Articles Page Links are now fixed!

Sorry about delay correcting this, but the Articles page is now repaired
so that the links should take you to copies of each article on the PA website.

Try and see, and let us know if any other links are outdated!

Thanks

Mr. Scrivener

Vaganay (1935) on Tischendorf

The following is taken from the English translation of Vaganay (1935) An Introduction to NT Textual Criticism (1991, Cambridge) transl. Amphoux/Heimerdinger, p. 148 fwd:

"In point of fact, the text itself was not so important.  Tischendorf had essentially no firm principles from which to work.  He was an enthusiastic and fortunate explorer, an active and vigilant editor, an ardent collector of variants, but he did not have a critical mind, in the true sense of critical.  Generally speaking, he continued in the tradition established by Lachmann, giving preference to the earliest Greek texts but he paid only scant attention to their classification into families.  He appeared indeed to mistrust any theory about the history of the text, preferring to rely on his own judgement to decide between several early variants.  He was unfortunately always influenced by the last manuscript he happened to have studied.  Everyone acknowledges, for example, that in his last edition he set too much store by Codex Sinaiticus.  Besides, he did not have time to write his own Prolegomena.  This was left to one of his disciples, C. R. Gregory, who published his Prolegomena, a superb work of textual criticism, as an appendix to the Editio Octava maior (vol III, 1884; re-edited and enlarged, 1894). 

Caspar Rene Gregory also continued the work of compiling a list of the NT manuscripts, giving a brief description of each.  The result is a work of fundamental importance:  Textkritik des Neuen Testamentes in three volumes (1900-09).  The first deals with the Greek MSS, adopting the nomenclature used by Tischendorf which goes back to Wettstein.  The 2nd volume contains the earlier MSS of the various early versions [translations].  Finally, the 3rd contains additions to the other 2 volumes and adopts a new system of numbering the Greek MSS which consists entirely of figures and which is still in use today.  There were two people who took over the work from Gregory, E. von Dobschutz and K. Aland (see p. 10).   In just one century, the # of MSS has doubled.  For the MSS of the versions, except for the Latin, there is still no successor to Gregory; the situation at present is that each editor uses his own signs or somebody else's, thus causing a certain amount of confusion. 

In conclusion, it may be said that Tischendorf did not really contribute to the improvement in method of NT TC.  He simply introduced an element of flexibility into the method of his predecessors in allowing more room for internal criticism.   Honour is due to him rather for the discovery and the edition of new witnesses to the text.  He was, above all, a man of learning, and, so to speak, a man of the variants.   It was Gregory who was to be the man of the documents.  There are, it is true, many errors in the lists they compiled, even though great care was taken.  On the whole, they represent a monument which is neither bold in its design nor balanced in its proportions, but it is a least solid in its foundations." (ch. 4, p. 143-148). 

mr.scrivener

Redating Codex W based on the Obvious...

Click to Enlarge: Use Backbutton to return

Consider if you will, Codex W.  This is a surprisingly handsome and refreshing codex, with its own distinct style of "slanted Uncial" script.  Although not unique, it certainly stands out in a crowd of 4th to 6th century manuscripts, for this striking feature alone.   As well, one must consider the great shape the codex is in, something not so obvious from the poor quality photos of the past.  But, apart from the appearance of heavily burnt edges on every page, the bulk of both the parchment and the text itself is quite excellent, almost 'new' looking by comparison with many a fade page of other manuscripts, including the likes of Sinaiticus and Vaticanus (4th century).   Recently, the better quality photos available at CNTSM etc. have allowed a much kinder view of the manuscript.
Like Codex Sinaiticus, the seeming 'newness' of the MS raises an eyebrow next to others of supposed similar date.
Even the burnt edges look suspiciously like either (relatively recent?) fire-damage, or else the kind of oxidation expected in a harsh but dry climate, but where the book remained closed and unused for centuries, protecting its contents.   Of course, dating any manuscript palaeographically is difficult, and one can only hope for a 50 to 150 year range of plausible dates for its making.  As well, even the so-called "best" manuscripts have murky and suspicious origins, and show a complex history of use, travel, correction and even abuse and neglect by various unknowable hands.


Comparative Palaeography:

One of the best checks and balances available for palaeographical dating estimates is a comparison to other existing documents of better known date and origin.   That is why the little-known last few pages of another manuscript become important...

Turn to Codex Nitriensis now for a moment.  This is a 6th century Greek parchment, scraped off and re-used to copy a Syriac commentary.   It sits in the British Museum.    Most of its text is from Luke, and this part of the manuscript has been dated to the 6th century with strong certainty.

 Sometime between the late 8th and early 9th century AD, Simeon, a monk at the convent of Mar Simeon of Kartamin, copied a Syriac text for Daniel, episcopal visitor (periodeutes) of the district of Amid in Mesopotamia (see notes in Add. MS 17211, ff. 53r and 49r). We owe to this event the partial survival of several older copies of Greek works, since Simeon reused parchment sheets from which Greek text had been scraped or washed off to copy the treatise against Joannes Grammaticus of Caesarea by the author Severus of Antioch. Today, Simeon's Syriac copy survives in two manuscripts at the British Library. The Syriac text has been rebound to reconstruct the sequence of the underlying (scriptio inferior), barely visible Greek texts of a 5th century copy of Homer's Iliad (Add. MS 17210) and a 7th century copy of the Gospel of Luke (Add. MS 17211, ff.1-48) as well as a 7th or 8th century copy of Euclid's Elements (Add. MS 17211, ff.49-53).

Add. MS 17211 is, of course, better known as 'Codex Nitriensis', betraying the fact that Simeon's manuscript once belonged to the convent library of St Mary Deipara in the Nitrian Desert of Egypt. Its text, containing parts the Gospel of Luke, is also known in New Testament scholarly circles under its Gregory-Aland 'number' R or 027.

Many ancient texts survive as palimpsests, the faint remains of texts on reused parchment that sometimes reappear over time or are recovered with the help of modern technology.

 The British Museum gives the following information:

6th century, 'Codex Nitriensis', a palimpsest, 9th century, containing Severus, Patriarch of Antioch, Treatise against John Grammatikos, chapters I-VIII, XX-XXI (Syriac) written over parts of the Gospel of Luke (Greek) (Gregory-Aland R = Gregory-Aland 027)

The style of the writing and caligraphy closely resembles Codex Alexandrinus and portions of Codex Sinaiticus.  Here is a sample:

Codex Nitriensis - Luke: Click to Enlarge

What is rarely noted however, is that the last few pages of this palimpsest have another work hidden under the Syriac, in another script:   Its a fragment of the Elements of Euclid, and it also has been firmly dated, to the 7th or 8th century:

The British Museum describes this portion as follows:

Euclid, Elementa (TLG 1799.001) , books X and XIII (7th century or 8th century)

Click to Enlarge

Click to Enlarge

How was this date arrived at?   By a knowledge of the scriptorium/monastery where it came from, and most importantly, by the palaeography of its writing!
And that's the point:  This style of writing has been positively identified as 8th century, and it is the very same style of writing as found in Codex W.

Textual critics had originally wanted to date Codex W as much earlier, i.e. 5th century, because of course it was an interesting copy of the Gospels with unusual readings. (It was classed as a "Caesarean" text-type by Streeter etc.).

But palaeographically, this date appears pretty unrealistic, given that the unusual style of writing has been pegged at the 7th or 8th century, at the very location where in the 4th and 5th centuries the style of Alexandrinus was produced instead.

mr.scrivener

Digging into Sinaiticus

As a spin-off from our previous post, we revisit the same page of Sinaiticus again:


A far more interesting and illustrative shot of the top-left of the same page can be seen below (Acts 3:9b fwd)

Click to Enlarge this, then backbutton to return

Line 1:   a small "o" and an overhanging dash replace the last "N" to keep the line from being overlong.
Line 2:  "ΘΕΟΝ" is contracted to "ΘΝ" with a short horizontal dash marking the abbreviation.
Line 3:  "ΑΥΤΟΝ" is written above the line with an "λ" above the line to mark the intended point of insertion of the accidentally omitted word.
Line 5: "οc" is written very small to keep the line from being overlong.
Line 6: letters bleed through from the back obscuring the "N" twice.
Line 7: an umlaut is used here to mark the accent and beginning of "ιερου".
Line 9: is cut short to end the sentence disconnecting it from the following "ΚΑΙ", which has been wrongly identified as a semitic construction indicating a new sentence.
Line 10: "ΚΑΙ" has been written outdented as per note in line 9.
Line 12:  a special "Dot & Space" has been copied from the original master, possibly previously copied from a papyrus, correctly indicating a new paragraph.


mr.scrivener

MS Production in 4th century Scriptoriums

Here is a succinct and very clear description of manuscript production and correction in the typical Scriptorium environment, provided by F.H.A. Scrivener in his Collation of Codex Sinaiticus (1864):

(1) Corrections by the original scribe, prima manu (p. m., 'first hand') as they are termed, can hardly be deemed variant readings. The penman, proceeding with his monotonous task rapidly and perhaps a little heedlessly, falls into some clerical error, which he immediately discovers and proceeds to set right ; in a few manuscripts (e. g. Codex D) by washing out the writing fluid, which was rather a kind of paint than ink, so that what he first copied can only just be perceived under his amended reading: in others, (e. g. Codex א), by placing points or some such marks over the letters or words he wishes to revoke (e. g. 'ÄÖ') .

To give one instance out of thousands: In Acts. 4:3 (א), the text being την αυριον ην γαρ, while he was writing the first ην, the copyist allowed his eye to wander over αυριον to the second ην, and so he hegins to write γαρ : finding out his mistake as soon as γ is finished, he simply places a point over that letter to cancel it, and proceeds with αυριον ην γαρ as if no error had been made.  ...

(Here Scrivener has given the most obscure example possible at this point.  The text here has faded so much that the mark is all but invisible now:)

"(2) The next class of corrections is far more important. When a manuscript was completely written, it seems to have been subjected to two kinds of revision-process. (a) It was collated first with the master-copy from which it was derived, in order to eliminate whatever mere clerical blunders had not been noted at the time of writing; the person who executed this office was named the 'comparer' (ο αντιβαλλων), being usually the scribe himself. 

(b) The second process was that of the διορθωτης, ("deorthotes") or corrector, seldom the same person as the comparer, whose business was to revise the text, often by the aid of a second manuscript varying a little from that first employed."  (- F.H.A. Scrivener, p. xix-xxiii)

mr.scrivener