Steven Avery
Administrator
p. 109
How We Got the New Testament
Text, Transmission, Translation (2013)
Stanley E. Porter
https://www.mybibleteacher.net/uploads/1/2/4/6/124618875/howweg~1.pdf
The second, and perhaps even more important, observation is that the two codexes themselves appear to recognize some type of differentiation among the books included. The organization of Codex Sinaiticus (01 א) falls into three distinguishable parts. The first part, including the four Gospels, ends with John’s Gospel and is followed by a blank sheet. The second part includes the Pauline Epistles, with Hebrews after 2 Thessalonians, and ends after Philemon, followed by a blank sheet. The third section consists of Acts, the Catholic Epistles, and then Revelation (a pattern of organization that seems to have become prominent from the seventh century on, especially in Byzantine manuscripts),188 before Barnabas and Shepherd of Hermas. There are blank sheets that distinctly separate the Gospels and the Pauline Epistles. I think this may well indicate that these units—the very ones that I traced transmissionally above—are thought of as fixed units. There is no further blank sheet dividing the rest of the New Testament books from Barnabas and Shepherd of Hermas.
However, another telling feature may well serve a similar purpose. At the end of every book in the New Testament (and Old Testament as well) of Codex Sinaiticus (01 א), there is a colophon that includes the title of the book and a coronis (a decorative mark used to indicate the end of a textual unit) written in the ink of the manuscript. Ever since the fundamental work of H. J. M. Milne and T. C. Skeat on the hands of Sinaiticus (as well as the colophons of Codex Alexandrinus [02 A]), there has been a strong linkage of the colophons, and the accompanying corona, with the scribal hands, so that scribe A has a particular way of drawing his coronis, and so on.189 I believe this is probably generally correct, but three exceptions are worth noting that help us to understand the organization and content of Codex Sinaiticus (01 א). At the end of Revelation and of Barnabas there is a more ornate coronis used than is found elsewhere. Both Revelation 1:5 to the end and Barnabas were written by scribe A, whose “coronis is the simplest, consisting of a crossed pair of wavy lines, sometimes ornamented with tendrils.”190 However, the corona at the end of Revelation and Barnabas are considerably more elaborate in their written forms, with more ornamentation of the tendrils. These corona in the hand of scribe A are unparalleled in the New Testament, although there are corona approaching this elaboration by scribe A at the end of Psalms, Proverbs, and 1 Maccabees.191 The corona are more complex in their written form, but more noteworthy is the fact that they may well have been partially written in red ink. The online version and the recent printed version of Codex Sinaiticus (01 א) do not note the coloring of these corona (although they do indicate uses of red elsewhere, including in the Psalms and for Eusebian and Ammonian numbers),192 but such coloring is found in the facsimile edition of Tischendorf. It is possible that Tischendorf fabricated this coloring himself (as he is often, though I think grossly unjustly, accused of fabricating other things), but the places where he indicates red ink in the corona match more darkly colored ink in the photographs. I suspect that the red ink was observed by Tischendorf and captured in his facsimile, but has now faded to a dark brown.193 The only other place where a more developed coronis is found in the New Testament of Codex Sinaiticus (01 א) is at the end of Mark’s Gospel. This coronis is usually simply attributed to scribe D, who uses more elaborate corona. However, there are only four examples of corona by scribe D in extant Sinaiticus, and this is by far the most elaborate and the only one that also uses red ink (visible in the photograph as well as in Tischendorf’s facsimile). In my view, it is probable that the scribes used these colored corona to indicate the location of known textual irregularities and to differentiate them from the rest of the text.194 Thus, the scribe of Codex Sinaiticus (01 א) realized that after Revelation there was something extraordinary about Barnabas and Shepherd of Hermas, hence their placement at the end of the manuscript, even after the third and least well-fixed textual grouping, and differentiation with the colored corona at the end of Revelation and Barnabas to indicate the following textual ambiguity. The scribes also, it seems to me, realized that there was a known alternative ending to Mark (the long ending), though they did not include it but indicated their knowledge with the elaborate and colored coronis. 195
188. Parker, New Testament Manuscripts, 283.
189. H. J. M. Milne and T. C. Skeat, including contributions by Douglas Cockerell, Scribes and Correctors of the Codex Sinaiticus (London: British Museum, 1938), 27–29, with an appendix of the colophons on plates 1–9. This is followed by Parker, Codex Sinaiticus, 74. I am not convinced, however, that all that can be said about the use of the colophons, especially the corona, has been said. Some of my comments below indicate further directions for possible study. For the latest study of the manuscript, see Jongkind, Scribal Habits. Jongkind concentrates on the scribes but in some areas does not go beyond Milne and Skeat.
190. Milne and Skeat, Scribes and Correctors, 28.
191. I think that Milne and Skeat underestimate the variety of corona used by scribe A, and the potential places where various corona might be used. The case in point is the uses in the Old Testament noted above, where it is possible (the evidence on the basis of the fragmentary nature of the Old Testament precludes certain judgment) that more elaborate corona were used to differentiate groupings within the Testament. For example, Psalms and Proverbs are differentiated from the other poetical works (written in two-column format), and 1 Maccabees is differentiated from 4 Maccabees
(Sinaiticus did not contain 2 Maccabees and 3 Maccabees).
192. See Parker, Codex Sinaiticus, 48.
193. The corona have undoubtedly faded on many pages of the manuscript to the point of being nearly undetectable (e.g., at the end of 1 Corinthians).
194. One might find an analogy with the umlaut used in Codex Vaticanus (03 B), which may be used to indicate a textual variant. See Parker, New Testament Manuscripts, 73.
195. This is consonant with the fact that scribe D wrote a bifolium (four pages—the front and back of a single sheet inserted in the middle of a quire) apparently to replace a bifolium by scribe A that was defective. Milne and Skeat (Scribes and Correctors, 9–11) discuss the possibilities and conclude that the problem probably was that scribe A had included extra material at the end of Mark, but they rule out that it could be the long ending of Mark (16:9–20). However, this does not mean that scribe A did not include an intermediate-length ending, or that the long ending was not known and that there was some other dispute about the ending of Mark. In any case, the scribe indicates that something unusual pertains to the ending of Mark
How We Got the New Testament
Text, Transmission, Translation (2013)
Stanley E. Porter
https://www.mybibleteacher.net/uploads/1/2/4/6/124618875/howweg~1.pdf
The second, and perhaps even more important, observation is that the two codexes themselves appear to recognize some type of differentiation among the books included. The organization of Codex Sinaiticus (01 א) falls into three distinguishable parts. The first part, including the four Gospels, ends with John’s Gospel and is followed by a blank sheet. The second part includes the Pauline Epistles, with Hebrews after 2 Thessalonians, and ends after Philemon, followed by a blank sheet. The third section consists of Acts, the Catholic Epistles, and then Revelation (a pattern of organization that seems to have become prominent from the seventh century on, especially in Byzantine manuscripts),188 before Barnabas and Shepherd of Hermas. There are blank sheets that distinctly separate the Gospels and the Pauline Epistles. I think this may well indicate that these units—the very ones that I traced transmissionally above—are thought of as fixed units. There is no further blank sheet dividing the rest of the New Testament books from Barnabas and Shepherd of Hermas.
However, another telling feature may well serve a similar purpose. At the end of every book in the New Testament (and Old Testament as well) of Codex Sinaiticus (01 א), there is a colophon that includes the title of the book and a coronis (a decorative mark used to indicate the end of a textual unit) written in the ink of the manuscript. Ever since the fundamental work of H. J. M. Milne and T. C. Skeat on the hands of Sinaiticus (as well as the colophons of Codex Alexandrinus [02 A]), there has been a strong linkage of the colophons, and the accompanying corona, with the scribal hands, so that scribe A has a particular way of drawing his coronis, and so on.189 I believe this is probably generally correct, but three exceptions are worth noting that help us to understand the organization and content of Codex Sinaiticus (01 א). At the end of Revelation and of Barnabas there is a more ornate coronis used than is found elsewhere. Both Revelation 1:5 to the end and Barnabas were written by scribe A, whose “coronis is the simplest, consisting of a crossed pair of wavy lines, sometimes ornamented with tendrils.”190 However, the corona at the end of Revelation and Barnabas are considerably more elaborate in their written forms, with more ornamentation of the tendrils. These corona in the hand of scribe A are unparalleled in the New Testament, although there are corona approaching this elaboration by scribe A at the end of Psalms, Proverbs, and 1 Maccabees.191 The corona are more complex in their written form, but more noteworthy is the fact that they may well have been partially written in red ink. The online version and the recent printed version of Codex Sinaiticus (01 א) do not note the coloring of these corona (although they do indicate uses of red elsewhere, including in the Psalms and for Eusebian and Ammonian numbers),192 but such coloring is found in the facsimile edition of Tischendorf. It is possible that Tischendorf fabricated this coloring himself (as he is often, though I think grossly unjustly, accused of fabricating other things), but the places where he indicates red ink in the corona match more darkly colored ink in the photographs. I suspect that the red ink was observed by Tischendorf and captured in his facsimile, but has now faded to a dark brown.193 The only other place where a more developed coronis is found in the New Testament of Codex Sinaiticus (01 א) is at the end of Mark’s Gospel. This coronis is usually simply attributed to scribe D, who uses more elaborate corona. However, there are only four examples of corona by scribe D in extant Sinaiticus, and this is by far the most elaborate and the only one that also uses red ink (visible in the photograph as well as in Tischendorf’s facsimile). In my view, it is probable that the scribes used these colored corona to indicate the location of known textual irregularities and to differentiate them from the rest of the text.194 Thus, the scribe of Codex Sinaiticus (01 א) realized that after Revelation there was something extraordinary about Barnabas and Shepherd of Hermas, hence their placement at the end of the manuscript, even after the third and least well-fixed textual grouping, and differentiation with the colored corona at the end of Revelation and Barnabas to indicate the following textual ambiguity. The scribes also, it seems to me, realized that there was a known alternative ending to Mark (the long ending), though they did not include it but indicated their knowledge with the elaborate and colored coronis. 195
188. Parker, New Testament Manuscripts, 283.
189. H. J. M. Milne and T. C. Skeat, including contributions by Douglas Cockerell, Scribes and Correctors of the Codex Sinaiticus (London: British Museum, 1938), 27–29, with an appendix of the colophons on plates 1–9. This is followed by Parker, Codex Sinaiticus, 74. I am not convinced, however, that all that can be said about the use of the colophons, especially the corona, has been said. Some of my comments below indicate further directions for possible study. For the latest study of the manuscript, see Jongkind, Scribal Habits. Jongkind concentrates on the scribes but in some areas does not go beyond Milne and Skeat.
190. Milne and Skeat, Scribes and Correctors, 28.
191. I think that Milne and Skeat underestimate the variety of corona used by scribe A, and the potential places where various corona might be used. The case in point is the uses in the Old Testament noted above, where it is possible (the evidence on the basis of the fragmentary nature of the Old Testament precludes certain judgment) that more elaborate corona were used to differentiate groupings within the Testament. For example, Psalms and Proverbs are differentiated from the other poetical works (written in two-column format), and 1 Maccabees is differentiated from 4 Maccabees
(Sinaiticus did not contain 2 Maccabees and 3 Maccabees).
192. See Parker, Codex Sinaiticus, 48.
193. The corona have undoubtedly faded on many pages of the manuscript to the point of being nearly undetectable (e.g., at the end of 1 Corinthians).
194. One might find an analogy with the umlaut used in Codex Vaticanus (03 B), which may be used to indicate a textual variant. See Parker, New Testament Manuscripts, 73.
195. This is consonant with the fact that scribe D wrote a bifolium (four pages—the front and back of a single sheet inserted in the middle of a quire) apparently to replace a bifolium by scribe A that was defective. Milne and Skeat (Scribes and Correctors, 9–11) discuss the possibilities and conclude that the problem probably was that scribe A had included extra material at the end of Mark, but they rule out that it could be the long ending of Mark (16:9–20). However, this does not mean that scribe A did not include an intermediate-length ending, or that the long ending was not known and that there was some other dispute about the ending of Mark. In any case, the scribe indicates that something unusual pertains to the ending of Mark
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