Crowdsourcing a marginal note at Luke 22:43–44

Luke 22:43–44 in GA 1424:

Luke 22:43–44 in GA 1424

I admit that abbreviated minuscule script is a bit outside my normal time range. Most of the time I’m not too bad at it, but it helps if you already know what you’re looking at. That being said, I was looking at the Lukan Gethsemane Scene in 1424 earlier, and noticed it has three marginal notes. I was able to make out two of them (rather I should say, enough of two of them), which are interesting enough on their own. They both seem loosely to derive from older patristic sources (Epiphanius? though a catena of [Pseudo-?]Titus of Bostra attributes a longer note to Chrysostom, of which one of the notes in 1424 appears to be an abbreviated form—GA 39 contains the text; The text of Luke 22:43–44 is on f. 203r, and the beginning of Chrysostom’s comments is at the 6th line of the commentary at the top of the page, but the comments relevant to this section are marked with a symbol and appear on f. 203v.).

Listing them in order of appearance on the page from top to bottom, the first is:


Text: διὰ τὴν ὑπερβολὴν | τῆς θαυμασιότητος | δοξολογῶν αὐτὸν | ὁ ἄγγελος ἐφαί|νετο· οἷα λεγειν· | σή ἐστιν ἡ ἰσχὺς | δέσποτα σὺ γὰρ ἴ|σχυας κατὰ θα|νάτου ἐλευθέρω|σας τὸ γένος ἀνθρώπων:

[rough translation:] “Because of the excess of astonishment, the angel appeared glorifying him, because he said, ‘Yours is the strength, O Master, for you are strong over death, setting free the race of mankind.’”

At the bottom of the page, a third note identifies Luke 22:43 as a fulfilment of Deuteronomy 32:43:

Below: square brackets relate to the text itself; round brackets are my suggested clarifications. Neither are perfect, as I admit that this type of hand is getting near the limits of my competency.

Text: [something]: ὤφθη δὲ αὐτῷ ἀγγέλος ἀπ᾽ ὀυρανοῦ ἐνϊσχύων αὐτόν: οὐχ ὢς δε ὁ [κυριον?]· ἀλλ᾽ ἵνα πληρωθῇ τὸ [it starts to get hard to read here, but ἐνισχυ]σάτωσαν αὐτὸν πάντες ἄγγελοι θεοῦ.

[rough translation]: [something]: “But an angel from heaven appeared to him, strengthening him”: But not (strengthening him) as Lord (or, not his divine nature?), but in order to fulfil that [which was spoken(or written) (by Moses?)]: “Let all the angels of God strengthen him.”
_______________

The second note, ironically the shortest and probably easiest, is the one that I’m having trouble with. I’d rather not spend more time trying to sort it out, so I though I’d ask for the wisdom of our readership. Can anyone decipher the full note easily? I can see letters here and there. I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s οὐκ split over the last two lines. I can see ἀστερισ[κος?] on the first/second line. It probably begins with τα Putting it all together would take me more time than I’d like to spend though. For context, Luke 22:43–44 are marked with asterisks in this manuscript, and my guess is that this note might be a text-critical remark, or at least I would think it’s an explanation of the asterisks. This manuscript does have marginal notes like this elsewhere that reveal a knowledge of textual variants.

Feel free to correct my rough transcriptions and translations of the other two notes as well, but I’m mainly asking about the second note, pictured below. I’ll try to check back and update/give credit.

Thank you much!

The second note:

GA 1424, marginal note at Luke 22:43–44. http://www.csntm.org/manuscript/View/GA_1424

EDIT: Thanks to Peter Montoro who sent me what I think is a reasonable proposal for parts of it, then he and I together put the rest of it together: τὰ ἔχοντα τοὺς ἀ|στερισκούς· ἔν τι|σιν ἀντιγράφοις οὐ | κεῖται:

Rough translation: “The things that have the asterisks: they do not lie in some copies.”

Fun fact: in 1986, these verses were used as part of a medical diagnosis:

William D. Edwards, Wesley J. Gabel and Floyd E. Hosmer, “On the Physical Death of Jesus Christ,” Journal of the American Medical Association 255.11 (1986), 1455–1463, esp. p. 1456. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/403315

On Epiphanius:

K. Holl, Epiphanius, Bände 1-3: Ancoratus und Panarion [Die griechischen christlichen Schriftsteller 25, 31, 37. Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1:1915; 2:1922; 3:1933]: 1:153-161, 169-233, 238-464; 2:5-210, 215-523; 3:2-229, 232-414, 416-526. Retrieved from: http://stephanus.tlg.uci.edu/Iris/Cite?2021:002:1923247

See also Dirk Jongkind’s post about Luke 22:43–44 in the Tyndale House Greek NT.

Minuscule 1424 – Help: Is this a correction?

I could use some help.

Here is minuscule 1424 at 1 Pet 4:11, located on the CSNTM website as GA_1424_0213b.jpg. [I haven’t found a way to navigate the CSNTM without wanting to end my life, but the image is roughly 60% down, two pages before 2Pt]

My gripe is with the reading ης χορηγει.

It seems to me that the first letter of ης is the result of a correction, mostly because of its dark ink, but also because of the majuscule η that is used. The circumflex above is part of the correction, but the breathing seems original.

Which leads me to assume, if correct, that we had here originally ὡς, just as in the line above, after the comma. The omega would fit under the current eta.

Am I seeing things that are not there? And, in light of the discussion earlier in the week is this a 1424*^vid, or is this all too speculative?

Greek NT MSS from the Gruber Rare Books Collection on-line

I was meaning to post on The Gruber Rare Books Collection at the Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago a long time ago, but now is the perfect time, because Jeff Hargis announced the other day on W. Willker's textual criticism discussion-list that the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts (CSNTM) have posted images of fourteen Greek New Testament manuscripts in the collection:

CSNTM is pleased to announce the posting of fourteen Greek New Testament manuscripts from the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, as well as a single leaf held by a private owner in Chicago. The manuscripts were photographed in March 2010 by a team from the Center and include GA 1424, an important late 9th or early 10th century manuscript that includes the entire New Testament. The manuscripts are posted on the “Manuscripts” section of the website. CSNTM is grateful to Dr. Ralph Klein, curator of the Rare Books Collection of the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, and to Dr. Edgar Krentz, for permission to post these images.

The Gruber Collection was mainly assembled by L. Franklin Gruber (1870-1941), President of Chicago Lutheran Theological Seminary, Maywood, Illinois. The MSS dates from the 9th to the 13th centuries. The most well-known, as apparent from Hargis' announcement is Greg.-Aland 1424. One of the interesting features of this MS is the so-called TO IOUDAIKON scholia found in few GNT MSS (incidentally, one other is in Sweden, so I have prepared an article including a brief treatment of the scholia and its suggested connection to the Jerusalem colophon).

As we have reported earlier on this blog, here, Dr. Nadezhda Kavrus-Hoffmann is cataloguing the Greek Medieval and Renaissance manuscripts in collections in the United States.

In March last year, she was at the Lutheran Theological Seminary in Chicago. She then found that the MSS had been studied very little by Seymour De Ricci and Kenneth Clark who had put together earler catalogues, and there were some erroneous information. For example, Kenneth Clark had dated one the MS to the latter 12th century, but Kavrus-Hoffman found palaeographic evidence that suggested a later date, and also the style of the miniatures confirmed her judgment.

In another MS there were notes in the margins about a solar eclips which helped her to establish the date and location of the scribe when he wrote the note.

Read the whole story here. I will come back with more news about Kavrus-Hoffmann's work.

An overview of the Greek New Testament MSS in the Gruber collection is found here.

The images of the MSS are found at CSNTM here.