Mark 1:41 - Why Jesus was angry in codex D

The Textus Receptus reads for Mark 1:41:

ο δε ιησους σπλαγχνισθεις εκτεινας την χειρα ηψατο αυτου και λεγει αυτω θελω καθαρισθητι

'And Jesus having compassion on him, stretched forth his hand; and touching him, saith to him: "I will. Be thou made clean." (Mk 1:41)

 Here we have almost complete agreement among all important witnesses, including Aleph/B): א A B C K L W ΔΘΠ 090 f1 f13 28 33 565 700  892 1009 1010 1071 1079 1195 1216 1230 1241 1242 1253 1344 1365 1546 1646 2148 2174 Byz. Lect. Italic, Vulgate, Syr, copt Goth Arm Geo Diat. etc.


The UBS2 text notes the following variant:

ο δε ιησους οργισθεις εκτεινας την χειρα αυτου ηψατο και λεγει αυτω θελω καθαρισθητι
'And Jesus being angry at him, stretched forth his hand; and touching him, saith to him: "I will. Be thou made clean." (Mk 1:41)

The support is:  D it-a,d,ff2,r1, Ephraem (it-b omits word).

Of course even with this flimsy attestation, the reading creeps into many modern versions due to "overwhelming" internal evidence (a conjectured 'harder reading' using the criterion of embarrassment).

Now however, new evidence has come to light, in part suggested by the strange Old Latin support.   It is found in the previous verse, (Mk 1:40), where the text begins,

και ερχεται προς αυτον λεπρος ...

 And there came a leper to him,... (Mk 1:40)

In several ancient Irish MSS we find the Old Latin/Clementine vulgate reading:

Et venit ad eum leprosus deprecans eum : 

However with the following twist:

Et venit ad eum leprecans eum : 

That is, there was a homoeoteleuton error as follows:

Et venit ad 
   eum lepr
 osus  depr

 ecans eum : 

 
dropping 8 letters of text and causing a new word to form: leprecans.  
This is a common spelling of the Old Irish word,

leprechaun

c.1600, from Ir. lupracan, metathesis from O.Ir. luchorpan lit. "a very small body," from lu "little" + corpan, dim. of corp "body," from L. corpus "body"

Apparently the early scribe then,  reading:

Jesus autem misertus ejus..., in the sense of "deplore" back-translated / corrected the Greek in Bezae to read:

  οργισθεις  i.e., Jesus "was angry with" or "despised" the Leprechaun, presumably for being mischievous and duplicious.

mr.scrivener

Rex Howe on Bagnall’s Early Christian Books In Egypt (2009)

Rex Howe is reviewing Bagnall’s  Early Christian Books In Egypt (2009) in an ongoing series of posts over at his blog,  Level Paths. 

Turning to the subject of the cost and market for books in the 2nd century, he summarizes and discusses it as follows:

"Bagnall’s book is worth its weight in gold because he has gathered so much information from the most current research regarding the economics of ancient book production. His bibliography and research on the primary sources available are priceless. He is precise and to the point—such a technical discussion could…effectively…bog down…the…reader, but Bagnall shares the necessary information and moves on to make his point. For the sake of not simply repeating what he has so perfectly summarized, allow me to simply give you some bullet points on ancient book economics:

• Ancient book prices are rarely preserved, so the database of information with which to work is limited.
• Apophthegmata Patrum owned by Abba Gelasios is a complete parchment Bible priced at 18 gold solidi, or 72 Roman grams of gold [1 solidus = 4 grams of gold from Constantine (272–337) onward].
• John Moschus (Pratum sprituale, PG 87/3.2997) values a New Testament at 3 solidi. A New Testament is about 19% of the total Bible; thus, implying a value of 15.6 solidi for an entire Bible—not differing greatly from Gelasios’ Bible (18 solidi).
• These prices should be accepted only with caution; however, the consistency of the two witnesses is encouraging.
• Testimony from the ostraka found in the Theban West Bank (credit given to Anne  Boud’hors) informs us of prices that, at first, appear a bit cheaper; however, two important factors raise questions about such “door-buster” prices: (1) it is uncertain that the prices listed included binding, which typically doubled the price, and (2) it is uncertain that such affordable prices would have applied to complete Bibles.
• Bagnall has a very helpful section on the prices of parchment and papyrus (54–56).
• For the sake of space, several other factors come into play when researching the economics of ancient book production: (1) material: parchment or papyrus, (2) the cost of labor, (3) accuracy of the ancient records that provide us with testimony about the prices of ancient book production, (4) the size/format of the sheet chosen for the production of a book, (5) the quality of copying desired (6) the practice of recycling writing materials—palimpsests, stuffing for binding and the Panopolis practice of gluing written sides of papyrus together in order to create one, new, thicker, “blank” leaf—and (7) the possible low cost of monastic labor (but see page 60).
• On page 57, Bagnall provides readers with a helpful table (3.1) that illustrates the “Cost Estimates (in Solidi) for One Bible” based upon the style of the desired handwriting, the material chosen for production, and the cost of labor.
• Bagnall proposes that the savings one would retain from choosing papyrus over parchment is correlated to the style of hand desired in the copying of the Bible.

The bullet points do not do justice to the thorough discussion of Bagnall, but hopefully, you feel a little more acquainted with factors one must consider when thinking about ancient book production. So, just how expensive were books? This is a key turning point in Bagnall’s argument in chapter three. Who would have owned Christian books? Bagnall insists that the prices of books were expensive enough that copies of the Scriptures would have been possessed, in most cases, only by churches and monasteries. Churches were concerned with charity and financial support for their clergy—thus making clergymen the most likely owners of Christian books. Listen to this quote from Bagnall:

"At the lower end, let us imagine a reader who received 10 solidi per year. A complete Bible would cost him half a year’s income. Such a purchase would have been entirely out of reach. Even an unbound short book, a single gospel on papyrus of the sort that cost a third of a solidus in the ostraka cited by Anne Boud’hors, would amount to one-thirtieth of a year’s income—in proportionate terms (although not in purchasing power) the equivalent of $1,000 today, let us say, for someone earning $35,000. People at that sort of income level do not buy books at that price. Even the best-paid of academics do not buy books at that price (62)."

Further, it is most likely that we must look to the high clergy (e.g., the office of bishop) for those who may have been able to purchase books in ancient Egypt. Thus, Bagnall returns to his thesis: with this in mind, how many Christian books should we expect to find in and around Alexandria? Three factors immediately come to the forefront:

(1) the number of high clergy Christian communities in the region,

(2) the salary of high clergy, such as bishops, in the region, and

(3) the presence of other, well-educated (and therefore, wealthy) Alexandrian Christians in the second century.

These factors coupled with Bagnall’s view that the Church as an institution was underdeveloped reinforce that the “probability of finding many Christian books truly datable to the 2nd century is very low” (65).

Prior to ending the chapter, Bagnall takes time to “redeem” the third century. A considerable amount manuscripts have come to us from the third century. Apart from the influence of Demetrios’ bishopric, Bagnall proposes another interesting explanation for the apparent increase in Christian book production—some among the urban elite became interested. He offers two examples: (1) well-educated, Alexandrian Christian like Origen and Clement most likely did not live in isolation and (2) even more intriguing is the testimony of a bilingual, book-owning, experienced writer about whom we learn via Chester Beatty Papyrus VII, which is a Greek codex of Isaiah that contains marginal glosses written in Coptic.

Thus, for Bagnall, the 2nd century Christians in Egypt simply did not possess the Church structure or finances needed to establish a respectable library. However, the 3rd century saw the development of the Church as an institution and the growing interest among the urban elite which led to an increase in Christian book production. Speculations abound in certain areas of his argumentation; however, he is quick to recognize this. Yet, his reasoning is convincing."

 - Rex Howe

What does this discussion tell us?  I would take away two important points:

(1) the scarcity of copies and lack of production in the 2nd century has consequences.  It means practically speaking that most copying errors and differentiation of text-lines must have happened in the late 2nd or early 3rd century, and not earlier.

(2) Corrupt textual lines like those behind Codex Vaticanus and Sinaiticus, were likely to have evolved later, and not earlier, and so they don't really reflect significantly older text-types, even when they appear to present a common ancestor-text.

  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

Dr. Robinson and Colwell on accidental vs. deliberate omissions

Nazaroo's response to Dr. Maurice Robinson's critique of his claim of over 75-80 homoeoteleuton errors has been posted on the homoioteleuton blog.

Dr. Maurice Robinson on homoeoteleuton in Aleph/B

I wanted to respond to one point made there regarding the question of the number of accidental vs. deliberate (theological) changes supposed to have been made in the Alexandrian text.

(Dr. Robinson claimed that most of the omissions, both h.t. and non-h.t. under question were deliberate edits, rather than accidents, as a counter-claim to Nazaroo's count. So the homoeoteleuton features were mere coincidences in some large or at least significant number of cases.)

Here is a quote from Everett Harrison, (1971):

"Re: Doctrinal Alterations: There is considerable divergence of opinion on this matter. Are there places where the text has been changed in the interest of doctrinal viewpoint? E.C. Colwell goes so far as to say, "The majority of the variant readings in the NT were created for theological or dogmatic reasons."  He surely cannot mean by this the actual majority, for the vast majority are devoid of all theological significance, being matters of orthography, synonyms, easily confused words, etc. A recent work by C.S.C. Williams, Alterations to the Text of the Synoptic Gospels and Acts (1951), deals with this problem. Even if all his contentions are admitted, the amount of such alteration is not great."

- E.F. Harrison, Introduction to the NT,(Eerdmans, 1971) p.86.

  Harrison is doubtless right about Colwell's sloppy claim here. Most variants are indeed accidental or at least grammatical, not deliberate theological edits at all.

The question that remains is, what about the specific 200 omissions in the WH text? Are the majority of those accidental or deliberate?

If 40% of them have homoeoteleuton features, then 60% don't. But that doesn't mean that the majority of non-h.t. omissions are deliberate.

I have shown some serious evidence that exposes the patterns of line-length, which is spread across both groups of readings (ht. and non ht.).

Colwell himself showed that (significant) singular readings are mostly accidental haplography omissions across all early MSS. But there is no reason not to extend such results to non-singular readings, since these are often simply errors that were not caught until they were copied for a few generations and proliferated.

We should apply what we know about immediate scribal habits (1st generation errors) to more distant variants (2nd/3rd generation errors). There is no good reason not to assume that the immediate predecessors of extant scribal work did not have the very same common faults.

mr.scrivener

Codex Corsendoncensis GA-3 (12th cent.), Scribal Gloss

Codex Corsendoncensis is such a late manuscript, and valued so little, that it is not even found in the manuscript-lists or apparatus of modern critical editions like the UBS Greek NT.  Nor does Bob Waltz (Encyclopedia of NTTC) even give it an entry in his extensive description of cursives and miniscules.

Its sole claim to fame is that it was one of the few manuscripts used by Erasmus in constructing his Greek NT (1516), and that it contains a clumsy scribal gloss, (which in turn sparked Erasmus' famous annoyed and skeptical remark about Greek manuscripts).  John Marsh describes the gloss: 

"The common text at 2 Cor. 8:4-5. is ...δεξασθαι ημας (v5) και ου καθως ηλπισαμεν...   but the best, and most numerous authorities reject δεξασθαι ημας , which is probably an interpolation. The proprietor of an ancient MS. from which Corserdoncensis was copied, knowing that δεξασθαι ημας was contained in some MSS. but rejected by others, and wishing perhaps to rescue these words from the charge of spuriousness, wrote, with a reference to δεξασθαι ημας  the following note in the margin :  εν πολλοις των αντιγραφων ουτως ευρηται.  The industrious scribe, who wrote Corsendoncensis, taking these words for a part of Holy Writ, which had been omitted in the text and supplied in the margin, transferred them into the body of his own work, and wrote as follows;  ...δεξασθαι ημας (v5)  εν πολλοις των αντιγραφων ουτως ευρηται και ου καθως ηλπισαμεν..."   ( Marsh's Letters to Archdeacon Travis, P. 176  noted in The Critical review, or, Annals of literature, Volume 16  [Feb. 1796] edit.  T.G. Smollett, p. 450)

Jan Krans tells us:

"The reception history of the scribal blunder itself is interesting as well. It was mentioned for the first time by none other than Erasmus. In his 1519 edition, he added a long note to his annotation on these verses. The example must have been very welcome to him, for it is clear proof that even the sacred texts are not free from ridiculous scribal errors and that textual criticism is necessary, whatever theologians may say. He concluded the note by saying that 'we found innumerable places corrupted for this same cause'. Even before the 1519 edition, he had already mentioned the case in his apology against Faber Stapulensis. There, the point made was somewhat more specific. He warned his colleague to 'not naively trust (Greek) manuscripts. Keep thinking critically'. "

This remarkable statement by Erasmus is important, because he never produced any further examples from the "innumerable" instances he claimed to have found.    There plainly aren't that many in the few manuscripts he himself collated (certainly none like the blunder in GA-3).

From this seed of Erasmus, the rumour-weed about scribal glosses begins to grow:

"In subsequent centuries, the blunder was frequently mentioned in text-critical books. Bengel, in his 1734 Greek New Testament, refers to Erasmus.   Metzger also mentions the case in his Text of the New Testament (3-1992, p. 194; see also Metzger/Ehrman 4-2005, pp. 258-259), referring to Bengel."  (- Jan Krans, Weblog 2010)

Yet the fragility and weakness of this claim is apparent, even to Jan Krans:

"The example ... shows that marginal annotations which were mistakenly adopted into the text did occur. The question remains, however, how widespread the phenomenon actually is, and how it can be demonstrated in cases that are less clear than the one in miniscule GA-3." (- Jan Krans, ibid.)

 It is ironic that Erasmus, often hailed as the 'father' of the Textus Receptus turns out to be the ultimate source of the dubious generalization that "scribes frequently tended to mistakenly turn marginal notes into text", and that this maxim is actually based on a single late 12th century miniscule.

For Jan Krans' article, see here:
Jan Krans on GA-3

 
mr.scrivener