Darrell Post Finds a New Member of Family 13 – L1080

In recent years, Darrell Post has worked to collate all manuscripts in John 11 and in this process he has just discovered a new member of Family 13 – Lectionary 1080 (Mount Athos, Great Lavra Monastery, A' 80, 13th century). Post tells me that the manuscript "was found to be a perfect match to Family 13 in its core group, in John 11:1-45. The lesson that covers 11:47-54 is of a slightly different pattern, but is a match to L547, also belonging to Family 13." 

This is the third lectionary which has been identified as a family member: 

In 1964, Jacob Geerlings analysed L547 in his study on The Lectionary Text of Family 13 according to Cod Vat Gr 1217 {Gregory 547) [ The Ferrar Lectionary] (Salt Lake City, 1964).

In 1982, Yvonne Burns published an article on L574, "A Newly Discovered Family 13 Manuscript and the Ferrar Lection System" in Studia Patristica 12 (pp. 278–299).

And now Post has identified a third lectionary, L1080, as a member of F13, but he points out that a full collation is necessary to see if it is a family member throughout the manuscript. Post sent me a chart which shows the pattern of readings in the chapter and also illustrates its close relationship to L547 in the lesson in 11:47–54.

Jac Perrin's Thesis on F13 in John Online

Jac Perrin has agreed to share his recently defended thesis "Family 13 in Saint John's Gospel," which we reported on here. The remark by Perrin that we discussed on this blog that "the PA of several other witnesses was in Luke, but their textual content was much closer to the TR than to any F13 member" (p. 277) has been removed since it proved to be wrong.

You find the thesis here and in the right sidebar (TC Files for download).

Dr. Jac Perrin on Family 13

Jac Perrin has successfully defended his PhD thesis entitled “Family 13 in Saint John’s Gospel,” submitted to the University of Birmingham, and written under the supervision of Prof. D. C. Parker and examined by Profs. Ulrich Schmid and Paul Foster.

Abstract
To date, the single criterion of Family 13 constituency has been the relocation of the Pericope Adulterae from its traditional location in John 7:53. This dissertation demonstrates why this criterion is inadequate and proposes a new criteria.

After an overview of the history of research, potential Family 13 witnesses are classified by means of a methodology originated by Dr. David Parker’s use of Text und Textwert. This process identifies 8 witnesses inappropriately nominated as Family 13 members, thus establishing GA 13, 69, 124, 346, 543, 788, 826, 828, 983, and 1689 as valid members. Each of these 10 witnesses is then described palaeographically as a discrete artefact.

Phylogrammatic software, originally designed for DNA analysis, is then adapted to exhaustively study these Johannine Greek texts. The by-product of this novel process complements and validates the earlier Text und Textwert process. Also available as a result of this study are original witness transcriptions (available at http://www.iohannes.com/family13/), a Critical Apparatus of Family 13 in St. John’s Gospel, an exhaustive description of the contents of 18 potential witnesses, and a description of the computer analysis process used in the study.

As Perrin points out in his thesis, all the 10 valid members of Family 13 are of Calabrian provenance as Abbé Martin has asserted, despite the fact that his specific attempts to localise them are problematic.

Further, Perrin concludes that one of the family members has the Pericope Adulterae in its traditional location in John 7:53 (1689), and not in Luke as other family members, so this cannot be the single criterion for filiality.

Perrin traces three different subgroups of F13 (in concord with Lake’s study of F13 in Mark).  The image below (fig. 63), reproduced with permission, is one way to depict the final stemma (“splits tree cladogram”).

Congratulations to Dr. Jac Perrin!

Update: I have removed reference to a point Perrin makes which seems to be erroneous that “the PA of several other witnesses was in Luke, but their textual content was much closer to the TR than to any F13 member” (p. 277); I cannot find the data to back this up. Perrin’s main point, however, is valid, that the relocation of the PA to Luke (after 21:38) cannot be the single criterion of F13 membership.