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.

Darrell Post on a New Lectionary Group

The following is a guest post by Darrell Post who has been researching John 11 for many years (see here and here and here). In this connection I also want to mention that Post has done a great job with entries on Greek New Testament manuscripts on Wikipedia.

  

A Newly Found Lectionary Group?
by Darrell Post

New Testament textual critics have lamented the status of lectionary studies for generations. Despite the large quantity of these liturgical works, there are more continuous-text manuscripts and many of these remain to be fully studied. Lectionaries have been perceived as secondary, not existing in the early centuries of the church, and therefore further removed from the initial text. Most lectionaries are presumed to align closely with the Byzantine text and would therefore add very little to what is already known.

 

Happily, research into lectionaries has been increasing in recent decades, so when I embarked on a project five years ago to collate manuscripts that include John 11, I wanted to involve lectionaries in my work.  Compared to continuous-text manuscripts, fewer lectionaries have been digitized and made available on the internet. Far fewer have had their images indexed with the Scripture references. Locating a specific New Testament portion can be a challenge given the varying lectionary formats. I was fortunate with John 11 as the lesson that includes verses 47-54 appears early in most lectionaries and follows the lengthy lesson about the man born blind in John 9. The other lesson, John 11:1-45 is normally found just a few lessons past the artwork signaling the start of the Gospel of Mark lessons. But the easy way to find it was by scrolling through the images looking for the rare use of the decorative pi that stands out for starting the lesson of John 12, as this lesson is separated from John 11 by only one lesson from Matthew.

 

A year ago, my work was finished with continuous-text manuscripts, having collated 1,726 of them against John 11. One of them, GA-345, caught my attention in June 2021. Upon examination, the text presented a strong resemblance to the pattern of variations found in the papyri and early majuscules. Wisse had found the text of Luke in GA-345 to be within the Byzantine tradition[1], and checking the Manuscript Clusters tool on the INTF’s website[2], little returned in the search of GA-345 against the samples taken from John. I presumed the text of John 11 within GA-345 to be an anomaly. 

 

As my work turned to the Lectionaries, my initial survey found a possible 881 that might include John 11 and have images available to study. I have now completed the work on 382 of the 881. Lectionary manuscripts might naturally be presumed to have been always created from other lectionaries, meaning they would have developed their own patterns of variation, distinct from continuous-text manuscripts. However, Burns found in 1982 that L574 belonged to Family 13.[3] 

 

I have found comparable results so far in John 11. Several lectionaries include readings distinct to the Π family, including L2023, a match to the text of Π members GA-268 and GA-787. After the launch of the Kr group among continuous-text manuscripts, at least a dozen lectionary texts were copied in conformity to Kr readings.
 

Just recently I have collated John 11 in four lectionaries that surprisingly were found to share the variation pattern of continuous-text GA-345. These five manuscripts present an early form of the text of John 11:

345, 11th, Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana, F. 17 sup.
L466, 12th, Grottaferrata, Biblioteca Statale del Monumento Nazionale, A. α. 11.
L518, 13th, Messina, Biblioteca Regionale Universitaria, S. Salv. 95.
L534, 12th, Vatican, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Barb. gr. 448.
L546, 10th, Vatican, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vat. gr. 781.

I have not found anything written about these lectionaries and the readings they share in John 11, although I am still looking and invite anyone to point out something I have missed. Jordan did not select any of these manuscripts for analysis in his dissertation on the lectionary text of the Gospel of John.[4] 

 

Each of these manuscripts needs to be fully collated to see the extent of these distinctive readings. L466 has lost the opening pages including the lesson covering 11:47-54. L518 and L534 follow the Majority Text in 11:47-54, but match GA-345 in 11:1-45. L546 follows GA-345 in both lessons, indicating the potential for more parallels.  

 

Morrill found that GA-345 has 96.1% agreement with the Majority Text with no close relatives in John 18, so this manuscript was not selected in his list of recommended manuscripts to include in the ECM edition of the Gospel of John.[5]

 

Given the text presented by GA-345 and these four lectionaries, at least in John 11, future critical editions should consider including the testimony of these witnesses. Most importantly, this find demonstrates that lectionaries are worthy of study with the potential for more surprises to be found that are right now hiding in plain sight. 

 

The chart below shows a comparison from John 11 of 345, L466, L518, L534, and L546 against well-known manuscripts:

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[1] Frederik Wisse, The Profile Method for Classifying and Evaluating Manuscript Evidence (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1982), 110.

[2] http://intf.uni-muenster.de/TT_PP/Cluster4.php

[3] Yvonne Burns, “A Newly Discovered Family 13 Manuscript and the Ferrar Lection System.”

In Studia Patristica, vol. XVII, part 1, edited by Elizabeth A. Livingstone, 278– 289.

Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1982.

[4] C.R.D. Jordan, ‘The  Textual Tradition of the Gospel of John in Greek Gospel Lectionaries from the Middle Byzantine Period (8th-11th Century)’ (PhD; Birmingham, 2009), 48-49.

[5] Michael Bruce Morrill, ‘A Complete Collation and Analysis of all Greek Manuscripts of John 18’ (PhD; Birmingham, 2012), 169, 386.

Darrell Post on Family 1 in John: Five New Core Members

In May last year we published a guest post by Darrell Post on the newly registered minuscule 2957.

Darrell is a graduate of Virginia Beach Theological Seminary, Here below we publish another guest post in which he identifies five new core members of Family 1 in John.

 

 

 

The 2011 dissertation A Textual Study of Family 1 in the Gospel of John, by Alison Welsby, presented a complete textual analysis of John’s gospel among 17 manuscripts suspected of being related to Kirsopp Lake’s famous Family 1. Welsby included a proposed family stemma and reconstructed text of the Gospel of John according to Family 1. Her completed research placed the 17 manuscripts into the following groups:

Core Group: 1, 565, 884, 1582, and 2193

Venice Group: 118, 205, 209, 2713, and 2886 (formerly 205abs)

Subgroup: 22, 1192, 1210, 1278, and 2372

Miscellaneous: 131

Not a member of Family 1: 872

In her introduction, Welsby explained her selection of the 17 codices to study. 1, 22, 118, 205, 209, 1192, 1210, and 1582 were included based on the confirmation of Amy Anderson's work on Family 1 in Matthew. 131, 872, 1278 and 2193 were also selected because Anderson had found them to be weak Family 1 members in Matthew. Then Welsby added 565, 884, and 2372 as these were not included by Anderson, but were indicated by the Text und Textwert volumes as possible members of Family 1 in John's gospel. Finally, 2886 was also included in its own right, coming out from under the shadow of being formerly known as 205abs.

Having included additions to Family 1 found in Text und Textwert, Welsby’s work gives the impression that all available witnesses to the text of Family 1 in John were included in her dissertation, leaving no others with a GA number as of the year 2011. However, it seems the manuscript clusters tool available on the INTF internet page (http://intf.uni-muenster.de/TT_PP/TT_Clusters.html) was not available to Welsby back in 2011. A quick search using this tool selecting GA-1, John, and Strict Grouping, reveals a much longer list of possible Family 1 members. 138, 357, 994, and 2575 are all indicated as related to Family 1, but none were included in Welsby’s dissertation. These four additional manuscripts also include a commentary in an alternating text format, and they all include the PA in its traditional location, 7:53-8:11 (other core Family 1 members place the PA after the end of the gospel). Further use of the INTF’s Clusters tool also suggest 809 and 2702 as more distant relations to Family 1.

Welsby’s subgroup, 22, 1192, 1210, 1278, and 2372 appears to have several additional members including 19, 149, 660, 697, 791, 924, 1005, and 1365. Most of these additional cluster relationships were also observed by Bruce Morrill in his 2012 dissertation on John 18 (see GA-138 on page 147).

I have also confirmed each of these proposed additions to Family 1 in John’s gospel as part of a project to collate manuscripts of John chapter 11. 138, 357, 994, and 2575 all belong to Welsby’s core group, with these four most closely related to 884 in John 11. I also found Welsby’s subgroup to be two related clusters, both with only a minimal connection to Family 1 itself.

Finally, 2517 was found to preserve only 12 leaves of John’s gospel, and only a small portion of chapter 11. However, this portion was found to strongly match 1, 565, 1582 and 2193. Bruce Morrill found the same results for 2517 in its extant portion of John 18.

The first table below shows the percentage of agreement in John 11 among the core members and the Venice Group, while the second table shows the agreement in John 11 among the subgroup.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There are completed IGNTP transcriptions of 138, 357, and 2575 available on the INTF manuscript workspace page. These three along with 994 and 2517 need to be fully studied and integrated with the work of Welsby toward better understanding the Family 1 text of John’s gospel.

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%	-

New Minuscule 2957 and Its Allies – Guest Post by Post

I want to introduce Darrell Post, graduate of Virginia Beach Theological Seminary, whom I invited to do this guestpost on the newly registered minuscule 2957 (David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University, Greek MS 053). Darrell has followed this blog for many years and is very interested in New Testament textual criticism. He has done us all a great service by creating and editing useful articles on Wikipedia.

He created the page on New Testament amulet (here). He thoroughly revised and expanded the page for NT papyri (here), uncials (here), minuscules (here), and lectionaries (here).

These helpful lists contain a lot of bibliography and links to images which is very helpful. The lists of minuscules can also be viewed by hosting institution. Darrell told me that someone else started individual pages for each minuscule, but he has not touched those pages since they are full of errors. He just focused on the lists. Here is his guestpost:

Guestpost by Darrell Post

Duke University owns a manuscript (MS 053) of Theophylactus’ commentary on the Gospel of John dated circa 1540 (see images here). The Scripture text appears to be complete with the words of the gospel written in light brown ink and the commentary text in a darker hue. This manuscript has just been issued a GA number, 2957. Wanting to know what sort of text was represented, I collated John 11:1-57 against the 2005 R-P Majority Text. Not surprisingly, MS 053 was found to mostly agree with the Byzantine text with several alternative readings.

Later while collating the text of GA-318, a damaged manuscript containing only John 7:9-12:8, I found it to be a nearly perfect match to Duke’s MS 053. Both manuscripts are commentaries with Scripture text in different color ink, and in John chapter 11 they share almost the exact same words, 943 out 953. Leaving out scribal corrections and most spelling differences, as allowed by the CBGM, the coherence between the two manuscripts is 950 out of 953. The two manuscripts also share a rare abbreviation (IE) of δεκαπεντε and the rare full spelling of Jesus in 11:33 and 38, along with the full spelling of πατηρ in 11:41. They also include a few somewhat hard to find readings of the NA text where it differs from the MT (αυτω instead of αυτου in 11:12, omission of αυτου in 11:54).

According to the test passages evaluated in the Text und Textwert tool available on the INTF web page, GA-318 (and therefore Duke’s MS 053) may be part of a subset of manuscripts belonging to the cluster Wisse identified as Cluster 2148. Working through this list, I have thus far found seven other manuscripts that match the proposed sub-set of Cluster 2148: 315, 742, 817, 819, 854, 1160 and 2735. Several other manuscripts probably also belong to Cluster 2148 including 833, 855, 857 and 2470.

With a few exceptions, all ten of the manuscripts collated thus far include each of the following unique, identifying readings from John 11: The omission of marian in 11:28, the omission of poiesai in 11:37, and the addition of de after the second legei in 11:39.

The table below shows the percentage of agreements between these ten manuscripts for John 11:1-57 against the 953 words in the R-P Majority Text.

	318	MS053	315	817	742	2735	819	1160	854	2148
318	100%	99.7%	99.3%	99.2%	99.3%	99.1%	98.6%	99.0%	98.8%	98.3%
MS053	99.7%	100%	99.2%	99.1%	99.2%	99.0%	98.5%	98.8%	98.7%	98.2%
315	99.3%	99.2%	100%	98.8%	98.5%	98.3%	98.1%	98.4%	98.3%	98.0%
817	99.2%	99.1%	98.8%	100%	99.5%	99.1%	99.1%	99.2%	98.8%	98.5%
742	99.3%	99.2%	98.5%	99.5%	100%	99.2%	99.0%	99.1%	99.0%	98.4%
2735	99.1%	99.0%	98.3%	99.1%	99.2%	100%	99.4%	99.5%	99.8%	98.4%
819	98.6%	98.5%	98.1%	99.1%	99.0%	99.4%	100%	99.3%	99.2%	98.0%
1160	99.0%	98.8%	98.4%	99.2%	99.1%	99.5%	99.3%	100%	99.3%	98.3%
854	98.8%	98.7%	98.3%	98.8%	99.0%	99.8%	99.2%	99.3%	100%	98.4%
2148	98.3%	98.2%	98.0%	98.5%	98.4%	98.4%	98.0%	98.3%	98.4%	100%

POSTSCRIPT: Greg Paulson has drawn attention to the fact that Maurice Robinson mentioned this manuscript in a comment on James Snapp’s blogpost about Greek MSS in the K. W. Clark collection at Duke University in 2017: “Also to be included but not yet digitized is Duke Gr. 53 (ca. AD 1450), Commentary of Theophylact on the Gospel of John with NT text interspersed. Peculiarly, this MS has no GA number even yet, although other Theophylact commentary MSS have a GA number). In this MS, the PA is not included, as is typical for commentaries.” Well, now by 2020, the manuscript has been digitized and yesterday it got its Gregory-Aland number – 2957.