The following is another guest post from Elijah Hixson. He is currently writing a PhD thesis at the University of Edinburgh on the NT purple codices about which Jerome famously said, “parchmens are dyed purple, gold is melted into lettering, manuscripts are decked with jewels, while Christ lies at the door naked and dying” (Epist. 22.32).
The Bibliothèque nationale de France have just made some very nice, high-quality images of (most of) Codex Sinopensis available! The manuscript is gorgeous and worth a look.
The Bibliothèque nationale de France have just made some very nice, high-quality images of (most of) Codex Sinopensis available! The manuscript is gorgeous and worth a look.
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| Codex Sinopensis (O 023), f. 8v. |
Codex Sinopensis (Paris, BnF supp. gr. 1286; O 023) is a 6th-century manuscript of Matthew’s Gospel. It is one of the purple codices—deluxe manuscripts written in gold and silver inks on parchment that has been dyed purple (on Codex Rossanensis, one of the other 6th-century purple codices, see here). Codex Sinopensis is especially magnificent, because it was written entirely in gold ink, and there are five extant miniatures painted right into the pages of the Gospel. These are some of the earliest examples of Christian art in manuscripts. Art historians know this manuscript well, and its well-trained scribe was probably in his or her prime. There are very few mistakes and corrections in this manuscript, compared to its two siblings.
Its text is not especially exciting; Codex Sinopensis has an early form of what will become the Byzantine text. What is more exciting than its text is its textual relationship with two other purple codices, N 042 and Σ 042. These three manuscripts were all copied from the same exemplar. Back in 2015 at the SBL Annual Meeting in Atlanta, I presented a paper on Codex Sinopensis and its close relationship with its two siblings as a way to test the singular readings method of determining scribal habits (summarised here).
If my quick count of the newly available images is correct, the new images include 41 of the 43 folios at the BnF, but they also include images of the lost leaf from Ukraine. Shortly after Henri Omont published the editio princeps of the 43 Paris leaves, Prof. Dmitry Aynalov sent a photograph of a 44th leaf, which was in the custody of a gymnasium (the equivalent of American high school) in Mariupol, Ukraine. The leaf has been lost since at least 1966, when Kurt Treu could only write that it was formerly in Mariupol and to my knowledge, the leaf has never resurfaced. Now, however, the BnF has digitised their black/white photograph of the lost leaf, which is grounds for rejoicing.
The two pages I could not find on Gallica are folios 11 and 30, but both of those folios include miniatures, and images of the painted sides are readily available all over the internet. Realistically, that leaves 11v and 30r as the only pages of Codex Sinopensis that are still only accessible through Omont’s pseudo-facsimile in the editio princeps. Of course, Muphy’s Law would correctly predict that if one is writing a doctoral thesis on Codex Sinopensis, one would encounter a discrepancy on f. 30r, line 9 about which the editio princeps is unclear, but that is another story.
The images are posted at Gallica (gallica.bnf.fr). The easiest way to find them, however, is through the links to each folio/bifolio at http://archivesetmanuscrits.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cc24356w.
Its text is not especially exciting; Codex Sinopensis has an early form of what will become the Byzantine text. What is more exciting than its text is its textual relationship with two other purple codices, N 042 and Σ 042. These three manuscripts were all copied from the same exemplar. Back in 2015 at the SBL Annual Meeting in Atlanta, I presented a paper on Codex Sinopensis and its close relationship with its two siblings as a way to test the singular readings method of determining scribal habits (summarised here).
If my quick count of the newly available images is correct, the new images include 41 of the 43 folios at the BnF, but they also include images of the lost leaf from Ukraine. Shortly after Henri Omont published the editio princeps of the 43 Paris leaves, Prof. Dmitry Aynalov sent a photograph of a 44th leaf, which was in the custody of a gymnasium (the equivalent of American high school) in Mariupol, Ukraine. The leaf has been lost since at least 1966, when Kurt Treu could only write that it was formerly in Mariupol and to my knowledge, the leaf has never resurfaced. Now, however, the BnF has digitised their black/white photograph of the lost leaf, which is grounds for rejoicing.
The two pages I could not find on Gallica are folios 11 and 30, but both of those folios include miniatures, and images of the painted sides are readily available all over the internet. Realistically, that leaves 11v and 30r as the only pages of Codex Sinopensis that are still only accessible through Omont’s pseudo-facsimile in the editio princeps. Of course, Muphy’s Law would correctly predict that if one is writing a doctoral thesis on Codex Sinopensis, one would encounter a discrepancy on f. 30r, line 9 about which the editio princeps is unclear, but that is another story.
The images are posted at Gallica (gallica.bnf.fr). The easiest way to find them, however, is through the links to each folio/bifolio at http://archivesetmanuscrits.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cc24356w.
Is there any easier way than reading through half of the images to see how O reads at Matthew 10:8?
ReplyDeleteThe Gallica images have been linked to by the INTF with the content indexed and you can click through to the Gallica site. However, the manuscript is incomplete and that text does not seem to be extant (at least according to the INTF indexing).
ReplyDeleteDaniel Buck,
ReplyDeleteAccording to Kronin in the 1901 JTS, it's not there; the first and second pages extant have Mt. 7:7-22; the third extant page has 11:5-12.
If I have time next week I may cobble together some sort of index.
It appears to be indexed on the INTF site.
ReplyDeleteWhere are images of f. 19 (Mt. 17:10-17)?
ReplyDeleteDaniel, James is correct that Sinopensis is not extant for Matt. 10:8. However, both N and Σ are, are, and apart from two minor spelling differences (which I note), they agree. Because they agree, there is no reason to doubt that exemplar for N O Σ at Matthew 10:8 had: Αϲθενουνταϲ θεραπευετε νεκρουϲ εγειρετε (εγιρετε N)· λεπρουϲ καθαριζετε δαιμονια (δαιμονεια N) εκβαλλετε· δωραιαν ελαβετε δωραιαν δοτε.
ReplyDeletePeter, I indexed the images of the microfilm for INTF, which is both incomplete and all out of order. The new images were posted as additions to those, except that the new images are of full sheets where there are full sheets, not single folios. So, for example, one side of one sheet has folios 4r and 10v, so that same image of both folios is posted where INTF was already indexed for 4r and also posted where INTF was already indexed for 10v.
James, f. 19 is here (or, if the link doesn't work, go to Gallica.bnf.fr, search for "supplement grec 1286" and select "dans les manuscrits" from the drop-down menu. F. 19 is one of the single folios on the second page of results): http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b105388211.r=supplement%20grec%201286?rk=450646;0.
Elijah
Elijah,
DeleteThanks. Btw, any thoughts about the description of 023 in "The Impact of Scripture in Early Christianity"?
James,
ReplyDeleteYou're welcome! I only skimmed the few pages on Sinopensis, but I can't give a full endorsement. I haven't seen any red ink or feast indicators. At the tops of some pages, Sinopensis does have some of the chapter headings (N and Σ have these as well), but I don't know of any convincing evidence that it was ever used as a lectionary. It doesn't have any lectionary converters that are common in later manuscripts. In fact, I would be surprised if it did. Sinopensis seems like the kind of book that only comes out of the vault once a year or when somebody especially famous like the Pope comes to visit (for a contemporary example, Google "Pope Rossanensis").
Elijah
Elijah,
ReplyDeleteThat's more or less my take as well -- the chapter-titles are just chaoter-titles, not notices for feast-days. But signs of liturgical use are always something to keep an eye out for.
Meanwhile: I made an index at
http://www.thetextofthegospels.com/2017/04/codex-sinopensis-o-023.html .
Btw, how sure are we that the photographed page is indeed part of 023?
James,
DeleteThe Mariupol leaf comes directly between BnF folios 21 and 22, and the text is continuous across the page breaks: (Matt. 18:9 BnF f. 21v βλη| |θηναι Mariupol f. r; Matt. 18:16 Mariupol f. v ινα επι | | ϲτοματοϲ δυο μαρτυρων BnF f. 22r).
Thanks for the index. I'm sure it is much more helpful to people than if I were to post the chaotic hand-written index hanging at my desk, in which I penciled in verse numbers over each folio number on a print-out of Cronin's reconstruction on p. 593 of his article.
Elijah
Also noted early on by H.S. Cronin when he examined Codex Sinopensis in 1900 in Paris, he found its readings are obviously closer to Aleph and B than the other Purple Uncials Σ Φ in Matthew. A quick look at Mt 15:16 is decisive in support of his findings with O (023) having the corrupted non-Byzantine, ο δε ειπεν reading while Σ Φ read Byzantine. Interestingly, the only OL MSS having the Byzantine reading is the common f q combination while the Syriacs split with the Peshitta siding with O (023) and the Harklean Sy reading with the Byzantines as is usually the case in Peshitta vs Harklean split readings.
ReplyDeletePaul Anderson
CSPMT
Paul,
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure Σ and Φ at Matt. 15:16 is the best place to verify Cronin's conclusions with O. With respect to Φ, it wasn't copied from the same exemplar, so Cronin's observation might be true, but the point is moot if you're talking about O's relationship to the exemplar of N-O-Σ. Von Soden thought Φ was related, but even he admitted that it was not a part of the same immediate family as N-O-Σ. For von Soden, Φ might be a cousin, but it's not one of the "3 Brüdern" (p. 1246). As for Σ, von Gebhardt mentioned a number of corrections made to a second exemplar in Σ. Σ actually agrees with O in the uncorrected text at Matt. 15:16 (N is not extant), but the Σ^2 corrector corrected the text to the Byz. reading there. Von Gebhardt mentions it as one of those secondary corrections on p. lii of his edition and mentions it as a correction again in a footnote to the transcription on p. 29, though for some reason his transcription of Σ includes the addition as if it were not a correction at all.
The microfilm of Σ042 at the INTF VMR is clear enough that you can see the correction there. It's p. 124(v), left column, about two-thirds of the way down.
Elijah