GA 2965 and the Nicetas Manuscript Cluster: Guest Post by Post II

The following is a guest post by Darrell Post, graduate of Virginia Beach Theological Seminar (for an earlier guest post by Darrell on minuscule 2957 and its allies, see here – that post also includes an introduction of the guestblogger).

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Gregory-Aland 2965 and the Nicetas Manuscript Cluster

Sometimes things hide in plain sight. Such was the situation with the manuscript cluster of Nicetas’ catena on John’s gospel. These individual manuscripts, 249, 317, 333, 423, 430, 743, and 869 have been known to exist for years, but this group was largely ignored until Brill published an article in 2016 by Michael A. Clark, Nicetas of Heraclea’s Catena on John’s Gospel: How Many Manuscripts are There?This helpful article established with certainty which mss should truly be cataloged as a catenae of Nicetas.  Clark later completed his dissertation, The Catena of Nicetas of Heraclea and its Johannine Text, which included a reconstructed text of John’s gospel as penned by Nicetas, complete with an apparatus showing variations between the Nicetas text, the Byzantine text, and the NA text. 

A contributing factor to the historical ignorance of this cluster involves the damaged and tattered nature of each of the manuscripts (see table below). Furthermore, none of them include the synoptic gospels, meaning these were avoided during the profile studies that identified other minuscule clusters.

Bruce Morrill’s dissertation on John 18 found 317, 333, and 423 as closely related, but 249, 430, and 869 lacked chapter 18. 743 changed dramatically somewhere between chapter 11 and chapter 18, where Morrill found it to have different relatives.

Recently, the INTF assigned a new GA number, 2965, to a previously unknown copy of Nicetas’ catena on John. This find is significant for two reasons. First, the text of 2965 seems complete and undamaged, and second, the Greek text strongly matches the cluster. The readings from this cluster’s text are mixed, retaining many of the readings found primarily in the Alexandrian mss—more so than Family 1 or Family 13. 

The table below shows the contents and location of each member of this cluster:

GA#	John Content	MS Content	Date	Location
249	3:22-13:20	JN	12th	Moscow, Historical Museum V. 90
317	10:9-end	JN	12th	Paris, National Library Greek 212
333	1:1-20:23	MT, JN	1214	Turin National University Library, B. I. 9
397*	1:1-21:18	JN	10/11th	Rome, Vallicelliana Library, ms.E. 40
423	1:1-19:16	MT, JN	1556	Munich, Bavarian State Library, Cod.graec. 36, 37
430	1:1-8:14	JN	11th	Munich, Bavarian State Library, Cod.graec. 437
743	1:1-21:21	JN, 1-3 JN, RV	14th	Paris, National Library, Suppl. Grec 159, fol. 2-7.12-406
869	6:20-11:57	JN	12th	Vatican Library, Vat.gr.1996
2965	Complete	JN	1360-80	Mikulov, Regional Museum, MIK 6370

*397 is included here because in portions of John’s gospel, chapter 11 for instance, it presents the same Greek text as found in the Nicetas cluster.

In John 11 there are 50 instances where the NA text varies from the 2005 R-P MT. 249, 317, 333, 423, 430, 869 and 2965 include 40% of these readings, while 397 includes 42% of them and 743 just 22%. By comparison, Family 1 has as many as 33% of these readings and Family 13 just 20% of them. Other frequently cited minuscules rank as follows: 33 – 58%, 579 – 52%, 213 – 50%, 1241 – 45%

Notable variations in John 11 supported by this Nicetas catena cluster include ηδη ημερασ rather than ημερασ ηδη in 11:17; την instead of τασ περι in 11:19; inclusion of δε, ηγερθη instead of εγειρεται and ηρχετο for ερχεται in 11:29; the inclusion of ετι in 11:30; προσ instead of εισ in 11:32; τετελευτηκοτοσ rather than τεθνηκοτοσ in 11:39; the omission of ο τεθνηκωσ κειμενοσ in 11:41, and εμεινεν for διετριβεν in 11:54. This last one is particularly rare, given the only other witnesses found to support this reading include P66, P75, 01, 03, 019, 032, 579, 597, 1241 and 1654.

The first table below shows the percentage of agreement in John 11 each member of the Nicetas cluster has with the MT. The second table shows the agreement between the mss, again from John 11.

Agreement with MT in John 11
249	(892/953)	93.6%
317	(891/953)	93.5%
333	(889/953)	93.3%
397	(895/953)	93.9%
423	(888/953)	93.2%
743	(912/953)	95.7%
869	(802/857)	93.6%
2965	(887/953)	93.1%

 

	249	317	333	397	423	743	869	2965
249	-	99.4%	99.5%	98.7%	99.4%	96.3%	98.9%	99.2%
317	99.4%	-	98.8%	99.0%	98.7%	96.3%	99.1%	99.8%
333	99.5%	98.8%	-	98.2%	99.9%	96.0%	98.6%	98.6%
397	98.7%	99.0%	98.2%	-	98.1%	96.5%	98.6%	98.7%
423	99.4%	98.7%	99.9%	98.1%	-	95.9%	98.6%	98.5%
743	96.3%	96.3%	96.0%	96.5%	95.9%	-	96.0%	96.1%
869	98.9%	99.1%	98.6%	98.6%	98.6%	96.0%	-	98.8%
2965	99.2%	99.8%	98.6%	98.7%	98.5%	96.1%	98.8%	-

David Smith: Why GA 1411 Should Not be GA 1411: On Classifying Catenae Manuscripts

The following is a guest post from David C Smith. David and I worked together a few years ago in Athens with CSNTM. He is completing a ThM at Dallas Theological Seminary and is a Deacon in the Anglican Church in North America. His masters thesis, entitled “A Study of the Text and Paratext of the Catena on Luke in GA 1441,” should be completed this summer. Here is some of the fruit of that work.

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Introduction

The question of Catenae Manuscript classification has been raised by some as the details and purpose for composition have been more clearly understood. I wish to contribute some data to the conversation that has come from my work on GA 1411, a relatively unexplored and unanalyzed MS from the National Library of Greece. I was fortunate enough to digitally preserve this artifact with my good friend Andrew Bobo as we worked for CSNTM in the summer of 2015.

The purpose and use of catenae manuscripts has been explained more fully in the NTTC world by scholars such as William Lamb, Hugh Houghton, and David Parker. Lamb in particular has argued that these manuscripts were not primarily written as witnesses to the New Testament, but were written as educational textbooks in the medieval Byzantine scholastic context. Much of his argument is based on situating these manuscripts in their historical context, and in turn showing how this understanding of the compositional purpose of catenae manuscripts explains the high amount of variance in not only their biblical text but in their patristic commentary. In addition, this explanation of their purpose calls into question their use as witnesses of the New Testament alongside other continuous-text manuscripts, which are clearly written to transmit the NT text.

For many reasons, not much work has been done on the Greek catenae manuscripts as artifacts to see if the actual details of the manuscripts support this conclusion from Lamb and others. That is, if we were to examine the textual and paratextual details of a given catenae manuscript, would the phenomena of the artifact be best explained by the theory that they are educational textbooks/anthologies?

My master’s thesis at Dallas Theological Seminary is a study of GA 1411 to attempt exactly this. I am trying to observe the details and phenomena of this manuscript to judge whether or not Lamb’s explanation best fits.

What is a Catena Manuscript and Why should we Care?

In the course of my research on the hexaplaric fragments of Job, I became immersed in its catena tradition. I also became aware that most handbooks and introductions to the Septuagint that mention these MSS did not describe them well, and they usually assumed too much knowledge on the part of the reader, especially the beginner, or worse, the specialist did not understand catena MSS either. A picture is worth a thousand words, and a visual of these MSS allows one to understand commentary on them and what the “C“ symbolizes in a critical text’s apparatus. Knowledge of their material layout aids in understanding their contents.

“Catena” is the Latin word for “chain,” and it will become evident below why these MSS were named as such. The details of the textual tradition of the Job catena need not detain us here. See my article on this topic for details, but one does not need to wade through it to appreciate the content of this post. There are two types of catenae MSS: Marginal and Text.