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A Caesarean Text in the Catholic Epistles?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2009

Muriel M. Carder
Muriel M. Carder
Affiliation:
Rajahmunory, India
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Extract

In giving their appraisal of the host of then unexamined minuscule codices of the Greek New Testament, Westcott and Hort wrote these intriguing words: ‘Valuable texts may lie hidden among them; many of them are doubtless sprinkled with relics of valuable texts now destroyed.’. 1 Beside this supposition should be set a well-attested fact, that ‘the Precedence of manuscripts depends, not on their age, but on their Pedigree’. 2 These two statements kept on recurring to the writer's mind as she concentrated on a group of six minuscule codices in the area of the Catholic Epistles: MSS 69, 1243, 1319, 1424, 1739, and 1874. 3 The Leicester Codex, MS 69, has long been known to Preserve an ancient lineage even though it was actually copied in the fifteenth century. Might not others of this group, less well known, also Perpetuate a rich heritage? It is the opinion of this writer that one of them does.4

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Articles
Information
New Testament Studies , Volume 16 , Issue 3 , April 1970 , pp. 252 - 270
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1970

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References

page 252 note 1 Westcott, B. F., and Hort, J. F. A., The New Testament in the Original Greek (London, 1881), II, 77Google Scholar section 105.

page 252 note 2 Streeter, B. H., The Four Gospels, A Study of Origins (London, 1930, 4th impression, revised), p. 50.Google Scholar

page 252 note 3 These six were chosen for special investigation because H. von Soden had classified four of them in his I-recension in the Catholic Epistles and two in his I-recension of the Gospels. All were readily available on microfilm.

page 252 note 4 This statement is purposely not taking into account MS 1739 which has long been famous as an Alexandrian cursive.

page 252 note 5 The difficulty is due partly to the tiny writing and the fact that two folios have been filmed on each frame, and the scribe's habit of writing certain letters smaller than others. This combination makes H KO ν and v hard to distinguish in places, especially where the ink has faded or is so dark that it blots.

page 252 note 6 The text of I John does not appear to be so much shorter. There are no stichoi mentioned at the end of II John, the usual 32 at the end of III John. On the other hand, the same scribe has shortened the Gospel of John by half a folio because he has left out several verses entirely by homoio-teleuton.

page 253 note 1 von Soden, H., Die Schriften des Neuen Testaments in ihrer ältesten erreichbaren Textgestalt (Göttingen, 1911), I.Google Scholar Teil: Untersuchungen, III. Abteilung: die Textformen, B. der Apostolos mit Apokalypse, p. 1841. Aland, K., Kurzgefaβte Liste der griechischen Handschriften des Neuen Testaments (Berlin,1963),Google Scholar lists it as K in ‘a’, which usually means Acts-Catholics, without stating the evidence for such a classification.

page 253 note 2 Aland, K., Black, M., Metzger, B. M., Wikgren, A., edd., The Greek New Testament (Stuttgart, 1966), see list in Introduction, p. xvii.Google Scholar

page 253 note 3 Merk, A., Novum Testamentum Graece et Latine (Rome, 1957, editio octava), Prolegomena, pp. 34, 40.Google Scholar

page 253 note 4 Colwell, E. C., ‘Method in Locating a Newly-Discovered Manuscript within the Manuscript Tradition of the Greek New Testament’, Texte und Untersuchungen (Berlin, 1959), LXXIII, 757–77.Google Scholar Hereinafter referred to as Method.

page 253 note 5 See e.g. Fee, G. D., ‘Codex Sinaiticus in the Gospel of John’, N.T.S. xv (1968), 24 n. 6.Google Scholar

page 253 note 6 Method, p. 759.

page 253 note 7 The following 21 were collated afresh personally against the Oxford 1873 T.R.: Ν72, N A B C ψ S(049), 69, 959, 1240, 1243, 1248, 1315, 1319, 1424, 1739, 1854, 1874, 1876, 1888, 1889. Two of these were collated from transcripts, three from photofacsimile, and the rest from microfilm. Four additional witnesses were used from Clark's, K. W.Eight American Praxapostoloi (Chicago, 1941): 876, 1799, 240, and 2412.Google Scholar Where the reading of 614 is given as a witness it has been taken from Massaux, É., ‘The Text of I Peter of Papyrus Bodmer VIII (Ν72)’, Mélanges Conzague Ryckmans, Miscellanea Orientalia et Biblica, van Waeyenbergh, H. et al. (Louvain, 1963), pp. 616–71.Google Scholar

page 254 note 1 Two phases of this step were necessary because of the nature of these MSS revealed in Step One.

page 254 note 2 Apart from von Soden, scholars have generally considered MS 1739 to be a good representative of the Alexandrian text. Because von Soden had classified it as Ib2 rather than H in the Catholic Epistles we decided to test it along with the rest. On the basis of von Soden's ‘Sonderlesarten von I’ alone it rated 47% of the total readings(more than Silva Lake's 40% minimum requirement, see ‘Family π and the Codex Alexandrinus’, Studies and Documents (London, 1936), pp. 8 and 15),Google Scholar but in my other tables it rated only 23·8% of Western readings in I John iii and 23·5% in I Peter iii. 1–19 (or 29% if sub-groups are added) as against 83% of distinctive Alexandrian readings. Obviously it is an Alexandrian manuscript in this corpus also. S. Kubo, by using Zuntz's method, arrived at the same conclusion regarding MS 1739 in I and II Peter and Jude (‘A Comparative Study of Ν72 and the Codex Vaticanus’, unpublished doctoral thesis of the University of Chicago, 1964. MS 1739 has connections with Caesarea, either having been written there or descended from a progenitor written there, and with Origen who used a text in Romans which agrees with its text (Lake, K. and New, S., edd., ‘Six Collations of New Testament Manuscripts’, H.T.R., extra number, 1932, pp. 144–5).Google Scholar Von Soden also believed Origen to have worked extensively on the text of the Catholic Epistles (op. cit. p. 1897). But my investigations, although hopefully undertaken, have so far not found in it enough Western or I-text variants to justify its inclusion in the Caesarean text.

page 254 note 4 ‘The Origin of Texttypes of New Testament Manuscripts’, in Early Christian Origins, Wikgren, A., ed. (Chicago, 1961), p. 129.Google Scholar

page 254 note 5 Method, p. 762.

page 254 note 6 Ibid. p. 759.

page 254 note 7 That is, paraphrase of Phrases and clauses, synonyms for individual words, addition of genitive pronouns, conjunctions and articles, the use of compound verbs for simple, interchange of participle for finite verb, exchange of imperfect for aorist tense, and so on. See Westcott and Hort, op. cit. II, 122–4, and Greenlee, J. H., Introduction to New Testament Textual Criticism (Grand Rapids, 1964), p. 88.Google Scholar For the presence of Western readings in Ν A and C see Westcott and Hort, op. cit. II, 151–2, of a Western section in ℵ see the study by Fee, G. D. in N. T.S. xv, 23–44Google Scholar, and for Western readings in ψ see Metzger, B. M., The Text of the New Testament (New York, 1964), p. 60.Google Scholar Metzger says in a footnote (4) on p. 213 of the same work that ‘The Catholic Epistles…seem not to have existed in a characteristically Western form of text’, but on p. 51 in speaking of Codex Claromontanus he admits that ‘Like Codex Bezae, the type of text in this manuscript is distinctly Western; it should be noted, however, that Western readings in the Epistles are not so striking as those in the Gospels and Acts’. From my own investigation of four of the Catholic Epistles I would agree with the former (p. 213) only if the word ‘characteristically’ is underlined, and definitely with the latter (p. 51) for this corpus also. I believe there is sufficient evidence even within the Greek MSS to say that a Western text did exist for the Catholic Epistles (see my unpublished doctoral thesis, ‘An Enquiry into the Textual Transmission of the Catholic Epistles’, University of Toronto, 1968). MS ψ is especially prolific in Western variants in I John.

page 255 note 1 Since Acts-Catholics are usually found together it is a reasonable supposition, though not a conclusion to be made without testing, that these manuscripts may be Western in the Catholics. MS 1799, whose readings we have included, is a very close relative of 2412, cf. K. W. Clark, op. cit. p.25.

page 255 note 2 Leading American scholars agree that small samples are too often misleading since one manuscript may have been copied from different examplars, or have been corrected only in certain chapters of a book or corpus. See, e.g., Colwell, , Method, p. 765.Google Scholar

page 255 note 3 Hutton, E. A., An Atlas of Textual Criticism (Cambridge, 1911), p. 100,Google Scholar found only seventeen for these four epistles in the manuscripts at his command. New manuscript evidence naturally brings to light more variants.

page 258 note 1 Method, p. 761.

page 258 note 2 On pages 762 and 770 of his Method Colwell uses the phrase ‘Distinctive Group Readings’. I prefer this term to ‘singular’ readings (Ibid. p. 761) because ‘distinctive’ can refer to the minor characteristics of the Western text which are present in many of its descendants, and it is these which we find in our epistles.

page 258 note 3 Out of the total of 30 variants72 has 25, ℵ has 27, A has 24, B has 29, C has 21 (but with a lacuna for 7) ψ has 23, MS 1243 has 24, and 1739 has 25.

page 258 note 4 Op. cit. pp. 1869–73.

page 258 note 5 A few of them seem to me to belong more properly to the Byzantine text, as Lagrange, M. J. points out in Critique Textuelle, II, La Critique Rationelle (Paris, 1935), p. 531.Google Scholar

page 260 note 1 Von Soden collated MS 1319 only cursorily, op. cit. p. 1841. The evidence of witnesses outside our group is taken from K. W. Clark, op. cit. p. 106. Clark's collations are continuous and complete.

page 260 note 2 Method, p. 764.

page 260 note 3 During the course of this study I found that the I-text MSS frequently read a subjunctive verb for an indicative (and occasionally vice versa). If one scribe alone had written ρεισωμεν for ρεισομεν = I John iii. 19 it could be considered an itacism, but when three or four or five combine in repeating the variant, especially if one is an excellent uncial such as ψ, it is surely not mere chance coincidence. Indeed, so many are these mood changes, especially in I John, that it appears to be a family characteristics of these I-text manuscripts. Von Soden also take note of this mood change in his list of I-text variants, op. cit. pp. 1869–73.

page 262 note 1 Method, p. 762.

page 262 note 2 The second intensive study was of I Peter iii. 1–19. In that Portion MS 1243 read 20/24 Alexandrian variants or 83% and 8+2/17 Western variants or 58·8%. This was not quite such an equal ratio, but the percentage is still sufficient to make the manuscript qualify for membership in both textual families.

page 263 note 1 See Beare, F. W., ‘The Text of I Peter in Papyrus 72’, Journal of Biblical Literature, LXXX, part III, 253–60;Google ScholarKubo, S., ‘Ν72 and the Codex Vaticanus’, Studies and Documents, XXVII, 1965;Google Scholar É. Massaux, op. cit. Ν74 is too fragmentary to be of much help in establishing lines of textual transmission.

page 263 note 2 J. H. Greenlee, op. cit. pp. 118, 127.

page 263 note 3 H.T.R. XXI, no. 4 (1928), 326 and 257.Google Scholar

page 263 note 4 B. M. Metzger, op. cit. p. 215.

page 263 note 5 Loc. cit.

page 264 note 1 B. H. Streeter's analysis of the Caesarean text also fits the case of MSS 69, 1319, 1424, 1874 in this corpus. See ‘The Caesarean Text of Matthew and Luke’, H.T.R. XXVIII (1935), 233:Google Scholar ‘But the particular selection of Neutral, Alexandrian, and Western readings in the Byzantine text is totally different from the selection in the Caesarean text. What constitutes the characteristic feature of both these texts is not so much the relatively small proportion of readings peculiar to themselves as the specific pattern, so to speak, in which Neutral, Alexandrian and Western readings are found combined.’

The selection which these four manuscripts make of Alexandrian, Byzantine, and Western readings marks them off as distinctly different from the Byzantine text and the Alexandrian, even though they have a lower Alexandrian-Western ratio and more Byzantine variants than does MS 1243. If a Caesarean text should be established in this corpus, the writer believes that Ayuso's bifurcation could be found, watered down, in these weaker members, and that MSS 1319, 1424, 1874 would separate themselves along one path and 69 would be closer to 1243. Von Soden was also keenly aware of two different groups within his I-text MSS. He called it ‘the two nuances of I’, op. cit. p. 1868.

page 265 note 1 It is not always clear which of these are itacisms common to the scribe of MS 1243 and which are mood changes. Sometimes the grammar of the sentence makes it definite, but often either indicative or subjunctive could be used and is sensible. It is my opinion that where these are definitely mood changes they belong to the Caesarean family and are one of those ‘strivings after elegance’ noted by Pére Lagrange: that is, a subjunctive mood seems more elegant than an indicative, e.g. I John iii. 17. μɛνɛι 1. μɛνη. So also the addition of the second article in I John iv. 18 η αγαπη ηтɛλɛια is more elegant because more classical.

page 265 note 2 Op. cit. I. III, 1869–72.

page 268 note 1 As this writer found that MSS 1240 and 1874 had divested Ν72 of the claim to uniqueness in reading αρολιμρανων for Νρολιμρανων. See F. W. Beare, op. cit. p. 254.

page 269 note 1 All statements in this article should be taken as applying only to I Peter, I, II, III John of the Catholic Epistles. Without detailed investigation I cannot claim the same conclusions for James, II Peter, and Jude.

page 269 note 2 Colwell himself says that with regard to ø ‘no confirmation of relationships exists’, Method, p. 764. I believe that the reason for this is stated in conclusion (3) above.

page 269 note 3 The writer is aware, of course, that there is more than one pattern of choice amongst the manuscripts which belong to the Caesarean tribe. See Baikie's, J. E. M. words quoted by Metzger, B. M. in Chapters in the History of New Testament Textual Criticism (Grand Rapids, 1963), p. 59.Google Scholar

page 269 note 4 It is definitely possible that there was. M. J. Lagrange, op. cit. p. 530, says that the lack of quaternions in manuscript D between Mark and Acts is sufficient to include all seven of the Catholic Epistles. We now possess only verses 11–15 of III John in Latin.

page 270 note 1 Op. cit. II, 77.

page 270 note 2 Op. cit. p. 21. That MS 1243, although written in the eleventh century, provides a link with antiquity can be gathered from its plain, simple superscriptions at the head of each book.