https://brentnongbri.com/2021/05/25/the-eusebian-apparatus-in-codex-sinaiticus/
Hi Brent and friends,
Good study, thanks!
One significant element of the Eusebian canons can be seen in Dirk Jongkind’s Scribal Habits of Codex Sinaiticus (2013), which has a wonderful Eusebian canon analysis section.
Dirk notices numerous anomalies in the Eusebian canons in Sinaiticus that are the result of:
transmission history
corruption
conflation
Since the Eusebian canons are dated to the early 4th century, realistically we can estimate 200 years or more for these competing and conflicting and conflating transmission lines to occur.
This pushes forward the terminus post quem of Sinaiticus about two centuries from the current Tischendorf-inspired scholarship-consensus date,
Your thoughts?
Thanks!
Steven Avery
Dutchess County, NY USA
https://linktr.ee/stevenavery
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Hi Steven, I’m not sure that one needs to posit 200 years or more for these kinds of discrepancies to appear. The Eusebian system is brilliant, but it is somewhat complicated to add it to a manuscript, and problems like those discussed by Jongkind at Matt. 16:2-6 and Mark 15:28 could, if I understand him correctly, result from just one or two exemplars in the transmission history that included the verses that are absent in Sinaiticus. I am not sufficiently familiar with the Eusebian apparatus to say how common or uncommon it is for gospel manuscripts to have “error free” versions of the Eusebian apparatus. I would be grateful if anyone had the data to answer that question.