Subject: Manuscript fragments....

From: [email-masked] (Robert B. Waltz)
Date: Mon, 10 Jun 96 10:45 CDT

TCers --

Just wondering aloud here....

Why is it that uncials are usually fragments, while minuscules are
generally complete or nearly? As I recall, about 80% of uncials are
fragmentary, often only a single leaf. Whereas a (very quick) check
of the Kurzgefasste Liste seemed to show that only about 5% of
minuscules are fragmentary (I was checking for manuscripts, not
of the Apocalypse, of less than fifty folios), and the number of
single-page manuscripts is infinitesimal.

Is this just because many of the papyri and uncials are recovered
from rubbish heaps and the like, whereas minuscules are usually
kept in libraries? Or is there something else involved that might
help us in our discussion of the destruction of manuscript's
ancestors?

And while we're on the topic -- Did the report by Lake, Blake, and
New examine the manuscripts to try to tell if any of them were
copied from uncials? That might figure in somehow.

Thanks for any thoughts.

Bob Waltz
[email-masked]

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From: Maurice Robinson <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 10 Jun 1996 20:08:21 -0400 (EDT)

Taking it in a different order from the original post:

> Did the report by Lake, Blake, and

They did not claim to make any determination of the predecessor exemplar, 
but the context of the article with its note that these minuscules all 
were apparently "orphans" seems to imply a lost uncial as the immediate 
predecessor.

> single-page manuscripts is infinitesimal.

I suspect that the likely destruction of the uncials after a good
minuscule copy was made therefrom generally obliterated the entire uncial,
whether it was disassembled and used as scrap paper or washed and reused
as a palimpsest.  Most discarded uncial fragments simply perished in the
normal course of events.  The uncial fragments which survive in highly
fragmentary form (especially if palimpsest) likely trace their destruction
to the 9th-10th centuries and this change in handwriting style.  The
fragments found in Egypt, however, are usually scraps from trash heaps,
and would not reflect the same practice.  A scaled graph of the total
number of existing MSS shows a significant narrowing from the 4th - 9th
centuries which seems to point to the correctness of Lake's conclusion. 
 
_________________________________________________________________________
Maurice A. Robinson, Ph.D.           Assoc. Prof./Greek and New Testament
Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary     Wake Forest, North Carolina
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