Also search codex א,
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Calligraphic handwriting, regular columns,
and decorative titles in some of these manuscripts (e.g., Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus)
are all material features that point to the literary object that the Pauline letters had become.22
22 On some of these features, see H. J. M. Milne and T. C. Skeat, Scribes and Correctors of the Codex Sinaiticus
(London: British Museum, 1938). Although produced in a codex form, these large majuscule manuscripts of the
fourth century and beyond resemble some of the literary bookrolls of classical works, truly elite products as
William Johnson has shown. See William A. Johnson, Bookrolls and Scribes in Oxyrhynchus, Studies in Book and
Print Culture (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004)
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Direct material evidence for critical interaction with manuscripts of the corpus Paulinum
in Roman Egypt is virtually non-existent, as Eldon Epp has remarked.9 Fourth-century
parchment books that contain the corpus Paulinum, such as codex Sinaiticus (א 01) and
Vaticanus (B 03), include some of the critical signs and accompanying marginal annotations that
characterized classical and Origenian scholarship.10
10 In the Pauline epistles of Sinaiticus, one corrector called “D” by Milne and Skeat, offered alternative readings
in the upper margin signalled by the titled obelus, και-compendium, and what they call an “arrow-caret.” See H. J.
M. Milne and T. C. Skeat, Scribes and Correctors of the Codex Sinaiticus (London: British Museum, 1938), 41–43.
One example of this correction with arrow-caret can be found at Rom 8:28 (BL Add MS 43725, fol. 264v).
Vaticanus contains fewer such markings, but an example of the use of a tilted obelus to signal a variant reading
appears at Heb 7:5 (Vat. gr. 1209, fol. 1516). I do not include here the alleged “distigme-obelos” argued by Philip
Payne to signal the 1 Cor 14:34–35 as an interpolation, as this view has been appropriately critiqued by Jan Krans.
Philip B. Payne, “Vaticanus Distigme-Obelos Symbols Marking Added Text, Including 1 Corinthians 14.34–5,”
NTS 63 (2017): 604–25; cf. Jan Krans, “Paragraphos, Not Obelos, in Codex Vaticanus,” NTS 65 (2019): 252–57
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For example, even though the extant text of part of Titus in the third-
century P32 (P. Ryl. I 5) is almost identical to the text found in the fourth-century codex
Sinaiticus, it would be irresponsible to assume that the missing portions of the fragment likewise
aligned with the text of Sinaiticus.16
16 Emily Gathergood has made a cogent argument that P. Ryl. I 5 derived from a multi-text codex that possibly
contained all three Pastoral epistles (1 & 2 Timothy and Titus). Emily Gathergood, “Papyrus 32 (Titus) as a Multi-
Text Codex: A New Reconstruction,” NTS 59 (2013): 588–606. But this argument can still make no claim on the
textual complexion of that codex.
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Ephesians
But the fourth-century manuscripts Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus
include two attempts by textual correctors to modify the addressee. In the former, the main
column of text reads τοις αγιοις τοις ουσιν και πιστοις εν χω ιυ but includes a small marginal
addition εν εφεσω, thus reading “to those holy ones who are in Ephesus and faithful in Christ
Jesus” (Vat.gr. 1209, fol. 1493). In the latter, the main column of texts reads the same as
Vaticanus, but a corrector added the phrase πασι(ν) in the right margin and εν εφεσω in the left,
thus reading “to those holy ones, all who are in Ephesus and faithful in Christ Jesus” (BL Add.
43725, fol. 280v).52 These sorts of corrections are usually explained as the result of a corrector’s
If Tertullian was correct that (Marcionite) copies existed with the explicit title
“to the Laodiceans,” it may have influenced the copying tradition that appears in the margins of
Sinaiticus and Vaticanus. But for Tertullian, the superscription ad Laodicenos demonstrated
Marcion’s own tendentious editorial hand.
comparison with an additional manuscript, and the identical placement of the correction εν
εφεσω in both manuscripts may support that conclusion.53 But they also reflect an editorial
contest over the ambiguity of the epistolary address at play in the fourth century, one that
Tertullian exploited around 150 years earlier in his dismissal of Marcion’s alleged
superscription.54
52 In contrast, this expanded reading can be found without marginal correction in the slightly-later Codex
Alexandrinus (BL Royal MS 1 D VIII, fol. 104r).
53 If this correction was made only on the basis of the title, then the phrase could feasibly have been inserted in a
variety of places in the sentence. The Latin tradition, by contrast, has greater variation in the location of the word
Ephesi (“in Ephesus”). See the edition: Hermann Josef Frede, ed., Epistula ad Ephesios, Vetus Latina, 24/1
(Freiburg: Herder, 1962), 4–5.
54 Tertullian’s dismissal was a result of exegetical reasoning, i.e., Paul was writing to a universal audience
anyways, in spite of the local address in the letter itself (Marc. V.17.1). Such exegetical reasoning would play a
larger part in his critical refutation of Marcion, as well will see
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Meanwhile, the variant credited to Marcion at Eph 3:9
actually appears in the manuscript tradition, most significantly in Codex Sinaiticus (BL Add.
43725, fol. 281v).76
76 The preposition is, however, added interlinearly by a corrector.
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early papyrus
3 On the basis of close analysis of the manuscript and its handwriting style, papyrologists Henry Sanders and
Frederick Kenyon dated the codex to the late second or early third century, and thus at least a century earlier than
the great fourth-century majuscules such as Codex Vaticanus (B, 03) or Codex Sinaiticus (א, 01) with their
complete texts of the corpus Paulinum. See F. G. Kenyon, The Chester Beatty Biblical Papyri: Descriptions and
Texts of Twelve Manuscripts of the Greek Bible, Fasciculus III, Pauline Epistles and Revelation (London: Emery
Walker, 1934), ix; Henry A. Sanders, A Third-Century Papyrus Codex of the Epistles of Paul (Michigan:
University of Michigan Press, 1935), 12–15. Another papyrologist Ulrich Wilcken suggested that the script could
extend into the second century, finally giving the date “um 200,” which has been followed in most studies of the
manuscript since then as “ca. 200.” See Ulrich Wilcken, “The Chester Beatty Biblical Papyri,” APF 11 (1935): 11
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Concerning two
passages in Luke (22:43–44 and 23:34) ostensibly marked as spurious by a corrector in codex א,
which he took as reflecting Alexandrian editorial interests, Streeter stated that the passages
either were so marked “on dogmatic grounds, or that the Christian scholars of Alexandria were
as much alert as Hort to rid the text of interpolations.”102
102 Streeter, Four Gospels, 123. Streeter considered this corrector to have worked as the διορθωτής at the time of
the manuscript’s initial production, a view that has been shown to be incorrect. See Lincoln H. Blumell, “Luke
22:43-44: An Anti-Docetic Interpolation or an Apologetic Omission?,” TC: A Journal of Biblical Textual Criticism
19 (2014): 1–35; cf. Dirk Jongkind, Scribal Habits of Codex Sinaiticus, Text and Studies, III.5 (Piscataway, NJ:
Georgias, 2007), 10–11 on the date of the corrector.
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Bibliography includes Jongkind and Milne/Skeat
