Congratulations to Peter Head, CBE

I would like to congratulate our longtime blog editor, Dr. Peter Head, on his recent appointment to the order of Commander of the British Empire (CBE). This is also a good time to recognize his International Award of Merit in Structural Engineering. Congratulations, Peter! You don’t look a day over 73.

H/T: Google Search

Correction: The original title of this post incorrectly identified Peter Head’s appointment in the Order of the British Empire. He is, in fact, in the class of CBE not OBE. We apologize for the mistake.

Lists of Greek New Testament Manuscripts on Wikipedia

One of our readers, Darrell Post, has made a magnificent update of the Wikipedia articles for the Greek New Testament manuscripts divided into papyri, uncials and minuscules (three parts). These pages promise to be great resources.

Papyri
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_New_Testament_papyri

Uncials
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_New_Testament_uncials

Here Darrell has indicated the manuscripts also photographed in UV light.

Minuscules (three articles)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_New_Testament_minuscules_(1%E2%80%931000)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_New_Testament_minuscules_(1001%E2%80%932000)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_New_Testament_minuscules_(2001%E2%80%93)

Updates to the minuscule page include an additional pass through the column for digital images, adding light grey shading for microfilm images, tan color for high-resolution color images hosted locally but not available online, and then gold color for links to new high resolution color images available online.

The highest GA number is now 2936.

Some numbers have been stricken from the K-Liste. By Darrell’s count there are 2,847 distinct manuscripts numbered. Of those 2,847, nineteen have been classified as destroyed, and 53 are described as either lost or with an unknown owner. 

The new total is 2,775 minuscule script manuscripts that could be available for modern color imaging.

By Darrell’s count 553 of the 2,775 (or 20%) have now been color digitized (roughly 20%). A large number exist on microfilm, and these are available online now at the INTF or other hosting locations like the National Library of France or the Vatican Library.

In the course of his work, Darrell further reports that he has found two manuscripts shown as “owner unknown” on the K-Liste. The first is GA 2324, known as the Hoffman Gospels. Darrell found it among the Yale University collection here.

The other is 2771, which is Lambeth Palace Library MS2795 here.
Darrell has notified the INTF. 

Thank you Darrell for your hard work on this!

Wikipedia is still bad: Notes on Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus

About this time last year I wrote a blog about the wikipedia page concerning Codex Alexandrinus, under the heading How Bad Is Wikipedia? Codex Alexandrinus as a Test Case.

My general conclusion was fairly negative:

“Wikipedia is quite bad. Facts are wrong, correct facts are placed in the wrong context, incorrect conclusions are drawn. ...  The best and most recent scholarship is cited the least. Evidence is not routinely provided. And the overall style is dreadful.”

Well, recently (in fact yesterday) I led a seminar on the NT manuscript C or 04 (Codex Ephraimi Rescriptus), and I happened to have a look at wikipedia again. Oh dear. This page also has plenty of problems - wikipediea obviously hasn’t really get a lot better in the last year. And this time I went all the way to the end and I found 20 problems, approximately half of which are either completely wrong or seriously misleading. See what you think.

1. Opening Sentence: “Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus (Paris, National Library of France, Greek 9; Gregory-Aland no. C or 04, von Soden δ 3) is an early 5th century Greek manuscript of the Bible, the last in the group of the four great uncial manuscripts (see Codex Sinaiticus, Alexandrinus and Vaticanus).”

Three problems with this sentence: i) the use of the word “early” for the date in the fifth century. By way of introduction it would be better to simply say ‘fifth century’ which is widely agreed. The possibility of narrowing down the range could be dealt with later (with evidence or argument). ii) and iii) the description of this as ‘the last in the group’. It is not clear what the word ‘last’ refers to here. If it is a dating issue, then it is unclear why C should be regarded as later than A (esp. if it is thought to be ‘early 5th century’ of course). It was not the last to be discovered or published. It is only ‘last’ in the alphabetical arrangement, but that means nothing. Further the sense in which the four great Greek Bible manuscripts are a ‘group’ is also not clear. It would be better to keep it simple: ‘one of the four Greek Bible manuscripts which survive from the fourth and fifth centuries’.

2. Second paragraph: “The manuscript received its name as a codex in which Greek translations of Ephraem the Syrian‘s treatises were written over (“rescriptus”) a former text that had been washed off its vellum pages, thus forming a palimpsest.^[1] The later text was produced in the 12th century. The effacement of the original text was incomplete, for beneath the text of Ephraem are the remains of what was once a complete Bible, containing both the Old Testament and the New.”

These sentences are just too clunky and inelegant. 

3. “There are only 209 leaves of the codex surviving, of which 145 belong to the New Testament and 64 to the Old Testament.”

Well it is true that 209 leaves survived up to the time of Tischendorf and are reflected in his published text; and this is a bit geeky, but in fact only 208 leaves are extant in the volume currently in the BN - there is one missing (and Tischendorf was the last person to hold it).

4. “The nomina sacra are abbreviated in an unusual way: ΙΗΣ for Ἰησοῦς (Jesus), IHY for Ἰησοῦ (of Jesus), XPΣ for Χριστὸς (Christ), ΧPY for Χριστοῦ (of Christ), ΠΑP for Πατήρ (Father), and ΣTH for Σταυρωθῇ (crucify).”

This is completely wrong. The footnote reference is to Gregory’s discussion of Codex Bezae. 

5. “The text of the Gospels is divided according to κεφαλαια (chapters), but their τιτλοι (titles of chapters) are not placed in the upper margin of the page as in Codex Alexandrinus. A list of their τιτλοι (tables of contents) preceded each Gospel.”

The difficulty here is partly linguistic and partly relates to the incomplete nature of the surviving evidence. Firstly it is not right to say that “the text of the Gospels is divided according to ...” The problem here is the word “divided”, the ennumeration of the kephalaia does not divide or even disturb the text of the gospels. It is a marginal system of ennumeration. Further it looks like the parenthetical italicised terms are translating the Greek words cited, but that doesn’t work with the third of these which is merely an equivalent for the whole phrase (a list of titloi = a table of contents). Further only two of the lists survives - so one should inject a note of caution: ‘based on the presence of the list of titloi preceding Luke’s Gospel and John’s Gospel it is reasonable to think that similar lists would have preceded each Gospel’. Finally, although no titloi are visible in the upper margins it is not to my mind certain that none were ever placed in the upper margin, since it is normal to have some orientation in the upper margins. Two possibilities would be worth considering, either that the material in the upper margin was written in red ink and so very thoroughly erased (like the first verse/s of each NT book); or that the pages were trimmed down when the book was rebound in the twelfth century [this in fact was Tischendorf’s view].

6. “The text of the Gospels is divided into small Ammonian Sections, whose numbers are given at the margin, with references to the Eusebian Canons (written below Ammonian Section numbers).”

Here again the term “divided” is not helpful. More substantially there is a question about the the presence of the two numbers in C. Only the upper number (the so-called Ammonian Section) is visible, and only these numbers are represented in Tischendorf’s transcription. Since Eusebius specifically mentions that the second number, the Eusebian Canon number, should be written in red ink; and since it appears that the red ink was well washed off in this manuscript, then it is possible that the Eusebian Canons were marked. But no one has ever seen them.

7. “The Pericope Adulterae (John 7:53–8:11) is omitted; though the pericope is located on the lost two leaves (John 7:3–8:34), by counting the lines it can be proved that it was not in the book – there is not room for it (as in Codex Alexandrinus).”

This should be stated in terms of probability rather than provenness, as indeed Metzger does in the Textual Commentary that is cited: ‘highly probable’.

8. “The text of Mark 16:9–20 was included to the codex, though it was located on the lost leaves; by counting the lines it can be proved that it was in the work.“

Other than the basic affirmation all the rest is completely wrong. Mark 16.9-20 is included in the text of Mark in this codex, there is no need to count anything. It is all there on folio 148r.

9. The list of lacunae. Two problems: a) surely it is more helpful to offer a list of passages which are present in the manuscript rather than a list of what is not present; b) the current list includes many passages that were present in red ink and have been more thoroughly erased than the main text in black ink. So it would be helpful to treat this, when extant, a bit differently from passages that are merely missing.

10. Text-type section

Obviously this is a difficult aspect of this manuscript, but this could be made clearer. Especially the referent of “it” is often not clear. E.g. in the following sentence one would be forgiven for thinking that Westcott-Hort (and von Soden) are addressing the textual character of Luke’s gospel in particular (which they are not): “In Luke its textual character is unclear. Westcott-Hort classified it as mixed; Hermann von Soden classified it as in the Alexandrian text-type.” It is also not quite correct to say that Westcott and Hort “classified” the textual character of the manuscript as “mixed” (it approximates to their view, but makes it sound more technical than it was). 

11. “Interpolations”, “Some corrections”, “Selected textual variants” and “Some other textual variants”

Since ‘interpolations’ are textual variants, we have three different categories for the same thing. Simplest to have a list of ‘Some textual variants’ and another list of ‘some corrections’. Of course some consideration as to why these are chosen to be listed and on what basis would be helpful.

12. History: “The manuscript was probably written in Egypt (or Palestine)^[5] before the middle of the fifth century.”

Firstly there is an error in the inclusion of ‘or Palestine’ at this point, since that is not what Gregory says. Secondly, whether it was ‘probably written in Egypt’ is doubtful. Better to say that Tischendorf suggested Egypt and no one has made a serious counter proposal.Thirdly, this ‘before the middle of the fifth century’ (or as previously ‘early fifth’) is in Gregory, but there really is not much by way of evidence, and most authorities seem to have been happy with a simple ‘fifth century’.

 13. “It was written by at least two scribes; according to Tischendorf, there were three scribes (A, B, C).”

Aside from the fact that this sentence barely makes sense, it is also wrong. Tischendorf discerned two scribes: one for the OT, one for the NT. Others (including Lyon) have suggested the possibility of a third scribal hand.

14. “The first corrector (C¹) worked in scriptorium, while the second corrector (C²) worked in Palestine in the sixth century.”

This makes it all sound so definite. No one knows where (or indeed when) C2 worked. Tischendorf suggested Palestine, Syria or Asia Minor (just places in between Alexandria and Constantinople). 

15. “At that time, the manuscript was probably housed in the Caesarea library, a famous theological library in ancient times^“

This is completely bogus. The cited reference makes no such claim.

16. “Jean Boivin, a French scholar, ...”

He was in charge of the Royal Library, so he was more than just any old French scholar.

17. “Because Tischendorf worked by eye alone, his deciphering of the palimpsest’s text was less than perfect.“

This is a rather odd statement. Of course it was not perfect, but the logic does not follow and judging by the paucity of Lyon’s corrections Tischendorf’s transcription was excellent.

18. Re Lyon: “This was also an imperfect work.”

This sort of comment (and the citation where it is made) is not particularly helpful. It makes it sound like it was a poor piece of work, which it was not.

19. “According to Edward Miller (1886) codices “B and probably א were procured under the dark gloom of Asian ascendency; A and C in the light of the most intellectual period of the early Church” (B – Vaticanus, א – Sinaiticus, A – Alexandrinus, C – Ephraemi Rescriptus).“

And the relevance of this is what exactly?

20. “According to Frederic Kenyon “the original manuscript contained the whole Greek Bible,...””

Strictly speaking this is true (i.e. Kenyon did say that). But the problem is that three or four times in this discussion we’ve been told that originally C comprised the whole OT; but no one has thought to notice that while the remains of the NT cover the whole breadth of the NT, from the OT we only have a few of the poetic works of the LXX.

How Bad is Wikipedia? Codex Alexandrinus as a Test Case

There are some things I really like about Wikipedia (although I don't really buy into David Parker's view that the Bible grew like a wikipedia article). It always comes up first in a google search so it is easy to find. It sometimes has really good pictures. And it usually has a jumble of information without any real coherent flow (which I generally don't mind). And lots of sentences finish with a reference (although it is not usually to the most relevant source). But a lot of scholars apparently don't like it and won't let their students use it. So how bad is wikipedia? I find it is sometimes helpful to check as one port of call among others, when I am up-dating a lecture; just to see: a) whether some stupid new idea has come out that I should be aware of; b) whether there is something really obvious I should include in my notes for a lecture; and c) what information people can glean entirely from secondary sources without ever having necessarily studied the subject.

Anyway, I was checking the wikipedia article for Codex Alexandrinus. That is over 7,000 words and 94 notes. It is full of information, and probably would give readers a reasonable idea of the manuscript. And the problems are sometimes subtle. Like the fact that a large proportion of the scholarship cited is from the 1800s (that doesn't make it wrong, but it does make it dated). Practically every sentence is poorly expressed (and that comes from an Australian). Look at that first note to Greek Bible! But I found a load of problems. (I know it can change all the time so I'll include the relevant bits here.)

1. "Wettstein designated it in 1751 by letter A, and it was the first manuscript to receive thus a large letter as its designation." If we overlook the 'large letter', we find here a typical wikipedia problem: two true facts are brought together in a stupid edit to create a false statement. Yes Wettstein designated it as A, yes, it was the first to have such a designation. But no, the connection between these statements ("thus") is wrong. It was already designated as "A" in Walton's Polyglot in 1657.

2. "The fourth volume contains the New Testament with 31 leaves lost." This is another typical wikipedia problem - the partial evidence taken as the full picture. What is the case? Well yes 31 leaves have been lost from the New Testament; but there are also leaves missing from 1 Clement (1 leaf) and 2 Clement (probably 2 leaves), both of which are in the fourth volume (leaving aside the possibility that they might be in Codex Alexandrinus' New Testament). So at least 34 leaves are lost from the fourth volume.

3. Here we are told: "Previously, General epistles were placed before Acts of the Apostles. They changed their positions after rebinding." (on the supposed authority of Westcott). But that is not what the colophon in the photo says, rather that this brings to a close "the Acts of the Apostles and the Catholic [Epistles]". Acts can't come after the Catholic Epistles because on the same page we have the end of Acts in the first column and the start of James in the second column. In fact Westcott said no such thing as is here stated. He gave the table of contents of Alexandrinus, further confirmation against the view that the order was changed in binding. As we shall see wikipedia has a keen interest in changes brought about in the binding of this manuscript.

4. Completely disconnected things put next to each other as if they are somehow related. There is a whole section further down on Textual Features, put those "Verses the scribe did not include" down there.

5. Leaving aside the fact that this also should be down in "Textual Features", this illustrates another wikipedia problem - inability to nuance and over-confidence in what can be proven. "In the lost two leaves (John 6:50-8:52), by counting the lines, it has been proven that it was not in the book – there was not room for it". So obviously it can be shown that if the text continued as normal there would not be enough space on the two missing leaves for all the text if 7.53 - 8.11 was included. And it is reasonable to assume that this amount of text was missing, and further that these verses were the missing ones. But we can't prove it wasn't some other twelve verses, or that these verses weren't added in the margin, or weren't somewhere else in the book (maybe somewhere in Matthew!). So we should say that A probably lacked these verses (Avid as in NA).

6. This is a doozy: "... most of the folios were originally gathered into quires of eight leaves each. In modern times it was rebound into quires of six leaves each." Now this sounds plausible enough, so long as you have no idea at all what a quire is. Incidentally I was so taken by this idea I thought about showing what the result would be like (but this is taking too long already). I do know that this completely wrong (and incidentally undocumented) statement has spread from wikipedia to other places on the interweb (e.g. Orthodoxwiki and answeringchristianity and thiswikipediaripoff).

7. The ye-olde English pretty obvious plagiarism detector: "whensoever" is probably enough, but those two sentences are both very odd: "The vellum has been fallen into holes in many places" - this may have meant something in its original context, but it no longer does.

8. (It looks like I'll easily make 10). Here we have another wikipedia staple: completely irrelevant information included for no obvious reason. "Words are written continuously in a large, round and well-formed uncial hand, with no accents and only some breathings (possibly added by a later editor). The letters are larger than those of the Codex Vaticanus. There is no division of words, but some pauses are observed in places in which should be a dot between two words." (I pass over the final phrase in silence). Here is a perfectly helpful couple of sentences, along with the interjection: "The letters are larger than those of the Codex Vaticanus." Oh yeah, like we all know how large those letters are! And this matters how? And why only one comparison?

9. That same clip has a typical wikipedia doublet. In fact a double doublet:  "no accents and only some breathings (possibly added by a later editor). ... There are no accent and breathing marks, except a few added by a later hand ..." cf. also "There is no division of words, but some pauses are observed in places in which should be a dot between two words ... but the punctuation was written by the first hand." Well this one is a contradictory doublet!

10. Leaving aside the fact that the proposed change of scribe at 1 Cor 10.8 was already mentioned a few paragraphs earlier, this sentence has a rather arbitrary element: "... who had better tools for comparison...". One could say that Milne and Skeat considered Kenyon's view and found it wanting (and perhaps that they have been followed by contemporary scholars - although I doubt that is particulary relevant unless they have also checked the data); but I don't see that they had any better tools than Kenyon did. They all worked with the manuscript itself. What other tools are there?





That is ten problems in the first half of the entry. And there are many more in the second half. I can see why many people advise students to avoid wikipedia. Wikipedia is quite bad. Facts are wrong, correct facts are placed in the wrong context, incorrect conclusions are drawn. Some of these errors would seem to have been deliberately inserted (either that or very stupid people are getting things badly wrong and adding them in). The best and most recent scholarship is cited the least. Evidence is not routinely provided. And the overall style is dreadful.