About this time last year I wrote a blog about the wikipedia page concerning Codex Alexandrinus, under the heading
How Bad Is Wikipedia? Codex Alexandrinus as a Test Case.
My general conclusion was fairly negative:
“Wikipedia is quite bad. Facts are wrong, correct facts are placed in the
wrong context, incorrect conclusions are drawn. ... The
best and most recent scholarship is cited the least. Evidence is not
routinely provided. And the overall style is dreadful.”
Well, recently (in fact yesterday) I led a seminar on the NT manuscript C or 04 (Codex Ephraimi Rescriptus), and I happened to have a look at
wikipedia again. Oh dear. This page also has plenty of problems - wikipediea obviously hasn’t really get a lot better in the last year. And this time I went all the way to the end and I found 20 problems, approximately half of which are either completely wrong or seriously misleading. See what you think.
1. Opening Sentence:
“Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus (Paris, National Library of France, Greek 9;
Gregory-Aland no.
C or
04,
von Soden δ 3) is an early 5th century Greek manuscript of the
Bible, the last in the group of the
four great uncial manuscripts (see
Codex Sinaiticus,
Alexandrinus and
Vaticanus).”
Three problems with this sentence: i) the use of the word “early” for the date in the fifth century. By way of introduction it would be better to simply say ‘fifth century’ which is widely agreed. The possibility of narrowing down the range could be dealt with later (with evidence or argument). ii) and iii) the description of this as ‘the last in the group’. It is not clear what the word ‘last’ refers to here. If it is a dating issue, then it is unclear why C should be regarded as later than A (esp. if it is thought to be ‘early 5th century’ of course). It was not the last to be discovered or published. It is only ‘last’ in the alphabetical arrangement, but that means nothing. Further the sense in which the four great Greek Bible manuscripts are a ‘group’ is also not clear. It would be better to keep it simple: ‘one of the four Greek Bible manuscripts which survive from the fourth and fifth centuries’.
2. Second paragraph: “The manuscript received its name as a
codex in which Greek translations of
Ephraem the Syrian‘s treatises were written over (
“rescriptus”) a former text that had been washed off its
vellum pages, thus forming a
palimpsest.
[1]
The later text was produced in the 12th century. The effacement of the
original text was incomplete, for beneath the text of Ephraem are the
remains of what was once a complete Bible, containing both the
Old Testament and the
New.”
These sentences are just too clunky and inelegant.
3. “There are only 209 leaves of the codex surviving, of which 145 belong to the New Testament and 64 to the Old Testament.”
Well it is true that 209 leaves survived up to the time of Tischendorf and are reflected in his published text; and this is a bit geeky, but in fact only 208 leaves are extant in the volume currently in the BN - there is one missing (and Tischendorf was the last person to hold it).
4. “The
nomina sacra are abbreviated in an unusual way:
ΙΗΣ for Ἰησοῦς (
Jesus),
IHY for Ἰησοῦ (
of Jesus),
XPΣ for Χριστὸς (
Christ),
ΧPY for Χριστοῦ (
of Christ),
ΠΑP for Πατήρ (
Father), and
ΣTH for Σταυρωθῇ (
crucify).”
This is completely wrong. The footnote reference is to Gregory’s discussion of Codex Bezae.
5. “The text of the Gospels is divided according to
κεφαλαια (
chapters), but their τιτλοι (
titles of chapters) are not placed in the upper margin of the page as in
Codex Alexandrinus. A list of their τιτλοι (
tables of contents) preceded each Gospel.”
The difficulty here is partly linguistic and partly relates to the incomplete nature of the surviving evidence. Firstly it is not right to say that “the text of the Gospels is divided according to ...” The problem here is the word “divided”, the ennumeration of the kephalaia does not divide or even disturb the text of the gospels. It is a marginal system of ennumeration. Further it looks like the parenthetical italicised terms are translating the Greek words cited, but that doesn’t work with the third of these which is merely an equivalent for the whole phrase (a list of titloi = a table of contents). Further only two of the lists survives - so one should inject a note of caution: ‘based on the presence of the list of titloi preceding Luke’s Gospel and John’s Gospel it is reasonable to think that similar lists would have preceded each Gospel’. Finally, although no titloi are visible in the upper margins it is not to my mind certain that none were ever placed in the upper margin, since it is normal to have some orientation in the upper margins. Two possibilities would be worth considering, either that the material in the upper margin was written in red ink and so very thoroughly erased (like the first verse/s of each NT book); or that the pages were trimmed down when the book was rebound in the twelfth century [this in fact was Tischendorf’s view].
6. “The text of the Gospels is divided into small
Ammonian Sections, whose numbers are given at the margin, with references to the
Eusebian Canons (written below Ammonian Section numbers).”
Here again the term “divided” is not helpful. More substantially there is a question about the the presence of the two numbers in C. Only the upper number (the so-called Ammonian Section) is visible, and only these numbers are represented in Tischendorf’s transcription. Since Eusebius specifically mentions that the second number, the Eusebian Canon number, should be written in red ink; and since it appears that the red ink was well washed off in this manuscript, then it is possible that the Eusebian Canons were marked. But no one has ever seen them.
7. “The
Pericope Adulterae
(John 7:53–8:11) is omitted; though the pericope is located on the lost
two leaves (John 7:3–8:34), by counting the lines it can be proved that
it was not in the book – there is not room for it (as in Codex
Alexandrinus).”
This should be stated in terms of probability rather than provenness, as indeed Metzger does in the Textual Commentary that is cited: ‘highly probable’.
8. “The text of
Mark 16:9–20
was included to the codex, though it was located on the lost leaves; by
counting the lines it can be proved that it was in the work.
“
Other than the basic affirmation all the rest is completely wrong. Mark 16.9-20 is included in the text of Mark in this codex, there is no need to count anything. It is all there on folio 148r.
9. The list of lacunae. Two problems: a) surely it is more helpful to offer a list of passages which are present in the manuscript rather than a list of what is not present; b) the current list includes many passages that were present in red ink and have been more thoroughly erased than the main text in black ink. So it would be helpful to treat this, when extant, a bit differently from passages that are merely missing.
10. Text-type section
Obviously this is a difficult aspect of this manuscript, but this could be made clearer. Especially the referent of “it” is often not clear. E.g. in the following sentence one would be forgiven for thinking that Westcott-Hort (and von Soden) are addressing the textual character of Luke’s gospel in particular (which they are not): “In Luke its textual character is unclear. Westcott-Hort classified it as mixed; Hermann von Soden classified it as in the Alexandrian text-type.” It is also not quite correct to say that Westcott and Hort “classified” the textual character of the manuscript as “mixed” (it approximates to their view, but makes it sound more technical than it was).
11.
“Interpolations”, “Some corrections”, “
Selected textual variants” and “Some other textual variants”
Since ‘interpolations’ are textual variants, we have three different categories for the same thing. Simplest to have a list of ‘Some textual variants’ and another list of ‘some corrections’. Of course some consideration as to why these are chosen to be listed and on what basis would be helpful.
12. History: “The manuscript was probably written in Egypt (or Palestine)
[5] before the middle of the fifth century.”
Firstly there is an error in the inclusion of ‘or Palestine’ at this point, since that is not what Gregory says. Secondly, whether it was ‘probably written in Egypt’ is doubtful. Better to say that Tischendorf suggested Egypt and no one has made a serious counter proposal.Thirdly, this ‘before the middle of the fifth century’ (or as previously ‘early fifth’) is in Gregory, but there really is not much by way of evidence, and most authorities seem to have been happy with a simple ‘fifth century’.
13. “It was written by at least two scribes; according to
Tischendorf, there were three scribes (A, B, C).”
Aside from the fact that this sentence barely makes sense, it is also wrong. Tischendorf discerned two scribes: one for the OT, one for the NT. Others (including Lyon) have suggested the possibility of a third scribal hand.
14. “The first corrector (C
1) worked in
scriptorium, while the second corrector (C
2) worked in Palestine in the sixth century.”
This makes it all sound so definite. No one knows where (or indeed when) C2 worked. Tischendorf suggested Palestine, Syria or Asia Minor (just places in between Alexandria and Constantinople).
15. “At that time, the manuscript was probably housed in the
Caesarea library, a famous theological library in ancient times
“
This is completely bogus. The cited reference makes no such claim.
16. “
Jean Boivin, a French scholar, ...”
He was in charge of the Royal Library, so he was more than just any old French scholar.
17. “Because Tischendorf worked by eye alone, his deciphering of the palimpsest’s text was less than perfect.
“
This is a rather odd statement. Of course it was not perfect, but the logic does not follow and judging by the paucity of Lyon’s corrections Tischendorf’s transcription was excellent.
18. Re Lyon: “This was also an imperfect work.”
This sort of comment (and the citation where it is made) is not particularly helpful. It makes it sound like it was a poor piece of work, which it was not.
19. “According to Edward Miller (1886) codices “B and probably א were
procured under the dark gloom of Asian ascendency; A and C in the light
of the most intellectual period of the early Church” (B – Vaticanus, א –
Sinaiticus, A – Alexandrinus, C – Ephraemi Rescriptus).
“
And the relevance of this is what exactly?
20. “According to
Frederic Kenyon “the original manuscript contained the whole Greek Bible,...””
Strictly speaking this is true (i.e. Kenyon did say that). But the problem is that three or four times in this discussion we’ve been told that originally C comprised the whole OT; but no one has thought to notice that while the remains of the NT cover the whole breadth of the NT, from the OT we only have a few of the poetic works of the LXX.
“Culture” is not perhaps the best word, but it’ll do for the moment. Udo Schnelle’s SNTS presidential address from last year has been published: U. Schnelle, ‘Das frühe Christentum und die Bildung’ NTS 61 (2015), 113-143..jpg)
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