New York Times Review of Westcott-Hort

Exactly 143 years ago to the day, America's paper of record (aka The New York Times) published a review of a recently published introduction to a Greek New Testament by two Cambridge scholars named Westcott and Hort. It is not signed and my online source (ProQuest) does not give an author, but your best guesses are welcome in the comments.

Appreciating 11Q5: A Comparative Look at the Great Psalms Scroll

11Q5 (11QPsa), known as the Great Psalms Scroll, is on display at the Ronald Reagan Library in Simi Valley, CA. This exhibition has been made available by the Israelite Antiquities Authority and the sponsorship of The Lowell Milken Family Foundation. You can learn more about the exhibition here. I had the opportunity to visit the exhibit on Friday with my family and found it to be an enriching experience.

In this post, I’d like to discuss three (among many!) important features of this manuscript by way of comparing it to the more popular 1QIsaa. For a discussion on the textual nature of the manuscript, see my prior post here.

1) Writing Precision and Formatting
One of the most noticeable differences between 1QIsaa and 11QPsa is the approach to the writing block. A writing block is the rectangular shape created by the top and bottom horizontal lines and the right and left vertical lines (See Tov’s Scribal Practices pp. 82-108). The scribe of 11QPsa writes within the writing block while the scribe of 1QIsaa often transgresses it. Notice that the scribe of 11QPsa only goes beyond the left vertical line twice in col 7.

Compare this column to column 2 of 1QIsaa. Here the scribe transgresses the left vertical line in almost every line.

The lack of concern for the writing block is perhaps most pronounced where the scribe begins a word to the left of the vertical line. Although only one letter of the word remains (due to deterioration of the manuscript), the letter is clearly to the left of the writing block and the beginning of a new word. See an example of that here.

Similarly, sometimes the scribe of 1QIsaa begins a word and realizes he cannot complete it in the remaining space. In these instances, the scribe has recourse to some “less than ideal” procedures. For example, here he begins a word, realizes he cannot finish it, stops, and transcribes the word in its entirety at the start of the next line.



In another situation, the scribe crams the final portion of the word (a pronominal suffix) above the line.



This feature of writing in the writing block reflects to some degree the skill of the scribe. The scribe of 11QPsa was more skilled than the scribe of 1QIsaa, at least regarding the spacing of words.

2) Degree of Scribal Intervention
Both manuscripts display a different level of scribal intervention. 1QIsaa has an instance of scribal intervention every 4 lines while 11QPsa has an intervention every 9 lines. (See again Tov's Scribal Practices, pp. 332-335). Neither statical is very impressive to be sure. 

A brief survey of the columns indicates that the scribe(s) of 1QIsaa intervened in the text much more frequently than the scribe of 11QPsa. Here is a column from each respective manuscript for review.

 

3) The Paleography
The paleography is also different. Although not uncommon among biblical manuscripts, it is exciting to see the divine name written in paleo-Hebrew in 11QPsa rather than the Jewish-Aramaic Square Script.

Next, the script is clearly from different eras. Some features of 1QIsaa include inconsistent use of final letter forms in final position (and even final letter forms in non-final position). The letter forms of 1QIsaa are not consistent in size. The script of 11QPsa, however, uses final/non-final letters and represents the letter size consistency. Here are some specific letters for comparison.

See the different form of the samek. In 1QIsaa, the form is open at the bottom.



See the different size of the ayin. In 1QIsaa, the form is more truncated.

Notice the backyard tick at the top of the zayin in 11Q5. It is more pronounced than in 1QIsaa (usually).

Notice the length of the downward stroke of the yod and the nature of the letter's head. The letter form is longer and more angular in 11QPsa.

There are several fascinating features of 11QPsa. These are just three. I hope this post stimulates more work on this important manuscript and readies visitors for their visit to the Reagan Library Your visit will not disappoint.

An Excellent (Relatively) New Book on Palimpsests

I've been rather quiet over the past few years, due to the arduous (and occasionally enjoyable) task of editing the ECM Revelation, which was finally  published last year. Another little project I've been working on for longer than I care to admit is an edition of the Greek biblical texts in Codex Climaci Rescriptus.

Always trying to keep up with the secondary literature, I was very happy to stumble across a fantastic volume edited by Claudia Rapp and her colleagues at the University of Vienna/Austrian Academy of Sciences entitled New Light on Old Manuscripts: The Sinai Palimpsests and Other Advances in Palimpsest Studies. The good folks at the AAS have an excellent track record in palimpsest research, and they are collaborating with some of the imaging scientists with whom my CCR colleagues and I have had the pleasure of working (most notably Roger Easton and Keith Knox). Anyway, the book is divided into five main sections, namely 'Saint Catherine’s Monastery and Its Palimpsests', 'Palimpsests and Their Contexts', 'Palimpsests and Their Contents', 'Imaging and Processing Methods', 'Management and Display'. The 32 (!) essays in the volume are full of interesting information on all aspects of palimpsest work, and their relevance extends far beyond the Sinai palimpsests. I was particularly pleased to see the chapters on the arcana of image processing, making it more accessible to the more technically ignorant, mono-dimensional philologists such as yours truly. 

And, best of all, the entire book is available via Open Access, so tollite, legite without delay! 

Resolving the Mystery of GA 2776

I’m in the process of working through all the manuscripts in the Liste tagged as containing Pauline content. One of these mss is GA 2766. The Liste describes the contents of this ms as “aprK.” It dates to the 17th century, is located in the Petraki Monastery in Athens, and is described as containing “c.a. 250” leaves.

However, the portion in the manuscript workspace only contains James through Jude, with no text of Acts or Paul or Revelation. So I dug a little deeper. Pinakes listed only one additional source of information about this ms—Μορφωτικὸ Ἵδρυμα Ἐθνικῆς Τραπέζης. Ἱστορικὸ καὶ Παλαιογραφικὸ Ἀρχεῖο. Μικροφωτογραφήσεις χειρογράφων και αρχείων, Γʹ (1981-1983). While the link to online version provided in Pinakes itself did not work, with a little digging, I was able to find a copy, which provided the following information about our ms (unfortunately the original scan was low resolution): 

This clearly describes the ms as a combination of a printed edition and a manuscript. In her dissertation, Dora Panella provides a description of this edition. “In 1532 Bernardus Donatus published in a single volume the Oecumenian catenae on Acts, the Pauline Epistles and the Catholic Letters together with Arethas’ catena on Revelation.”  A little more digging turned up a nice scan. It was then, comparing this edition to the images on the VMR, that I realized that the handwritten portion of this ms was also copied from this very edition. 

To begin with, the mise-en-page of the ms is remarkably similar to the edition. To give one example, the double diplai in the margin of the ms look exactly like those in edition. However, there are two features of the ms that serve as “smoking guns” that confirm it has been copied from a printed edition, even without a detailed comparison of the text itself: 

First, following the printed edition, the ms (at least in the opening of James) does not have any nomina sacra. They are spelled out, exactly as they are in the printed edition. This is extremely unusual in a Greek ms. In the right circumstances this is itself enough to suggest that a ms was copied from a printed edition. But there is more. 

Second, and perhaps even more significantly, the ms uses catchwords at the bottom of each page, exactly as does the printed edition. As is well known, early printed works put the last word or clause of each page in a separate line at the bottom of each page. These catchwords were then repeated on the start of the next page, which enabled printers to keep the sheets in the proper order. The ms has fewer words per page than the printed edition, so the catch words in the edition do not line up. So the ms has added catch words of its own. Just as in the printed edition (and very unlike standard practice for NT mss), these are given in a line by themselves at the bottom of each page and then repeated at the beginning of the next page.

Taken together, these two factors seem to me to be sufficient evidence to conclude that GA 2776 has not been copied from another ms of the Catena, but from the editio princeps and should therefore be removed from the Liste. 

As a final check, I used Nico Lamme’s TEI collation of Tommy Wasserman’s Jude transcriptions to check to see if GA 2776 had any distinctive readings in Jude that it might share with the printed edition. Since there is a possibility that there are other mss  that have been copied from a printed edition, I set the search (using Nico’s handy find variation script), for all places where GA 2776 has a reading that is found in five or fewer additional witnesses. This search produced three results: 

In Jude 10_4–8 (note that the locations are derived from Lamme’s collation and in some cases differ from Wasserman’s printed edition), there is a singular transposition of δε and μεν that seems to have been corrected by the copyist in scribendo. This is a simple error that doesn’t provide evidence one way or the other.

In Jude 10_20, Wasserman’s transcription has GA 2776 reading φυσικ<d>ο</d>ς with a handful of other mss (this variation is not present in Wasserman’s printed apparatus, but is in his original transcription). In my judgment, the transcription here should probably be φυσικ<d>ω</d>ς. (The scribe copies “ο” with a heavy dot on the top, while the letter is clearly open. However, the center rise of the ω appears to be absent, justifying marking the letter as dubious.) In any case, even if the letter was ο, this sort of variation is rarely genealogically significant. 

In Jude 23_22–24, Wasserman has 2776 joining 1066 1642 in omitting τον before απο. However, an examination of the ms at this place shows that the scribe has written what looks very like his style of τ on top of the α in απο. While it is far from clear, this could possibly be taken as another in scribendo correction. 

While this textual data provides no additional reasons to support the paratextual information provided above, it also provides no challenge to removing GA 2776 from the Liste.