Parablepsis to the Rescue in Jude 12

Jude 12 has an above average number of variants in it. But one in particular is quite striking. It’s the addition of the words γογγυσταὶ μεμψίμοιροι κατὰ τὰς ἐπιθυμίας αὐτῶν πορευόμενοι (“grumblers, malcontents, following their own desires”). This longer reading is found in 01*, 04C, 1270, 1297, 1827, and some Coptic witnesses at the end of v. 11 and must come from v. 16. How did it get here? Probably by dittography caused by the presence of οὗτοί εἰσιν in both verses. But that is a long way for an eye to skip as seen in Codex Sinaiticus.

The red lines mark the shared verbiage in v. 12 and v. 16 (οὗτοί εἰσιν).

Is it really possible that a scribe’s eye skipped that far? I doubt it. Thankfully, Tommy Wasserman’s dissertation cites J. Rendel Harris who provides a better explanation. He suggests that the mistake happened when the two verses were on the same level in parallel columns. The scribe’s eye jumped, not just from one verse to the other, but from one column to the other. The longer reading wasn’t always corrected, in part, because as Tommy notes, it fits pretty well in v. 12 given the reference to Korah’s rebellion in v. 11 and the grumbling that was a key part of it (cf. Num 16.11; 17.6 etc.).

All this is well and good. It explains how the scribe got off track. What it doesn’t answer is how he got back on. How does a scribe go from jumping columns like this and not leave out everything in between (vv. 12–15) as a result? A mistake that big would not have gone unnoticed and therefore would not have survived like it has in the tradition. What gives?

At this point, the corrector in Sinaiticus may offer a clue. Just after the addition (marked as such), we find another correction in the small addition of οἱ out in the margin before ἐν ταῖς κτλ. 

The article οἱ has been added in the margin in 01

Sure enough, the other three Greek manuscripts with the longer reading also lack the article οἱ after the addition (04 is not extant at this point per ECM). Since those are the same last two letters in the addition (πορευόμενοι), might it be possible that, having skipped to the wrong verse, the scribe’s eye now skipped back to the right one thanks to the letters -οι? From there, he carried on with the rest of v. 12, missing only the οἱ. This would explain why his mistake went completely unnoticed and how he managed to skip from v. 12 to v. 16 without leaving out everything in between. In short, he managed to get himself back on track without ever having realized he left it. 

If so, then we have a rather fun case where one parablepsis led to a lengthy addition and a second parablepsis kept it from leading to a much larger omission—while the combination kept the scribe from noticing he made either mistake.

Thoughts?

Textual Criticism in the 1970s and 1980s

Was there an interlude in the discipline of NT textual criticism in the mid-20th century? Eldon Epp thought so. Kurt Aland disagreed. Whichever side you take, I noticed an interest contrast today in an article by Georg Luck published in 1981 on the state of classical textual criticism. 

Writing shortly after Epp made his provocative claim about an interlude, Luck wrote these words introducing an extended review of several books: “Above all, these works show that textual criticism today is as an essential tool of classical scholarship as it has ever been.” 

That’s an interesting contrast. At roughly the same period of time, a NT scholar was suggesting the discipline was in a lull on his side of things while a classicist was saying it was thriving on his. I have no grand conclusion to draw. Just an observation.

Three New Essays on Theology and Textual Criticism

At ETS last year, the conveners of the session on inerrancy invited several people to give papers on inerrancy and textual criticism. That included me and my coblogger Dirk Jongkind and Matthew Bennet of Cedarville University. (Dan Wallace was also slated to speak, but unfortunately couldn’t make it at the last minute.) Those papers have now been published in the latest issue of Presbyterion. 

In Dirk’s paper, he examines the claim that textual variants don’t affect theology and uses that to discuss the relationship of textual criticism and theology more generally. In my paper, I consider whether a shift to the pursuit of the initial text creates a problem for evangelicals who hold to inerrancy. In Bennett’s very interesting paper, he compares textual criticism of the New Testament to textual criticism of the Qur’an with particular attention to the theological ramifications for Christians and Muslims respectively. (It was certainly news to me to learn about the online Encyclopedia of the [variant] readings of the Qur’an and its 14,000 recorded textual variants.)

You can read all three papers online at our Academia pages:

• “It Does Not Make a Difference”: The Fraught Relation Between The Textual Criticism of the New Testament and Theology (Jongkind)
• Inerrancy and the Initial Text (Gurry)
• Apples and Oranges: The Theological Implications of Textual Critical Discoveries in the Bible and in the Qur’an (Bennett)

Curetonian Syriac Gospels Digitized

I learned some good news by way of Ian Mills on Twitter today. The British Library has now digitized Add MS 14451, better known as the Curetonian Syriac Gospels. There are a handful of leaves in other places as well (see here). The images from the BL are listed as in the public domain.

Ending of Mark Papers Published

The papers from the Mark 16 conference around this time last year have now been published in the latest issue of Comparative Oriental Manuscript Studies Bulletin. I haven't had a chance to read them yet myself but look forward to.

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The Transmission of Mark’s Endings in Different Traditions and Languages

Papers presented at the International Workshop, Lausanne, 2–3 June 2022; ed. by Claire Clivaz, Mina Monier, and Dan Batovici

Introductory Essay

• A Multilingual Turn: Introducing the ‘MARK16’ COMSt Bulletin  (Claire Clivaz) 

Greek and Latin Traditions

• Physical Discontinuities in the Transitions between the Gospels: Reassessing the Ending of Mark in Codex Sinaiticus, Vaticanus and Alexandrinus  (Patrick Andrist) 
• The Text and Paratext of Family 1 in Mark 16 (Tommy Wasserman) 
  
• ʻAccording to the Egyptiansʼ: Mark 16 in GA 72 (Mina Monier) 
  
• Framing Mark: Reading Mark 16 in a Catena Manuscript (Anthony P. Royle and Garrick V. Allen) 
• Was Salome at the Markan Tomb? Another Ending to Mark’s Gospel  (Elizabeth Schrader Polczer)
• ‘The End of the Beginning’: Mark’s Longer Ending (16:9–20) and the Adaptation of the Markan Storyline (James A. Kelhoffer)
• The Ending of Mark in Tatian’s Diatessaron (Nicholas J. Zola) 
• Mark 16 and the Eusebian Apparatus: Greek and Latin Solutions  (W. Andrew Smith) 

Other Languages

• The Shorter Ending of the Gospel of Mark in the Coptic Versions  (Anne Boud’hors and Sofía Torallas Tovar) 
• The Endings of the Gospel of Mark in Syriac Witnesses  (David GK Taylor) 
• Mc 16 dans les manuscrits arabes du Sinaï — Réflexions de méthode pour leur utilization en critique textuelle. Diversity of versions, rubriques, langues sources, variantes fausses et vraies (Jean G. Valentin) 
• The Endings of Mark in Ethiopian Translation and Transmission  (Curt Niccum) 
• Mark 16 in the Persian Harmony of the Gospels (Ali B. Langroudi)
• The Displaced Endings of Mark in Armenian Biblical Manuscripts  (Dan Batovici) 
  
• Mark 16:9–20 in Armenian Medieval Literature: A Commentary by Barseł Maškeworc’i (Armine Melkonyan) 
• Un essai de panorama de Marc 16 dans la tradition georgienne  (Bernard Outtier)
  

History of the Reception

• Cerinthus and the Gospel of Mark: The Priority of the Longer Ending  (Joan E. Taylor)
  
• Trajectories in the History of Textual Scholarship on Mark’s Endings: A Reconsideration (Jan Krans and An-Ting Yi)
• Mark 16 from the Sixteenth to the Nineteenth Century: Why Were the Doubts not Expressed Earlier? (Regis Burnet)

New Series “Papyri and the New Testament”

I just discovered today that Brill has a new series called “Papyri and the New Testament” edited by Peter Arzt-Grabner, John S. Kloppenborg, and Christina M. Kreinecker. Here’s the publisher’s summary:

Papyrology has always interested scholars of the New Testament and of Christian origins, mainly because of the discovery of papyrus copies of texts from the Christian scriptures. However, what documentary papyri, ostraca, and tablets indicate about issues of everyday Greco-Roman life has also much to contribute to the understanding of early Christ groups. These issues include ancient economy and agriculture, labor and social relations, reading cultures, administration, and a variety of other topics. The PNT series is designed to introduce students and teachers to the value of this material. The volumes provide introductions, evaluations, and conclusions. Many documents are presented in their entirety with an English translation and commentary. The authors cover the state of papyrological research and supplement it with their own conclusions and updates, making the series also of interest to scholars of Papyrology, Biblical Studies, Ancient History, and Classics.

The first two volumes are scheduled for release this year.

The first volume is More Light from the Ancient East: Understanding the New Testament through Papyri edited by the series editors. The title is an obvious ode to the pioneering volume by Adolf Deissmann.

The first volume of the new series “Papyri and the New Testament” introduces students, teachers, and scholars to the value of the study of papyrological documents and their impact on the understanding of early Christ groups. Papyri, ostraca, and tablets document the social, economic, political, and multilingual circumstances of the Greco-Roman period and are the best sources for understanding New Testament times. Compared to the first studies devoted to this topic about 100 years ago, the amount of available material has grown twentyfold. In addition, the days have passed when papyri were found exclusively in Egypt: a significant number of texts from Israel, Syria, North Africa, Britain, Switzerland, and other Greco-Roman regions demonstrate that these sources shed light on general conditions throughout the Roman Empire. The volume both introduces the main issues of comparing papyri with New Testament texts and presents many comprehensive examples.

The second volume is Letters and Letter Writing by Peter Arzt-Grabner.

New Testament letters are compared with the private, business, and administrative letters of Greco-Roman antiquity and analyzed against this background. More than 8.000 letters – preserved on papyrus, potsherds or tablets from Egypt, Israel, Asia Minor, North Africa, Britain, and Switzerland – have been edited so far. Among them are not only short notes by writers with poor writing skills, but also extensive letters and correspondences from highly educated authors. They testify to the high art of Paul of Tarsus, who knew how to make excellent use of epistolary formulas or enrich them with new variants, but they also show that some New Testament letters clearly fall outside the framework of standard epistolography, raising new questions about their authors and their genre. The introductions and discussions offered in the volume reflect the current state of research but also offer new results. Over 130 papyrus and ostracon letters are newly translated in their entirety.