This Made Me Chuckle
-
And it’s good to chuckle early on a Saturday. Believe me, there’s plenty to
chuckle about too. Posted in dilettantism
1 hour ago
Thursday, July 09, 2009
Singular Readings in Versional Witnesses to the D-text: A Sampling from Codex Glazier
I've made available the tables depicting the singular readings from Acts 8:4-25 (my SBL Rome paper) available here .
Two New Book Reviews
We can thank J. K. Elliott for two new reviews in the Review of Biblical Literature. Elliott's first review is glowing:Carl Cosaert, The Text of the Gospels in Clement of Alexandria (SBL, 2008)
His second review is also laudatory, although he notes that the monograph is better suited to a scholarly reader:AnneMarie Luijendijk, Greetings in the Lord: Early Christians and the Oxyrhynchus Papyri (HUP, 2008)
Sinaiticus as a Commentary on John's Apocalyse?
Sinaiticus as a Commentary on John's Apocalyse?
That's the issue raised at the Sinaiticus conference by Juan Hernández Jr. (Bethel University, St. Paul). Juan has been educating us about the text of John's Revelation for 3 or 4 years now. In this paper, he writes, "[The Apocalypse in Codex Sinaiticus] exhibits dozens of differences at key points, reflecting the concerns...of its earliest copyists and readers. Taken as a whole, Sinaiticus' text of Revelation may constitute one of our earliest Christian commentaries on the book..., anticipating the later concerns of Oecumenius and Andrew of Caesarea." He qualifies this claim to an extent, but reinforces it by concluding "[W]e can discern a concerted effort to elucidate the Apocalypse's message by scores of changes throughout."
Juan states that Sinaiticus differs substantially from modern critical editions. It is difficult to evaluate this claim without seeing the differences relative to other manuscripts. Could we say the same about any witness to Revelation? Which mss come closer to NA27? Compared with NA27, Juan cites Sinaiticus as having 182 additions and 389 omissions, with 207 word losses. Juxtaposing this data with the same data of other mss would help ascertain how substantially different Sinaiticus is from NA27, and whether the scribe of Sinaiticus really did make a concerted effort to alter the text.
As part of his thesis that the scribe of Sinaiticus deliberately altered the text, Juan argues that there is a number of theologically motivated variants: Jesus is the beginning of the church, not the beginning of creation (Rev 3:14); Jesus does not vomit (avoidance of base bodily functions, 3:16); both God and the Lamb are ascribed the blessings, honor and "glory of the Almighty" (instead of "and the power," 5:13); Jesus summons Jezebel, rather than throwing her (2:22); Jesus himself opens the door rather than any man (3:20).
Someone remarked that it might be significant that the corrector fixed all these variants (except the last one, involving the mere change of an eta to an omega.). If the corrector corrected these before it left the scriptorium or some time while the Christological issues were raging, then perhaps the charge that scribes deliberately altered texts for theological reasons is somewhat mitigated.
One also must ask if theological motivation really is the cause of alteration; perhaps, as might be the case with 3:20, the change was accidental, rather than arising from "intelligent design" (P.J. Williams' terminology). Moreover, as Tommy Wasserman argued in his SBL Rome paper in regard to theologically motivated alteration, one should ask if a given scribe was consistent in altering texts before ascribing motivation; Tommy demonstrated that this was not the case with many of Bart Ehrman's passages, and one wonders the same for Sinaiticus in Revelation.
Less spectactorily, Juan gave a helpful list of orthographical variations, nonsense readings, grammatical and contextual alterations, dittographic and haplographic reeadings, singular readings, etc. There was also an interesting list of alterations, possibly from liturgical interference.
Lacking expertise in many of these issues, I withhold judgment, except to say that it is a rather spectacular claim that the text of Sinaiticus reflects a "concerted effort" in its transmission history to improve "the Apocalypse's message" by incorporating "scores of changes throughout."
That's the issue raised at the Sinaiticus conference by Juan Hernández Jr. (Bethel University, St. Paul). Juan has been educating us about the text of John's Revelation for 3 or 4 years now. In this paper, he writes, "[The Apocalypse in Codex Sinaiticus] exhibits dozens of differences at key points, reflecting the concerns...of its earliest copyists and readers. Taken as a whole, Sinaiticus' text of Revelation may constitute one of our earliest Christian commentaries on the book..., anticipating the later concerns of Oecumenius and Andrew of Caesarea." He qualifies this claim to an extent, but reinforces it by concluding "[W]e can discern a concerted effort to elucidate the Apocalypse's message by scores of changes throughout."
Juan states that Sinaiticus differs substantially from modern critical editions. It is difficult to evaluate this claim without seeing the differences relative to other manuscripts. Could we say the same about any witness to Revelation? Which mss come closer to NA27? Compared with NA27, Juan cites Sinaiticus as having 182 additions and 389 omissions, with 207 word losses. Juxtaposing this data with the same data of other mss would help ascertain how substantially different Sinaiticus is from NA27, and whether the scribe of Sinaiticus really did make a concerted effort to alter the text.
As part of his thesis that the scribe of Sinaiticus deliberately altered the text, Juan argues that there is a number of theologically motivated variants: Jesus is the beginning of the church, not the beginning of creation (Rev 3:14); Jesus does not vomit (avoidance of base bodily functions, 3:16); both God and the Lamb are ascribed the blessings, honor and "glory of the Almighty" (instead of "and the power," 5:13); Jesus summons Jezebel, rather than throwing her (2:22); Jesus himself opens the door rather than any man (3:20).
Someone remarked that it might be significant that the corrector fixed all these variants (except the last one, involving the mere change of an eta to an omega.). If the corrector corrected these before it left the scriptorium or some time while the Christological issues were raging, then perhaps the charge that scribes deliberately altered texts for theological reasons is somewhat mitigated.
One also must ask if theological motivation really is the cause of alteration; perhaps, as might be the case with 3:20, the change was accidental, rather than arising from "intelligent design" (P.J. Williams' terminology). Moreover, as Tommy Wasserman argued in his SBL Rome paper in regard to theologically motivated alteration, one should ask if a given scribe was consistent in altering texts before ascribing motivation; Tommy demonstrated that this was not the case with many of Bart Ehrman's passages, and one wonders the same for Sinaiticus in Revelation.
Less spectactorily, Juan gave a helpful list of orthographical variations, nonsense readings, grammatical and contextual alterations, dittographic and haplographic reeadings, singular readings, etc. There was also an interesting list of alterations, possibly from liturgical interference.
Lacking expertise in many of these issues, I withhold judgment, except to say that it is a rather spectacular claim that the text of Sinaiticus reflects a "concerted effort" in its transmission history to improve "the Apocalypse's message" by incorporating "scores of changes throughout."
Wednesday, July 08, 2009
Codex Sinaiticus Highlights II
I too enjoyed the Codex Sinaiticus Conference. Just a few highlights (I am sure that Tommy has full notes on many papers!):
Rene Larson's argument about the quality of the parchment production and the infrastructure that must have stood behind it (ready supplies of large numbers of domestic animals, esp. cows; and the continuous production of a large quantity of top quality parchment).
Helen Shenton's comment that the pricking and ruling patterns bear no observable relationship to scribal changes (with more info in essays to be uploaded to the web site on 20th July).
Tim Brown's argument that Scribe B could have been B1 and B2 (more on this perhaps later).
Rachel Kevern's presentation (and the comment that photos of several unidentified fragments have been placed on-line at Quire 0, folio 1R).
Klaus Wachtel's count of 23,000 corrections throughout the manuscript (at an average of 30 corrections per page). He made some interesting comments as well about the importance of Ca (who corrected the whole codex systematically) and Cb2 (who undid some of Ca's corrections!).
Archbishop Damianos' plea/prayer that people around the world might find spiritual renewal in the Word of God.
Prof Nikolopoulos' comment that the New Finds in total weighed 1.5 tonnes.
The three papers - Boetrich, Fyssas and Frame - on the history of the discovery of the manuscript, its transfer to Russia and its purchase by/for the British Museum were all very interesting.
My paper, on Scribe D in the NT, was prepared in time and seemed to go down well (and I received some helpful comments for the published essay).
Rene Larson's argument about the quality of the parchment production and the infrastructure that must have stood behind it (ready supplies of large numbers of domestic animals, esp. cows; and the continuous production of a large quantity of top quality parchment).
Helen Shenton's comment that the pricking and ruling patterns bear no observable relationship to scribal changes (with more info in essays to be uploaded to the web site on 20th July).
Tim Brown's argument that Scribe B could have been B1 and B2 (more on this perhaps later).
Rachel Kevern's presentation (and the comment that photos of several unidentified fragments have been placed on-line at Quire 0, folio 1R).
Klaus Wachtel's count of 23,000 corrections throughout the manuscript (at an average of 30 corrections per page). He made some interesting comments as well about the importance of Ca (who corrected the whole codex systematically) and Cb2 (who undid some of Ca's corrections!).
Archbishop Damianos' plea/prayer that people around the world might find spiritual renewal in the Word of God.
Prof Nikolopoulos' comment that the New Finds in total weighed 1.5 tonnes.
The three papers - Boetrich, Fyssas and Frame - on the history of the discovery of the manuscript, its transfer to Russia and its purchase by/for the British Museum were all very interesting.
My paper, on Scribe D in the NT, was prepared in time and seemed to go down well (and I received some helpful comments for the published essay).
Codex Sinaiticus Highlights
Tommy Wasserman has committed to writing more exhaustively on the conference highlights. I offer here some preliminary highlights. Almost every paper at the conference was excellent. My highlights ignore the many excellent overviews (e.g. by Gamble, Trobisch, Tov, Clarkson, Shenton, Parker, Epp, et al.) as well as the parallel sessions which I did not attend.
Father Justin announced that a new fragment from Judges may have been located in the monastic library. He also described plans for the construction of a new library at St Catherine’s which will include conservation facilities. These new facilities take two or more years to complete.
Tim Brown explained the potential discovery of a new scribal hand in Sinaiticus. If he is correct, hand B will now need to be split into B1 and B2. Perhaps, (per Brown) one scribe was training the other. The hands differ in how they render Alpha and Lambda, among other characters.
If you have the opportunity to visit the display at the British Library, you will be fully mortified by the video documenting the reception of the manuscript in 1934. One can watch the “conservators” take the manuscript out of the tin and accost it in every way possible. I also enjoyed the letter from a seven year old who sent in his 2/6’s for the £100,000 subscription. Apparently, the public contributed substantially to the purchase and received the manuscript with much fanfare.
If you have not yet seen the digital edition, do so here.
Secret Gospel of Mark and Codex Bezae
Josep Rius-Camps (JRC) presented a paper in the Synoptic section entitled, "The Secret Gospel of Mark Authenticated by Codex Bezae." In a paper purporting to authenticate the notion of a Secret Gospel of Mark (SGM), I was struck by JRC's assumption of his thesis.
JRC begins his paper by noting that the majority of scholars regard the SGM as Morton Smith's "sophisticated hoax" in which he claimed to discover it. He then accentuates this fact with appropriate subjunctive terminology in the third paragraph: "According to Smith's manuscript...." But within the same paragraph, he moves away from the subjunctive to the indicative inferences: "Thus, Clement does not question its [i.e., SGM] existence." JRC should have written instead, "Thus, according to Smith's letter, Clement does not question SGM's existence."
From this point forward, JRC looses track of the fact that "the majority of scholars" view the letter as written by Smith. The rest of the paper is concerned to demonstrate that the SGM text, as found in Smith's letter, corresponds closely with Codex Bezae.
I don't understand how this authenticates SGM. After all, Morton Smith, if he composed the letter as an elaborate hoax, could just as easily have written the letter with D-text readings as he could have with NA25, etc. Nevertheless, JRC argues, "A forger would not have had recourse to a variant reading witnessed only by the Codex Bezae to give credibility to his alleged Secret Gospel." Well, Morton Smith, if he were the forger, would have had access to Codex Bezae! There seems to be a major disconnect here.
JRC ends his paper with five conclusions: 1)Canonical Mark is incomplete, suffering from the excision of passages which might invite moral laxity (he cites the Pericope Adulterae as a comparable example); 2) the gospel author himself produced two or more redactions; 3) historically, Jesus' journey to confront Temple authorities in Jerusalem can be accurately reconstructed, untangling the confusing data preserved in canonical Mark; 4) The text of Codex Bezae for Mark is better than other New Testament (Alexandrian and Byzantine) texts; 5) Mark himself was aware of a "mystical dimension" of the historical Jesus.
JRC begins his paper by noting that the majority of scholars regard the SGM as Morton Smith's "sophisticated hoax" in which he claimed to discover it. He then accentuates this fact with appropriate subjunctive terminology in the third paragraph: "According to Smith's manuscript...." But within the same paragraph, he moves away from the subjunctive to the indicative inferences: "Thus, Clement does not question its [i.e., SGM] existence." JRC should have written instead, "Thus, according to Smith's letter, Clement does not question SGM's existence."
From this point forward, JRC looses track of the fact that "the majority of scholars" view the letter as written by Smith. The rest of the paper is concerned to demonstrate that the SGM text, as found in Smith's letter, corresponds closely with Codex Bezae.
I don't understand how this authenticates SGM. After all, Morton Smith, if he composed the letter as an elaborate hoax, could just as easily have written the letter with D-text readings as he could have with NA25, etc. Nevertheless, JRC argues, "A forger would not have had recourse to a variant reading witnessed only by the Codex Bezae to give credibility to his alleged Secret Gospel." Well, Morton Smith, if he were the forger, would have had access to Codex Bezae! There seems to be a major disconnect here.
JRC ends his paper with five conclusions: 1)Canonical Mark is incomplete, suffering from the excision of passages which might invite moral laxity (he cites the Pericope Adulterae as a comparable example); 2) the gospel author himself produced two or more redactions; 3) historically, Jesus' journey to confront Temple authorities in Jerusalem can be accurately reconstructed, untangling the confusing data preserved in canonical Mark; 4) The text of Codex Bezae for Mark is better than other New Testament (Alexandrian and Byzantine) texts; 5) Mark himself was aware of a "mystical dimension" of the historical Jesus.
Codex Sinaiticus: The Servers Crashed
Yesterday, I heard from Juan Garces, curator of manuscripts at the British Library, that they had had 20 million hits on the Codex Sinaiticus website, after all the images of Codex Sinaiticus were released two days ago, before the website cracked down under the pressure, in spite of the fact that they had cloned it so as to redirect traffic at five or six different places (don't ask me how it works). Now it is apparently up and running again.
And I wondered yesterday when I looked at our blogstatistics why on Monday we had almost three times as many visitors as usual (and Tuesday too). Was it Bill Warren's post on pizza lacunae? Then I just realized that people are now searching for "Codex Sinaiticus" like crazy out there. Juan Garces told me he had very busy days during the conference with interviews from CNN, Reuters, etc, etc. No wonder there is now a huge interest in this treasure (but for how long). Anyway, I would prefer interest in Codex Sinaiticus over Codex Gigas, i.e., the Devil's Bible (which was the search term on this blog that drove most traffic from search engines a while ago).
Now I have arrived safely in Birmingham and will soon attend the next conference. Today the VMR is officially launched (see Peter William's previous post) and there is a special conference to celebrate the Mingana collection, and tomorrow we will have a special day on one of the GNT MSS in the Mingana collection.
I will come back to reports from the Sinaiticus conference later. I can say that it was a very nice conference with ca 200 attendees and a lot of good papers that gave many new insights, treating the codex from all sorts of aspects. I did miss Dirk Jongkind who was one of the invited speakers, but caught the flu and had to stay in bed. I look forward to the publication of the papers and I hope to read Dirk's contribution there (although I of course have his excellent monograph).
These are busy days. Yesterday I got an e-mail from a journalist at Christianity Today wanting an interview on my blogpost, A Black Day for Theology in Sweden. I don't know how I will find time for this and it has to be done no later than Thursday.
And I wondered yesterday when I looked at our blogstatistics why on Monday we had almost three times as many visitors as usual (and Tuesday too). Was it Bill Warren's post on pizza lacunae? Then I just realized that people are now searching for "Codex Sinaiticus" like crazy out there. Juan Garces told me he had very busy days during the conference with interviews from CNN, Reuters, etc, etc. No wonder there is now a huge interest in this treasure (but for how long). Anyway, I would prefer interest in Codex Sinaiticus over Codex Gigas, i.e., the Devil's Bible (which was the search term on this blog that drove most traffic from search engines a while ago).
Now I have arrived safely in Birmingham and will soon attend the next conference. Today the VMR is officially launched (see Peter William's previous post) and there is a special conference to celebrate the Mingana collection, and tomorrow we will have a special day on one of the GNT MSS in the Mingana collection.
I will come back to reports from the Sinaiticus conference later. I can say that it was a very nice conference with ca 200 attendees and a lot of good papers that gave many new insights, treating the codex from all sorts of aspects. I did miss Dirk Jongkind who was one of the invited speakers, but caught the flu and had to stay in bed. I look forward to the publication of the papers and I hope to read Dirk's contribution there (although I of course have his excellent monograph).
These are busy days. Yesterday I got an e-mail from a journalist at Christianity Today wanting an interview on my blogpost, A Black Day for Theology in Sweden. I don't know how I will find time for this and it has to be done no later than Thursday.
13,000 new images online
Peter Robinson has announced the launch of 13,000 new images in the Virtual Manuscript Room. These are from the Mingana Collection in Birmingham. Mingana Islamic Arabic 1572 is one of the oldest known Qur'ans. Some of the images come with no further details so that you can play a good guessing game.
Tuesday, July 07, 2009
NEWSFLASH FROM SINAITICUS CONFERENCE AT BRITISH LIBRARY: NEW LEAF FROM CODEX SINAITICUS
I am enjoying a terrific conference on Codex Sinaiticus at the British Library. There is little time to blog right now, but I thought I would mention the most interesting announcement. A scholar who is working on the bookbindings of St Catherine of Mt Sinai has found what is most probably a new leaf of Codex Sinaiticus within the binding of the book! This was announced today in Father Justin's fabulous presentations of the new finds of 1975 and further developments.
This evening I am heading for the next conference in Birmingham. Maybe I will have time to blog later in the week if there is some internet connection.
This evening I am heading for the next conference in Birmingham. Maybe I will have time to blog later in the week if there is some internet connection.
Sunday, July 05, 2009
A Pizza of a Puzzle
While we were enjoying a lunch together after the Saturday session at ISBL in Rome, a curious thing happened. One of those at lunch received what we dubbed a "Pizza Lacunae" as you can see in this picture.
The puzzle is to discern where the missing piece is at. We decided that it was not in Peter Head's office, although that was a quick suggestion. Last I heard, the missing piece was on its way to London, which is enough of a hint for now. Needless to say we had a great time of fellowship at ISBL! And special thanks go to Tommy for how he led the group and arranged for the viewing at the library.
In Christ,
Bill Warren
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