I have taken this verbatum from Willker's TC-List, with some added formatting:
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Post #6619:
Regarding the question about how many copies of Mark have annotations, and the nature of those annotations, here is an excerpt from a lecture I plan to give in the near future, covering that very subject. Once we set aside copies in which the annotations is simply the Commentary of Victor of Antioch, here is what we have:
". . . . That note in the Commentary of Victor of Antioch is not the only note that should be considered when evaluating the evidence about the ending of Mark.
Bruce Metzger wrote that
"Not a few manuscripts which contain the passage have scribal notes stating that older Greek copies lack it, and in other witnesses the passage is marked with asterisks or obeli, the conventional signs used by copyists to indicate a spurious addition to a document." (Bruce Metzger, p. 123, A Textual Commentary on the Greek N. T., � 1971 by the United Bible Societies.)
The second part of Dr. Metzger's statement is incorrect. To the best of my knowledge, not a single manuscript that does not have a note about the passage has been shown to place asterisks or obeli alongside it to convey scribal doubt about the passage. When copyists wanted to signify doubt about a large passage, they ordinarily placed a *series* of asterisks or other marks alongside it. But the marks that have been claimed to signify scribal doubt about the passage in unannotated manuscripts are solitary. I looked into this, and in every case that I could track down, where the presence of a mark at Mark 16:9 has been verified, and it does not refer to a note in the margin, the same mark appears elsewhere in the same manuscript at places where there is no textual issue, but there is a lection-division."
(Time out. See, regarding this, my earlier posts about those copies here at textualcriticism. There is still one MS in Spain that I have not been able to check out. But it's a MS with a commentary accompanying the text. Time in.)
"In other words, these manuscripts were studied superficially, and marks that were made as part of the lectionary apparatus were misidentified as if they were made to convey scribal doubt. In the real world, instead of conveying scribal doubt, they do just the opposite, showing that the passage was expected to be read in the churches as a normal part of the church-services on Ascension-day, and as part of an eleven-part series of readings about Christ's resurrection.
What about the manuscripts that contain notes? There is no reason to vaguely refer to this as "not a few" copies. They consist of 14 copies in three specific groups:
The first group is manuscripts 20, 215, and 300. Manuscripts 215 and 300 are sister-manuscripts. 20 and 300 both feature the "Jerusalem Colophon," stating that the text was checked using the ancient and approved copies at Jerusalem. At or near Mark 16:9, a note in these three manuscripts says, "From here to the end forms no part of the text in some of the copies. But in the ancient ones, it all appears intact." The facts thus give a very different impression from what one gets by reading Metzger! Instead of "stating that older Greek copies lack" verses 9-20, this note affirms that although some copies lack the passage, the ancient ones include it. And from the "Jerusalem Colophon," it may be deduced that the ancient copies being referred to are those "ancient and approved copies at Jerusalem."
There is simply no way that anyone could reasonably draw from this evidence the conclusion that the annotator intended to guide the reader to reject the passage. This note does just the opposite, by affirming that Mark 16:9-20 is in the ancient copies.
The second group consists of some members of family-1, specifically, 1, 205, 205abs, 209, and 1582. The Gospels-text in these copies, to one extent or another, is Caesarean. The note in these five manuscripts runs as follows:
"Now in some of the copies, the evangelist's work is finished here, as is also Eusebius Pamphili's canonization. But in many, this also appears."In Codices 1 and 1582, this note is not in the margin; it is situated directly above verse 9.
This note informs the reader that "some copies" stop the text at the end of verse 8, and that the Eusebian Canons do not include Mark 16:9 to 20, but that many copies include verses 9-20. In addition, even though the note explicitly says that the Eusebian Sections stop at verse 8, the Section-numbers in 1 and 1582 include the passage: Section 234 begins at 16:9, Section 235 begins at 16:10, and Section 236 begins at 16:12.
The third group consists of five secondary members of family-1: specifically, manuscripts 15, 22, 1110, 1192, and 1210. In these manuscripts, a note before verse nine says,
"In some of the copies, the Gospel is completed here, but in many, this also appears."This is basically the same note in Codices 1 and 1582, minus the phrase about the Eusebian Canons. Somebody, at a time and place where the Eusebian Canons had been expanded so as to include the passage, removed the phrase about the Eusebian Canons, because it appeared not to be true.
There is one more manuscript with a note about Mark 16:9-20: minuscule 199, which was made in the 1100's. Referring to verses 9-20, a brief note in minuscule 199 says, "In some of the copies, this does not occur, but it stops here." Although this note's wording is unique, Minuscule 199 should be classified with the first group of manuscripts that have the "Jerusalem Colophon." Its text in Luke is aligned with the text of the Luke found in another codex, which is partly uncial Lambda and partly minuscule 566; in that manuscript, the "Jerusalem Colophon" appears at the end of each Gospel.
So: we are dealing with just fourteen annotated manuscripts. And we are not dealing with 14 independent notes: the notes found in 199, 20, 215, and 300, are related, via a link to the manuscripts mentioned in the "Jerusalem Colophon." Codices 1, 205, 205abs, 209, and 1582 share the same note because they share the same ancestor-manuscript. And, the note in codices 15, 22, 1110, 1192, and 1210 is the same note that is in Codex 1, except the phrase about the Eusebian Canons has been removed.
Plus, with the exception of the short note in minuscule 199, these notes appear to have been written, not to raise doubts about the passage, but to assure the reader that the passage is authentic, being found in either the ancient copies, or in many copies." [end of James' tentative lecture]
There you have it.
Yours in Christ,
James Snapp, Jr.
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Message #6623:
"The first set of annotated manuscripts to examine consists of manuscripts 20, 215, and 300. They share a very similar text, and manuscripts 20 and 300 appear to be among the few manuscripts which can confidently be considered sisters; that is, they shared the same exemplar. Burgon noticed that in both of these manuscripts, in the Gospel of Mark, which is accompanied in both manuscripts by Victor of Antioch's commentary (though in each it is attributed to Cyril of Alexandria), although the number of lines per page is different, "every page begins with the same syllable, both of Text and Commentary." [See page 289 of Burgon's 1871 book The Last Twelve Verses of St. Mark Vindicated, in Appendix D.]
In addition, manuscripts 20, 215, and 300 all feature, in one form or another, the Jerusalem Colophon. This is an annotation, found in 37 Greek manuscripts, which states that the manuscript has been checked using the ancient and approved copies at Jerusalem.
In 20 and 300, the colophon states after the end of Mark,
ευαγγέλιον
κατα Μάρκον
εγράφη και
αντεβλήθη
ομοίως εκ των
εσπουδασμένων
στίχοις αφς′
κεφαλαίοις
σλξ′,that is, "The Gospel according to Mark, similarly written and checked from the best copies - 1,700 lines, 237 chapters (or, sections)."
In 300, the colophon at the end of the Gospel of Matthew says,
ευαγγέλιον
κατα Ματθαιον
εγράφη και
αντεβλήθη εκ
των
‛Ιεροσολύμοις
παλαιων
αντιγράφων, εν
στίχοις βφιδ′ "The Gospel according to Matthew, written and checked from the old copies at
Jerusalem, in 2,514 lines."[For further details see Tommy Wasserman's article "The Greek New Testament Manuscripts in Sweden with an Excursus on the Jerusalem Colophon", in Svensk Exegetisk Ǻrsbok, 2010.]
Manuscripts 20, 215, and 300 have the following note at, or near, Mark 16:9 (with some words abbreviated):
εντευθεν
εως του τέλους
εν τισι των
αντιγράφων ου
κειται· εν δε
τοις αρχαίοις
πάντα
απαράλειπτα
κειται" "From here to the end forms no part of the text in some of the copies. But in the ancient ones, it all appears intact."
In 20 and 300, this note is not located at the beginning of 16:9; it
is located, as Burgon stated, "in the wrong place in both of them, viz. at the
close of ver. 15, where it interrupts the text." However, this does not indicate that the copyist was confused; only that he was forgetful: the copyist placed the note in a convenient place on the page, and forgot to add asterisks to direct the reader to the beginning of verse nine.
[See pages 118-119 of Burgon's 1871 book The Last Twelve Verses of St. Mark Vindicated, especially the footnotes, and compare to this pages 365 and 366 of C. R. Williams' article "The Appendices to the Gospel according to Mark", in Transactions of the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences, Vol. 18, Feb. 1915, Yale University Press.]
Also, if you download the 242-page French Intro to NTTC by J.P.P. Martin, on page 14 (as digitally counted) you can see a reproduction of the pertinent page (140r) of Codex 20.
Is there anything else that needs clarification?
Yours in Christ,
James Snapp, Jr.
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Thanks for this to James, from
mr.scrivener
