Eusebian canons - the simple palaeographic / textual proof that Sinaiticus is centuries later than 4th century

Steven Avery

Steven Avery

Administrator
Dirk Jongkind in Scribal Habits … gave us incredible and meticulous detail on the Eusebian canons

He showed conclusively that by the time of Sinaiticus the Eusebian canons had undergone

1) corruption
2) conflation
3) transmission history

Yo be continued
 
Steven Avery

Steven Avery

Administrator
https://brentnongbri.com/2021/05/25/the-eusebian-apparatus-in-codex-sinaiticus/


Hi Brent and friends,

Good study, thanks!

One significant element of the Eusebian canons can be seen in Dirk Jongkind’s Scribal Habits of Codex Sinaiticus (2013), which has a wonderful Eusebian canon analysis section.

Dirk notices numerous anomalies in the Eusebian canons in Sinaiticus that are the result of:

transmission history
corruption
conflation

Since the Eusebian canons are dated to the early 4th century, realistically we can estimate 200 years or more for these competing and conflicting and conflating transmission lines to occur.

This pushes forward the terminus post quem of Sinaiticus about two centuries from the current Tischendorf-inspired scholarship-consensus date,

Your thoughts?

Thanks!

Steven Avery
Dutchess County, NY USA
https://linktr.ee/stevenavery

=================

Hi Steven, I’m not sure that one needs to posit 200 years or more for these kinds of discrepancies to appear. The Eusebian system is brilliant, but it is somewhat complicated to add it to a manuscript, and problems like those discussed by Jongkind at Matt. 16:2-6 and Mark 15:28 could, if I understand him correctly, result from just one or two exemplars in the transmission history that included the verses that are absent in Sinaiticus. I am not sufficiently familiar with the Eusebian apparatus to say how common or uncommon it is for gospel manuscripts to have “error free” versions of the Eusebian apparatus. I would be grateful if anyone had the data to answer that question.
 
Last edited:
Steven Avery

Steven Avery

Administrator
Brent
Matt. 16:2-6 and
Mark 15:28

cascading errors ?

Appendix III: “Deviating table numbers in the Eusebian apparatus.”

The nature of the corruption of the Eusebian system changes from Gospel to Gospel and « *ms unlikelr to have been taken from the same manuscript that provided the main text.

suffered already during its ussion history. (

Dirk Jongkind
p. 117-118

1681772188159.png
1681772129598.png


p. 120
1681772325344.png


p. 129
1681772407127.png


p. 116
1681772566800.png


p. 253
1681772977969.png
 
Last edited:
Steven Avery

Steven Avery

Administrator
Eusebian canon history explained

The First Chapters: Dividing the Text of Scripture in Codex Vaticanus and Its Predecessors (2022)
Charles E. Hill
https://books.google.com/books?id=zpFWEAAAQBAJ&pg=PA53

2.4.1 Parallel Section Type: The Ammonian Sections (AS)
and Eusebian Canons in the Gospels

One of the most ingenious and enduringly useful textual tools of antiquity came
from the hand of Eusebius of Caesarea. Basing himself on the earlier work of a
third-century Ammonius of Alexandria (not the fifth-/sixth-century philosopher
mentioned above), Eusebius invented a system of cross-references for the Gospels
that is still printed in critical editions of the NT today. It is not as monumental a
project as was Origen’s Hexapla, but it has far surpassed that earlier textual
instrument in long-lasting utility.56 It is first known to us from the partial witness
of Codex Sinaiticus from the fourth century and more extensively in Codex
Alexandrinus from the fifth.57
We are fortunate to have Eusebius’s own description of what he was about in
constructing this apparatus. In a letter written to someone named Carpianus he
says that he used a ‘Diatessaron’ devised some decades earlier by Ammonius,
which set out the text of Matthew, flanked in three separate columns (much like
Origen’s Hexapla) by all the similar pericopes (^piKo-nds) of the other Gospels.
This provided a panoramic view of the similarities and differences between the
Evangelists’ accounts. The drawback to Ammonius’s meticulously constructed
tool was that, while it preserved the sequence of the Matthean narrative intact, it
necessarily destroyed the coherent sequence (roi» rrjs aKo\ov6(as dppov)58 of the
others. (We also do not know for certain whether sections of the other Gospels
that had no parallel with Matthew were left out by Ammonius, or simply spliced in
at the points he thought good.) Eusebius took over Ammonius’s parallel sections59
but devised a better system for displaying them, while leaving the other Gospel
texts unmolested. This he accomplished by placing in the margins of each intact
Gospel, numbers for each of the sections Ammonius had created, at each point
where a new parallel section began. This of course would have involved some
reworking of Ammonius’s project, probably including the assigning of numbers to
each individual pericope, which Eusebius could then insert into the margins of
each Gospel at the beginning of each new parallel pericope. While there are
variations between manuscript witnesses, the numbers of sections Ammonius
and Eusebius created (sometimes called the Ki<pa\a<a minora),60 are considered
to be: 355 for Matthew; 233 for Mark; 342 for Luke; 232 for John.
But to make the apparatus truly useful required another step. Eusebius then
constructed ten separate tables which coordinated all the section numbers of each
Gospel, pericope by pericope, and then numbered those tables. The tables would
then be prefixed to a copy of the fourfold Gospel, and each marginal section
number in each Gospel would carry beneath it a second number, written in red
ink, informing the reader which table contained the passage in question and its
parallels in the other Gospels. As he instructs Carpianus:
1681804274658.png


1681804328736.png
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top