The Longer Reading in Matthew 25:13

           A textual variant in Matthew 25:13 may shed some light on a mechanism that elicited some expansions in the Byzantine Text.  In the EOB-NT, Matthew 25:13 reads, “Watch, therefore, for you do not know the day or the hour that the Son of Man is coming.”  The words “that the Son of Man is coming” are framed by “<” and “>.”  The WEB, based on the Majority Text, says similarly, “Watch therefore, for you don’t know the day nor the hour in which the Son of Man is coming.”  The KJV reads similarly, and the Textus Receptus agrees with the Byzantine Textform at this point.  In the EHV, Matthew 25:13 only says, “Therefore, keep watch, because you do not know the day or the hour.”  There is no footnote in the EHV to indicate the existence of the longer Byzantine reading. 

          The ESV, CSB, NIV, and NASB all end the verse at the word “hour.”  The NLT, apparently abandoning its base-text, continues with “of my return.”

          What’s going on here?  Did Matthew write the words ἐν ἧ ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου ερχεται or not?

          Short answer:  Not.

          The Byzantine/Majority Text supports the inclusion of “in which the Son of Man is coming,” but the Peshitta does not.  Codices A, D, L, W, Δ, and Σ end the verse with ὥραν (hour).  So do some minuscules, including 33, the first hand of 157, 892, and the first hand of 1424.   The Alexandrian codices À and B weigh in for the shorter reading, and so do P35 and Codex D, and patristic witnesses such as Chrysostom, Athanasius, and Augustine.  The Vulgate and the Old Latin also solidly support the shorter reading here.

          To perceive what has happened here, it is helpful to know that Matthew 25:1-13 was the lection assigned to the 17th Saturday after Pentecost in the Byzantine lectionary.  (It is also a lection in Lectionary 846, to be read in honor of female virgins and martyrs.)  When this segment is read separately from the rest of the chapter, the final sentence was expanded to tell listeners what day and hour were referred to (perhaps using Mt. 24:42 and 24:44 as a model). 

          This expansion can be seen happening in Byzantine manuscripts.  In Codex Y (034), the verse ends ὥραν in the text, but someone – apparently the same person who supplemented the manuscript for lection-reading – added in the margin, “εν η ὁ υς του ανου ερχεται.”  There’s the longer variant.

          Bruce Metzger’s dismissal of the longer reading is correct, but his explanation for its existence (as a “pedantic addition”) seems to show little appreciation for the influence of the lectionary on the Byzantine Text.  When Metzger wrote his Textual Commentary, he was all-in on Hort’s now-defunct theory of the Lucianic Recension.   A more mature Metzger would probably adjust his wording, acknowledging the longer reading as having been made under the influence of lectionary-usage.

          When was the longer reading introduced?  Probably sometime after Codex A (400s), and before 017 (Cyprius) (800s) and the marginalia in 034 (800s, if the marginalia is of the same date as the main text).  [Update:  Andy Vogan has observed that 07, assigned to the 700s, also has the longer reading.]  Someone influenced by a lectionary, wishing to benignly introduce an expansion at the end of Mt. 25:13 to wrap up a lection, created the longer reading, and it was so edifying that so many scribes adopted it that it eventually became the majority reading.  The removal of such intrusions into the text can be achieved relatively easily by filtering the majority text against the Alexandrian Text, the Western Text, and the text of family Π.

 

Production-Dates: How Do We Get Them?

           Sometimes when first-time observers read about the production-dates of New Testament manuscripts, one of the first things they notice is that most of the dates are not very precise.  Several factors contribute to establishing the approximate production-date of a manuscript.  Let’s look at some of them today:   colophons, script, content, material, special factors, and radiocarbon dating.

          COLOPHONS.  Notes written by a scribe, or scribes, involved in the production of the manuscript – sometimes state when the manuscript was made.  Such notes, or colophons, immediately simplify the task of assigning a production-date.  Medieval scribes who wrote colophons with dates typically used calendars in which the first year of the earth was 5509.  Sometimes the production-date was given in terms of the reign of a particular Byzantine Emperor.  Robert Waltz has provided a detailed explanation of how production-dates mentioned in colophons should be interpreted.  Rarely, dates are given in terms of the number of years A.D. (Anno Domini, “the year of the Lord”).  

          SCRIPT.  Usually, there is no colophon, so analysts attempting to determine a manuscript’s production-date must resort to a study of the handwriting displayed in the manuscript.  This involves the field of paleography (or “palæography”), the study of ancient writing.   The method of Greek handwriting changed over time – from the majuscule, or uncial, lettering of the early copies (and formal and informal variations), to the minuscule lettering of later copies (with variations such as Perlschrift, Bouletée, and “Ace of Spades” minuscule).

Bernard de Montfaucon
(1655-1741)

The first systematic study of Greek palaeography was made by Bernard de Montfaucon, a Benedictine monk, in 1708.   Almost instantly, paleography grew into a scientific field of study.  In 1912, Edward Maunde Thompson published An Introduction to Greek and Latin Palaeography, a book which remains useful today.  American scholar Bruce Metzger focused on Biblical writings in his 1981 book Manuscripts of the Greek Bible: An Introduction to Palaeography.  Recently, Timothy Janz has written Greek Paleography From Antiquity to the Renaissance, which is available to read at the Vatican Library’s website.   With just a few hours of effort, readers of Janz’s introduction can gain plenty of information about palaeography (and view the specific scripts in manuscripts at the Vatican Library).

      Manuscripts’ production-dates assigned on the basis of paleography tend to have an unavoidable range of about 100 years, because we have no way of knowing whether an anonymous scribe was just beginning his (or her) career – in which, hopefully, he would continue for 50 years – or whether his career was approaching its end.  If a scribe continued using the script he possessed when he first learned to write, then that script could endure throughout his whole career.  (Theoretically a scribe could adjust his own handwriting over time, but there is not much to go on to suggest that such a thing was normal.)        

          CONTENT.  A manuscript cannot, of course, be written before the events that are recorded in the manuscript.  Some New Testament manuscripts – more than you might expect – mention  historical events (especially in lectionary-calendars accompanying the Biblical text) that provide a solid basis for discerning the limits of when a manuscript was made.  For example, if a lectionary calendar mentions the feast-day for Cosmas the Hymnographer, bishop of Maiuma, and Andrew of Crete, it must have been produced after the mid-700s.  If a lectionary-calendar mentions Lazarus the Wonder-worker, its production-date must be later than the period when Lazarus the Wonder-worker was active in the 900s.

          (The Latin term for the earliest possible production-date is the terminus a quo.   The Latin term for the latest possible production-date is the terminus ad quem.)

          MATERIAL.  All New Testament manuscripts are made of papyrus or parchment or paper.  (There is a small class of witnesses, which used to be represented by the letter “T” in a Fraktur-style font, which can include other material such as very small manuscripts, amulets, and inscriptions.)  Characteristics of these materials can influence the dating of a manuscript – especially when the paper features a watermark, which can narrow down not only the production-date of a manuscript but also its provenance (where it comes from).

          SPECIAL FACTORS.  Sometimes the provenance of a manuscript helps define the limits of its production-date.  For example, the manuscript known as GA 0212 (which technically should not be in the list of continuous-text New Testament manuscripts, because it is not a continuous-text New Testament manuscript) was found in the ruins of Dura-Europos, a place which was beseiged and destroyed by a Roman army in 257.  Thus 0212’s terminus ad quem cannot be later than 257.

          Even after taking all of the above into consideration, specialists sometimes get production-dates wrong.  One example is found in the 27^th edition of the Nestle-Aland Novum Testamentum Graece, where the editors assigned GA 2427 a production-date of “XIV?” (p. 711), and ranked it as a “consistently cited witness of the first order” in Mark (See the Nestle-Aland Introduction, p. 47* and p. 58*).  GA 2427 is indeed cited very frequently throughout Mark in NA27’s textual apparatus. 

          But in NA28, GA 2427 is gone.  In 2006, Wieland Willker already described 2427 as a fake, and, as Willker reported, Stephen Carlson demonstrated beyond a reasonable doubt that 2427 is a forgery, based primarily on Philip Buttmann’s 1860 Greek New Testament (as he explains in an article at the SBL Forum Archive).  Tommy Wasserman gives additional details about the exposure of 2427 in a 2009 post at the Evangelical Textual Criticism blog.  Margaret Mitchell of the University of Chicago (now retired) gave a lecture in 2012 which will leave viewers with no reason to imagine that GA 2427 was made no earlier than 1860.             

          So, experts can be fooled, at least temporarily, by well-made forgeries – even with careful consideration of colophons, script, material, and special factors.  Which brings us to the last resort:
          RADIOCARBON ANALYSIS.   A small amount of parchment that undergoes carbon-14 tests can yield an approximate production-date for the material.  (The date when the material was used may be later.)  This is usually not done (because the carbon-14 tests involve the destruction of the things they test).  But sometimes it is.  For instance the Ethiopian Garima Gospels, initially assigned a production-date in the 1000s, was suspected by Jacques Mercier of being much earlier.  Mercier submitted small sample fragments of the manuscript to radiocarbon tests, which gave one fragment a date of  330-540, and another fragment a date of 430-650 (as reported in 2011 in the journal of Kenyon College).  And just like that, the Garima Gospels went from being a minor witness to the Ethiopic Version to being confirmed as a contender (with the Rabbula Gospels of 586) to be the oldest illustrated manuscript of the Gospels.  Perhaps what is presently a last resort should in the future be the first resort, where parchment is involved, and when the requisite amount of material can be spared, and the cost of radiocarbon analysis is not prohibitive.  Rare is the parchment New Testament manuscript that does not have a blank border that could be removed without appreciable loss.

                                              

The Gangster's Bible: Lectionary 1599

           At the University of Chicago, among the manuscripts that form the Goodspeed Manuscript Collection,  is a medieval lectionary called the Argos Lectionary – named after the ancient city of Argos, in Greece.  Its is also known as Lectionary 1599, or, in the catalog of the collection, MS 128.  But another name is often given to it:  “The Gangster’s Bible.”

Vincenzo Colosimo

         The story of this moniker begins, as Michael Hirsley reported in the Chicago Tribune in 1993, when, following Edgar Goodspeed’s acquisition of  GA 2400 (an extensively illustrated New Testament made around the 1100s), a student of Goodspeed showed him the Argos Lectionary.  Goodspeed wanted to find out more about it, and this led to a meeting between Goodspeed and one of the owners of Colosimo’s restaurant in Chicago – named after Vincenzo “Diamond Jim” Colosimo, who had been killed – some reports said the killer was John Torrio; others say it was Al Capone – on May 11, 1920. 

          Apparently some of the mobsters in Chicago had a special use for the Argos Lectionary:  it was used as the book on which gang-members took oaths (possibly similar to the oaths described by Michael Franzese).   

          Eventually, with the involvement of Harold R. Willoughby, the University of Chicago purchased the Argos Lectionary from its owner on very agreeable terms, and it took its place in the Goodspeed Manuscript Collection, where it is to this day. 

         Lectionary 1599 was made in the 800s or 900s, and its text is written in two columns per page measuring approximately 29 x 22 cm.   It has endured significant damage, but plenty of pages have survived which contain text from the Gospels.  Its text, like most lectionaries, is essentially Byzantine.  A few textual features may be mentioned:

Image 122:  Luke 22:4 includes και γραμματευσιν, similar to the reading in C, N, P, 157, 700.  

Image 190:  Mark 15:28 is not in the text.

Image 228:  In Matthew 27:55, εκει appears after γυναικες.

Images 134, 135, & 136:  John 13:3-17 follows the end of Matthew 28, and is followed by text from Matthew 26:21.  (This liturgical arrangement for Maundy Thursday explains why, in GA 225, John 13:3-17 is found after after Matthew 26:20.)

Images 235, 236, & 237 – Mark 16:9-20 is the third of the eleven Heothina readings.

Image 242 – In John 21:1, the incipit-phrase (used to begin the reading, in the lower right-hand column 0f text) includes αὐτοῦ ἐγέρθεις ἐκ νεκρῶν, a reading also found in Γ (036)  f¹³ 1241 and 1424.

Image 248 – In Luke 10:8-10, near the end of the first column of text, the scribe made a parableptic error when his line of sight drifted from εἰσέρχησθε καὶ in 10:8 to καὶ μὴ δέχωνται in 10:10.  Also, in Luke 10:11, the text of l1599 includes  (“from your feet”).

Image 261 – In a list of feast-days in October, the saints honored on Oct. 7 are listed as Sergius and Bacchus.  The saint honored on October 8 is listed as Saint Pelagia.  This implies that John 8:3-11 was initially included in the lectionary, before it was damaged.   This arrangement also explains why the story of the adulteress is found in family 13 in Luke 21, shortly after where the reading for Saints Sergius and Bacchus (Luke 21:12-19) is located.  This kind of textual transplant was simply for the convenience of the lector.

         

GA 804 Looked Like a Gospels-Manuscript - Except For This!

            In October 2014, I wrote about GA 804, a small Gospels-manuscript from the 1000s with a text that often agrees with K and Π.  This manuscript, housed in Athens at the Hellenic Parliament Library, was digitized by a research-team from the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts.

            Today, I want to zoom in on the contents of the ten pages in GA 804 that appear after its Eusebian Canon-tables and chapter-list and immediately before the text of Matthew.  These pages (viewable at the CSNTM website) were once part of a different manuscript – a lectionary, containing assorted extracts from various New Testament books.  They contain Galatians 4:4-7 (a Christmastime reading), First Corinthians 9:19-22, First Corinthians 10:1-3 (part of a lection for the ceremonial Blessing of the Water on January 5), Titus 2:11-14, Titus 3:5-7 (these two segments from Titus form part of a lection for January 6, Epiphany), Hebrews 7:7-17 (a lection for February 2), and Hebrews 2:11-18 (a lection for Good Friday).  The last page of the lectionary (on which the last part of Hebrews 2:18, after περασθείς, can still be read) was reused to contain an illustration (now badly faded) of the apostle Matthew. 

            Let’s briefly sift through the text, ignoring most of the many itacisms, and looking at its readings especially at points where the Byzantine Textform has a reading different from NA27.  A few other readings are also recorded:

Gal. 4:6 – 804 does not have ὁ Θς before το πνα

Gal. 4:6 – 804 has ημων instead of υμων, agreeing with P46 À A B C

Gal. 4:7 – 804 has αλλ’ instead of αλλα, agreeing with Byz

Gal. 4:7 – 804 has θυ δια χυ, agreeing with Byz

I Cor. 9:20 – 804 has ως υπο νομον, agreeing with Byz

I Cor. 9:21 – 804 has θω, agreeing with Byz

I Cor. 9:21 – 804 has Χω, agreeing with Byz

I Cor. 9:22 – 804 has Και at the beginning of the verse

I Cor. 9:22 – 804 has ως, agreeing with Byz

I Cor. 9:22 – 804 has τα, agreeing with Byz

I Cor. 9:23 – 804 has Τουτο, agreeing with Byz

I Cor. 9:24 – 804 has Η before ουκ

I Cor. 9:26 – 804 has δε after Εγω

I Cor. 9:26 – 804 has πϊκτευω instead of πυκτευω

I Cor. 9:27 – 804 has αλλ’ instead of αλλα, agreeing with Byz

I Cor. 10:1 – 804 has δε, agreeing with Byz

I Cor. 10:1 – 804 has ηλθον instead of διηλθον, agreeing with 1241^s

I Cor. 10:2 – 804 has εβαπτισθησαν, agreeing with NA. 

I Cor. 10:3 – 804 has an h.t. error:  the scribe’s line of sight went from the first occurrence of το αυτο to the second occurrence, skipping the intervening words.  (This indirectly supports the Byzantine reading)

Titus 2:11 – 804 has η σριος, agreeing with Byz

Titus 2:13 – 804 has πρς instead of σωτηρος

Titus 2:13 – 804 has Ιυ Χυ, agreeing with Byz

Titus 2:14 – 804 has εαυτον before λαον, instead of εαυτω

Titus 2:14 – 804 has καλλων instead of καλων

Titus 3:4 – 804 has φιλανια 

Titus 3:5 – 804 has ελειον, agreeing (with itacism) with Byz

Titus 3:5 – 804 has ανακενησεως instead of ανακινώσεως

Titus 3:6 – 804 has γενώμεθα instead of γενηθωμεν

Titus 3:7 (lection-segment concludes at the end of the verse)

Heb. 7:9 – 804 has επως (itacism)

Heb. 7:10 – 804 includes ὁ before Μελχισεδέκ, agreeing with Byz

Heb. 7:11 – 804 has αυτην ενομοθετήτο (agreeing with Byz, sort of)

Heb. 7:11 – 804 has χρειαν instead of χρεια

Heb. 7:11 – 804 has μη instead of ου

Heb. 7:14 – 804 has ουδεν περι ερωσυνης, agreeing (essentially) with Byz

Heb. 7:17 – 804 has μαρτυρειται, agreeing with NA

Heb. 7:17 – 804 does not have οτι

Heb. 7:17 – 804 has ει before ιερευς

Heb. 2:14 – 804 has σαρκός και αιματος, agreeing with Byz

            Thus, we have here the remains of a mostly Byzantine lectionary – with a few readings that stand out:  

● The absence of ὁ Θς in Galatians 4:6 would make this reference to God less explicit.  This shorter reading is supported by B and 1739.

● φιλανια in Titus 3:4 is not exactly a textual variant; it is a seldom-seen sacred name contraction; uncontracted, the word is φιλανθρωπία.  (It is featured in the Kacmarcik Codex in a section about nomina sacra contractions.  (Dr. David Calabro tells a little more about the Kacmarcik Codex in this brief video.))

● εβαπτισθησαν in I Cor. 10:2 is supported by the formidable array of À A C D (i.e., Claromontanus, not Bezae), Ψ 33 1611 1505.  Yet the usual Byzantine reading, ἐβαπτίσαντο, is supported (with a slight spelling difference) by Papyrus 46 B K et al.  The Tyndale House GNT adopts ἐβαπτίσαντο here, in agreement with a note added by Bruce Metzger in his Textual Commentary, which would mean that those who crossed the Red Sea baptized themselves.

● ημων in Galatians 4:6 causes the sentence to refer to our hearts, rather than your hearts.  

● The sacred-name contraction πρς in Titus 2:13 is weird:  uncontracted, this would be Πατρος, “Father” – which does not work very well with Granville Sharp’s Rule in play; a reader of such a sentence might conclude that Paul mean that our God and Father = Jesus Christ.  But this would not be the only instance of a copyist writing the wrong sacred-name contraction.   

● μαρτυρειται in Hebrews 7;17 – The Byzantine reading μαρτυρει might have originated in a parableptic error in which the final syllable -ται was accidentally skipped.

● ει before ιερευς is not adopted in Hebrews 7:17 in the Nestle-Aland compilation, the Byzantine Text, the Textus Receptus, Pickering’s f35 archetype, or the Tyndale House GNT.  Yet a case could be made for its genuineness:  scribes might naturally insert the equivalent of “are” here, but scribes might just as naturally conform the quotation to the Greek text of Psalm 110 (Psalm 109:4 in the Septuagint) that is being quoted – or omit it accidentally.  The inclusion of ει has early and diverse support from Papyrus 46, K, 1175, and 1739.  

This data should augment and clarify the Informational Document for GA 804 at CSNTM which was drawn up by Daniel B. Wallace.  In addition, the statement “238b–239b: PA; πν is written vertically in red letters between 7.52 and 7.53” should be corrected:  those red letters are not πν; they are υπ, and they are part of the lectionary marginalia instructing the lector to jump (υπερβαλε) ahead to 8:12, where one sees in the margin the instructions for the lector to resume (αρξου).

I do not know if this lectionary has received its own official identification-number.  Perhaps such a step should be delayed until a careful investigation can be made to see if these pages are part of a lectionary which already has an identification-number.

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

I also invite you to read and contemplate some of the Scriptures in these pages – First Corinthians 10:1-3, Galatians 4:4-7, Titus 2:11-14, Titus 3:5-7, Hebrews 2:11-18 – as you celebrate the coming new year 2020!

A Surprise in Athens

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lectionary 2012, in English.

Matthew 27:6-9a:

            [ε]ξεστ[ιν]

  βαλ[ε]ιν αυτα ·

  εις τον κορβαν[αν]

  επει τιμη αί

  ματος εστιν +

συμβούλιον δ[ε]

  λαβόντες η[γό]

  ρασαν εξ αυτ[ων]

  τον αγρον του

  κεραμέως · εις τα

  φην τοις ξένοι[ς]

  διο εκλήθη · ο α

  γρος εκεινος · α

  γρος αιματος ·

  εως της σήμερ[ον]

  τοτε επληρώ

  θη τω ρηθεν

  δια Ϊερεμίου

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

                    –ηλθον

  εις τὴν αγίαν πό

  λην καὶ ενεφα

  νησθησαν πολλοις +

Ο δε εκατόνταρ

  χος και οι μετ’ αυ

  του · τηρουντες

  τον Ιν · ϊδοντες 

  τον σεισμον και

  τα γενόμενα ·

  εφοβήθησαν σφό

  δρα + λέγοντες ·  

  αληθως Θυ Υς ην

  ουτος + οι ουν Ϊου

  δαιοι · ϊνα μὴ μεί

  νη επι του στρου ·

  τα σώματα εν

  τω σαββάτω ·

John 19:31c-34a:

  Πιλάτον ίνα

  κατεαγωσιν αυ

  των τὰ σκέλει

  και αρθωσιν +

  ηλθον ουν οι στρα

  τιωται + και του

  μεν πρώτου

  κατέαξαν τὰ

  σκέλει καὶ του

  αλλου του συσταυ

  ρωθέν τος αυ

  τω + επι δε τὸν

  Ιν ελθόντες ως

  ειδον αυτον η

  δη τεθνηκότα

  ου κατέαξαν αυ

  του τὰ σκέλη +

  αλλ’ εις των στρα

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

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

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

Sinai Gr. 212: The Most Important Manuscript You Never Heard Of

Mark 16:9-20 in Sinai Gr. 212.

            Among the manuscripts in the Sinai Palimpsests Project’s collection of newly photographed manuscripts, Greek 212 (Lectionary 846) stands out as one which has New Testament texts as its primary upper writing.  This early Greek lectionary manuscript was made from recycled parchment pages which had previously contained a Greek Psalter.  This manuscript deserves much more attention than it has received.
     

            Let’s take a closer look at the excerpts from the New Testament that this manuscript contains.  There are 30 excerpts in all, all but one of which are preceded by a rubric (a note written in red) that identifies the purpose or occasion for each lection, and/or the book from which the lection is taken.  I have given extra details here for only a few of the rubrics.   

            The first eight lections form an eight-part series of lections about Jesus’ post-resurrection appearances:  (1)  Matthew 28:1-9.  (2)  Mark 16:1-8.  (3)  Luke 24:1-12.  (4)  John 20:1-18.  (5)  Matthew 28:9b-20.  (6)  Mark 16:9-20.  [27v-32v]  (7)  Luke 24:13-35.  (8)  John 21:1-14. [44v].  (This eight-part series, which resembles the 11-part Heothina series in the Byzantine Lectionary, represents a feature in an ancient lection-cycle used at Jerusalem.)

           The rest of the excerpts are:

 Luke 10:38-42.

      Matthew 16:13-20

      Matthew 5:17-24 (without εικη in 5:22)

      Matthew 10:1-15 (For the Apostles) [62v]

      Matthew 10:16-22

      Matthew 10:24-33

      John 12:24-26 (For Saint Stephen) [78r]

      Matthew 5:13-16

      Matthew 25:1-13

      Matthew 5:1-12a

      John 10:11-16

      Matthew 16:24b-27 (For the Archangels) [92v]

      John 5:19b-24 (For the Sleepers)

      Matthew 11:25-30

      Hebrews 13:10-16

      Hebrews 1:13-2:4

      First Corinthians 4:9-15 (For the Apostles)

      First Corinthians 12:27-13:3 (reading καυθήσωμαι in 13:3)

      Romans 5:1-5.  [105v]  (reading εχομεν in 5:1)

      Second Corinthians 4:7-12.

      Hebrews 4:14-5:6.

      First Thessalonians 4:13-18.  (The rubric for this lection is missing, an unartistic secondary hand has added From Thessalonians in black ink.)

            Additional information about the rubrics and marginalia in Sin. Gr. 212 can be found in Daniel Galadza’s informative article Two Greek, Ninth-century Sources of the Jerusalem Lectionary:  Sinai Gr. 212 and Sinai Gr. N.E. ΜΓ 11, in Bollettino Della Badia Greca De Grottaferrata (2014). 

            When microfilm-pictures were taken of Sinai Gr. 212 in 1950, the manuscript was assigned a production-date in the 600s.  However, considering the breathing-marks and accents that accompany the text, the main upper Greek writing’s production-date should probably be assigned to the late 700s or early 800s.  The text of a Greek Psalter that was sacrificed to provide writing-material for the lectionary-text (which is particularly apparent in the new photographs at the Sinai Palimpsests Project website) may date to the 500s.    

            This is just one manuscript – and yet, its discovery is like discovering fragments from nine New Testament books, all older than 90% of our extant New Testament manuscripts.  (Actually, ten New Testament books, inasmuch as what appears to be a sort of tightly written heading on the first page is the contents of Acts 5:38b-39.)

What type of text does this witness display?  Although one should not extrapolate too much from one scoop out of the ice-cream bucket, the following comparison in Matthew 28 is instructive:

2 – σισμος, agreeing with À.

2 – και before προσελθων, agreeing with B À.

2 – απο της θύρας but not του μνημείου, agreeing with A C K M Δ Π W Y.  A supplemental hand has supplied του μνημείου.

3 – ως instead of ωσει, agreeing with B À* D K Π.

4 – ως instead of ωσει, agreeing with B À D A L W.

6 – does not have ὁ Κς at the end of the verse, agreeing with B À Θ 33.

8 – απελθουσαι instead of εξελθουσαι, agreeing with B À C L Θ. 

9 – does not have the first part of the verse (up to αυτου), agreeing with B À D W Θ.

9 – ὁ before Ις, agreeing with D L W Y Θ.

9 – υπηντησεν instead of απηντησεν, agreeing with B À* C Π Υ Θ.

10 – μαθηταις instead of αδελφοις, agreeing with 157.

10 – κακει instead of και εκει, agreeing with B D L M.

14 – does not have αυτον after πείσομεν, agreeing with Β À Θ 33.

17 – does not have αυτω after προσεκύνησαν, agreeing with Β À D 33.

19 – ουν after Πορευθέντες, agreeing with B W Δ Θ Π.

20 – does not have Αμην at the end of the verse, agreeing with B À A* D W.

Thus, in Matthew 28, Sin. Gr. 212 is a strong Alexandrian witness.  It should be a consistently cited witness of the first order.



[Readers are encouraged to explore the embedded links in this post to find additional study-materials.]

Glossary of Textual Criticism: D-M

(Continuing the Glossary of Textual Criticism)

Diorthotes: The proof-reader and general overseer of the production of manuscripts in a scriptorium.  

Dittography:  A scribal mistake in which what should be written once is written twice.  This can describe the repetition of a single letter, a line, or even (rarely) a whole paragraph.

 

The first table
of the Eusebian Canons
in Codex K.

Eusebian Canons:  A cross-reference system for the Gospels, devised by Eusebius of Caesarea to help readers efficiently find and compare parallel-passages (and thematically related passages).  The basic idea is that numbers were assigned to every section of every Gospel, and each number was put into one of ten lists, or canons, in a chart at the beginning of the Gospels.  The first list presented the identification-numbers of passages in which parallels exist in all four Gospels; the tenth list presented the identification-numbers of passages which appear in one Gospel only, and lists 2-9 present the identification-numbers of passages in combinations of Gospels (such as Matthew+Mark+Luke).  The Eusebian Canons were often prefaced by Eusebius’ composition Ad Carpianus, in which an explanation was given of how to use the cross-reference chart.  In some Greek manuscripts, some Latin manuscripts, and especially in Armenian manuscripts, the Eusebian Canons are elaborately decorated.  In a few deluxe copies, the text of Ad Carpianus appears within a quatrefoil frame.

            Also, in some manuscripts, the copyists have put extracts from the Canon-tables below the main text, relieving the reader of the need to consult the Canon-tables in order to identify parallel-passages.  This is called a foot-index, because it appears at the foot of the page.

           

Euthalian Apparatus:  A collection of supplemental study-helps and systems of chapter-divisions for Acts and the Epistles, developed by an individual named Euthalius (who to an extent adopted earlier similar materials prepared by Pamphilus).  Little is known about Euthalius and the extent to which his initial work has been adjusted and expanded by others; the detailed analysis Euthaliana, by J. A. Robinson, remains an imperfect but valuable resource on the subject.

Family 35:   A cluster of over 220 manuscripts which represent the same form of the Byzantine Text.  Wilbur Pickering has reconstructed its archetype.

Flyleaves:  Unused pages at the beginning and end of a manuscript.  In some cases, these pages consist of discarded pages from older manuscripts, glued into or onto the binding. 

Genre distinction:  The practice of recognizing each genre of literature in the New Testament (Gospels, Acts, Epistles, and Revelation) as having its own transmission-history.

Gregory’s Rule:  An arrangement of the pages of a manuscript in such a way that the flesh-side of the parchment (i.e., the inner surface of the animal-skin from which the parchment was made) faces the flesh-side of the following page, and the hair-side of the parchment (i.e., the outer, hair-bearing surface of the animal-skin from which the parchment was made) faces the hair-side of the following page.  Only a few manuscripts, such as 059, do not have their pages uniformly arranged in this way.  (Named after C. R. Gregory.)

Harklean Group:  A small cluster of manuscripts which display a text of the General Epistles which is related to, and strongly agrees with, the painstakingly literal text of the Harklean Syriac version (which was produced in A.D. 616 by Thomas of Harkel, who made this revision of the already-existing Philoxenian version (which was completed in 508 as a revision/expansion of the Peshitta version) by consulting Greek manuscripts in a monastery near Alexandria, Egypt which he considered especially accurate).  The core members of the Harklean Group are 1505, 1611, 2138, and 2495.  Some other manuscripts have a weaker relationship to the main cluster, including minuscules 429, 614, and 2412. 

            Although the Greek manuscripts in the Harklean Group are all relatively late, they appear to echo a text of the General Epistles which existed in the early 600s, and perhaps earlier, inasmuch as Codex Sinaiticus (produced c. 350) contains in the third verse of the Epistle of Jude a reference to “our common salvation and life,” a reading which appears to be a conflation between an Alexandrian reading (“our common salvation”) and the reading of the Harklean Group (“our” (or “your”) “common life”). 

                   

Headpiece:  A decorative design accompanying the beginning of a book of the New Testament in continuous-text manuscripts, and sometimes accompanying the beginnings of parts of lectionaries.  These may sometimes be extremely ornate, especially in Gospel-books.

Homoioarcton:  A loss of text caused when a copyist’s line of sight drifted from the beginning of a word, phrase, or line to the same (or similar) letters at the beginning of a nearby word, phrase, or line.  Often abbreviated as “h.a.”

Homoioteleuton:  A loss of text caused when a copyist’s line of sight drifted from the end of a word, phrase, or line to the same (or similar) letters at the end of a nearby word, phrase, or line.  Often abbreviated as “h.t.”  (Many short readings can be accounted for as h.t.-errors, such as the absence of Matthew 12:47 in some important manuscripts.)

This detail from Lectionary 1963
features a simple headpiece, a rubric,
an initial, and an incipit before the text of
Matthew 5:42-43.

Initial:  A large letter at the beginning of a book or book-section, especially one enhanced by special ornateness and color.  In some Latin codices an initial may occupy almost an entire page.

Interpolation:  Substantial non-original material added to the text by a copyist.  Although patristic writings utilize several saying of Jesus that are not included in the Gospels, Codex Bezae is notable for its inclusion of interpolations in Matthew 20:28 and Luke 6:4.  Due in part to Codex Bezae’s text’s tendency to adopt longer readings, Hort proposed in the 1881 Introduction to the Revised Text that Codex Bezae’s shorter readings in Luke 24 are original, and that in each case, the longer reading is not original, despite being supported in all other text-types.  Hort labeled D’s text at these points “Western Non-Interpolations.”        

Itacism:  The interchange of vowels, such as the writing of ει itstead of ι, ε instead of αι, and ο instead of ω.   

Jerusalem Colophon:  A note which, in its fullest form, says, “Copied and corrected from the ancient manuscripts of Jerusalem preserved on the holy mountain.”  Fewer than 40 manuscripts have this note, including Codex Λ/566, 20, 117, 153, 215, 300, 565, 1071, and 1187; in 157 it is repeated after each Gospel.  

Kai-compendium:  An abbreviation for the word και, consisting of a kappa with its final downward stroke extended.

Kephalaia:  Chapters.  In most Gospels-manuscripts, each Gospel is preceded by a list of chapters:  Matthew has 68 chapters; Mark has 48, Luke has 83, and John has 18 or 19.  Chapter-titles typically appear at the top (or bottom) of the page on which they begin, with the chapter-number in the margin.

Lacuna:  A physical defect in a manuscript which results in a loss of text.

Lectionary:  A book consisting of sections of Scripture for annual reading.  Scripture-passages in lectionaries are arranged according to two calendar-forms:  the movable feasts, beginning at Easter, contained in the Synaxarion, and the immovable feasts, beginning on the first of September (the beginning of the secular year), contained in the Menologion.   

 

Lectionary Apparatus:  Marginalia and other features added to New Testament manuscripts in order to make the manuscripts capable of being used in church-services for lection-reading.  These features usually include a table of lection-locations before or after the Scripture-text.  Symbols are inserted in, or alongside, the text of each passage selected for annual reading:  αρχη for “start,” “υπερβαλε” for “skip,” “αρξου” for “resume,” and τελος for “end.”  Rubrics are sometimes added to identify readings for Christmas-time and Easter-time, and holidays considered especially important by the scribe(s).  Incipits, phrases to introduce the readings, often appear alongside the beginning of lections, or alongside the rubric in the upper or lower margin.  

Letter-compression:  A method writing in which letters are written closer to each other than usual, and some letters are written in such a way as to occupy less space than unusual,  This indicates that the scribe was attempting to reserve space.  It occurs especially on cancel-sheets made to remedy omissions by the main scribe.

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

A rare full-page miniature
in GA 2370 at the
Walters Art Museum -
Christ Blessing the Apostles.

Miniature:  An illustration, often (but not always) situated within a red frame.  The term has nothing to do with the size of the illustration; it is derived instead from the red pigment, minium, which was often used to render the frame around the picture.  (This pigment was famously used in the Book of Kells to make thousands of small dots in the illustrations.)  Miniatures of the evangelists frequently appear as full-page portraits, showing each evangelist in the process of beginning his written account; John is typically pictured assisted by Prochorus.       

Minuscule:  A manuscript in which the letters of each word are generally connected to each other.  The transition from majuscule, or uncial script, to minuscule script, occurred during the 800s and 900s, and was led by Theodore the Studite.  Uncial script was still used, however, for lectionaries in the following centuries. 

Mixture:  A combination of two or more text-types within the text of a single manuscript.  When mixture occurs, it normally is manifested as readings from one text-type sprinkled throughout a text which otherwise agrees with another text-type.  In block-mixture, distinct sections represent distinct text-types.  Codex W exhibits block-mixture; in Matthew and in Luke 8-24 its text is almost entirely Byzantine, but other text-types are represented in the rest of the Gospels-text.   

[Continued]