Eighth Lincoln College Summer School in Greek Palaeography

Wesley won’t be a lecturer this year

Lincoln College is hosting its 8th Summer School in Greek Palaeography this summer. I highly recommend it. You can read about my experience.

The eighth Lincoln College International Summer School in Greek Palaeography will be held on 27 July - 1 August 2020. The school offers a five-day introduction to the study of Greek manuscripts through ten reading classes, three library visits and five thematic lectures.

Costs: The school does not charge student fees. However, any faculty members admitted to the school may be charged a small fee to defray costs. Participants are individually responsible for their transportation and living expenses in Oxford. A few bursaries, covering housing (but no board), will be awarded to particularly deserving applicants.

Daily schedule: 9:00-11:00 reading class, 11:15-13:00 library visit, 13:00-14:45 lunch break, 14:45-16:45 reading class, 17:00-18:00 lecture. A final written examination will be administered on Saturday 1 August, 9:00-12:00.

Instructors: Georgi R. Parpulov (Ph.D. Chicago), Christos Simelidis (D.Phil. Oxon.), Dimitris Skrekas (D.Phil. Oxon.).

Lecturers: Nigel G. Wilson FBA (Oxford), Prof. Marc Lauxtermann (Oxford), Prof. Leslie Brubaker (Birmingham), Prof. David Parker FBA (Birmingham), Christopher Wright (Cambridge).

More info here. 

Correcting Text und Textwert in Eph 5.22

Where they have data, the Text und Textwert (TuT) volumes are invaluable. They are not, however, without the occasional mistake. At other times, their data is open to interpretation. Case in point: Eph 5.22.

The TuT Paul volumes list a number of readings not given in your NA28/UBS5 hand editions. For the variation involving the verb, the TuT gives us two additional variants. These are ὑποτασσέσθω in 228, 522, 664, 1315, 1874C and ὑποτασσόμαι in 1851. 1874 is also listed under ὑποτασσέσθωσαν (as 1874L; L = marginal reading) and ὑποτάσσεσθε (as 1874T; T = text reading).

The problems here are that 228 actually has ὑποτάσσεσθε, 1851 actually reads ὑποτασσόμεναι (cf. 5.21; 1 Pet 3.1) and 1874 probably only evidences two readings not three. This last one may be debatable. See for yourself.

228

1851

1874

New Images of Papyrus 967 (Ezekiel Portion)

Another portion of the 2nd-3d-century Papyrus 967 (LXX, RA 967), discovered in 1931, that contains parts of Ezekiel, Esther and Daniel has now been digitized and is available on-line. It is the National Library of Spain in Madrid that has digitized their pages with Ezekiel (HT: John Cook).

More here and here.

John Meade compiled a list for us in a blogpost from last year to which I have added a link to the new images below. We are now just waiting for images of the portions in Princeton and Montserrat:

1. Chester Beatty IX + X: pp. 10–17 (upper half); 71–83 (upper half); 102–109 (upper half) (images of the pages from Dublin can be viewed at the CSNTM).
2. Princeton, Univ. Libr., P. Scheide 3: pp. 20 + 22, 23–28, 30–32, 34–37, 40–45 (upper half).
3. Kӧln, IfA, P. Colon. theol. 3–40: pp. 10–17, 20, 22, 71–77, 79–83 (lower half); 90, 92–101 (upper half); pp. 18–19, 21, 29, 53–70, 84–89 (whole) (see images at Kölner Papyri of the Institute of Ancient History at the University of Cologne).
4. Madrid, CSIC (Fonds Photiaded), P. Matr. bibl. 1: pp. 10, 33, 38–39, 46–52 (access the new images here).
5. Montserrat, SBO, P.Monts./II Inv. 42. 43: p. 78 (lower half), p. 91 (upper half)

More information and link to the digitized portion in Köln here.

More about the text and paratext of this papyrus from our blog here, here, and here.

Update: An anonymous commenter (and Sofia Torallas Tovar) has informed me that the Monteserrat portion has indeed been digitized (a few years ago as P.Monts Roca IV was published):

Montserrat catalogue and images:
http://dvctvs.upf.edu/foto/472/PMR42r.jpg
http://dvctvs.upf.edu/foto/472/PMR42v.jpg
http://dvctvs.upf.edu/foto/472/PMR43r.jpg
http://dvctvs.upf.edu/foto/472/PMR43v.jpg
http://dvctvs.upf.edu/catalogo/ductus.php?operacion=introduce&ver=1&nume=472 .

Handwritten-Text Recognition (HTR) for Syriac Manuscripts

The Beth Mardutho Facebook pages just announced a major development in the quest to use OCR (optical character recognition) technology for manuscripts. Calling it Handwritten-Text Recognition (HTR), they say they have it working for Syriac manuscripts. I know others have tried this for Greek for years and have run into trouble. We can hope the lessons learned here for Syriac can be passed on and used on Greek. If anyone has more details, please share.

Congratulations to the team!

Evidence for Codex Alexandrinus in Egypt

In a recent article (D. Lincicum, ‘Two Overlooked Greek Manuscripts of 1 Clement’ Vig. Cr. 73 (2019), 241–253) David Lincicum provides evidence that a Greek manuscript of 1 Clement in the National Library of Greece—EBE 1896—is a direct copy from Codex Alexandrinus’ text of 1 Clement, from a point in time prior to its arrival in London in 1627 (because of its association with other texts of Alexandrian provenance). This manuscript ‘offers us an important sighting of a notable Codex before it came to the attention of western scholars’ (p. 253). (It also offers a glimpse of the manuscript before it was trimmed for binding in London—so more text is visible in the heading field of the codex.)

A shorter Byzantine reading in the parable of the Prodigal Son

Rembrandt’s Return of the Prodigal

I’ve written before on some shorter (not necessarily shortest) Byzantine readings and their significance for the Byzantine priority position held by my esteemed co-blogger, MAR. (See here, here, and here.) Well, I’ve just come across another such unexpected Byzantine shorter reading. This one occurs in Luke 15.21, in the parable of the two lost sons (aka the prodigal son), the younger son realizes his mistake and says:

18 ἀναστὰς πορεύσομαι πρὸς τὸν πατέρα μου καὶ ἐρῶ αὐτῷ· πάτερ, ἥμαρτον εἰς τὸν οὐρανὸν καὶ ἐνώπιόν σου, 19 οὐκέτι εἰμὶ ἄξιος κληθῆναι υἱός σου· ποίησόν με ὡς ἕνα τῶν μισθίων σου.
18 I will arise and go to my father, and I will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. 19 I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Treat me as one of your hired servants.” ’

Then, when he does see his father, he gives this slightly truncated form of his speech:

21 εἶπεν δὲ ὁ υἱὸς αὐτῷ· πάτερ, ἥμαρτον εἰς τὸν οὐρανὸν καὶ ἐνώπιόν σου, οὐκέτι εἰμὶ ἄξιος κληθῆναι υἱός σου.
21 And the son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’

This is verbatim from vv. 18–19, except for the last bit which is left off. Not surprisingly, some manuscripts include it. Also not surprisingly, most editions reject the last bit, no doubt, as a harmonization to v. 19 (see Tregelles, Souter, RP, SBLGNT, NA28/UBS5, THGNT). Here is the evidence from NA28:

ποιησον με ως ενα των μισθιων σου ℵ B D 33. 700. 1241. ℓ 844 vg^mss sy^h
omit 𝔓75 A K L N P Q W Γ Δ Θ Ψ ƒ^1.13 565. 579. 892. 1424. 2542. ℓ 2211 𝔐 lat sy^s.c.p co

This variant is also one of many in Luke that had its grade inflated (B to A) from UBS3 to UBS4. The one exception to the strong consensus noted above is WH who have the longer reading in brackets—not so surprising given their affinity for ℵ B. What is striking is that, not only is the shorter reading  attested by Byz, but the longer reading is also attested by such important witnesses as ℵ, B, D, 33.

In addition to its good external evidence, the shorter reading has a very obvious transcriptional explanation in parablepsis. All it takes is a scribe’s eyes skipping  from σου to σου and the result is the omission of the last phrase (cf. Matt 19.9). Intrinsically, since Luke has already repeated so much of the son’s speech, we might expect him to repeat the whole of it. This kind of verbatim repetition of speech is quite common in the Bible, especially in the OT, which Luke is known for imitating stylistically.

I imagine many will reject parablepsis as less likely than harmonization (so Metzger’s Commentary). But why should such an intentional change be more likely than the equally obvious but unintentional one? Certainly, scribes harmonize to the context. But, from my experience, they accidentally omit by parablepsis even more. Any look at a large apparatus bears this out on page after page.

To make the point, we need go no further than these three verses themselves. We just need to do so in a much larger apparatus than NA. In the IGNTP Luke, I see six cases of omission in just these three verses all of which are easily explained by simple parablepsis.

1. 71 omits αυτω in 15.18
2. 903* omits εις τον in 15.18
3. 1, 118, 205, 209 omit και ... σου in 15.19
4. R* omits υιος ... κληθηναι from 15.19–21 thus omitting all of v. 20
5. W, 713 omit ποιησον ... σου in 15.19
6. ℓ 890 omits και ... σου² in 15.21

The clearest parallels to our variant are 5 and 6 which are also omissions due to the repetition of σου. The omission in R* is instructive because it shows that omissions could be lengthy. 

So, my question: if these shorter readings are clearly accidental omissions, why shouldn’t we see the same in v. 21? Yes, the majority of witnesses have the shorter form, but does that in itself make it more likely? Not for me. Instead, the shorter reading has the simpler scribal explanation, one found multiple times in this same context, and is also attested by the best witnesses. Therefore, it seems to me that it should be preferred as original.