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The Corrections of Codex Sinaiticus and the Textual Transmission of Revelation: Josef Schmid Revisited
Abstract
The role of manuscript corrections in studying textual transmission of the New Testament has been long recognised by textual critics. And yet, the actual witness of corrections may at times be difficult to interpret. A case in point is Josef Schmid's seminal work on the text of Revelation. Following Wilhelm Bousset, Schmid argued that a particular group of corrections in Codex Sinaiticus reflected a
Vorlage
with a text akin to that of the Andreas text-type. By dating these corrections – unlike Bousset – to the scriptorium, Schmid utilised their witness to trace the text of Andreas back to the fourth century. Recently, Juan Hernández has shown that the corrections cited by Schmid were significantly later, hence calling his fourth-century dating of Andreas (among other things) into question. Through an analysis of the corrections cited by Schmid, supplemented by a fuller data-set of Sinaiticus’ corrections in Revelation, this study seeks to reappraise Schmid's claims concerning the textual relations of these corrections, and identify their role in the later transmission of the text of Revelation.
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The publication of Josef Schmid's landmark work on the textual history of the Apocalypse seemingly established the Andreas Text Type as a fourth-century product. The primary evidence for Schmid's claim came from the fourth-century corrections of the Apocalypse in Codex Sinaiticus, corrections which bore a close resemblance to the Andreas text of the Apocalypse. Schmid's reconstruction, however, is flawed. The fourth-century corrections he identified are actually from the seventh century. The data supporting a fourth-century Andreas text type does not exist. Schmid's widely influential error appears to have been based on a misreading of Milne and Skeat's Scribes and Correctors of the Codex Sinaiticus.
This is an analysis of a representative selection of text-critical variants in the Book of Revelation. In particular the variants include those that concern the author’s language and style and those involving grammatical features. The attempted solutions offered are based on the principles of thoroughgoing eclectic criticism.
Collations of test passages in all Apocalypse manuscripts not used by H.C. Hoskier showed that one of the newly discovered minuscules reflects the so-called Alexandrian texttype to a significant extent. It is the manuscript Grec. 977 of the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, known as 2846 in the Kurzgefaßte Liste. Concerning the agreement with the Nestle-Aland text against the Majority Text, the ranking is: A C N 2846 P47 2062 2050 2053 2329 2344 P 1611 etc. Where P47 N differ from A C, 2846 mostly agrees with A C.
Pour l'A., les deux codex du Sinaiticus et du Vaticanus ont ete ecrit a peu pres a la meme epoque et dans la meme ville de Cesaree. En mai 330, l'empereur Constantin a envoye une lettre a Eusebe, eveque de Cesaree. Pour l'A., il s'agit d'une lettre authentique contenant des instructions precises, mais il n'existe pas de relation entre cette lettre et les deux codex.
Contemporary textual critics attend to a variety of pressing questions. No longer restricted to the quest for the "original" text of the NT, current practitioners pursue a number of interrelated issues. Topics like scribal activity, theological variation, the nature and scope of the NT canon, and the sociohistorical worlds of scribes and their manuscripts are now commonplace in text-critical discussions. The definition of what a textual critic is (and does) has been broadened to include the pursuit of questions once considered peripheral to the discipline.
These questions are not new. Writing at the threshold of the early Byzantine era, Andrew of Caesarea displays an awareness of competing variants, comments on their theological significance, and condemns scribes who atticize the Greek manuscripts of the Bible. Andrew's Commentary on the Apocalypse appears to reflect the same integration of issues that characterizes contemporary text-critical research, albeit from the perspective of the seventh century. Andrew's handful of text-critical exempla speaks directly to a discipline that probes the relevance of scribal activity and challenges contemporary assumptions about its significance. In particular, Andrew's assessment of textual variation confounds modern sensibilities. Andrew embraces textual variants that produce a semantic difference in the reading of the Apocalypse and excoriates scribes who make stylistic changes. Andrew's Commentary on the Apocalypse offers a distinctively Byzantine appraisal of variants that enriches our understanding of textual variation and contributes to current discussions about its significance for textual criticism.
Little is known about Andrew of Caesarea or his commentary today. Despite the availability of Josef Schmid's critical edition of Andrew's Greek text, scholarship in this area has stalled for six decades. The challenge of dealing with an untranslated, early Byzantine text is a major factor. Many works of late antiquity and the early Byzantine period share this fate. This état des choses, coupled with Schmid's daunting text-critical apparatus for Andrew's commentary, can discourage even the most daring scholars. No modern translation of Andrew's commentary exists in any language today. Portions of the work are available in English, but a full rendering of the nearly three-hundred-page commentary has yet to be published—a critical first step for understanding any ancient work.
The lack of a full translation is only one problem. Most of the available research remains inaccessible to the broader community of scholars, appearing mostly in dated studies. With the exception of Schmid's monograph, treatments of the archbishop's work are also brief and offer only a sampling of what can be learned from the commentary. The Apocalypse's putative status as an eschatological work presents another challenge. Andrew's commentary is often mined for information about "the world to come." Such a narrow focus, however, fails to do justice to the commentary's standing as an exemplar of early Byzantine practices. Other aspects of the work require attention, and Andrew's assessment of textual variation in light of his broader hermeneutical approach to Scripture will occupy the discussion here.
We know very little about Andrew. We know that he was the archbishop of Caesarea Cappadocia (Kayseri in modern-day Turkey) and that his administration, spanning the years 563-614, began as the age of Justinian (d. 565) drew to a close. At the time he lived, the effects of the previous era's christological debates—epitomized in the Council of Chalcedon—were still being felt and made their way into the commentary. Andrew's occasional remarks on the text appear to reveal more about early Byzantine attitudes toward the Bible than about his actual text-critical practices.
Andrew divides his commentary into twenty-four "discourses" (λόγοι), which are then subdivided into three "heads" (κεφάλαια), resulting in seventy-two sections in the work. Each of the λόγοι concludes with a doxology. Andrew derives the number twenty-four from the number of elders before God's throne. Origen's anthropological model for interpreting Scripture appears to be the inspiration for Andrew's tripartite segmentation:
[J]ust as there are three parts to man, [so] every God-breathed Scripture has been given three parts by Divine Grace. The literal and...
Working with an Open Textual Tradition: Challenges in Theory and Practice
- M W Holmes
On the role of manuscript corrections in textual transmission, see Royse, Scribal Habits, –;
M. W. Holmes, 'Working with an Open Textual Tradition: Challenges in Theory and Practice',
The Textual History of the Greek New Testament: Changing Views in Contemporary Research
(ed. K. Wachtel and M. W. Holmes; SBL Text-Critical Studies ; Atlanta: Society of Biblical
Literature, ) .
Ironically, though the text used in Andreas' commentary is replete with grammatical improvements, Andreas himself condemns scribes who atticised the text of RevelationThe Relevance of Andrew of Caesarea for New Testament Textual Criticism
- Schmid
- Studien
-
Schmid, Studien, .. Ironically, though the text used in Andreas' commentary is replete
with grammatical improvements, Andreas himself condemns scribes who atticised the text
of Revelation. See J. Hernández Jr, 'The Relevance of Andrew of Caesarea for New
Testament Textual Criticism', JBL () –, –.
Observations on Early Papyri of the Synoptic Gospels, especially on the “Scribal Habits”
- Head
Novum Testamentum Sinaiticum, lxxiv-lxxvi, who assigns Cc, as he does not distinguish between Cc and Cc* correctors. CSP's more precise assignment follows Milne and Skeat, Scribes and Correctors
- Cf
- Tischendorf
Manuscripts from outside the text-type were used to revise it
- Cf
- Colwell
British Library/Hendrickson, 2010) 7, who suggests a date at ‘[a]round the middle of the fourth century
- D C Cf
- Codex Parker
- Sinaiticus
Concerning the Text of the Apocalypse: Collations of All Existing Available Greek Documents with the Standard Text of Stephen's Third Edition, together with the Testimony of Versions, Commentaries and Fathers. A Complete Conspectus of All Authorities (2 vols
- H C Hoskier
Manuel de critique verbale appliquée aux textes latins (Paris: Hachette, 1911) §§ 429-32; D. C. Greetham, Textual Scholarship: An Introduction (Garland Reference Library of the Humanities 1417
- See L Havet
The date suggested by Milne and Skeat as between the 5th and 7th centuries can thus be seen as reasonable, although I would tend to place Ca towards the first half of this period
- A C Cf
- Myshrall
Novum Testamentum Sinaiticum, lxxv, who only notes: ‘ν erasum’. In the same vein, Hoskier, Concerning the Text of the Apocalypse, 2.298, cites the correction as ‘ℵa vel c
- Cf
- Tischendorf
A Textual Commentary
- Cf
- Elliott
See also Hernández Jr, ‘Creation
- So Colwell