Codex Sinaiticus

Greek Koine and Biblical and Medieval Greek
1

During some reading about biblical textual traditions in Wikipedia, I came across an article on the Codex Sinaiticus with an image of part of Luke 11:2. I don’t think I yet have rights to post a link or an image, but I will try to put the address below:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codex_Sinaiticus#/media/File:Codex_Sinaiticus-small.jpg

Thrilled at a chance to test my Greek on genuine unedited text, I went ahead and tried to read the passage. (I have read this text before in modern polytonic fonts.) To my surprise, I find a large amount of marginal corrections and what seems to be missing text. Is this normal for works of this period? Am I missing something about the layout of the page or the Codex itself?

An example of surprising corrections are the dots above the anomalous ουτω at the end of the second to last line. I would be surprised at such sloppiness in an elementary school dictation class, let alone in a prestigious copy of a sacred text costing the equivalent of a worker’s salary for an entire year.

An example of missing text are the words that I would expect between πατερ and αγιασθητω at the beginning. How can text be missing from a familiar text without any correction? Wouldn’t a copyist know at least this text by heart? For heaven’s sake, the calligraphy itself looks gorgeous, if I ignore the ugly insertions in the margins. Again, am I missing something obvious?

In reading more about old Greek bibles, I was also somewhat shocked to learn that there were widespread differences in spelling conventions, including systematic confusion between ι and ει, among other things (e.g., βασιλια at the end of line 3 and the beginning of line 4 in the link). When did a conventional spelling become enforced? Did the same spelling chaos reign in copies of classical works?

2

The manuscript is actually self-consistent here. It’s just that different manuscripts say different things.

πάτερ ἁγιασθήτω τὸ ὄνομά σου ἐλθάτω ἡ βασιλία σου γενηθήτω τὸ θέλημά σου ὡς ἐν οὐρανῷ οὕτω καὶ ἐπὶ γῆς

We’d normally write ἐλθέτω and βασιλεία. Various revisers have have also written different notes on this manuscript, presumably by comparing other manuscripts, seeking a standard text over the centuries. The της before γης, the dots over ουτω, the squiggle and dots after γης.

A comparison between the Luke and Matthew texts in a modern critical edition may give you some ideas about how phrases might have hopped across over the centuries between Luke and the Sinaiticus scribe.

3

New Testament textual criticism is full of surprises.

Check out Wieland Willker’s webpages, there’s more than one.
http://www.willker.de/wie/TCG/index.html

The Second edition Bruce Metsker’s The Text of the New Testament is a classic. The fourth edition, revised by Bart Ehrman, I have not bothered to read.

Last week on a dark and stormy night I was returning from an hour long walk in the woods with 40 mile an hour winds and heavy rain. As I pulled into Safeway a woman pulled in beside me in a Black SUV, rolled down her window and tried unsuccessfully to engage me in a discussion the the true story of Judas and Jesus. The story line was instantaneously recognizable as material from Bart Ehrman and Elaine Pagels. The woman had never heard of Bart Ehrman, I told her to do a web search for him, knowing she would end up finding debates between Bart Ehrman and Peter J Williams, Simon Gathercole, etc. I’ve heard Ehrman’s monologue over and over again. The guys from Cambridge are clever and amusing as they dance around him, exposing holes in his argument.

Ehrman is a world renowned scholar, who recycles worn out ideas from 19th-century Germans. Terry Gross interviews him several times a year, Christmas, Easter, Holloween.

4

No two manuscripts give exactly the same text. Variants among the manuscripts of the NT (and of classical texts likewise) are not at all surprising to anyone familiar with the vicissitudes of textual transmission. There was no fixed text.

Here the oldest surviving manuscript (early 3rd cent.) and the Sinaiticus (4th cent.) are without the additional material after πατερ found in later manuscripts, and a plausible view is that it is a later addition to the text (rather than “missing text” as you describe it), interpolated from the longer version of the prayer in Matthew (6.9-13) in the interests of harmonization.

Similarly with the various material that other manuscripts variously give after βασιλ(ε)ια σου.

The dots above ουτω are cancellation dots, a standard scribal convention, and probably indicate that the text first written was “corrected” from another manuscript that had a slightly different text. And the της inserted above the line between επι and γης will likewise reflect manuscript variance.

What you see as spelling “chaos” isn’t quite that. There were a number of more or less indifferent orthographical variants (ει/ι for example) that persisted throughout antiquity, and sometimes newer “vulgar” forms coexisted with older more “correct” ones (e.g. ελθατω/ελθετω).

Editors try to recover the “original” text—if there ever was such a thing. Some put their faith in some particular branch or “text-type” of the tradition, minimizing the significance of the rest. It’s a tricky and controversial business, tiresome and never-ending.

So there was a lot of variation in the text(s) in antiquity (as there still is today, but less). Most of the variation in the NT is fairly minor, though not all of it. If you want to get some idea of the scale of it, the successive editions of the Greek New Testament put out by the United Bible Societies has a “critical apparatus” below their preferred text (just as editions of classical texts do), recording the various variants and the manuscripts in which they appear.

5

Also notice “γενηθήτω τὸ θέλημά σου ὡς ἐν οὐρανῷ οὕτω καὶ ἐπὶ γῆς,” which is present here, but is viewed as an addition to the original Luke text.

6

Thanks for the replies. I have read about the hundreds of thousands of variations in the text of the bible, but I think it is another thing to see it before your eyes.

I think another thing that fed my reaction was the “familiarity” with this text. After some thought, I have concluded it was probably just such perceived familiarity that allowed readers to feel entitled to correct the text.

Could someone explain the significance of writing the three omegas and the sigma in small letters at the right margin? From the replies, I gathered that these were actually part of the original text and not corrections, as I had thought.

The dots above ουτω are cancellation dots, a standard scribal convention, and probably indicate that the text first written was “corrected” from another manuscript that had a slightly different text.

I recognized the dots as such from descriptions of how Old Irish adopted such dots for a similar purpose. By the way, what is the English plural for punctum delens?

What you see as spelling “chaos” isn’t quite that. There were a number of more or less indifferent orthographical variants (ει/ι for example) that persisted throughout antiquity, and sometimes newer “vulgar” forms coexisted with older more “correct” ones (e.g. ελθατω/ελθετω).

Does such a level of variation exist in Latin bibles?

I also find it curious that so many religious traditions dating from both before and after Christianity seem to have established standardized copies of their core cherished texts, and yet Christians did not. Then again, I don’t know about many traditions and whether their texts have significance variations(i.e., various sects of Buddhism or Taoism); and I think Zoroastrians believe that some of their texts were actually completely lost or destroyed.

7

thats funny I’ve just been listening to lots of Ehrman’s debate videos on youtube, and his opponents always come off as naive amateurs after he gets done with them. The Loeb Library commissioned Ehrman to do a new translation of the Apostolic Fathers. He’s hardly an amateur.

8

Before we get into the Ehrman argument, let’s take a closer look at the variations that have surprised Altair at Luke 11:2:

Sinaiticus:

πάτερ ἁγιασθήτω τὸ ὄνομά σου ἐλθάτω ἡ βασιλία σου γενηθήτω τὸ θέλημά σου ὡς ἐν οὐρανῷ οὕτω καὶ ἐπὶ γῆς

Wescott and Hort (here identical to the standard scholar’s text):

Πάτερ, ἁγιασθήτω τὸ ὄνομά σου· ἐλθάτω ἡ βασιλεία σου·

What are the differences between Sinaiticus and Wescott and Hort? Not the missing words that Altair remembered between πάτερ and ἁγιασθήτω. It’s likely that he either recalls the words from Matthew, and has misplaced them to Luke, or is of some sort of Greek Orthodox extraction (on that, see more below).

The big difference is γενηθήτω..γῆς. Where has that come from? Very likely a scribe transplanted it from Matthew 6:10 ἐλθάτω ἡ βασιλεία σου, γενηθήτω τὸ θέλημά σου, ὡς ἐν οὐρανῷ καὶ ἐπὶ γῆς. We can imagine that scribe’s mistake was probably very similar to Altair’s in wanting to restore the non-existent “ἡμῶν ὁ ἐν τοῖς οὐρανοῖς” between πάτερ and ἁγιασθήτω.

However, let’s get to the Byzantine Majority text:

Byzantine Majority:

Πάτερ ἡμῶν ὁ ἐν τοῖς οὐρανοῖς, ἁγιασθήτω τὸ ὄνομά σου. Ἐλθέτω ἡ βασιλεία σου. Γενηθήτω τὸ θέλημά σου, ὡς ἐν οὐρανῷ, καὶ ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς.

This text version has both transpositions from Matthew present! Both Altair’s, and our scribe of late antiquity. But, of course, neither transposition appears in some of our early papyrus versions or Vaticanus.

I don’t think that this verse is actually a good example of the normal level of manuscript variability. It’s clearly special because of the use of the Lord’s Prayer in the liturgy, which tends to echo in people’s heads, and that caused some scribes to transpose back and forth between Matthew and Luke. Still, there is really only one major difference here between Sinaiticus and the “standard” text, and we have a good idea of how it got there.

You’re looking at one of the most standardized texts in existence, I would think, of this age and distribution. Maybe the Iliad comes close? Hand-copying is error-prone. On the other hand, there really are fewer very interesting variants in the NT, compared to most other ancient texts. The few important ones have been well-know and discussed for hundreds of years.

(Back to Ehrmann: His schtick is that he was very sheltered growing up about verbal inspiration of the text, and then had the scales fall from his eyes when he went to college and saw how the Orthodox Christians have been changing the Bible to prove their theology from day 1. He can sometimes be big on big picture, and then light on specifics. When pressed to defend himself once, after a debate, I heard him bring up 1 John 5 as an example of how Christians added the Trinity to the Bible! He’s a good speaker, and his books would be much more tolerable to me if it weren’t for the nasty habit of referring to his academic credentials in the opening sentence of every chapter. Go pick up “How Jesus Became God” and read through the first section of each chapter in order. You’ll see what I mean.)