James Snapp Jr. on the colophons for Mark's Ending

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

Chase (1897) on Mark 16:9-20

Here is the appendix to Chase's work on Codex Bezae, in which he discusses Mark's ending (click to enlarge the pages, then backbutton returns here):

CLICK TO ENLARGE

Click to Enlarge pages

Codex W and Greek Enoch? ...I don't think so

In his palaeographic analysis, Sanders (1912) compared Codex W to several older Greek manuscripts, including P. Cair. 10759. (Greek Enoch, Gosp.Peter etc.).  To give a standard sample for manuscripts of this early period, we offer the following example, P. Chester Beatty XII, leaf 3:

Typical earlier Greek Papyrus:  Click to Enlarge

The first thing to note about early calligraphy, is the startling difference between using a soft brush or reed (earlier papyri) and using a hard nib or quill (4th - 5th century and beyond).   This stylizes the writing more than any other single factor.   Its the difference between painting, which is soft and blob-like, allowing the ink/paint to flow and leading it with the brush, versus the firm and hard controlled strokes of the pen, using a thinner more ink-like medium.

paint-brush versus quill  - Click to Enlarge

This softer paint-like writing was practically necessary, because of the relative roughness and fragility of papyrus, which was a primitive paper-like material, as opposed to later parchment and vellum (animal skins).

It is true that sometimes the early Egyptian scribe using papyrus would give a slight to moderate tilt or angle to the letters, but this varies from scribe to scribe, and can hardly be defined even as a conscious choice.   The tilt is probably based on practical factors like right- or left-handedness, and not issues of style at all.   The early slight to moderate tilt may be quite noticeable in more extreme cases, but does not seem to be a choice based on anything but writing convenience and speed.   There is no dispute however, that slanted writing was popular quite early, as a few samples of P45 can illustrate:

P45 - Click to Enlarge

Again, the thickness of the letters may vary widely, from elegant like this, to bloated and clumsy, but the same 'painted on' look dominates the calligraphic style and feel, regardless of incidentals like letter-shape or tilt.   As well, P45 (or the group of pages so designated) involves a variety of books and hands, all dated roughly to the 3rd century, of which only Luke/Acts is tilted.   It is not possible to make any conclusion at all regarding date based on tilt or angle of writing.

 P45 wasn't available to Sanders (P45 was discovered in 1930), but probably would have been preferred by him as an example of early slanted writing over the Greek Enoch fragments from P. Cair. 10759 below:

Papyrus Cairo 10759

Gospel of Peter  (Click to Enlarge)

Enoch (Click to Enlarge)

 P. Cair. 10759 also spans several books and hands, but the Enoch pages have the closest similarity to Codex W.   Of particular interest is one feature, namely the variation in line thickness based on the angle of the 'nib' or quill used to write the letters.   This itself seems to suggest a much later date for this section of 10759, than may have been at first assigned to it.   The other pages (e.g. Peter) show instead the typical 'painted on' look of a brush-like implement or soft quill.   Indeed, Enoch resembles more the typical hand of the late 3rd or 4th century scriptorium than the early papyri.

We have already referred to Schmid's excellent and thorough article in  The Freer Biblical Manuscripts (2006), Ed. Larry W. Hurtado, and we will quote his passage of Sanders here:

"Hand 'c' [of Enoch] bears a much closer resemblance to the hands of W...The ease, grace, and slope of the hand remind one strongly of the first hand of W, but the shapes of many of the letters, notably  γ ε κ μ σ ω  are far closer to [the 1st quire of John in W]. I see no reason for not considering the two hands of the Enoch fragment contemporary.  It [Enoch] has been dated to the 6th century, but though both hands are somewhat more developed types than the hands of W, I should not place the date later than the end of the 5th [century]." (Sanders, 137-8, in Schmid, p. 239)

Here Sanders is already jockeying to secure an earlier date for his Codex W, but the problem of the anachronism of P. Cair. 10759 is quite glaring!  -  It has already been dated to the 6th century A.D., and yet it is probably the closest thing to Quire 1 of John in Codex W we are ever going to find.  In other words, despite Sanders' cleverness, this is really evidence for dating W to the 6th century palaeographically, not the 5th century.

And if so, trying to make Codex W the archetype of other 5th/6th century witnesses is a naive and flimsy proposal.   But why does it matter?   Because Codex W is now no longer an early "4th or 5th century" witness to other palaeographic features, such as outdented and enlarged letters, slanted varying-width styles, etc.  - But rather, a very late witness.

mr.scrivener

Codex B & Mark's Ending Revisited

James Snapp Jr. informs us on his webpage discussing Vaticanus that, if an ending were added to the MS,

"The subscription would thus be in the lower margin, but this occurs in two other places in the codex (at the end of Luke and at the end of Philippians); the copyist did not see that as a problem."

The Ending of Luke, with 'subscription' (Scribal Signature) shown below, reaching below the bottom margin:

Codex Vaticanus: Luke's Ending - Click to Enlarge

Likewise, the 'subscription' at the end of Philippians also extends below the line, showing that the Scribe did not have much concern for this issue.

Codex Vaticanus:  Ending of Philippians 

mr.scrivener