalous readings of À in John 1.  Based on data accumulated by Reuben Swanson, here are some of À’s unusual readings:

            v. 4 – εστιν instead of ην  

            v. 6 – ην after θεου

            v. 17 – non-inclusion of Χριστου

            v. 18 – non-inclusion of ο ων before εις τον κολπον

            v. 19 – does not include και ωμολογησεν

            v. 20 – non-inclusion of αυτον

            v. 20 – includes παλιν

            v. 21 – reads επηρωτησαν

            v. 21 – non-inclusion of και before λεγει

            v. 21 – non-inclusion of ὁ before προφητης 

            v. 28 – reads ποταμου after Ιορδανου

            v. 32 – reads ως περιστεραν καταβαινον εκ του ουρανου και μενον after πνευμα

            v. 34 – reads εκλεκτος του Θεου instead of υιος του Θεου

                      

            Sinaiticus very often has no Greek allies in the first chapter of John.  Why?  Partly because Codex D is not extant for John 1:16-3:26, but there is more to it than that.  I deduce that the text of John 1 in Sinaiticus is not merely Western; the copyist used a Western exemplar but freely drifted from its text.  Although in theory this could occur almost anywhere in the text’s ancestry, it seems likely that this array of readings originated as À’s text of John 1:1-8:38 was transcribed.  Sinaiticus’ copyist was obligated by a lacuna in his main exemplar to resort to a secondary exemplar, but he did not trust the secondary exemplar and felt free to take some liberties with its contents.   

            What is the basis for this deduction?  What would make a scribe reluctant to trust an exemplar, even a secondary one? 

            Enter Heracleon.  Heracleon was a Valentinian Gnostic writer in the second century, generally regarded as one who taught in Italy, possibly in the city of Rome.  Bart Ehrman has presented some data that suggests a special relationship between the text of Sinaiticus in John 1:1-8:38 and the text used by Heracleon (see the essays Heracleon, Origen, and the Text of the Fourth Gospel and Heracleon and the ‘Western’ Textual Tradition, chapters 14 and 15 of Studies in the Textual Criticism of the New Testament, Vol. 33 of New Testament Tools & Studies, 2006).   À* agrees with several readings in the text of Heracleon, as cited by Origen.  One particularly impressive example involves the text of John 1:21:  Heracleon claimed (according to Origen) that John had denied being a prophet (instead of denying that he was the prophet); this indicates that Heracleon’s text of John 1:21 lacked the article ὁ before προφήτης – and this is the extremely rare reading of À*.  We see in John 1:21 in À* the same kind of unusual reading – the omission of an article – that we also see in 1:18.  Another reading in À that corresponds to a reading which can plausibly be deduced to have been in the text used by Heracleon is the presence of εστιν (“is”) in John 1:4 instead of ην (“was”).

            Now take a close look at how Origen cites John 1:18 in his Commentary on John, Book Six, paragraph 2:  as Origen contests Heracleon’s view that John 1:18 is a statement from John the author of the Gospel – Origen considered it a statement by John the Baptist – Origen cites the text with “only begotten God” without the article.  A little later, Origen cites John 1:18 again, this time without any noun after “only begotten” – that is, as Origen cites most of 1:18 in two segments, the first segment is “No one has seen God at any time,” and the second segment is, “The only-begotten who is in the bosom of the Father.” You may recall from the previous post that this was probably the reading of the Diatessaron.  

            This form of the text – without either “Son” or “God” after μονογενὴς – is probably the form that Heracleon used, and the form that the scribe of À encountered in his exemplar, but rejected.  (In Book 6, paragraph 7, Origen appears to use John 1:18 in a way that refers to simply “the Only Begotten.” probably using Heracleon’s text, but his quotation with "only begotten God" is more prominent.) 

            In conclusion:  a comparison between the text of Heracleon (as represented by Origen) to the text of John 1:1-8:38 in À indicates that Sinaiticus’ text of John 1:1-8:38 was influenced by an exemplar which frequently agreed with the text of Heracleon.

            If the scribe of À recognized that his secondary exemplar was a manuscript used by Heracleon, the scribe would very probably consider it right to harbor suspicions about its accuracy, and to filter its unusual readings via comparisons to the quotations embedded in Origen’s commentary.

             Now let’s consider the circumstances in which Codex Sinaiticus was made, as fully as they can be deduced.  Researchers such as J. Rendel Harris and T. C. Skeat have made a strong case, based on the accumulation of small pieces of evidence, that À was made in Caesarea.  (Skeat proposed that Sinaiticus and Vaticanus were both among the 50 codices prepared by Eusebius of Caesarea for emperor Constantine; however his theory is rather complicated and requires a “Goldilocks” scenario to account for the differences between Vaticanus and Sinaiticus – and it simply does not account for the many differences between the text used by Eusebius and the contents of B and À, or for major differences between B and À, such as their differing forms of Tobit, and the inclusion in À of the books of Barnabas and Hermas, and the inept treatment of the Eusebian Canons and Sections in À.) 

            Who was in charge of the scriptorium in Caesarea in the mid-300s?  Jerome informs us (in Lives of Illustrious Men and elsewhere) that at Caesarea in the mid-300’s, bishop Acacius, followed by bishop Euzoius – both of whom subscribed to Arianism – improved the library’s holdings by transferring to parchment various texts which were in danger of being damaged or lost, having been written on papyrus. 

            Although Jerome does not explicitly state that Biblical texts on papyrus were among the materials that Acacius and Euzoius transferred onto parchment, it seems reasonable to think that Biblical texts would be prioritized in such a project.  And if Acacius oversaw the production of Sinaiticus at Caesarea, this would account for (a) his access to the text of John used by Heracleon – reckoning that Origen must have taken a copy of Heracleon’s work to Caesarea, inasmuch as he cited it in his Commentary on John – and (b) his willingness to replace readings in his exemplar with readings that he could recollect or harvest from the writings of Origen, and (c) the generally Alexandrian character of the text of À in the rest of the Gospels, Acts, and Epistles, echoing Egyptian exemplars either taken to Caesarea by Origen in the 200s, or acquired later in the 200s.      

            (Among the small points supportive of the theory that Acacius oversaw the production of Codex Sinaiticus, one that should not be overlooked is the size of the writing in the codex; it is the ancient equivalent of a giant-print Bible, a format that would be especially useful to Acacius, who, Jerome reports, had only one eye.)      

            The implication of all this is that although John 1:1-8:38 is essentially Western, it also contains non-Western readings where the copyist abandoned his exemplar.  The reading μονογενὴς θεός is one such non-Western reading.  Rather than show that μονογενὴς θεός was ever a Western reading, À shows its scribe’s willingness to abandon his secondary exemplar – likely an exemplar associated with Heracleon.   

             In conclusion, À’s reading μονογενὴς θεός, although found in the Western section of À, is unlikely to be representative of À’s Western exemplar, and is more likely a reading introduced by the scribe of À on the basis of his personal familiarity with the reading θεός after μονογενὴς as it is found in Origen’s Commentary on John.      

           

Readers are invited to check the data in this post, and to explore the embedded links to additional resources.

             

Interview with Maurice Robinson, Part 2

          Today as we continue the interview with Dr. Maurice Robinson, we investigate how the Byzantine Priority position deals with one specific textual variant-unit.

Q: Could you provide an example of your text-critical approach by walking me through why you favor the Byzantine reading of Luke 6:1, instead of the Alexandrian reading?

Robinson:  I addressed this particular unit in a 1993 article (in Faith and Mission 11), and somewhat repeat myself here.

          I regard the shorter Alexandrian reading as possibly due to homoioteleuton in the Alexandrian archetype, even while suggesting other proximate causes of variation also to exist.  A primary principle of internal evidence should be to presume accidental error as more likely than intentional alteration, especially where omission might result from transcriptional failure and yet still produce a “sensible” reading — one that then would be less likely to receive correction in subsequent copies within its particular transmissional line.

          As for a short walk-through, the external evidence is basically clear:  the dominant united Byzantine Textform reads en sabbatw deuteroprwtw diaporeuesqai, while a small minority made up of predominantly Alexandrian-type manuscripts, along with several versional witnesses, omits deuteroprwtw.  Assuming the originality of the more dominant Byzantine reading, the presence of deuteroprwtw appears best to explain the alternative than vice versa, and that on two grounds:

1. Accidental omission.  The transcriptional factor is fairly obvious: the shorter reading lacks deuteroprwtw; this easily could have occurred — particularly in a small number of manuscripts — due to haplography, skipping from -tw d- to -tw d- in the phrase sabbatw deuteroprwtw diap-.  Such readily could have been the proximate cause of the Alexandrian archetypal reading underlying its omitting manuscripts at this point, and also for those otherwise unrelated minuscules that likely reflect independent error.  But this is not the only possible factor, since intentional removal of a difficulty cannot be ruled out.

2. Intentional omission.  Due to the problematic nature of the longer reading (i.e., what does deuteroprwtw actually mean?), intentional excision of a questionable word equally may have occurred in the Alexandrian archetype or otherwise unrelated witnesses.  Certainly, whatever significance deuteroprwtw may have had to first-century readers remains unclear (I suggest “second chief sabbath” — but even this is open to interpretation).

          Interestingly, similar problematic designations appear in the Septuagint: Psalm 23’s title speaks of “the first of the sabbaths” (ths mias sabbatwn).  Psalm 47’s title mentions “the second sabbath” (deutera sabbatou); and Psalm 93’s title reads “the fourth of the sabbaths” (tetradi sabbatwn) — even though today we have no knowledge of what these designations might mean, despite their unquestioned presence in the Septuagint.  Also, Meyer (In Vol. 2, pages 47-50 of his Handbook to the Gospels of Mark and Luke) notes the similar deuteroescatos (penultimate, next to last) and deuterodekath (“the second tenth”; Jerome, ad Ez. 45).  There thus is no reason why sabbatw deuteroprwtw may not have been understood by the original first-century recipients of the Lukan narrative, even if we today are uncertain.

          In contrast, Metzger (in his Textual Commentary) claims to defend the Alexandrian omission of deuteroprwtw by suggesting “transcriptional blunder” to have caused the rise of the Byzantine deuteroprwtw reading. Yet Metzger’s convoluted explanation of such (taken from Westcott & Hort and Meyer) is highly problematic:

● Step 1: “Perhaps some copyist introduced prwtw as a correlative of en eterw sabbatw in ver. 6, and”

● Step 2:  “a second copyist, in view of [Lk] 4.31, wrote deuterw, deleting prwtw by using dots over the letters — which was the customary way of cancelling a word.”

● Step 3:  “A subsequent transcriber, not noticing the dots, mistakenly combined the two words into one, which he [then] introduced into the text.”

● Step 4 (required, but not mentioned by Metzger): further adjusting the orthography from the two-word form deuterw prwtw into the single-word form deuteroprwtw; 

● Step 5 (also required but not mentioned by Metzger):  this highly problematic reading then would not only be accepted as valid, but also perpetuated without removal or correction among nearly all remaining manuscripts over the centuries of manual transmission.

In addition to the above, the second edition of Metzger’s Textual Commentary offers an alternative but even more convoluted explanation, “as Skeat has suggested” in his “Final Solution” article:

● Step 1:  “by dittography the letters batw were added to sabbatw.”

● Step 2:  “A later copyist interpreted the b as deuterw and the a as prwtw, and”

● Step 3:  “took tw as an indication that the adjective was to agree with sabbatw.”

Step 4 (not stated, but obviously required): In a resultant copy the presumably abbreviated b and a would have to be written in full form as deuterw and prwtw;

● Step 5: (also not stated but required): the extraneous tw would have to be removed;

● Step 6: (similarly): the two words then would be combined into one, with the orthography corrected (as noted above in Metzger’s Step 4); and then

● Step 7 (Metzger’s Step 5): almost all remaining manuscripts then would accept this highly problematic reading and perpetuate it without removal or correction over the centuries of manual transmission].

(Notice that Skeat’s third step simply makes no sense, since the result would have been en sabbatw deuterw prwtw tw diaporeuesqai auton — a construction occurring nowhere else in the New Testament or Septuagint (the usual expression requires en tw [or 2x in the LXX ama tw] + infinitive + accusative subject of the infinitive).  Yet Skeat boldly claims that “Once it has been accepted that deuteroprwtw is a feasible expansion of BATW” everything else will follow without complication.”)

          Metzger’s explanation represents a noble attempt to explain the rise of the more difficult deuteroprwtw by means of compounded transcriptional errors — yet according to his or even Skeat’s hypotheses all initial steps somehow would have to occur in a single exemplar manuscript, with a resultant copy then containing a “clean” form of that “more difficult” reading. That manuscript then becomes the progenitor of that which appears among almost all other manuscripts throughout copying history without subsequent correction.  

          As I stated in 1993, “the logic simply does not follow.”  Unless there were some sort of formal revision process based upon that one particular resultant manuscript, the odds against the massive perpetuation of presumably a “nonsense” reading would be utterly overwhelming — especially since under normal transmissional circumstances such a supposedly egregious error should have been systematically and speedily corrected by the usual scribal diligence, and thus lack perpetuation among most subsequent copies.

          In essence, the Metzger/Hort/Meyer explanations offer a perfect example for Occam’s Razor:  is it easier to accept a highly convoluted 5- or 7-step process that requires a complex and problematic transmissional history?  Or is an assumption of either accidental haplography (skipping from -tw d- to -tw d-) or deliberate removal of a single problematic word the simpler solution?  The answer would seem obvious to anyone not overly enthralled with the Alexandrian text-type.

(More of this interview coming soon!)