Brent Nongbri - the Milne and Skeat disagreement with Tischendorf on cursive notes

Steven Avery

Steven Avery

Administrator
The other argument mentioned by Roberts, the presence of ‘certain cursive notes’ in ‘a distinctly fourth century hand’ also deserves more intensive scrutiny. Here is what Milne and Skeat say on the matter:

In the marginal additions made by scribe D while correcting the New Testament the directional signs are frequently supplemented with the words ανω and κατω, the former being placed in the lower margin and the latter opposite the place in the text (N.T. 2b, 66b, 73, 74, 80, 82, 92). These words are written in cursive script (no doubt to distinguish them from the text proper), and slender though the evidence of a few isolated words must be, they certainly belong to the fourth century, and probably the first half of it.29
Click to expand...

In a footnote, Milne and Skeat dispute Tischendorf’s identification of the writer of these ‘cursive’ words and offer their own attribution:

These are attributed by Tischendorf (Prolegomena, p. 9*) to the corrector Ba, but identity of ink and the fact that they accompany only corrections by D make it certain that they are from his hand. One isolated example of κατ(ω) by scribe A is on NT 40b.30
Click to expand...

Thus, in seven instances these ‘cursive’ notes accompany corrections by scribe D, and in one instance they are found with a correction by scribe A. The identification of this ‘cursive’ hand with that of scribe D is made by ‘identity of ink’ used for the corrections by scribe D and the ‘cursive’ notes.31 The question, then, is this: Can these notes be assigned with confidence to the fourth century or even more narrowly to the first half of the fourth century? Before answering these questions it is important to get a sense of the size of these notes relative to the writing of the text block in Codex Sinaiticus (see Fig. 1):
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top