Video Lecture: Kinds of Greek NT Manuscripts

Lecture 02 -
Kinds of Greek NT Manuscripts

            The second video lecture in the series Introduction to New Testament Textual Criticism is online.  This lecture, a little more than 20 minutes long, reviews different kinds of continuous-text Greek manuscripts of books of the New Testament – papyri, uncials (majuscules), and minuscules – and some of their distinctive features. 
            Sub-titles provide a running outline of the lecture.

On YouTube at
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RACT7JaKOXo

Here is an excerpt:

            In our first lecture, I mentioned that there are five kinds of witnesses to the New Testament text:  (1) manuscripts, (2) versions, (3) patristic writings, (4) lectionaries, and (5) talismans and inscriptions.  Today we are taking a closer look into the distinct characteristics of each kind of continuous-text Greek manuscript.

Let me tell you an old story [Jadecarver and Student] . . . 

             Before we do anything else - before we learn the guidelines of how to make text-critical decisions, before we learn about the impact they can have upon the text, and before we investigate controversies in the field - we get to know the materials.

             A New Testament Greek manuscript is a witness that contains the Greek text of one or more New Testament books, initially formatted as one or more New Testament books.  For everything else I’m going to describe, it is probably safe to add the words:   “There are some exceptions.”  Today, we’re not exploring exceptional cases.  They’re out there, but we can look into them later.             

             With some exceptions, every substantial New Testament manuscript in existence was a codex when it was produced.  A codex is a handmade book, as opposed to a scroll.  Some witnesses used to be codices but only a single fragment of a single page has survived. 

            If a fragment has writing on both sides, from the same composition, that’s a giveaway that it was part of a codex. 

            If an early fragment has writing on just one side, and it’s not the end of the composition, that indicates that it was part of a scroll. 

            If an early fragment, such as Papyrus 13, has writing on both sides, but the writing on one side is from a different composition compared to the text on the other side, that indicates that it was part of a scroll, which first had writing on one side, and then someone decided to recycle it, and wrote on the other side.

           Our earliest witnesses were written on papyrus, pages made from the processed fibers of papyrus plants that grew along the Nile River.         

            In the 300s, after Christianity was legalized, books continued to be made out of papyrus, but parchment began to be the preferred material for New Testament manuscript-makers.   Parchment is made out of animal-skin.  At the end of the lecture, I will mention some resources that should give you a good idea of what goes into making papyrus, and what goes into the process of turning the skin of an animal into the pages of a book.

            In the Middle Ages, manuscripts began to be made out of a different material, called paper.  Some manuscripts have portions that are parchment, and portions that are paper, especially in cases where a parchment manuscript was damaged, and paper was used to replace the damaged pages.

          Now let’s consider the different kinds of continuous-text Greek manuscripts.

            First, there are the papyri.                     

            Papyrus-material, by the way, is still produced today; here’s a piece. 

            Papyrus manuscripts of New Testament books have their own catalog-numbers or names in the libraries where they reside, but for general purposes they are known by the letter “P” and a number, which represents the order in which they were found.  So, Papyrus 52 was approximately the 52^nd New Testament papyrus to be found, identified, and catalogued.  

            Papyrus manuscripts are typically the first witnesses mentioned when comparing the support for rival readings.  The earliest papyri echo a period that is earlier than all other manuscripts.  So it is natural to give them a high level of importance.  But there are seven things that should be kept in mind about the papyri.

             ● First, it is not unusual for papyri to be cited for readings that do not appear in the surviving part of the manuscript.  When it comes to papyrus fragments, there is often more to see than just what you can see.  Depending on how much text survives in a fragment, on how many pages, it is sometimes possible to create what is called a codicological reconstruction of part of the non-extant part of the manuscript.  For example, if you have fragments of two pages of a manuscript, you might be able to tell approximately how much text was on each page of the manuscript, and approximately how many pages it had.  The further the reconstruction gets from the extant text, the less useful it is for text-critical purposes.   But if a variant is large, and relatively close to the extant text, codicological reconstruction can serve as the basis on which to form a strong suspicion about whether the variant was present or absent in the manuscript, on the basis of space-considerations.     

            ● Second:  there is nothing magical about papyrus.  Copyists did not suddenly become more accurate just by writing the text on papyrus.  Papyrus 72 was probably made in the 300s, and it is one of the earliest manuscripts of the books that it contains.  But if you compare its text of the Epistle of Jude to the text of Jude in an ordinary late medieval manuscript, the text in the medieval manuscript will be far closer to the original text.    

            ● Third:  while the papyri are very old, many of them are not remarkably old.  Right now, we have about 140 papyrus manuscripts.   Forty of them were produced after the fall of the Roman Empire, in the 500s or later.    

            ● Fourth:  almost all of the papyri are fragmentary, and most of the papyri are very fragmentary.  Less than 30 early papyri – and by “early” I mean, “earlier than Jerome” – before the late 300s – consist of more than two pages. 

            ● Fifth:  the primary value and use of the papyri, by far, has been to confirm readings that were already known from other witnesses.  The number of readings found exclusively in papyri that have been securely adopted in any major edition of the Greek New Testament is zero.  In the late 1800s, textual critics had practically no papyri to work with; now we have 140, and in terms of the contents of the text, they have made very little difference.

            ● Sixth:  almost all of the papyri were found in Egypt.  That is because papyrus tends to gradually decay in climates that are not very dry, and the climate in parts of Egypt is very dry.  So if a textual critic were to say, “Let’s reconstruct the text based on the earliest manuscript,” he would produce a text based on evidence from Egypt, at least in the passages for which there is an early papyri – because that’s where papyrus lasted longer than in other places.  That kind of approach might give us a good look at the texts that were used in Egypt.  But it doesn’t really help us see what the text looked like in other locations, where there was more rain – such as the location of every church mentioned in the New Testament.  Saying, “Let’s depend primarily on the oldest evidence” is like saying, “Let’s depend primarily on the evidence that experienced the best weather.”

            ● Seventh, the production-date assigned to a papyrus manuscript is usually an estimate, with a range of 100 years.  The analysis of ancient writing, called paleography, is used to arrive at these production-dates.  In rare cases, the circumstances in which a New Testament manuscript has been found sets some parameters for its production-date; for example, if a manuscript is found in the ruins of a city that was destroyed in a particular year, we can deduce that it was not produced after that year.  But usually, paleographers assign production-dates according to the Greek script that the copyist used.

             If you look at printed English fonts from 300 years ago, and compare them to fonts in use today, you will see some differences.  The same sort of thing is true of ancient Greek handwriting; different styles of script were dominant at different times.  Paleographers study the script in detail.  But they can’t look at a script and tell you how old a copyist was when he wrote it. 

            If you reckon that a copyist in the ancient world engaged in a peaceful profession that involved copying books, he could copy a book at age 20, or at age 70 – and use the same handwriting he had learned when he had first learned to write.  There’s no way to tell if he was young, and would go on using that handwriting for another 50 years, or if he was old, and had been using that handwriting for 50 years.  So this range of about 50 years in both directions is built-into most paleographically assigned production-dates. 

           Now let’s consider the uncial manuscripts, also called majuscules.  When you read the textual apparatus in a Nestle-Aland or United Bible Societies or Tyndale House Greek New Testament, you can tell when a witness is a papyrus, because it is identified by a number after the letter P.   Similarly, you can tell when a witness is an uncial, because all uncials are numbered with numbers that begin with the numeral 0.  Codex Sinaiticus is 01, Codex Alexandrinus is 02, Codex Vaticanus is 03, and so forth.  Whether an uncial is a massive codex like Codex Sinaiticus, or a Gospels-book like Codex Cyprius, or a small fragment like 0315, every one gets its own number.  These numbers are called the Gregory-Aland numbers, because this kind of identification-system was developed by the scholar C. R. Gregory and expanded by Kurt Aland.  Different identification-systems were used before this became the standard identification-method; a comparison-chart of the obsolete methods and the standard method can be found online at the Encyclopedia of New Testament Textual Criticism.

            That is the first standard way in which uncials are identified.  But there is another method:  some uncials are also represented by letters of the English alphabet, and some uncials are represented by letters of the Greek alphabet.  Codex Alexandrinus is Codex A, Codex Vaticanus is Codex B, and so forth.  Codex Sinaiticus is represented as À, the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet.  Generally, the more important an uncial is, the more likely it is to be better-known by its letter than by its number.

            There are only 26 English letters and 24 Greek letters, and we have a lot more than 50 uncial manuscripts.  Sometimes the same letter is used for different manuscripts in different parts of the New Testament.  For example, “D” is Codex Bezae in the Gospels and Acts, but in the Epistles, “D” represents Codex Claromontanus.  “E” is Codex Basiliensis in the Gospels, but in Acts, “E” is Codex Laudianus. 

            The numerical system is less likely to cause confusion, because each number represents exactly one manuscript.  But the letter-based system is easy to remember and it is used in the printed textual apparatus of the major editions of the Greek New Testament.  The only safe course of action is to learn both identification systems.

             It is not unusual for an uncial manuscript of the four Gospels to contain more than just the text of the four Gospels.  A Gospels-codex may begin with the Eusebian canons before the text of the Gospels begins, introduced by Eusebius’ letter to Carpian explaining how to use the Canons as a cross-reference tool.  Each Gospel may also be preceded by a list of its chapters; these chapter-lists are called Kephalaia.  The chapter-titles may be repeated at the top or bottom of the page of text where they begin; at these locations, they are called the titloi.  And at the end of each Gospel, one usually finds the closing-title.             

            Next come the minuscules – that’s minUscules.  Whereas uncial manuscripts are written in large letters that are usually separated from one another, minuscules are written in small letters that tend to be connected to one another in words.  Minuscule copies of New Testament books go back as early as the early 800s.  Uncial manuscripts continued to be made after that, but by the 1000s, minuscule script became dominant.  It took less time and required less materials to make a minuscule manuscript. 

            Here are a few things to know about minuscules:

            ● Minuscules should not be belittled simply because they are minuscules.  Kirsopp Lake said, “It is neither the date nor the script of a MS which determines its value for the critic, but the textual history of its ancestors.”

             ● Some minuscules are not technically continuous-text manuscripts:  they are commentaries, in which a portion of the New Testament text is written, followed by a portion of commentary, followed by the next portion of New Testament text, followed by a portion of commentary, and so forth.   This is not much different from a truly continuous-text manuscript that has the same commentary-material in the outer margins.  When several copies of the same commentary also share the same form of the New Testament text, divided into the same portions, it is clear that they share the same ancestry, and their weight should be boiled down.

            ● Some minuscules contain a high amount of abbreviation.

            ● Some uncials are partly minuscule.  It is not rare to see uncial letters and minuscule letters on the same page – occasionally, comments are written in minuscule script and the text is written in uncial script, to help prevent readers from getting them confused.

            ● Some minuscules are illustrated.  Minuscule copies of the Gospels may include full-page miniature portraits of each Evangelist before his Gospel begins.  In this context, the term “miniature” does not describe the size of the portrait; a “miniature” is a picture framed in pigment that contains red lead – a pigment called minium. 

             Often each evangelist in these pictures is accompanied by a symbolic representation:  usually for Matthew, it is a man or angel.  For Mark, it is a lion.  For Luke, it is an ox.  And for John, it is an eagle.  The symbolism is based on the visions of the seraphim around God’s throne in the books of Ezekiel and Revelation.

            Also, the initial letter of a book, or in some cases, many of the initial letters at the beginnings of sections of a book, may be artistically stylized.  When an initial is made to resemble an animal, this is called a zoomorphic initial.  In many manuscripts, at the beginning of a book, there is a large ornamental design, called a headpiece, accompanied by the title of the book.

            ● In some minuscules of the Gospels, in addition to the Eusebian Canons and chapter-lists, there are book-introductions, or summaries.  Sometimes there are lists of rare words.  In some copies of Acts, there is an itinerary of the journeys of Paul.  And sometimes, at the end of the book, there is a scribal note, or colophon, which might include information about when and where it was copied. 

           Regarding all other witnesses to the Greek New Testament:  we will hopefully look into them in future lectures.  Representatives of the Greek text of the New Testament tend to take center stage, because everything else does not contain the text that is being reconstructed.  But other witnesses are extremely important when it comes to tracking specific readings and building a history of separate forms of the text.              For example, when you see a rare reading in a Coptic manuscript from Egypt, and it also shows up in a Latin manuscript that was made in Ireland, it raises a question about how the text in these two geographically separated places is connected.  And if you see that the same reading in the same passage was quoted and interpreted by two early writers in two different locations, you can thus observe that the reading was widely distributed – and sometimes this evidence is earlier than any extant evidence from continuous-text Greek manuscripts.

             To learn more about early papyrus manuscripts and parchment manuscripts and how they were made, download Sitterly’s 1898 book Praxis in Manuscripts of the Greek Testament, and read chapters 1, 2, and 3.

            Also, watch the video, 8 minutes and 44 seconds long, that you can find at YouTube by searching there for “Beloved Essences How To Make Papyrus” –

            And another video, 3 minutes and 42 seconds long, that you can find at YouTube by searching there for “Texas Film Studio How To Make Papyrus.”

            And, watch the video about how to make parchment at Mike Rowe’s Dirty Jobs series, Season 4, Episode 26, which is also accessible at YouTube, beginning in the 20^th minute of the video.

            And, watch the video about how paper was made in the late Middle Ages at YouTube; search there for a video 15 minutes and 18 seconds long, called “Papermaking by Hand at Hayle Mill.”

           Also, if you can acquire Larry Stone’s book The Story of the Bible, do so, and read chapters 1 and 3, and be sure to look inside the pouches. 

How to Read a Greek Gospels Manuscript

            Today, let’s look into how to read a Greek manuscript of the Gospels – an important skill that every New Testament textual critic should have.  If you do not already know some New Testament Greek, use This List of Free Resources for Learning New Testament Greek, and after a year or so you should have enough skill to understand everything that I am about to describe.

            Now let’s explore an important medieval Greek manuscript of the Gospels:  minuscule 9.  All Greek manuscripts are important, but this one is especially significant historically, because it was used by the scholar Robert Stephanus in his compilation of the Greek New Testament in 1550.  That is, out of the hundreds of Greek Gospels-manuscripts that exist, this is one that was studied and used the most in the 1500s, as the Textus Receptus – the base-text for the King James Version – was developed. Minuscule 9 – called witness ιβ′ (i.e., #12) by Stephanus – is kept at the National Library of France.  It was produced in 1168.  You can download page-views of the entire manuscript from the Gallica website – just select “Manuscripts” from the options in the first sub-menu there, and then search for Grec 83, and use the menu on the far left of the page to complete the download.  (You will need to agree to Gallica’s Terms & Conditions.)

           

            After opening the manuscript, the first thing we find is a summary of the manuscript’s contents, written relatively recently.  Most manuscripts that are kept in library-collections have this sort of note, and if we pay attention to their contents, we may save some time; these notes often tell readers a little about the manuscript’s history, and list the page-numbers on which each Gospel begins, and also tell about whatever sections might be missing or out of order.  We can deduce from the information on this page that minuscule 9 was once known as Regius 83 (when it was in the library of the king of France), a useful data-nugget if one ever wishes to look for references to this manuscript in books written before its Gregory-Aland inventory number became the standard nomenclature by which it was known.

            Next, we encounter in minuscule 9 a one-page Prologue to the Four Gospels.  It looks like someone had intended to draw the symbols of the Evangelists in the four corners of the page, surrounding the semi-cruciform text – if you look closely you can see the sketched outline of Mark’s lion in the northwest corner – but this task was never completed.  The Prologue explains the symbolic connection between the Gospels and their symbols (man, lion, ox, and eagle).

            On the next page, framed within a red border, is Eusebius of Caesarea’s letter To Carpian (Ad Carpianus), which provides brief instruction on how to use the Eusebian Canons, Eusebius’ cross-reference system for the Gospels.  The title appears in uncial letters, the outlines of which were drawn, and then filled with red pigment.  There is an elaborate initial “A” in which blue, red, and yellow pigment has been used.  Within the text, the letter omicron and a few other letters are sporadically filled in or outlined in red.  (This feature appears frequently in the Gospels-text as well.)  An English translation of Eusebius’ letter to Carpian is online, and so is a table of the Canons themselves.

            Next, several pages are filled by the Eusebian Canons.  The canon-lists are framed by decorative columns, resembling rounded doorways at the entrance to a temple.  At the end of the canons, two columns have been left blank.  Then comes the Kephalaia, or chapter-list, for the Gospel of Matthew, filling a page and a half. 

            After a blank page, the text of the Gospel of Matthew begins, after its title, which is written in large red letters.  A huge initial “B,” somewhat reminiscent of the initials in the Bury Bible, but not quite as ornate, fills most of the page; the rest of the text on the page is written in uncials.

            On the next page, the text of Matthew continues.  The Greek book-title has been written at the top of the page, and at some point this was supplemented by the Latin book-title as well. 

            Continuing to the following page, readers may notice small Greek letters beta and gamma in the outer margin.  These are section-numbers, corresponding to the section-numbers that appear in the Eusebian Canon-tables.  Within the text, one can detect small breaks where one section ends and another begins; the first letter of the new chapter is written in red. Also, you can see at the beginning of the chapter a small “+” symbol.  Often (as we see here in minuscule 9 at the third section), this “+” is accompanied by another symbol that represents the word arche, “beginning/”  This means that at this point, a daily reading begins.  Often the arche-symbols are supplements by telos-symbols, signifying the ends of the segment for the daily reading.   (If we turn ahead to page 11, at the end of Matthew 2:12 we can see a telos-symbol at the end of a line, and alongside the next line, the arche-symbol is in the margin.)

            By the way, if you have learned your Greek numerals, you can easily follow along with the section-numbers that are in the inner margin of the 27th edition of the Nestle-Aland Novum Testamentum Graece.  Sometimes, a manuscript’s section-numbers will not correspond exactly to the Nestle-Aland arrangement, but they usually do.

            In minuscule 9, ordinary page-numbers have been added in the upper right corner of the page – although it is more precise to call the numbers in this manuscript leaf-numbers rather than page-numbers, because they appear on every other page, denoting the individual leaf, on which there is (a) a front page, and (b) a back page.  If we turn to page 10a, we will see in the left margin a stack of four symbols (each looking like “├”).  Sometimes such marks appear in the form of little arrow-markers (>).  They are there to indicate that in the lines of text that they accompany, there is a quotation from the Old Testament.

            If we look at the bottom of page 10a, we will see a chapter-number – α – and the chapter-title (περι των μαγων, that is, About the Wise Men).  At the top of leaf 12, the next chapter-number and chapter-title (titloi – the same as the Kephalaia, except they appear here one at a time) are supplied at the top of the page, and the chapter-title also appears in the outer margin alongside the exact point where the chapter begins – in this case, at Matthew 2:16.  (For more information about the Kephalaia, see the post Kephalaia:  The Ancient Chapters of the Gospels.)  Sometimes, the titloi appear at the foot of the page.

            Occasionally, one will encounter a hole in the parchment, such as the one in minuscule 9 on leaf 17.  Almost always, these holes were made during the preparation of the parchment, and scribes simply wrote around them. 

            Also in minuscule 9, one will occasionally find little notes written in Latin in the margin.  Four such notes can be seen on the front of leaf 20.

            On leaf 22, some damage has occurred to the manuscript, and a repair has been attempted: part of the lower portion of the leaf has been ripped away.  Newer parchment has been glued to the old parchment, and the small portion of the text that was lost has been supplied in different handwriting.  Technically, this small bit of writing (less than four full lines) on the younger parchment qualifies as a supplement.

            On leaf 24, we see the effect of a recurring problem in medieval manuscripts:  when manuscripts were bound or rebound, sometimes their pages were also recut, and sometimes this was carelessly done, resulting in over-trimming.  Fortunately in this case, no Gospels-text was lost, but the book-title at the top of the page has been cut.  (Also notice on this page the Latin translations of the chapter-numbers and chapter-titles.)

            On the back of leaf 27, there is something interesting:  in the text, Matthew 9:26 ought to read, και εξηλθεν η φημη αυτη εις ολην την γην εκεινην.  However, the copyist skipped the words η φημη.  When this scribal error was detected, the missing words were added in the margin, accompanied by a triangular set of red dots (\), and the same symbol was added in the text at the point where the words η φημη should be read.

            On leaf 28b, we encounter two more interesting features:  first, at Matthew 10:4, there is a short margin-note about Judas.  And in the text of Matthew 10:5, the copyist momentarily omitted the word εθνων but caught his mistake and added the word above the line at the place where it belongs.

            On leaf 29a, there is another \ mark in the margin, but in this case it is not in red, and there is no identical mark in the text; instead, in the outer margin, there is a Latin note accompanied by two dots – ‥ – a distigma, or umlaut-like symbol.

            Moving along to leaf 37, we can see that somebody added red “<” marks in the outer margin, to acknowledge the quotation from Isaiah 42 that Matthew makes in 12:18-21.  These marks are not as neat as some others, though, so it is possible that a different scribe is responsible.
            On 37b and 38a, the original book-title that had been at the top of the page, apparently trimmed away, has been replaced in very different handwriting.

            In the margin of 53a, alongside Matthew 19:27, there is a lectionary-related symbol in the margin:  in addition to arche and telos, here we see arcou – that is, “resume.”  Sometimes a lection consisted of more than one segment of text, and this symbol introduced the second segment.           

            On 59a , there is another example of the use of the ‥ mark.  In this case, the ‥ appears directly above the telos symbol that follows the end of Matthew 21:43, and another ‥ appears in the margin, accompanying the note του ορθρου.  This indicates that this passage was a morning-time reading in the lection-cycle.   If this echoes the treatment of this passage in some otherwise unknown early lection-cycle, it might have something to do with the absence of Matthew 21:44 in a few early witnesses – but such a lection-cycle would have to be extremely early, inasmuch as one of the witnesses in which Matthew 21:44 appears to be missing is Papyrus 104, which competes with Papyrus 52 for the title of the earliest extant fragment of the New Testament text.

             On 67a, in the margin alongside the end of Matthew 24:37, we encounter another lectionary-related mark:  υπ, written with the υ below the π.  This abbreviation stands for hyperbale, or, “jump ahead, signifying that the rest of the lection consisted was somewhere other than the immediately-following text.  In this case, we find arcou “resume”) just a little further down the page, alongside Matthew 24:43. 

            On page 80a, there is a textual variant in the margin:  νυκτος is added to Mt. 27:64, between αυτου and κλέψωσιν.  This reading is supported by L M 565 700 892 1424 and the Sinaitic Syriac manuscript, and a correction in 1582.

            At the end of Matthew, on 81b, only slightly separated from the end of 28:20, there is a colophon, that is, a closing-note by the scribe:  the end of the words of Matthew, from the Gospel according to Matthew, which Matthew wrote in Hebrew in Palestine, in the eighth year after the ascension of Lord.  Written in 2,522 remata, 2,560 stichoi.    This is followed by what appears to be the name of the scribe, Solomon, in stylized lettering.

            On the very next page, 82a, the Kephalaia are listed for the Gospel of Mark, below a braided heading-marker, for which red, blue, yellow, and green pigments were used.   

            A few pages appear to be missing – the last page of the Kephalaia-list has been replaced – but the Gospel of Mark begins intact, with a very large initial “A” on 85a.  The opening title, drawn in red hollow uncials, is rather unusual.           

Getting crazy with the flourishes.

            On several of the pages of Mark which follow, one may notice an idiosyncrasy of the scribe: when the word και appeared in the last line on a page, he often wrote it as a και-compendium, i.e., an abbreviation, and extended the final stroke in a fancy design below the line.  Sometimes the flourish is reinforced with red ink (as on page 111.)  The stalks of the letters φ and ψ on the last line of a page are sometimes similarly embellished.

            The Gospel of Mark ends on 131b, and a nice little headpiece introduced the Kephalaia-list for Luke, with a red cross in the margin.

            On 133b, in the space left after the end of Luke Kephalaia-list, someone has added a portrait of Luke the Evangelist, writing his Gospel at a desk, framed within a heavy green background on three sides.  What appears to be a blue easel with clawed legs sits nearby.
            On 134a, the text of the Gospel of Luke begins, below the unusual title and alongside a large initial “E.”  On the next page, the book restarts at verse 5 (which is not unusual in medieval manuscripts) and there is another large initial “E,” very different in style from the first one.

            On 137b, the copyist made an embarrassing mistake:  he completely skipped Luke 1:51, right in the middle of the Magnificat.  The missing verse has been added in the margin.  A smaller mistake was made in 2:15; the words το γεγονος are missing in the text; they have been supplied in the margin.

            On 144b, the genealogy begins, and the format is unusual:  numbers are assigned to each individual, and the numbers continue on the next page, on which the text is arranged in three columns.  On 145b, the scribe returns to a single-column format, but the numbers continue, all the way up to the reference to God, at the end, who is numbered 77.

            On leaf 179 there is a small patch at the bottom.

            On 183b, in Luke 13:28, there is an initial omicron that is shaped like a fish.  Another fish-initial is on 214a.  Similar initials occur in some lectionaries. 
            In the first line of 187b, the initial in Luke 15:11 is unusually large.
            On 199a, the scribe skipped the words εν ποια in Luke 20:2.  They are added in the margin.

            The Kephalaia-list for the Gospel of John is on 215a, with a red and green braided headpiece.  On the opposite side of the page there is a full-page portrait of John, composing his Gospel, framed on three sides by a thick green border. 

            The next leaf is clearly a supplement, the original opening page containing the text of John 1:1-14a, is lost. 

            On 237a, there is a “jump ahead” symbol alongside the line where John 7:53 begins, instructing the lector to move ahead to 8:12 on the next page, where an αρξου (“Resume”) symbol appears.  (This neatly illustrates a hypothesis regarding the early loss of John 7:53-8:11: an early copyist, unfamiliar with the local lectionary in which John 7:53-8:11 was skipped in the lection for Pentecost-Day, possessed an exemplar in which he saw instructions to “Jump ahead” at the end of John 7:52, and to “Resume” at 8:12, and, thinking the instructions were meant for him rather than for the lector, omitted the intervening verses.  (See for more information my e-book, A Fresh Analysis of John 7:53-8:11).

             On 239a, a distigma (‥) appears in the margin of John 8:36, where the copyist left out the word ουν.  Another distigma appears in the text to indicate where the word belongs.

           

The full-page colophon
after the end of John.

The text of John concludes on 241a.  241b contains a cruciform-framed colophon that includes stichiometric information.  

            Beginning on 272a below a decorative headpiece, there is a lection-calendar for Sunday lections, beginning with the lection for Easter.  Incipit-phrases (the opening words of a lection as read in the church-service) are included.  This is the normal annual Synaxarion calendar.  An interesting minor detail in these pages is the assorted knot-like designs which occasionally appear, apparently serving no practical purpose – they seem to be doodles. Similar knots appear in a wide range of manuscripts.

            On 280a, a braided headpiece precedes another part of the lection-calendar. 

            Another headpiece is on 285b; yet another one begins 287a, which has as part of its design a “Jesus Christ, Victor” cross.  The incipit-phrases for Easter-week lections follow.

            On 288a, after another headpiece, the Heothina-series of lections is covered, even though no special marks accompany the text of these lections in the Gospels-text.    
            On 288b, there is another headpiece.  The heading introduces the Menologion-readings for the month of September. That is, unlike the first part of the lection-calendar, in which all dates are arranged in relation to Easter, these feast-days are assigned to dates on the calendar.

            On 289b, another headpiece introduces incipit-phrases for the Menologion-readings for the month of October.  On 290a, we see that Sergius and Bacchus’ feast-day is commemorated on October 7, and Pelagia’s feast-day is commemorated on October 8.  This is consistent with the designation of John 8:3-11 as the lection in the Menologion for October 8. 

            At the top of 290b, another headpiece introduces incipit-phrases for the Menologion-readings for the month of November.

            At the top of 291b, there is another headpiece – better executed than some of the others.  The list that follows provides incipit-phrases for the lections read in December.

            More headpieces and more monthly lection-lists, with more knot-doodles in the margins, along with simple pictures of the symbols of the Evangelists, continue, to the end of the manuscript’s text on 248b.  Then after a few blank pages, the back cover is reached.

            All in all, minuscule 9 is a pretty good manuscript to use to get acquainted with the standard format of medieval Greek Gospels-manuscripts.  It does not have an overwhelming amount of marginalia; its script is reasonably neat; its appearance is not marred by incessant corrections. I hope this review of minuscule 9 has been informative and instructive. 

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

Hand to Hand Combat: Codex D vs 2397

GA 2397 - The end of John,
with a colophon.

            In the year 1303, a copyist named Hyacinthus finished the text of a Greek manuscript of the Gospels.  Below the closing verses of the Gospel of John, he wrote a little note which went something like this:  first, in red:  “The work is completed, glory to our God, in the year 6811 [from the beginning of the world].”  And then:  “Written by the hand of Hyacinthus, sinner and writing-specialist.   Reader, pray, and curse not by the Lord that the writer has finished.  And may the Lord save you all, brothers!  Amen and amen and amen.”   

            This volume, now known as minuscule 2397, is catalogued as manuscript 135 in the Goodspeed Manuscript Collection at the University of Chicago.  It is also known as the Hyacinthus Gospels, in honor of the copyist who wrote its text.  

            Hyacinthus was, it seems, devoutly dedicated to his work.  But how good was the accuracy of the text he wrote?  Let’s take a sample of the contents of minuscule 2397 and compare it to the contents of a much older manuscript – Codex Bezae.  Researcher Dr. David Parker has assigned Codex Bezae to “about 400.”  (Other researchers have given it a production-date a century or so younger.)

            Using John 15:1-10 as printed in the Nestle-Aland Novum Testamentum Graece (27th edition) as the standard of comparison, let’s list all the differences between it and the text of 2397.  Then we will set aside differences that are usually considered minor – differences that involve vowel-exchanges, spelling, and word-order – and see how materially different the text of 2397 is from the base-text of English versions such as the ESV and CSB.  Then we will do the same kind of comparison, using the text of John 15:1-10 made by the copyist of Codex Bezae. 

2397:  Comparison to NA27

(Black diamonds signify readings that diverge from the Byzantine Textform)

1 – 2397 reads αληθηνη instead of αληθινη (+1, -1) ♦

1 – 2397 reads εστι instead of εστιν (-1)  ♦

2 – 2397 reads φερων instead of φερον (+1, -1) ♦

2 – 2397 transposes, reading πλειονα καρπον instead of καρπον πλειονα

2 – 2397 reads φερει instead of φερη (+2, -1) ♦

3 – no variants

4 – 2397 reads μεινη instead of μένη (+2, -1)

4 – 2397 reads μεινητε instead of μένητε (+2, -1)

5 – no variants

6 – 2397 reads reads μεινη instead of μένη (+2, -1)

6 – 2397 does not have το before πυρ (-2) ♦

6 – 2397 reads βαλλουσι instead of βαλλουσιν (-1) ♦

7 – 2397 reads αιτήσασθε instead of αιτήσεσθε (+1, -1) ♦

8 – 2397 reads γενησεσθε instead of γένησθε (+2)

9 – 2397 reads ηγάπησε instead of ηγάπησεν (-1) ♦

9 – 2397 transposes, reading ηγαπησα υμας instead of υμας ηγαπησα.

10 – no variants

            Thus, in John 15:1-10, 2397 contains 13 non-original letters, and is missing 12 original letters, for a total of 25 letters’ worth of corruption.  When all movable-nu variants and normal vowel-exchanges are removed from the equation, there are just two substantial variants in 2397:  the non-inclusion of το before πυρ in verse 6, and the reading  γενησεσθε in verse 8 (a reading supported by Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Alexandrinus), yielding four letters’ worth of corruption in these 10 verses. 

            Now let’s make the same kind of comparison, using Codex Bezae’s text of John 15:1-10:

Codex D:  Comparison to NA-27
(This takes into account the text made by the scribe, not corrections that were introduced later.)

1 – no variants

2 – D reads καρπο instead of καρπον (-1)

2 – D reads φορον instead of φερον (+1, -1)

2 – D reads καθαριει instead of καθαίρει (+1, -1)

2 – D transposes, reading πλειονα καρπον instead of καρπον πλειονα

3 – D omits all of verse 3, and the first part of verse 4 up to (and including) the word φέρειν.  That is, D omits ηδη υμεις καθαροί εστε δια τον λόγον ον λελάληκα υμιν· μείνατε εν εμοι, καγω εν υμιν. Καθως το κλημα ου δύναται καρπον φέρειν (-100)

4 – D reads μεινη instead of μένη (+1)

4 – D reads μεινητε instead of μένητε (+1)

5 – D reads γαρ after εγω (+3)

5 – D does not have εν before εμοι (-2)

6 – D reads δυνασθα instead of δυνασθε (+1, -1)

6 – D does not have ουδεν at the end of the verse (-5)

6 – D reads αυτο instead of αυτα (+1, -1)

6 – D does not have το before πυρ (-2)

6 – D reads καιετε instead of καιεται (+1, -2)

7 – D reads δε after εαν (+2)

7 – D reads υμειν instead of υμιν (+1)

8 – D reads αιτησασθαι instead of αιτησασθε (+2, -1)

8 – D does not have υμιν at the end of the verse (-4)

8 – D transposes, reading πολυν καρπον instead of καρπον πολυν

8 – D reads γένησθαι instead of γένησθε (+2, -1)

8 – D reads μου instead of εμοι (+1, -2)

9 – no variants

10 – D reads καγω instead of εγω (+2, -1)

            Codex Bezae thus has 18 non-original letters in John 15:1-10, and is missing 124 original letters, for a total of 142 letters’ worth of corruption.  When all movable-nu variants and normal vowel-exchanges are removed from the equation, Codex D has 7 non-original letters in this passage, and is missing 113 letters, for a total of 120 letters’ worth of corruption. 

            So, setting the results side by side:  if we didn’t filter the variants at all, 2397 would have a total of 25 letters’ worth of corruption, compared to 142 letters’ worth of corruption in the text written by the copyist of Codex Bezae.  If normal vowel-exchanges, transpositions, and minor spelling differences in both manuscripts are set aside, then 2397 detours from the Nestle-Aland compilation’s text of John 15:1-10 at just two points, yielding four letters’ worth of corruption.  Using the same approach, Codex Bezae has 120 letters’ worth of corruption in these ten verses.  

            Now, let’s consider the reliability of the transmission-streams of these two manuscripts.  Minuscule 2397 was produced in 1303, according to its colophon.  That means that, reckoning that the Gospel of John was written in A.D. 90, 1,213 years separate the autograph from this copy.  Using raw data, the copyists in the transmission-line of the Hyacinthus Gospels contributed one letter of corruption (either adding a non-original letter, or removing an original letter) per 10 verses once every 48.5 years.  Using filtered data (i.e., without considering benign, normal vowel-exchanges, movable-nu, and similar variants), the copyists in the transmission-line of the Hyacinthus Gospels contributed one letter of corruption (either adding a non-original letter, or removing an original letter) per 10 verses once every 303 years.

            Meanwhile, if we assign a production-date of A.D. 500 to Codex Bezae, this would mean that 410 years separate the autograph from this copy.  Using raw data, the copyists in the transmission-line of Codex Bezae contributed one letter of corruption (either adding a non-original letter, or removing an original letter) per 10 verses about once every three years.  Using filtered data, the copyists in the transmission-line of Codex Bezae contributed one letter of corruption (either adding a non-original letter, or removing an original letter) per 10 verses once every 3.4 years. 

            These results show that no matter how one filters the data, the text of John 15:1-10 in Codex Hyacinthus is over six times more accurate than the text that came from the hand of the copyist of Codex Bezae.  These results (based, admittedly, on one sample passage) also indicate that the copyists in the transmission-stream of the Hyacinthus Gospels – a Byzantine transmission-stream – were about twenty times better at copying the Greek text than the copyists in Codex Bezae’s Western transmission-stream.  I note in closing that if the Robinson-Pierpont Byzantine Text had been used as the standard of comparison instead of the Nestle-Aland compilation, the results would favor the Hyacinthus Gospels even more heavily.

[Readers are welcome to double-check the data and calculations in this post.]

James White and Hebrews 1 - A Response

The first page of Hebrews
in Papyrus 46.
(Yellow circle = verse 3.)

            Recently, my post Fool and Knave! Hebrews 1 in Codex Vaticanus was the subject of part of a video broadcast by apologist James White (whom I shall call Dr. White in this post, since he accorded me the same title in his broadcast).  His main point seemed to be that it is possible for other people – particularly competitors or opponents – to misinterpret, reframe, or selectively edit one’s statements so as to misrepresent their intention. 

         

            Of course I agree with Dr. White about that.  Jesus Himself had His statements misused by those who wished to oppose Him.  However, along the way, some things were said which call for clarification, so I have cobbled together this response.            

● 25:50 – Just a little quibble:  Dr. White called the note in Codex Vaticanus alongside Hebrews 1:3 a colophon; however, a colophon is technically something else – more like a note by a copyist (rather than a later corrector) about when and where and by whom the manuscript was produced.  The note in Codex B alongside Hebrews 1:3 is just a note. 

● 27:30 – In the course of offering some thoughts about a variant-unit in Hebrews 1:8, Dr. White described me as a “Byzantine Priority-type textual critical scholar;” however, the term “Byzantine Priority” refers to a text-critical approach which favors Byzantine readings all the time, and that is not my view.  (I adopt και κριτὴς in James 4:12, for example.)  My approach is Equitable Eclecticism, in which readings with very strong intrinsic evidence in their favor are capable of being adopted instead of rival readings with much more abundant attestation.

            In his discussion about the presence or absence of “and ever” in Hebrews 1:8, Dr. White stated, “Other people would respond to that by saying, well, while that’s possible, and certainly there is something to be said about Alexandrian scribes desiring a concise, tight type text, it’s also just as possible and probable that there is the opposite tendency amongst the Byzantines to have a more flowing text, and  to have fuller titles, and especially in worship contexts, liturgical contexts, things like that; it could go the opposite direction.  So both of those have to be balanced.”

            I would be interested to know the identity of these “other people” who reject “and ever” in Hebrews 1:8.  For it is not just Byzantine Prioritists who adopt the longer reading there:  it is adopted in the Nestle-Aland compilation, and the UBS Greek New Testament accepts the longer reading without drawing attention to the shorter reading’s existence.  Michael Holmes (editor of the SBL-GNT) rejected Codex Vaticanus’ reading here too.  As far as I can tell, one has to reach back over a century, to Hort (of course) to find any editor willing to even bracket του αἰωνος; the inclusion of the words is reflected not only in the KJV and NKJV but also in the NIV, ESV, CSB, NLT, NRSV, and NASB. 

            Via his insistence that “Both of these have to be balanced” – both a reading that has massive and ancient and widespread support, and a reading with extremely limited support – Dr. White has illustrated a problem with the approach that has dominated the field of New Testament textual criticism for far too long:  it is often possible, if one is sufficiently creative, to imagine reasons to prefer readings with minimal external support.  To restate:  reasoned eclecticism, as it is currently practiced, opens a wide door to the acceptance of quirk-readings. 

            That is why the NIV currently has a reading in Mark 1:41 that is supported by only one Greek manuscript.  This is why the TNIV removed “Son of God” from Mark 1:1.  That is why Bart Ehrman argues for the reading “apart from God” in Hebrews 2:9.  That is why there is no reference to fasting in the text of Mark 9:29 in the ESV.  That is why, as Dr. White himself has observed, although the reading “not yet” in John 7:8 is supported by “an awesome array of witnesses” (including not only the Byzantine Text but also early papyri), the Nestle-Aland/UBS compilation reads, instead, “not.”  And that is why the editors of the latest edition of the Nestle-Aland compilation took the next step in Second Peter 3:10:  they adopted a reading for which the editors created what was, to them, a plausible case, even though it is found in no Greek manuscripts.    

    

● 30:00 – Dr. White stated that he has said that “If you apply the same standards of hermeneutics and exegesis to the most Alexandrian text, and the most Byzantine text, you’re not going to come up with a different Christian faith.”  However, were Dr. White to undertake that task, I suspect that he would end up with two different Bibliologies – one in which the text of the New Testament is errant, and another in which the text of the New Testament is inerrant.      

            Inerrancy is a doctrine which cannot be proven; however, a demonstrable error in the text would show that the text is errant, Q.E.D.  Briefly leaving Dr. White’s video-broadcast, let’s explore the approach he used in his book The King James Only Controversy, when discussing a textual contest in Mark 1:2, and test its effects when applied to another variant.  (Speaking of The King James Only Controversy:  when will Dr. White acknowledge that his account of Tischendorf’s first encounter with Codex Sinaiticus in that book is incorrect??)

            Dr. White argued (I mean “argued” in the technical sense; he reasoned) that between the reading “in the prophets” (read by the vast majority of Greek manuscripts, and supported in a second-century composition by Irenaeus) and the reading “in Isaiah the prophet,” “it is much easier to understand why a scribe would try to “help Mark out,” so to speak, and correct what seems to be an errant citation than to figure out why someone would change it to “Isaiah the prophet.””

            Dr. White proceeded to propose that what appeared to scribes to be an error is actually a conventional way of referring to a conflated citation.  Dr. White and others have made similar arguments regarding not only Mark 1:2, but also Matthew 27:9, where two prophecies with similar themes are referenced using the name of only one.  However, does such reasoning work at Matthew 13:35? 

            Codex Sinaiticus – one of the two fourth-century manuscripts upon which the Nestle-Aland compilers lean most heavily and most often – identifies the prophet cited in Matthew 13:35 as Isaiah.  Problem:  the passage quoted there is Psalm 78:2, which was written by Asaph, not by Isaiah.  Eberhard Nestle (the first editor of what later became the Nestle-Aland compilation) considered Sinaiticus’ reading “certainly genuine.”  And if we were to apply the reasoning that Dr. White used to justify adopting “Isaiah the prophet” at Mark 1:2, how could we say otherwise?  It is much easier (using Dr. White’s reasoning) to understand why a scribe would try to help Matthew out, by removing the error, than to figure out why someone would put Isaiah’s name where it clearly does not belong. 

            And thus a case is made for the quirk-reading – in this case, a quirk-reading that, if adopted, would impact the doctrine of inerrancy, barring some desperate verbal acrobatics.  (The question of whether Biblical inerrancy is a cardinal Christian doctrine seems to be in dispute among some textual critics, by the way, even evangelical ones at Dallas Theological Seminary.)    

            Perhaps another example will be instructive.  The Alexandrian text, in Matthew 27:49, includes a statement that Jesus was struck with a spear before He died, which flatly contradicts the testimony in John 19:30-35.  (Does Dr. White think that this reading, too, has to be balanced?)  An argument could be made that this must be the original reading, on the grounds that it is the more difficult reading.  Without addressing the merits or defects of such a case, can it be denied that if one were to conclude that the errant Alexandrian reading in Matthew 27:49 were original, it would yield a different Bibliology than the non-problematic Byzantine reading? 

            More frequently, what is at stake is not a Christian doctrine, but the ability of a particular passage to teach what it originally taught.  And although, for the most part, Dr. White and I are saying the same thing about the ability of both the Nestle-Aland compilation and the Byzantine text (and some independent compilations) to adequately express Christian doctrine, we advocate two different approaches at this point.  

            Dr. White seems content, when encountering two rival variants, to say, “Both of those have to be balanced,” even when one has extremely meager external support, as long as a scenario can be imagined in which scribes created the reading that has massive and ancient support – whereas I would argue that quirk-readings should be treated as quirk-readings, and be rejected, rather than share the page with the inspired text. 

            Two examples of quirk-readings have already been provided, both from Hebrews 1:3:  it is not difficult to see how the words δι’ αυτου (or δι’ ἑαυτου) – “by Himself ” – could be lost via scribal negligence, when a copyist’s line of sight drifted from the final letters of δυνάμεως αὐτου to the letters του in the next word, thus skipping the letters in between.  The same kind of mistake explains the loss of the word ἡμων after ἀμαρτιων.  (In text-critical jargon, these are cases of parablepsis elicited by homoeoteleuton, and it is a very ordinary kind of scribal mistake.)  

Let’s look at three more examples of quirk-readings, all from the Gospel of Mark. 

            ● In Mark 10:50, in the account about the healing of blind Bartimaeus, Bartimaeus is said to throw aside his cloak as he jumps up, obeying Christ’s call.  In a respectably old Syriac manuscript, though, the text says that Bartimaeus, rather than putting down his cloak, took up his cloak.  A case can be imagined for the minority reading, the idea being that the story was tweaked by scribes who desired to turn Bartimaeus’ experience into an allegorical picture of repentance, in which the garments stained with sin are laid aside.  Should both of these readings therefore be perpetually retained, one in the text, and one in the margin, in our Greek compilations and in English versions, assuring that nobody will be confident about what Bartimaeus did with his cloak?       

            ● In Mark 10:24, in the vast majority of the Greek manuscripts of Mark (and not just the medieval copies), Jesus tells His disciples, “Children, how hard it is for those who trust in riches to enter the kingdom of God.”  This reading is also supported by the Gothic version (made in the mid-300’s) and by a quotation made by Ephrem Syrus (in the mid-300’s) from Tatian’s Diatessaron (which was made around 170).  The flagship manuscripts of the Alexandrian text, however, do not include the phrase “for those who trust in riches,” thus yielding the sentence, “Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God.” 

            Dr. White favored the Alexandrian reading of Mark 10:24 when he wrote The King James Only Controversy.  He reasoned that “It is easier to understand how the phrase could be added than to understand why it would be deleted.”  Is that so?  When I look at the Greek text –  Τέκνα, πως δύσκολόν ἐστιν τοὺς πεποιθότας ἐπὶ χρήμασιν εἰς τὴν βασιλείαν του Θεου εἰσελθειν – it is very easy to see how the phrase would be deleted:  by simple scribal negligence, when a copyist’s line of sight drifted from the letters –ιν at the end of the word ἐστιν to the same letters at the end of the word χρήμασιν, thus accidentally skipping the words in between.  The longer reading, in this case, accounts for the origin of the shorter reading, and does so rather elegantly.  

            Dr. White acknowledged in his book that such a simple scribal error “is, of course, a possibility.”  But he did not conclude that the Alexandrian reading was incorrect.  Instead, he recommended putting a footnote at this passage:  “The reading should be noted if it is not contained in the text; or, if it is contained in the text, its absence in ﬡ or B should be noted as well.  In either case, the reader should be given all the information available.”

            However, this is both wishful thinking – for there is not an English translation in existence which gives readers all the information available – and wrong.  Such generosity toward minority-readings inevitably adulterates the force of the original reading, so as to cause readers to constantly wonder, “Where is the Word of God:  in the text, or in the footnote?”  Dr. White seems perfectly willing to reply that it doesn’t matter, since the same teachings emanate from the New Testament as a whole no matter which reading is adopted in that particular passage.  However, such an approach compels the original text in all those passages to share its authority with a scribal corruption.            

            ● A third example:  in Mark 10:19, the words “Do not defraud” are not in Codex Vaticanus, and some other uncial manuscripts concur.  This is not hard to explain:  the same mechanism that caused the loss of four words in Mark 10:24 caused the loss of two words here, when a copyist’s line of sight drifted from the letters –ρήσης at the end of μὴ ψευδομαρτυρήσης to the same letters at the end of μὴ ἀποστερήσης.     

            Is there really a need to inform Bible-readers about every passage where the copyists of Sinaiticus and Vaticanus made mistakes?  Should we clamor for more trivia in Bible-footnotes, so as to allow – nay, to cause – more glitch-readings to adulterate the authority of the original text?  Granting that we could afford to do so, I submit that the responsibility of textual critics is, rather, in the opposite direction:  the effects of scribal corruptions should be removed from the base-text, and expressions of indecision should be resorted to only in cases where the evidence is extremely closely contested.  I hope that Dr. White, upon further reflection, will agree.    

(Postscript:  in the forty-fourth minute of his video-lecture, as Dr. White read the textual apparatus for Hebrews 1:3, he misinterpreted the letter D as “Bezae Cantabrigiensis.”  Actually D in this passage stands for a different manuscript, Codex Claromontanus.)