Subject: Re: Jn 3.17 in codex Koridethi

From: "DC PARKER" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 10 Jun 1997 11:40:51 GMT

Matthew Johnson wrote):

> Unfortunately, minuscule hands vary even more greatly than uncial hands.  But
> given that caveat, 048 is fairly typical for a minuscule.
> 

There is further confusion here.  One might assume that you had 
intended to write that '048 is fairly typical for an uncial'.  But 048
is of course a double palimpsest.  Which script you looked at you don't say.

David Parker

DC PARKER
DEPT OF THEOLOGY
UNIVERSITY OF BIRMINGHAM
TEL. 0121-414 3613
FAX  0121-414 6866
E-MAIL [email-masked]

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From: Matthew Johnson <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 10 Jun 1997 11:57:43 -0700 (PDT)

> is of course a double palimpsest.  Which script you looked at you don't say.

You are right.  We are dealing with another "modern scribal error".  I
wrote down the minuscule number, but then miscopied it when writing my
post.  I did not notice until afterwards that I had written the initial
"0", which is standard for uncials, not minuscules.

Since I no longer have the notes, I will have to scurry back over to
the local Jesuit University Library and try to find the volume I looked at
to see which minuscule it was.  In the meantime, all I can say is that 
it _was_ a minuscule as was clear from the form of the letters (usually
connected, with accents and breathing marks etc).

But despite the embarrasing error concerning which minuscule I looked
at, I hope members of the list will find the line of reasoning useful.

After all (recapitulating very briefly), the idea holds for many
different minuscule hands.  The idea was that 1) Jean's proposed
confusion of AUTON for AUTOU _could_ occur when copying from a
minuscule, but this requires both a particularly sloppy hand and
a double misreading 2) the same error could occur reading from a
damaged uncial, particularly if it is a _slanted_ uncial.  In this
latter case we require only that the initial stroke of the N was
assumed missing.  Such an error is far less likely if the copyist
knows Greek, but it has already been shown that the copyist of Th.038 
(Koridethi) did not know Greek very well.

Having said all this I will now add only one thing before I look up
which minuscule it was: I do not consider the above reasoning 
_conclusive_ evidence that either error occured.  I only consider it 
suggestive that the second error is more likely than the first.  I
would really rather see large parts of a fascimile edition of Th.038
as well as the same sort of statistics reported in Parker's Codex
Bezae before issuing a more confident judgement.

Matthew Johnson
Waiting for the blessed hope and the appearance of the glory of our 
great God and Saviour Jesus Christ (Ti 2:13).

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From: Matthew Johnson <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 11 Jun 1997 19:31:17 -0700 (PDT)

On Tue, 10 Jun 1997, Matthew Johnson wrote:

> to see which minuscule it was.  

So now I have done the promised scurrying: it was minuscule 747, Luke
2:1-7, looking at the words AUGUSTOU, AUTON and TOU to compare how the
scribe forms the OU and the ON. 

While I was looking at this, another error path occurred to me: the scribe
have fallen under the spell of the repetitive ON endings, writing TON
hUION AUTON instead of TON hUION AUTOU for three ON endings in place of
two.  But this is hardly a new result. 

Matthew Johnson