Snapp on the Distigmai in Vaticanus

Over on his blog, James Snapp has a new post on the double dots in Vaticanus. These dots have been of significant interest ever since Phil Payne first noticed them. 

Following Niccum and Head, Snapp makes a good case, with some new suggestions, that the dots are from the 16th century. In particular, he suggests that Sepulveda’s letter to Erasmus, where he says he noted 365 variations in Vaticanus, should be reread as 765, changing just one roman numeral (CCCLXV → DCCLXV). In that case, the number matches exactly Payne’s estimate. I wonder if we have the original letter anywhere.

There’s more to the argument, but I won’t spoil it. Go read it and see what you think. I was already pretty convinced the dots were from Sepulveda, but this convinced me further. But I’d love to hear from others who have written or presented on this (Peter Head 👀).

Examples of dots in Vaticanus

Last Two Videos on NT Textual Criticism and Askeland on GJW

I’ve now uploaded the last two guest lectures from my Fall TC course. The first is from James Snapp on Mark 16 and the second is Richard Brash on whether Cornelius Van Til’s theology leads to KJV-onlyism or its kin.

By way of commentary, I should note that James and I had a good Q&A after his talk but Zoom was unfortunately a bit out of sync. Personally, I was surprised to hear James say that he does not think Mark 16.9–20 is Mark’s originally intended ending. In other words, both he and I agree that we do not have Mark’s intended ending. Where we differ is that he thinks that vv. 9–20 are still from Mark and were in the first published copy. By his definition, then, they are original. I’m guessing that if that was news to me, it may be news to some of James’s followers too. But James can chime in if he wants to clarify/correct me here.

Finally, apologies to Christian Askeland whose video on Coptic translations I forgot to download in time from Zoom and is now gone forever. As a consolation, you can go read Christian’s new article on lessons from the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife at the TCI website.

Thanks to all my guests this semester!

James Snapp discovers two more folios of 064!

St. Catherine’s Monastery,
where these new folios of 064 are.

In case you missed it a few days ago, James Snapp has discovered two previously unidentified folios of 064 at the Sinai Palimpsests Project website.

If you go over to see the images of 064 at the VMR, you’ll notice there are gaps from Matt. 26:70–27:13 and from Matt. 27:30 to 27:44. These two gaps correspond exactly to the text on two folios Snapp identified from Sinai, Syriac 7.

Also incredibly helpful is the pseudo-facsimile transcription James made, which even mark differences from the Robinson-Pierpont text.

Well done, James, and congrats on the find! See the whole post here, and the initial announcement here.

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Final note: this discovery follows Head’s Rule.