Vaticanus again

Well it’s a facsimile of Codex Vaticanus,

You’ve done this before, Ehud
Do you never learn?
You sneek in here and leave the mess, just like your namesake.

Would have been nice to show the page rather than making us look for it.
Mark 15:43-16:8 [LINK]

What may look like an erasure is the text of the opposite page that has transferred to the opposite page during years of storage.

Look closely and you’ll see the Greek letters are reversed.

What interests researchers is the blank space following the gospel,
although it isn't enough space to fit the disputed verses, it may suggest a knowledge of them.

Rob

 

Codex Vaticanus must be written in one of the most beautiful scribal hands of the 4th century. Codex Sinaiticus is also a beautiful specimen of penmanship. I am glad we have these early testimonies to the biblical text. Are there any early papyri that have such beautiful penmanship? If there are I haven't noticed them.

 

Deacon, on the link you provided, on the top line of the left column, the Greek for Joseph of Arimathea, is the EI in small letters at the end of the first line a correction by a later hand, or did the scribe write it like that on purpose, or did he catch his own mistake and fill it in afterwards? It's possible we'll never know. But what is your best guess? One sees several of these as one makes his way down each column. Interesting!

 

now that's nice...a post & run flame by Ehud is going to turn into a productive discussion.

Poetic justice. :thumbsup:

 

While Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus are absolutely beautiful copies of the Bible, they do have some interesting (and probably incorrect) readings. I was just reading in Mark 4 and noticed an interesting variant reading that evidently made its way into their common ancestor. In Mark 4:21, most manuscripts have: ". . . is it not brought that it may be placed on the lampstand?" while a few others (according to the Nestle text: Aleph B* f-13 33 pc) have: ". . . is it not brought that it may be placed under the lampstand?" No doubt the one copying the ancestor of these two manuscripts saw the first two "under" words in the verse and accidentally changed the only "on" in the verse to "under" as well.

 

Did the Vaticanus manuscript reverence the Word of God?

 

Yes, Askjo. Codex Vaticanus was some early Christians' (probably plural) primary (if not the only) access to the Scriptures. They likely read it with reverence in their worship services and memorized from it. Perhaps you should show our predecessors in the faith a little more respect. Is it perfect? Probably not. But God has seen fit to have it be preserved until this day.

 

My Greek knowledge is rudimentary, I can only read the majuscule lettering of Vaticanus with great difficulty.

Yes, the small lettering noted on the page are corrections.
For what it’s worth, to me it looks like its in the same style and coloring as the original but at some point in Vaticanus’ history its lettering began to fade and a scribe traced over the letters. So they could have been added much later.

At various points in the manuscript there are interesting marks [umlauts] that signal important early text-critical variants. (see Wieland Willker page on Vaticanus [LINK])

Rob