Toto

The images are back for me (from another connection). I think that "Mr. Scrivener" had not paid his bills, and his domain registration expired.

Julian

Like everything else Nazaroo writes around here, he managed to get even this wrong. His attempt at humor (I guess that's what it was) was a bungled citation of a classic Monty Python sketch called "Mrs. Nigger-baiter explodes" from their TV Show (and a couple of their records).

Julian

P.S. I am not getting the images discussed in the previous posts. Which is fine by me, actually.

Nazaroo

Gee I goofed again.

Guess that's why they call me Mr. Magoo!

Riverwind

Oh...this thread is still going?

Nazaroo

Why the Current Crop of MSS from the 3rd to the 9th century are a Joke




What happened to all the manuscripts that were made between the 4th and 9th centuries?

The Roman Emperor and the new 'Holy Roman Empire' destroyed them all, while trying to impose their own text.

The text without John 8:1-11, because Emperor Constantine in a fit of jealous rage murdered his own son wrongly for committing adultery with his queen, then boiled his queen to death for Adultery.

No hard feelings there....

Riverwind

I'm not sure how much I should rely on Mr. Nazoo's charted data, but I have always been curious why there are so many manuscripts from around the 9th - 13th centuries. This seems to coincide with the rise and fall of miniscule handwriting, but even with the ease of writing in miniscule, I can't really understand why this would have caused such an increase in manuscript numbers from this time period.

Does anyone (other than Nazoo) have an understanding of this...of the politics or whatever that might have led to this?

Chris Weimer

As time goes on, the more the manuscripts are preserved.

jgibson000

And more centers of scribal activity beyond monasteries (courts, universities, private and public libraries), as well as better communications with the east, are established/open up.

I think we find the same pattern in these years for all "known in the west" ancient documents as "Nazaroo/Scrivener" adduce for NT MSS, don't we?

No conspiracy theory needed.

JG

Steven Avery

Hi Riverwind,

Professor Robinson writes excellently on this.

http://rosetta.reltech.org/TC/vol06/...tml#footnote81
New Testament Textual Criticism: The Case for Byzantine Priority

61. The second "copying revolution" occurred in the ninth century when handwriting switched rapidly from uncial to minuscule script.79 This change likely was initiated by Theodore of Studium and was swiftly accepted throughout the Greek-speaking world as a replacement for the more ponderous uncial script. Within a century and a half uncial script had ceased to exist among continuous-text NT MSS and soon after that disappeared even from the more traditional and conservative lectionaries. The upshot of this copying revolution was similar to what transpired following the papyrus-to-vellum conversion of the fourth century: uncial MSS of far earlier date were recopied in great quantity into the new and popular minuscule script and then destroyed.80 As Streeter noted,

In the ninth century there was a notable revival of learning in the Byzantine Empire. A natural result of this would be to cause Christian scholars to seek a better text of the Gospels by going back from current texts to more ancient MSS ... An analogy may be found in the effect of the revival of learning under Charlemagne on the text of the Latin classics. MSS of the seventh and eighth centuries ... are full of corruptions which do not occur in MSS of the subsequent period.81

80 Mioni, Introduzione, 64, states, "At the beginning of the ninth century the transliteration ... of many works from majuscule to minuscule script commences... On the one hand, this transformation provoked the irreparable destruction of practically all codices in uncial, which were no longer recopied; on the other hand, this transliteration became the salvation for humanity of numerous works which otherwise would have been irreparably lost" (present writer's translation; emphasis added).

81 B. H. Streeter, "The Early Ancestry of the Textus Receptus of the Gospels," JTS 38 (1937) 229.

Shalom,
Steven Avery

Nazaroo

Unfortunately, this statement does nothing to explain the actual state of the manuscripts.

Of course the rate of increase of manuscripts can and will be affected by expansion of copying centers, improved copying techniques, and even fluctuations in economic factors (droughts, taxes, wars, plagues.)
Finally anomalies in local climates (such as the dryness of Egypt) can affect raw numbers of surviving manuscripts for key periods.

But none of these factors explain the data at hand.

NO variation in the rate of increase of manuscripts can cause a NEGATIVE rate of increase. Even if manuscript production were to stop dead for a short period, the number of manuscripts, and the rate of multiplication will always have a slope that is between zero and a positive number.

Only the destruction of existing manuscripts can cause a decrease in the actual number of manuscripts for any given short window of time or snapshot from the timeline, which would show up as a negative rate of increase.

But you can only destroy manuscripts which are already in existance, not manuscripts that have not been written yet, or counted.

Nor do any of the listed factors have any power to cause the actual raw number of manuscripts for each century (and a century is a VERY long period for copying manuscripts) to drop. Only DESTRUCTION of manuscripts of a specific age can cause this.

When we see the Papyri increasing, then decreasing in absolute numbers, the explanation is simple: Copying is a multiplicative process, accounting for the increase.

The practice of making papyri was phased out when resources and techniques arrived for the more durable parchment making. This accounts for the later decrease in papyri. There was an active conscious choice which transferred preference to parchments.

----------------------------------------------


There is no such process available for UNCIALS/Miniscules. These are merely different forms of handwriting on the same materials. Physically the manuscripts must be lumped together. And now, the problem is clearly apparent.

There can be no talk of a 'decrease in uncials', with a corresponding 'increase in miniscules' during an entirely different period FIVE WHOLE CENTURIES LATER.

The DIP in the ABSOLUTE number of surviving manuscripts for each period must be explained. The techniques of manufacture didn't deteriorate. The climate didn't change. In fact, as Robinson et al have noted, production INCREASED.

The quality of manuscripts was already good enough to easily survive till the present from the 4th century onward. To put it bluntly, manuscripts from the 6th, 7th, 8th, and 9th centuries are hardy and durable objects, meant to survive abuse and withstand deterioration, and they were adored and cared for in dry libraries, churches and monasteries, and were looked after carefully by librarians, monks, scribes.

There can be no explanation for the missing manuscripts from the 4th to the 9th centuries, other than wilfull gathering and destruction on a massive scale.

Even Robinson is painfully aware of this problem, and must conjecture a wholescale 'procedure' of recopying and DESTROYING the exemplars, to account for the huge number of manuscripts from all over the empire in the 9th, 10th, 11th, 12th, 13th, centuries, and yet to have virtually NO SURVIVING MANUSCRIPTS FOR THE PREVIOUS FIVE CENTURIES.

A handful (less than a few hundred uncials and fragments) simply won't explain this.

FIVE CENTURIES WORTH OF MANUSCRIPTS ARE MISSING.

The handful of 'approved' MSS from the 4th and 5th centuries had no trouble surviving on the bookshelves of the Vatican and in various monasteries throughout the Mediterranean. This just means what we expect: a handful of ancient MSS somehow escaped destruction. But this only makes sense against a background of massive wholesale destruction.

Since there is a plethora of MSS from the 9th century forward, this massive operation of destruction must have stopped after five centuries of destruction.

The only other option is one late 'pogrom' of destruction in the 9th century that virtually wiped out all old MSS, but somehow left a remnant (hidden from the destroyers) from which the Christians were able to recover and replenish the supply.

But even this theory falls upon its face, because then there should be a large number of 'seed' manuscripts from which the mass of 5,000 manuscripts dating from the 10th to the 15th century were copied. Some of those should have been UNCIALS of various ages, covering the whole period targeted by previous persecution and destruction.

The only explanation for the missing manuscripts is as Robinson has proposed: namely that those replenishing the MSS supply were the same people who destroyed the MSS from whence they were copying, ensuring no trace of their sources.

Yet there is one more problem with it:

There is no such procedure of 'destroying the MSS you are copying from', that has been recorded throughout the history of a whole millenium of copying. This has to have been a practice almost universally, but SILENTLY adopted by the scribes themselves, and with little protest or rebellion (or else severe punishments).

And the mystery is really solved. The church destroyed its own manuscripts, as it did to the commentaries and homilies of its own doctors, each of whom was in turn declared a heretic and damned, and their works put to the flames.

They made it illegal to make or possess your own copies of the Scriptures, and killed and tortured Jew and Christian alike who dared to preach their contents independantly. They abused the very power of govenment, of state, to impose control and enforce a standard which guaranteed their stranglehold over all other powers in Europe. This was the very cause of the Reformation.

The suppression of the Scriptures for FIVE centuries after the establishment of the 'Christian-Roman Empire', and the final escape and burst of copying activity in the following five centuries is the story of the suppression of true Christianity and religion by authoritarian dictatorship, and the final victory of the common working-class people over their rulers.

This was the prepatory PRE-REFORMATION, the necessary spread of the Gospel to the people BEFORE any Reformation could take place. The invention and spread of the power of the printing press was only the icing on the cake, the final reward for centuries of quiet extrication from the yoke of ROME.

Once the critical number of manuscripts and copy-centers was reached, the cat was out of the bag, and power of Rome broken. There was a brief attempt to reinstate this power during the Nazi occupation of Europe, but this was no longer Medieval Europe. The Dark Side, though vicious and dangerous, and immensely destructive, could not defeat the force of education and literacy, largely driven by religious devotion and belief.