Payne: Vaticanus Distigme-obelos Symbols Marking Added Text, Including 1 Corinthians 14.34–5

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Payne: Vaticanus Distigme-obelos Symbols Marking Added Text, Including 1 Corinthians 14.34–5

Post by Kapyong »

Greetings all,

Here is an interesting and significant article by Philip B. Payne from the latest issue of New Testament Studies. It's available publically and is causing quite a stir.

Here is my link to the page on New Testament Studies, not sure if it works for everbody :
Vaticanus Distigme-obelos Symbols Marking Added Text, Including 1 Corinthians 14.34–5

Edit: Here is the right link :
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0028688517000121

Here is Payne's introduction (my bolding) :

"This article publishes for the first time all eight instances in codex Vaticanus B (henceforth, Vaticanus) where a distigme identifying a textual variant is combined with a bar that has five specific characteristics. It argues that just as bar-shaped obeloi in the Vaticanus prophets identify the locations of blocks of added text, so do all eight distigme-obelos symbols in the Vaticanus NT. Milne, Skeat and Canart ascribe each Vaticanus LXX book with obeloi and asterisks to the same scribe who penned the Vaticanus NT, scribe B. On the line to the right of each distigme-obelos symbol – except one with a downward stroke from both dots and the bar, indicating a different hand – is a gap (henceforth, ‘following gap’) in the text at the exact location of a multi-word block of text widely recognised as not original, but added later (henceforth, ‘added text’). Only the original scribe could have put these gaps in the text. The distigme at Luke 14.24 matches the original Vaticanus ink. Therefore, since obeloi mark the location of added text, their conjunction with a gap at the exact location of added text is most naturally explained if scribe B penned these symbols and left the following gap to mark where text was added.

"It appears that all studies of distigmai in Vaticanus agree that distigmai correlate closely with the location of textual variants. Probability tests confirm this correlation to a high degree of reliability. Ever since Canart concluded that fifty-one distigmai match the apricot colour of the original Vaticanus ink on the same page and identified traces of original ink protruding from some evidently re-inked distigmai, there has been a growing acceptance that at least the original-ink-colour distigmai date to the fourth century and mark the location of textual variants. Other surviving NT manuscripts contain a variant reading in over 92 per cent of these fifty-one distigme locations.

"This article begins by establishing the use of distigmai near the time of Vaticanus in the fourth- or fifth-century LXX G. It then provides evidence that scribe B repeatedly left comments explaining that obeloi signify added text. After analysing the eight distigme-obelos symbols in the Vaticanus NT, it argues from the form and function of their characteristic bars that it is highly improbable these eight bars are simply paragraphoi unrelated either to the distigme or to the added text at the exact point of the following gap.

"The article concludes by providing an explanation why the Vaticanus Gospels do not include any of the blocks of added text their five distigme-obelos symbols mark, but the Vaticanus epistles do include the block of added text their one distigme-obelos marks. The contrast between the presence of high stops throughout the Vaticanus epistles and their virtually complete absence from the Vaticanus Gospels indicates that practically all the Vaticanus Gospels’ text preceded the adding of high stops and so is earlier than the Vaticanus epistles’ text. It is even earlier than P75’s text, which has high stops throughout. This vindicates scholarly judgement that the Vaticanus Gospels’ text is earlier than its epistles’ text. Its text is so early that it preceded all five of its distigme-obelos-marked additions, hence their omission from its Gospels.

"This study demonstrates that scribe B was a careful textual critic who identifies 1 Cor 14.34–5, the only Bible passage silencing women in the church, as added text. Vaticanus provides early and credible judgement in what is widely regarded as the most important NT manuscript that vv. 34–5 were not in the body text Paul's original letter, but are a later addition. This is important theologically since it offers a resolution to the notorious difficulty of reconciling vv. 34–5 with Paul's many affirmations of women in vocal ministry and their equal standing with men in Christ."

Wow :)
This is why I might actually buy a copy of Linguists' Software's amazing replica of Codex Vaticanus that Phil Payne helped make (perhaps when Bitcoin hits $10K) :
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Last edited by Kapyong on Mon Oct 23, 2017 5:24 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Payne: Vaticanus Distigme-obelos Symbols Marking Added Text, Including 1 Corinthians 14.34–5

Post by andrewcriddle »

IMHO the symbols at 1 Corinthians 14.34–5 indicate the scribes awareness that these verses occur at a different position in some manuscripts.

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Re: Payne: Vaticanus Distigme-obelos Symbols Marking Added Text, Including 1 Corinthians 14.34–5

Post by Kapyong »

Gday,
andrewcriddle wrote: Thu Oct 19, 2017 11:57 am IMHO the symbols at 1 Corinthians 14.34–5 indicate the scribes awareness that these verses occur at a different position in some manuscripts.
Andrew Criddle
Here is Payne's photograph of 14:33-4 with the distigme :
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Re: Payne: Vaticanus Distigme-obelos Symbols Marking Added Text, Including 1 Corinthians 14.34–5

Post by Kapyong »

Philip Payne's article (linked above) details six groundbreaking discoveries, summarized below:
Philip Payne wrote: 1. Scribe B, who penned Vaticanus’s entire New Testament and Old Testament Prophets, was extraordinarily faithful in preserving the text of its exemplars, namely the manuscripts from which Vaticanus was copied.

2. The entire text of all four Gospels in Vaticanus is even earlier than the text with high stops througout in Bodmer Papyrus 75, henceforth P75, usually dated AD 175–225 and containing most of Luke 3 through John 15.

3. The entire text of the epistles in the second oldest Bible, Codex Sinaiticus, dated AD 350–360, is arguably at least as old as the text of P32, dated ca. AD 200.

4. The two-dot symbol (the technical term is “distigme”) marking the location of textual variants throughout Vaticanus also occurs in the fourth to fifth century LXX G.

5. Scribe B left a gap following eight two-dot+characteristic bar symbols (including the one at Mark 6:11, 1285B, the article identifies five characteristics of the "characteristic bars") at the exact point of a multi-word later addition.

6. Scribe B marked 1 Corinthians 14:34–35, the only Bible passage commanding women to be silent in the churches, as a later addition.

I have a further summary in .docx format that Philip authorised me to post - I'll go turn it into BB so it looks nice.

BTW -
You better hurry if you want one of these :
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Only 25 left now, at USD $5785.


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Re: Payne: Vaticanus Distigme-obelos Symbols Marking Added Text, Including 1 Corinthians 14.34–5

Post by Kapyong »

Gday all,
Here is Philip Payne's summary of his article linked above :
(It would be handy if the forum took .doc or .html as input.)


This article details six groundbreaking discoveries, summarized below:
  • Scribe B, who penned Vaticanus’s entire New Testament and Old Testament Prophets, was extraordinarily faithful in preserving the text of its exemplars, namely the manuscripts from which Vaticanus was copied.
  • The entire text of all four Gospels in Vaticanus is even earlier than the text with high stops througout in Bodmer Papyrus 75, henceforth P75, usually dated AD 175–225 and containing most of Luke 3 throughJohn 15.
  • The entire text of the epistles in the second oldest Bible, Codex Sinaiticus,dated AD 350–360, is arguably at least as old as the text of P32,dated ca. AD 200.
  • The two-dot symbol (the technical term is “distigme”) marking the location of textual variants throughout Vaticanusalso occurs in the fourth to fifth century LXX G.
  • Scribe B left a gap following eight two-dot+characteristic bar symbols (including the one at Mark6:11, 1285B, the article identifies five characteristics of the"characteristic bars") at the exact point of a multi-word later addition.
  • Scribe B marked 1 Corinthians 14:34–35, the only Bible passage commanding women to be silent in the churches, as a later addition.
Scribe B Preserved the Text of Vaticanus’s Exemplars with Remarkable Fidelity
Scribe B is the only scribe of
Vaticanus who preserved the obeloi Origen (ca. 185–ca. 254, the most famous expert on the text of the Bible from the early church) used to show where the Septuagint Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures added words not in the Hebrew text. Scribe B reproduced Vaticanus’s Prophets so faithfully that he or she did not add bars to the exemplar’s text even by five passages explicitly identified as“not in the Hebrew.” “Or she” reflects Eusebius’s statement in Church History6.23.2 that Origen employed “girls skilled in penmanship.”The sharp contrast between the virtually complete absence of periods at the end of sentences in Vaticanus’s Gospels and the presence of periods throughout all its epistles showsthat Scribe B copied both exemplars faithfully. This is the only explanation for this sharp contrast congruent with a copyist’s primary task, to reproduce the exemplar’s text. Vaticanus symbols marking differences between manuscripts show that Scribe B was aware of variants, copied exemplars faithfully, and preferred the earliest possible text. Scribe B was extraordinarily careful not to add to or take away text from Vaticanus’s exemplars, not even adding periods after sentences or obeloi where some original ink marginal notes identify LXX additions.

The Extraordinarily Early Text of the Gospels in
Vaticanus
The text of P
75is remarkably similar to the corresponding text in Vaticanus. Carlo Martini’s Ilproblema della recensionalità del codice B alla luce delpapiro Bodmer xivargued this in detail, and scholars have confirmed his findings. The virtually complete absence of periods at the end of sentences in theVaticanus Gospels but their presence throughout the Vaticanus epistles and P75indicates that, as usual then, all four Vaticanus Gospels were copied from the same manuscript, but one so primitive it had virtually no periods. The Vaticanus Gospels’ lack of periods indicates that their text is earlier than the Vaticanus epistles’ text and even earlier than P75’stext with high stops throughout. None of the New Testament papyri that the standard Nestle-Aland critical text identifies as second-century (P32,90,98, 104)contains a period. Kurt and Barbara Aland, The Text of the New Testament, 287, state, “the original texts … naturally also lacked punctuation.” The Vaticanus Gospels’ text is so old it was not contaminated by any of the six blocks of added text (including Mark 6:11, 1285B) their two-dot+characteristic bar symbols mark. These discoveries corroborate both halves of Bruce Metzger’s judgment inHistoricaland Literary Studies,157–58, “Since B [=Vaticanus] is not a lineal descendent of P75, the common ancestor of both carries the … text to a period prior to AD 175–225, the date assigned to P75.” It also supports Stephen Pisano’s affirmation in Lemanuscrit B de la Bible,96, “of the text of B as an extremely reliable witness …,especially of the Gospels and Acts.”

The Second Century Text of the Epistles in Codex Sinaiticus

Chris Stevens’ November 18, 2015 Evangelical Theological Society paper, “Titus in P32 and Sinaiticus: Textual Reliability and Scribal Design,” showed that there is only one letter in the text of Titus in P
32, dated ca. AD 200, that differs from the text of Sinaiticus, so the Sinaiticus text of Titus goes back at least to ca. AD 200. Sincefourth century scribes copied entire collections of the epistles, not separate epistles from different manuscripts, the rest of the Sinaiticus epistles’ text is probably also this old. This supports a second century date not only of the entire text of theVaticanus Gospels, but also of the entire text of the Sinaiticus epistles.

The Antiquity of Two-Dot Symbols in
Vaticanus
Approximately 780 two-dot symbols in the margins of
Vaticanus mark the location of Greek textual variants. Fifty-one of them match the original Vaticanus ink. Two more with original ink protruding behind reinking suggest that most two-dot symbols were re-inked with the rest of Vaticanus ca. AD 1000. The same symbol occurs in the fourth- or fifth-century LXX G, the earliest extensive copy of Origen’s annotated LXX. LXX G’s and Vaticanus’s many parallels suggest they came from the same scriptorium. The following example from LXX G 228 demonstrates ancient use of this two-dot symbol to mark textual variants between Greek manuscripts.
Image

These two dot symbols give us insights regarding textual variants in a corpus of very early manuscript text far wider than has survived from before the time of Vaticanus. Because manuscripts have survived showing textual variants at most of their locations, they show that we probably know through surviving manuscripts most of the textual variants that were available to the producers of Vaticanus. This greatly reduces the plausibility that the original manuscripts were significantly different from what we know from surviving manuscripts.

ScribeB Left a Gap Following Eight Two-dot+characteristic bar Symbols atthe Exact Point of a Multi-word Later Addition

Six key facts support the conclusion that all nine bars (including1285B)with characteristic features adjacent to a two-dot symbol mark the location of a multi-word textual addition:
  • The Nestle-Aland Novum Testamentum Graece 28th edition identifies a multi-word textual variant somewhere in the line following each characteristic bar. If all nine were simply paragraph marks, this conjunction would have to be mere coincidence. The probability that multi-word variants identified by Nestle-Aland would occur somewhere in each of nine randomly-selected Vaticanus lines (including the one at Mark 6:11, 1285B) is less than one in 33 trillion (= 33 billion UK).
  • Even more astounding, Scribe B left a gap at the exact letter where a widely acknowledged, multi-word textual addition begins following every characteristic bar except one that was evidently added by a different hand.
  • None of the other twenty bars adjacent to a two-dot symbol shares more than two of the remaining four characteristics of the "characteristic bars". All nine extend, on average, much farther into the margin than the other twenty and are, on average, noticeably longer than the average of the other twenty. This distinguishes them graphically from paragraph bars randomly occurring after dots. Their extension into the margin associates them with their adjacent two-dot symbols, whose purpose was to mark the location of textual variants. Characteristic bars specify which category of variant—multi-word additions.
  • Scribe B undoubtedly used horizontal-bars in the Vaticanus Prophets to mark the locations of blocks of added text since one is in the middle of text and since explanations that these bars mark added text display original Vaticanus ink.
  • All nine characteristic bars adjacent to a two-dot symbol resemblethe shape and length of each bar marking added text in the Vaticanus Prophets.
  • A horizontal bar was the standard Greek symbol for marking addedtext.All this supports the conclusion that two-dot+characteristic bar symbols mark the location of multi-word blocks of added text.
Vaticanus Scribe B Marked“Let women keep silent in the churches … for it is a disgrace for a woman to speak in church” as a Later Addition
1 Corinthians 14:34–35 silences women in church three times with no qualification. Chapter 11, however, guides how women should prophesy, and chapter 14:5, 24 (3x), 26 and 31 affirm “all” speaking in church. Popular resolutions of this contradiction limit 14:34–35’s demand for silence only to disruptive chatter or, recently contrived, only to judging prophecies. These resolutionsshould be rejected since they permit speech verse 35 prohibits, namely asking questions from a desire to learn.
As this photograph shows, Scribe B identified 1 Corinthians 14:34–35 as added text
Image
but faithfully preserved those verses from
Vaticanus’s epistles’ exemplar, just as Scribe B faithfully preserved text in the Vaticanus Prophets marked with a bar as later additions. It is precisely because of honest preservation of textual data that Scribe B’s textual judgments should be respected, not dismissed.In the 121 cases of a bar in the Vaticanus Prophets, a comparison with the Hebrew Scriptures shows that ScribeB’s judgments were correct, that the Greek translation being copied did indeed add words that were not in the Hebrew text. Furthermore, manuscripts confirm a block of text was added at the gap Scribe B left following every other two-dot+characteristic bar symbol. Therefore, this symbol implies that Scribe B had manuscript evidence 1 Corinthians 14:34–35 was not original to Paul, but is later added text. We should trust Scribe B’s textual judgments because the wide scope of textual variants Scribe B marked implies access to far more pre-VaticanusNT manuscript text than survives today. 1 Corinthians 14:34–35 is the only multi-word textual variant ever identified at the gap following this two-dot+characteristic barsymbol. At least sixty-two textual studies argue that 14:34–35 is a later addition. Joseph Fitzmyer, First Corinthians,530, notes that “the majority of commentators today” regard verses 34–35 as a later addition. Kim Haines-Eitzen, The Gendered Palimpsest, 62, affirms this of “[n]early all scholars now.”This is important theologically because the two-dot+characteristic bar symbol at the interface of 1 Corinthians 14:33 and 34 provides a resolution to the notorious difficulty of reconciling verses 34–35 with 1 Corinthians 11’s inclusion of women prophesying and chapter 14’s affirmations of “all” prophesying—verses 34–35 were not in Paul’s original letter, but are a later addition. Therefore, Paul’s unqualified affirmations of the equal standing of man and woman in Christ (Galatians 3:28; Romans 16; 1 Corinthians 7; 11:11–12) need not be qualified by verses 34–35’s huge caveat. Nor must one resort to implausible interpretations of 14:34–35. The article concludes that the best name in light of both their shape and apparent function for these nine text critical symbols marking the location of added text is distigme-obelos symbols.
Last edited by Kapyong on Mon Oct 23, 2017 5:26 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Payne: Vaticanus Distigme-obelos Symbols Marking Added Text, Including 1 Corinthians 14.34–5

Post by andrewcriddle »

We may have to distinguish between what the scribe believed and the basis for his (or her) belief.

The scribe may well have believed that the passage was an interpolation. However it seems simpler to suppose that this belief was based on knowledge of manuscripts where the verses occur at a different position, (manuscripts which we know existed), than that it was based on knowledge of a manuscript which entirely lacked the verses. A hypothetical manuscript for which we have no other evidence.

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Re: Payne: Vaticanus Distigme-obelos Symbols Marking Added Text, Including 1 Corinthians 14.34–5

Post by Kapyong »

Gday all,
andrewcriddle wrote: Sat Oct 21, 2017 1:26 am We may have to distinguish between what the scribe believed and the basis for his (or her) belief.

The scribe may well have believed that the passage was an interpolation. However it seems simpler to suppose that this belief was based on knowledge of manuscripts where the verses occur at a different position, (manuscripts which we know existed), than that it was based on knowledge of a manuscript which entirely lacked the verses. A hypothetical manuscript for which we have no other evidence.
Andrew Criddle
I've been corresponding with Philip (one 'l', whoops), and he asked me to post his response to Andrew Criddle :
Philip B. Payne wrote: There are two problems with supposing that this distigme-obelos symbol marks the transposition of 1 Corinthians 14:34-35 from after v. 33 to after v. 40 (or the reverse).

First, none of the other distigme-obelos symbols mark any transposition of text. They all mark the location of a block of added text.

Second, if it were the intent of scribe B to mark that the text found following the end of v. 33 occurs in other manuscripts after v. 40, since exactly the same variant occurs at the end of v. 40, there should have been at least a distigme there. Distigmai mark the locations where there is a textual variant. If scribe B were aware of the transposition of vv. 34-35 following v. 40, one would expect a distigme before the line containing the end of v. 40 as well. Since there is no distigme before the line containing the end of v. 40, it is unlikely scribe B intended by the distigme-obelos symbol and the gap at the end of v. 33 to mark a transposition.

Third, Andrew Criddle incorrectly states that “a manuscript which entirely lacked the verses [is] A hypothetical manuscript for which we have no other evidence."

My book, Man and Woman, One in Christ, An Exegetical and Theological Study of Paul’s Letters (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2009, list $32.99 but author autographed copies available for $19.99 from www.linguistsoftware.com/orders/orders.htm) pages 225-253 lists seven evidences from manuscripts that 1 Corinthians 14:34-25 is a later addition and pages 253-265 details nine internal evidences that these verses are a later addition. At least sixty-two textual studies argue that 1 Cor 14:34-35 is a later addition, listed on pp. 225-226 of my book or by J. Fitzmyer, First Corinthians (AB; New Haven: Yale, 2008) 530, citing twenty scholars, including Cope, Delling, Fuller, Keck and Roetzel. Fitzmyer states that ‘the majority of commentators today’ regard vv. 34-35 as a later addition. K. Haines-Eitzen, The Gendered Palimpsest: Women, Writing, and Representation in Early Christianity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012) 62 affirms this of ‘[n]early all scholars now’. You may see details including photographs of the specific manuscript evidence for the addition of 1 Corinthians 14:34-35 in my 1995 NTS article on Codex Fuldensis and my 1998 NTS article on MS 88, both downloadable free from www.pbpayne.com under Publications: Articles.”
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Re: Payne: Vaticanus Distigme-obelos Symbols Marking Added Text, Including 1 Corinthians 14.34–5

Post by MrMacSon »

Kapyong wrote: Wed Oct 18, 2017 3:29 pm Greetings all,

"This article begins by establishing the use of distigmai near the time of Vaticanus in the fourth- or fifth-century LXX G. It then provides evidence that scribe B repeatedly left comments explaining that obeloi signify added text. After analysing the eight distigme-obelos symbols in the Vaticanus NT, it argues from the form and function of their characteristic bars that it is highly improbable these eight bars are simply paragraphoi unrelated either to the distigme or to the added text at the exact point of the following gap.

"The article concludes by providing an explanation why the Vaticanus Gospels do not include any of the blocks of added text their five distigme-obelos symbols mark, but the Vaticanus epistles do include the block of added text their one distigme-obelos marks. The contrast between the presence of high stops throughout the Vaticanus epistles, and their virtually complete absence from the Vaticanus Gospels, indicates that practically all the Vaticanus Gospels’ text preceded the adding of high stops and so is earlier than the Vaticanus epistles’ text. It is even earlier than P75’s text, which has high stops throughout. This vindicates scholarly judgement that the Vaticanus Gospels’ text is earlier than its epistles’ text. Its text is so early that it preceded all five of its distigme-obelos-marked additions, hence their omission from its Gospels.

"This study demonstrates that scribe B was a careful textual critic who identifies 1 Cor 14.34–5, the only Bible passage silencing women in the church, as added text. Vaticanus provides early and credible judgement, in what is widely regarded as the most important NT manuscript, that vv. 34–5 were not in the body text Paul's original letter, but are a later addition. This is important theologically ...
.
Kapyong wrote: Fri Oct 20, 2017 8:31 pm Gday all,
Here is Philip Payne's summary of his article linked above :

This article details six groundbreaking discoveries, summarized below:
  • Scribe B, who penned Vaticanus’s entire New Testament and Old Testament Prophets, was extraordinarily faithful in preserving the text of its exemplars, namely the manuscripts from which Vaticanus was copied.
  • The entire text of all four Gospels in Vaticanus is even earlier than the text with high stops throughout in Bodmer Papyrus 75 (henceforth P75), usually dated AD 175–225, and containing most of Luke 3 through John 15.
  • The entire text of the epistles in the second oldest Bible, Codex Sinaiticus, dated AD 350–360, is arguably at least as old as the text of P32, dated ca. AD 200.
  • The two-dot symbol (the technical term is “distigme”) marking the location of textual variants throughout Vaticanus also occurs in the fourth to fifth century LXX G.
  • Scribe B left a gap following eight two-dot+characteristic bar symbols (including the one at Mark 6:11, 1285B, the article identifies five characteristics of the"characteristic bars") at the exact point of a multi-word later addition.
  • Scribe B marked 1 Corinthians 14:34–35, the only Bible passage commanding women to be silent in the churches, as a later addition.
< . . snip . . >

The Extraordinarily Early Text of the Gospels in Vaticanus
The text of P75 is remarkably similar to the corresponding text in Vaticanus. Carlo Martini’s Ilproblema della recensionalità del codice B alla luce delpapiro Bodmer xiv argued this in detail, and scholars have confirmed his findings. The virtually complete absence of periods at the end of sentences in the Vaticanus Gospels, but their presence throughout the Vaticanus epistles and P75 indicates that, as usual then, all four Vaticanus Gospels were copied from the same manuscript, but one so primitive it had virtually no periods. The Vaticanus Gospels’ lack of periods indicates that their text is earlier than the Vaticanus epistles’ text and even earlier than P75’s text with high stops throughout.

None of the New Testament papyri that the standard Nestle-Aland critical text identifies as second-century - P32, 90, 98, 104 - contains a period. Kurt and Barbara Aland, The Text of the New Testament, 287, state, “the original texts … naturally also lacked punctuation.” The Vaticanus Gospels’ text is so old it was not contaminated by any of the six blocks of added text (including Mark 6:11, 1285B) [that] their two-dot+characteristic bar symbols mark. These discoveries corroborate both halves of Bruce Metzger’s judgment in Historical and Literary Studies,157–58, “Since B [=Vaticanus] is not a lineal descendent of P75, the common ancestor of both carries the … text to a period prior to AD 175–225, the date assigned to P75.” It also supports Stephen Pisano’s affirmation, in Lemanuscrit B de la Bible,96, of “the text of B as an extremely reliable witness …especially of the Gospels and Acts.”


The Second Century Text of the Epistles in Codex Sinaiticus

Chris Stevens’ November 18, 2015 Evangelical Theological Society paper, “Titus in P32 and Sinaiticus: Textual Reliability and Scribal Design,” showed that there is only one letter in the text of Titus in P
32, dated ca. AD 200, that differs from the text of Sinaiticus, so the Sinaiticus text of Titus goes back at least to ca. AD 200.

Since fourth century scribes copied entire collections of the epistles, not separate epistles from different manuscripts, the rest of the Sinaiticus epistles’ text is probably also this old. This supports a second century date not only of the entire text of the Vaticanus Gospels, but also of the entire text of the Sinaiticus epistles.
.

That is all quite fascinating. One thing that it brings into focus, however, is the dating of p75 (and other papyri) which, I understand, is largely by paleography. The claims about the date of Codex Sinaiticus could be far-fetched.

Brent Nongbri has recently published an argument that restricting the date of P75 to the late second or early third century is not realistic, and that the similarity of the text of P75 to that of Codex Vaticanus might be better explained by considering both books as products of the fourth century, along with the bulk of the other “Bodmer papyri” with which it was apparently discovered.

See -

B. Nongbri (2016) "Reconsidering the Place of Papyrus Bodmer XIV–XV (P75) in the Textual Criticism of the New Testament," Journal of Biblical Literature 135, no. 2: 405–437.
  • "..the present essay ... show[s] that, both paleographically and codicologically, P.Bodm. XIV–XV fits comfortably in a fourth-century context, along with the bulk of the other “Bodmer papyri” with which it was apparently discovered .."
and
P. Orsini (2015) "I papiri Bodmer: scritture e libri," Adamantius 21, 60-78 (probably in Italian)

.
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Re: Payne: Vaticanus Distigme-obelos Symbols Marking Added Text, Including 1 Corinthians 14.34–5

Post by andrewcriddle »

Kapyong wrote: Mon Oct 23, 2017 5:31 pm
Philip B. Payne wrote: .........................................................................

Third, Andrew Criddle incorrectly states that “a manuscript which entirely lacked the verses [is] A hypothetical manuscript for which we have no other evidence."

My book, Man and Woman, One in Christ, An Exegetical and Theological Study of Paul’s Letters (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2009, list $32.99 but author autographed copies available for $19.99 from www.linguistsoftware.com/orders/orders.htm) pages 225-253 lists seven evidences from manuscripts that 1 Corinthians 14:34-25 is a later addition and pages 253-265 details nine internal evidences that these verses are a later addition. At least sixty-two textual studies argue that 1 Cor 14:34-35 is a later addition, listed on pp. 225-226 of my book or by J. Fitzmyer, First Corinthians (AB; New Haven: Yale, 2008) 530, citing twenty scholars, including Cope, Delling, Fuller, Keck and Roetzel. Fitzmyer states that ‘the majority of commentators today’ regard vv. 34-35 as a later addition. K. Haines-Eitzen, The Gendered Palimpsest: Women, Writing, and Representation in Early Christianity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012) 62 affirms this of ‘[n]early all scholars now’. You may see details including photographs of the specific manuscript evidence for the addition of 1 Corinthians 14:34-35 in my 1995 NTS article on Codex Fuldensis and my 1998 NTS article on MS 88, both downloadable free from www.pbpayne.com under Publications: Articles.”
Shall we say that there is no direct evidence for a manuscript entirely lacking the verses. Neither MS 88 or Fuldensis provide direct evidence in this sense (both clearly contain the verses).

IMHO MS 88 is ambiguous and late. Fuldensis may provide evidence that Victor regarded the verses as an interpolation, it is less clear what evidence he may have had for this position. I am also a little troubled with the idea that there was a quite widespread feeling that the verses were not original without any surviving explicit testimony to that effect.

Andrew Criddle

EDITED TO ADD
I also think that it is relevant that many modern scholars would strongly prefer the verses not to be there. The claim that nearly all scholars regard the verse as an interpolation maybe should be considered in that context.
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Re: Payne: Vaticanus Distigme-obelos Symbols Marking Added Text, Including 1 Corinthians 14.34–5

Post by Secret Alias »

But it is hard to imagine that the earliest Christian tradition including the Marcosian tradition and possibly the Marcionite would have allowed women to have such a prominent place in the Church if - as you suggest - Paul originally told them to keep their mouths shut. Seems like one of a number of additions to the Pauline corpus by orthodox reactionaries.
“Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote
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