S.C.Carlson

In the Gospels, Alexandrinus (A) is considered to be a witness to an early form of the Byzantine text, a later form of which the TR mostly reproduces (along with an admixture of some Caesarean (fam. 1), Western, and Vulgate readings). In Paul, A's text is Alexandrian.

Stephen

S.C.Carlson

Yes, and it takes some practice, but the system is remarkably useful once one gets the hang of it. As the medieval MSS do not have the modern chapter-verse system, text critics who are collating MSS of the gospels find the Eusebian system very useful in finding their way to the passages they are interested in.

Stephen

Phlox Pyros

Thanks Stephen.

Any idea what that first "7" symbol was for?

Phlox Pyros

I just thought I'd bump this and see if any one had something else to add.

S.C.Carlson

Not at the moment.

Julian

Nothing at this time. However, I would love to find some typical scribal mistakes and see what they look like in the text. Stuff like corrector's notes, dittography, h.t., h.a. and so on... It should be possible to locate such mistakes in Swanson and then find the corrsponding piece in the MS.

So far this has been very enlightening.

Julian

Buster Daily

Agreed on all counts.

I have a curiosity question. How does the lexicon of a typical gospel (let's say Mark) compare to a modern short story of a similar size quantitatively? Has anyone seen a textual analysis of the size of the vocabulary and the word frequency, word level etc? Would the various words and phrases used in Mark be somewhat above the head of a poorly or moderately educated first or second century individual or are we talking "Dick and Jane" here? I'm not nearly fluent enough in Koine to even get a rough idea. I suppose a textual analysis of an English translation would give some idea but I'm not sure.

Anecdotally, I remember being a kid and trying to struggle through the KJ version of the Gospels and thinking, "Wow. This is some heavy s*&t." As a teenager I picked them up again but this time I was older and it was NIV. My second reaction was, "Wow. This is easy reading."

S.C.Carlson

According to this old B-Greek message, Wesley J. Perschbacher, Refresh your Greek (or via: amazon.co.uk), has listed the book of the NT based on difficulty due to vocabulary size. The "easiest" are 1 John, John, Rev, and Mark. The "hardest" are Titus, Jude, and 2 Tim.

Stephen

Julian

I want to take a slightly closer look at Swanson and the κεφαλαια and τιτλοι as well as the Eusebian Canons. The first image is from Swanson's Mark showing a section of the κεφαλαια and τιτλοι:

We see that they correspond to what we have seen in the manuscript. Our manuscript is, of course, the one marked as A. Swanson's table show the variations between the various manuscripts. Although I didn't take a scan of this, each καφαλαιον is clearly marked in his text and not in some footnote.

Here is Swanson's section dealing with the Eusebian Canons, this is from page 12, which is fairly short. We will need to dissect this since I have a few things I am not clear on. Maybe they will become clearer as I talk myself through them.

The initial D is simply footnote section D. In verse 16 we have EC (Eusebian Cannon number) Θ/ς in MS. π, ι (iota) in f¹³ and 1346 (how is that an EC? The iota, that is) and some more stuff. Then we see something strange. I am assuming that Μρ is GMark, Λο is GLuke, Ιω is GJohn and Μθ is GMatthew. Mark has a iota next to while the rest seem to point to 124. Huh? What does that mean? Please take a look at the Swanson footnote D and see if you can explain it. I will continue to think upon it.





Finally, I suggested that we turn our eyes towards looking at some scribal errors. Here is the first one. We find it in 1:16 and in the manuscript on the first page, top of the second column. I have put a picture of it below.

In the picture below, look to the third line. The original scribe (A*) wrote

ΣΙΜΩΝΟΣ ΑΜΦΙΒΑΛΛΟΝΤΕΣ ΑΜΦΙ... (I added the spaces for clarity)

The corrector (A^c) corrected to:

ΣΙΜΩΝΟΣ ΑΜΦΙΒΑΛΛΟΝΤΑΣ ΑΜΦΙ... (I added the spaces for clarity)

It is a small change from Ε to Α. It looks fairly illegible to me. Just like a smudge. *shrug* Notice also the two different smudges. One in line three on the second lambda of ΑΜΦΙΒΑΛΛΟΝΤΑΣ and again in line six in the picture where it says ΚΑΙ πΡΟΙΕΣΩ. Are they just incidental damage to the MS? Are they a correction by A*? It's probably nothing but it did kinda draw my eye.



More later.

Julian

Roger Pearse

Thank you Phlox for taking the time to lay this out with images. It really was necessary to do it like that for me to see how this worked. So effectively we have a set of descriptions in a table at the front, with the Z (= 7 with an underscore) marking each, and an overscore on the letter where it begins. This I understand.

What is interesting is the statement in the preface that a different symbol was used in other gospels. This would be most unusual, if the kephalaia and the marks were anything but copied from the parent manuscript. Can we therefore infer that Alexandrinus (or an ancestor of it) was copied from rolls, some of which used the Z and others the other symbol?

Likewise the absence of the overscore is explicable if the scribe was copying the kephalia marks from the parent manuscript -- he may just have forgot -- but less so if someone is going through afterwards adding them in.

All the best,

Roger Pearse