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A note on scribal error

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 June 2016

John Wm Wevers
John Wm Wevers*
Affiliation:
University of Toronto
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Extract

0. The Purpose of this short study is to show that phonetic rather than graphemic considerations predominate in scribal errors in Greek Biblical manuscripts and to suggest an explanation for this phenomenon.

1. In preparing my critical edition of the Greek Genesis, all available extant mss of Genesis prior to the 16th century were collated, the only exceptions being a 15th-century ms which was unavailable to the Göttingen Academy, and two other 15th-century mss which proved to be copies of mss already collated. The mss collated constituted 9 uncial texts dating from the 3rd to the 7th centuries and 98 minuscules dating from the 9th to the 15th centuries. Also collated were 32 papyri ranging from ca. 50 Bc (a tiny fragment containing only a few letters) to the 9th century. Three of these papyri are substantial, the so-called Berlin Genesis (late 3rd century) and the Chester Beatty Papyri IV and V (4th and late 3rd centuries respectively).

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique , Volume 17 , Issue 2-3 , 1972 , pp. 185 - 190
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Linguistic Association 1972

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References

1 SEPTUAGINTA Vetus Testamentum Graecum auctoritate Societatis Litterarum Gottingensis editum: Vol. I Genesis edidit John Wm. Wevers (in press). Cf. also my Textual History of the Greek Genesis to appear as Mitteilungen d. Septuaginta-Unternehmens Band XI (Also in press. Both volumes to be published by Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen).

2 Sixteenth-century mss (and younger mss) were excluded since the invention of printing introduced an entirely new factor into text tradition, viz. that of numerous uniform copies. Actually included in the minuscule texts collated was one 17th century ms (as a control ms), but this has been left out of consideration in this study.

3 For full details on copyist errors with individual mss and citations given, see Anhang 1: “Orthographica und Grammatica” in the Genesis edition cited in note 1. In this paper I give only a few examples.

4 These were fully discussed by Schmidt in The Minor Prophets in the Freer Collection and the Berlin Fragment of Genesis by H. A. Sanders and C. Schmidt (Univ. of Michigan Studies: Humanistic Series Vol. XXI. New York: The Macmillan Co., 1927).

5 I can no longer give the century in parentheses since most of the errors occur in a number of mss.

6 This excludes all such variants which have possible sense in the text; these have all been noted in the upper critical apparatus of the Genesis edition.