When a marginal note becomes the text

Towards the end of his Apology against Jacques Lefèvre d'Étaples (English translation in Collected Works of Erasmus vol. 83; here if you have institutional access), Erasmus criticizes his friend for not understanding the need of doing textual criticism. What struck me more than anything is the example Erasmus gave for why textual criticism is necessary. Here is the relevant paragraph:

Another thing which is constant in your examinations is that whatever your Greek manuscript had in it, you ascribe unhesitatingly to Paul, as though Greek manuscripts do not sometimes vary, or are never corrupt, when I myself discovered in a particularly fine manuscript copy the following words written in the Second Epistle to the Corinthians: δεόμενοι ἡμῶν τὴν Χάριν καὶ τὴν κοινωνίαν τῆς διακονίας τῆς εἰς τοὺς ἁγίους δέξασθαι ἡμᾶς· ἐν πολλοῖς τῶν ἀντιγράφων οὕτως εὕρηται, καὶ οὐ καθὼς ἠλπίσαμεν. What we have here, of course, is a case of several words being transferred by an illiterate scribe from the margin to the body of the text. In order to make this clearer to those who do not know Greek, I shall translate as follows: 'Asking that we receive the gift and the fellowship of the ministering to the saints; in many manuscript copies appears the following: "and not as we hoped"' It is clear that the words 'in many manuscript copies appears the following' represent someone's marginal annotation. It is risky, therefore, to place immediate trust in your manuscript and to make pronouncements before examining all the manuscripts. (trans. Howard Jones; CWE 83, p. 105)

[Note: there's something there to be said about trusting God's Word as it is, ontologically, as opposed to trusting our access to it through our copies and translations (or trusting that our access is always and in every place equal to what it is, ontologically) but that's another discussion.]

I wondered if this manuscript was still known. A footnote (the annotations for this Apology were written by Guy Bedouelle) says that this manuscript is "MS Greek suppl 2 of the National Library in Vienna, loaned to Erasmus by the monastery of Corsendonck, near Turnhout," and it refers the reader to ASD IX-3 193:2567n. That refers to ordo 9 (=IX), tome 3 of the Amsterdam edition of Erasmus' works, page 193, and specifically, the note that corresponds to line 2567. Conveniently, that volume is available through open access, here. A little lower on p. 193 for the note corresponding to lines 2569-2572 (continuing on to p. 195) of ASD IX-3, we read:

The Greek manuscript to which Erasmus is referring is minuscule 3 of the Greek New Testament, now in Vienna, National Library, Gr. supp1. 52. It contains the four Gospels, Acts, the Catholic Epistles and Paul's Epistles. It belonged once to a convent at Corsendonck near Turnhout and was lent to Erasmus for his second edition in 1519, as he testifies on the first leaf; see F.H.A. Scrivener, A Plain Introduction to the Criticism of the New Testament, Cambridge 1883, p. 179; C.R. Gregory, Textkritik des Neuen Testaments, Leipzig, 1900, p. 128. Cf. J.J. Wetstenius, ed., Nouum Testamentum Graecum, Amsterdam, 1751-2, II, p. 197 and H.J. de Jonge, ASD IX, 2, p. 191, n.l. 461.

It still exists! It's minuscule 3, dated to the 12th cent. The note is at 2 Cor. 8:5. The variant seems to be the presence or absence of δέξασθαι ἡμᾶς (I checked the NA28 and Swanson), which occurs before the words ἐν πολλοῖς τῶν ἀντιγράφων οὕτως εὕρηται. Let's have a look:

https://ntvmr.uni-muenster.de/community/modules/papyri/?site=INTF&image=30003/449299/8110/10/5673

Someone (Erasmus?) has underlined the words in the manuscript, but there it is: the marginal note that became the text. The Comma Johanneum (at 1 John 5:7–8) almost certainly came into the text this way, and it's always good to find specific examples of this type of thing happening. The more we know, the better equipped we are to catch scribal error.

For more on reader's notes, see:

Bible as Notepad

I was pleased to lay my hands on this very recent collection of essays edited by Liv Ingeborg Lied and Marilena Maniaci. It is the third volume in De Gruyter’s new ‘Manuscripta Biblica’ series, edited by Patrick Andrist and Martin Wallraff. (Oddly, vol. 2 is only scheduled for publication in 2019 and there’s no word of vol. 1 on the publisher’s website.) As the series itself indicates, MB focuses on manuscripts of the Bible and as such ‘introduces and analyses these neglected witnesses of acts of reading and re-interpreting the text throughout the centuries’. Bible as Notepad fits squarely within this scope.

The essays, which are actually proceedings from a 2014 conference held in Oslo, deal with a diverse pool of topics. Here’s the TOC to whet your appetite:

1. Liv Ingeborg Lied, ‘Bible as notepad: Exploring annotations and annotation practices in biblical manuscripts’
2. Daniel K. Falk, ‘In the margins of the Dead Sea Scrolls’
3. Kipp Davis, ‘Margins as media: The long insertion in 4QJera (4Q70)’
4. Paolo Buzi, ‘Additional notes in Christian Egyptian biblical manuscripts (fourth–eleventh centuries): Brief remarks’
5. Jeff W. Childers, ‘Divining gospel: Classifying manuscripts of John used in sortilege’
6. Marilena Maniaci, ‘Written evidence in the Italian Giant Bibles: Around and beyond the sacred text’
7. Nurit Pasternak, ‘Giannozzo Manetti’s handwritten notes in his Hebrew Bibles’
8. Adam Carter Bremer-McCollum, ‘Notes and colophons of scribes and readers in Georgian biblical manuscripts from Saint Catherine’s Monastery (Sinai)’
9. Loren T. Stuckenbruck and Ted M. Erho, ‘EMML 8400 and notes on the reading of Hēnok in Ethiopia’
10. Patrick Andrist, ‘Toward a definition of paratexts and paratextuality: The case of ancient Greek manuscripts’

There’s much to be learnt from every essay in this wide-ranging collection, but the one that particularly hit home for me was Andrist’s, more theoretically geared, treatment of paratexts. (FWI: Patrick Andrist and Martin Wallraff are spearheading a big ERC-funded project ParaTexBib, which investigates the structural codicology and paratextual materials in the manuscripts of the canonical Gospels). I’ve been interested in the notion of paratextuality for a while now and have found Genette’s literary theories, which Andrist re-contextualised and re-appropriated for the study of biblical manuscripts, fascinating and potentially useful. I hope to say more on the subject in due course. Suffice it to say that the biblical manuscript tradition a rich pool of data that is ripe for fresh investigations and the study of paratexts might well be a very fruitful way of going about it.

Rescued by Water and Salt?

There are a number of puzzles to resolve in 1 Peter 3.20 but I’ve come across a new one, at least with its transmission and reception. The Harklean Syriac of 1 Peter 3.20 tells of “eight souls rescued by (byad, ܒܝܕ) water.” Notably, the Syriac translates the debatable δι’ ὕδατος as unambiguously instrumental. But this is not what’s odd. What’s odd is the marginal reading.

1 Peter 3.20 in New College 333 showing the marginal reading after ܡ̈ܝܐ (“water”)

Marked after the word “water,” the margin has kad metmalhān ܟܕ ܡܬܡܠܚܢ which is something like “when they [the souls] were salted.” In his 1799 edition, Joseph White admits ignorance as to what was meant by this, suggesting that maybe it should be read as kad metmalāyēn ܟܕ ܡܬܡܠܝܝܢ (“when they were filled”) instead.

It looks to me (and B. Aland) like the first reading is correct which leaves me to explain the presence of “when they were salted.” Typically, the marginal readings in the Harklean text provide an alternate reading for Thomas’s main text, but here this doesn’t appear to be the case since there isn’t anything which it would naturally replace, certainly not “by the water.” And there is nothing in the ECM that would show this to be a known reading in the rest of the textual tradition; it seems to be unique to the Harklean margin.

Elsewhere Thomas does use his margin for short interpretive comments and that seems to be the best way to understand it here. But if so, how does “being salted” explain “being rescued by water”?

The only parallel to “being salted” I can think of is Mark 9.49 where the Harklean has the longer reading: “every person will be salted with fire and every sacrifice will be salted with salt.” Like the water in 1 Peter 3.20, there is debate as to whether the salt in Mark 9 is a means of judgment or a means salvation (or perhaps both). I’m wondering whether there is any history of connecting the the imagery of the flood, the salting in Mark, and possibly baptism in the Syriac tradition that Thomas might be reflecting. Or maybe I am missing some simpler explanation. It is certainly curious.

Calhoun: Acts 17.27 in Bezae as a Reader’s Note

The latest issue of Early Christianity (6.2) has an interesting short article from Robert M. Calhoun on the reading of Codex Bezea at Acts 17.27. Instead of reading that every nation has been made “to seek God” (ζητεῖν τὸν θεόν), Bezae says that it was “especially to seek the divine” (μάλιστα ζητεῖν τὸ θεῖόν ἐστίν). Several other witnesses attest τὸ θεῖον as well (gig, Clement, Irenaeus), but all of them, in one way or another, smooth the awkward syntax introduced by ἐστίν. As Metzger says, the text of Bezae “cannot be construed with the rest of the sentence” and must be emended either by removing ἐστίν or changing τό to something like ὅ (Commentary, p. 405).

Calhoun, however, points out that if Bezae’s text is taken as a complete sentence, it reads quite naturally as a reader’s note: μάλιστα “ζητεῖν τὸ θεῖόν” ἐστιν = “certainly [the correct reading] is ‘to seek the divine.’” At some point, the comment was misread so that instead of just replacing θεόν with θεῖον, the entire sentence was placed in the main text. Calhoun further suggests that this may give us a (small) clue about the editorial process behind the text of Bezae.

While this isn’t the kind of scenario one can definitively prove, and while I would like to see some uses of μάλιστα in similar contexts, it looks to me like a convincing solution and comes with the distinct advantage of not resorting to emendation.

Here is the relevant page in Bezae (line 2) courtesy of Cambridge’s nifty manuscript viewer:

----
Robert Matthew Calhoun, “The D-Text of Acts 17:27 (μάλιστα ζητεῖν τὸ θεῖόν ἐστιν),” Early Christianity 6.2 (2015): 230-234.

Medieval Musings in the Margins

The brainpickings blog lists a number of curious notes in margins and colophons made by medieval scribes (originally from the Spring 2012 issue of Lapham’s Quarterly:

"New parchment, bad ink; I say nothing more.

"I am very cold."

"That's a hard page and a weary work to read it."

"Let the reader's voice honor the writer's pen."

"This page has not been written very slowly."

"The parchment is hairy."

"The ink is thin."

"Thank God, it will soon be dark."

"Oh, my hand."

"Now I've written the whole thing; for Christ's sake give me a drink."

"Writing is excessive drudgery. It crooks your back, it dims you sight, it twists your stomach and your sides."

"St. Patrick of Armagh, deliver me from writing."

"While I wrote I froze, and what I could not write by the beams of the sun I finished by candlelight."

"As the harbor is welcome to the sailor, so is the last line to the scribe."

"This is sad! O little book! A day will come in truth when someone over your page will say, 'The hand that wrote it is no more'."

Cf. the nice little directions for use in Greg.-Aland 1030.

Do you know of any other gems? Share in the comments!

HT: Ingrid Lilly

Marginal Comments Included in the Main Text

I found the following information in a rather old book and have not been able to verify this, but it looks interesting. According to Tregelles' intro to his text of Revelation (1844), the Codex Corsendoncensis (I believe this is Gregory-Aland minuscule 3, right?) reads as follows in 2 Cor 8:4-5 δέξασθαι ἡμᾶς ἐν πολλοῖς τῶν ἀντιγράφων οὕτως εὕρηται καὶ οὐ καθὼς ἠλπίσαμεν. The first two words δέξασθαι ἡμᾶς are an addition found in some mss, while everything from καὶ οὐ ... onwards is part of the regular text of 8:5. That leaves the words 'ἐν πολλοῖς τῶν ἀντιγράφων οὕτως εὕρηται' ('such it is found in many copies'), referring apparently to the addition of δέξασθαι ἡμᾶς. A good example of a marginal comment in the exemplar that was included in the main text. This phenomenon must have happened more often.