Many
textual critics consider Codex
Vaticanus the centerpiece of the church’s collection of New Testament
manuscripts. Besides containing Greek text
from much of the Old Testament (in a form of the Septuagint), Codex Vaticanus
includes all books of the New Testament except First Timothy, Second Timothy,
Titus, Philemon, and Revelation. (After
the book of Hebrews, which abruptly stops midway through 9:14
at the end of a page, the text of the book of Revelation is present, but it is
written in handwriting typical of the 1400’s, and constitutes a separate
manuscript from the much more ancient portion.)
Today,
let’s take a close look at one of the better-known pages of this important
manuscript, which was produced around 325:
the page that contains the first chapter of the book of Hebrews. I will simply list twelve features on this
page, and describe them one by one.
First,
though, for those who might want to explore Codex Vaticanus’ pages directly,
here is an index of the online images of the first page of every New Testament book that
is included in the manuscript, in the order in which they appear in Codex Vaticanus. Clicking the embedded link will take you to
the image of that page at the Vatican Library’s website.
 |
| From Codex Vaticanus: Second Thess. 3:11-18 and Hebrews 1:1-2:2. This image is digitally altered; a digital photo of the page is at the Vatican Library website. |
1. Book title, in the
upper margin of the manuscript.
2. Decoration. Similar decorative lines are not unusual in
later manuscripts, which sometimes feature horizontal lines made of braided ropes or
thorns. In this case, the decoration was
added long after the initial production of the manuscript. Such decorations serve a practical purpose as well as an
artistic one, helping draw attention to the beginnings of books.
3. Enlarged
initial. When Codex Vaticanus was
produced, it did not have this feature, which was added later. A close look at the page shows that
originally the letter pi at the
beginning of Hebrews 1:1 was written in the same script, and in the same size,
as the rest of the letters in the word Πολυμερως. (In some manuscripts, the initial at the beginning of books is not only enlarged, but drawn in the shape of animals, or even of people. It is not unusual, in medieval Gospels-manuscripts, for an initial to signify the beginning of a Eusebian Section, and for the initials to be written larger, and in different ink, than the rest of the text.)
4. Distigme. The two dots in the margin which resemble an
umlaut (¨) seem to have been added to draw attention to a textual variant in the text. In some other manuscripts, margin-notes
similarly draw attention to textual variants, but they usually mention the
alternative reading. Probably whoever
added these symbols to the pages of Codex Vaticanus (and there are wide-ranging opinions about whether these marks are ancient, or medieval, or even
Renaissance-era) possessed another volume in which the same points of textual
variation were marked, with notes about the readings in Codex Vaticanus. More distigmai
appear on this page (for example, at Hebrews 1:3).
5. Coronis. Barely visible, a simple decorative design
here, made of dots and flourishes, designates the end of a book. Early copyists tended to use their own distinct
designs, so the occurrence of different designs in the same manuscript is a
clue that more than one copyist contributed to its production. The remarkable similarity between a
coronis-design that appears repeatedly in Codex Vaticanus (for example, at the end of
Genesis), and a coronis that appears in Codex Sinaiticus (at
the end of Mark), has suggested to some researchers that the same copyist
was involved in the production of both manuscripts, possibly as a normal copyist for
Vaticanus, and as a scriptorium-supervisor for Sinaiticus.
6. Subscription. This is the closing-title of a book – in this
case, Second Thessalonians.
7. Subscription
expansion. After the closing-title of
Second Thessalonians, someone wrote an additional note: “Written
from Athens.”
8. Secondary Corrector’s Note. Made somewhat famous by Bruce Metzger in his 1981 book
Manuscripts of the Greek New Testament: An Introduction to Palaeography, this note was written by someone who had discovered that
someone had corrected an erroneous reading.
The copyist of Codex Vaticanus had written Φανερων in Hebrews 1:3, and a
corrector had replaced that with the correct reading, Φέρων (which is supported
by all other manuscripts, including Papyrus 46). The person who wrote this note, however,
objected to this correction, and wrote, ἀμαθέστατε καὶ κακέ, ἂφες τὸν παλαιόν,
μὴ μεταποίει. Metzger translated these
words as, “Fool and knave, can’t you leave the old reading alone, and not alter
it!” Another rendering: “Untrained troublemaker, forgive the ancient
[reading]; do not convert it.” He re-wrote
Φανερων, erasing most of the corrector’s Φερων.
Apparently, the note-writer regarded Codex Vaticanus as a
museum-piece to be protected and preserved, rather than as a copy of Scripture
to be used as such.
9. Diple-marks. The
“>” symbols in the margin accompany quotations from the Old Testament – in
this case, quotations from Psalm 2:7 and Second Samuel 7:14.
10. A
Correction. The copyist of Codex
Vaticanus appears to have written ελεον,
but the person who reinforced the otherwise faded
lettering throughout the manuscript declined to reinforce the second ε (epsilon), and either he or another corrector wrote above it the correct letters, αι.
See also the insertion of the letter ε in λειτουργοὺς in verse 7, in the
last line of the second column on this page, and the lack of reinforcement of
the letters ε and ν in εχρεισεν in verse 9, in the tenth line of the
third column.
11. Modern
Chapter-number. A relatively recent
owner (or steward) of the manuscript wrote the modern chapter-number directly
on the page in the margin, and crudely but clearly delineated the
chapter-division in the text.
12. Editorial
Pruning. Somewhere in the
transmission-stream of Codex Vaticanus’ text, a copyist removed the words του
αἰωνος, probably because he considered them superfluous. (There seems to be nothing that would make
these words vulnerable to accidental loss, and the difference between the
inclusion or omission of the words is the difference between “forever and ever” and “forever.”)
It is
sometimes claimed that no textual variants that are closely contested have an impact
on Christian doctrine. In Hebrews 1:3,
however, most Greek manuscripts affirm that Jesus, by Himself – δι’ αὐτου or
δι’ ἑαυτου – cleansed our – ἡμων – sins. This unquestionably impacts the
interpretation of the verse: is there
room for any other source of purification of sins – for instance, is it valid
to seek purification through one’s own works, or through the intercession of
Mary or of other saints – or was purification from sins fully obtained by Christ, and by Him alone?
And, did Jesus achieve the forgiveness of the sins of all people (as
the American Bible Society’s 1976 Good News Translation says: “after achieving forgiveness for the sins of
all human beings”), or forgiveness for the sins of believers (as
the New Living Translation says:
“When He had cleansed us from our sins”)? Does this verse teach that atonement was provided solely by Christ? And does it affirm that the atonement covers believers, or does it allow the belief that the atonement covers all people in general?
(It is
difficult to see how the UBS /Nestle-Aland
compilations could beget the New Living Translation’s rendering. Neither compilation has the Greek equivalent
of “us” or “our.” Yet the
NLT’s publisher explicitly asserts that the text of the fourth edition of
the UBS Greek
New Testament and the 27th edition of the Nestle-Aland
compilation was its New Testament base-text.)
It is
possible, of course, to find answers to questions about the sufficiency of Christ’s sacrifice, and about the range of His atonement’s effectiveness, elsewhere in the
New Testament, and that is what is meant (or, what should be meant) by those who say that closely
contested textual variants do not have an impact on doctrine: if one were to simply ignore the verse in
which the textual contest takes place, the doctrine which one might, or might
not, find in that verse is affirmed elsewhere in the New Testament. However, the fact remains that some textual
variants do have an impact on the interpretation
of specific passages of the New Testament.
