three crosses note - 7th century? - scribal mess noticed 300 years after production?

Steven Avery

Administrator
This will be the central spot for three crosses note info.

1667767968408.png



Michael Swift on the:

Facebook PureBibleForum

https://www.facebook.com/groups/purebible/permalink/1679545468804002/

μεχρι του ϲημειου τω
τριων ϲταυρων εϲτι
το τελοϲ των επτα
φυλλων τω
περιϲϲων κ(αι)
μη οντω
του εϲ
δρα §

Question: Has anyone here done a review of the three crosses note in the Sinaiticus? If so, what are your findings as to the scribal hand? Is the hand linked to any other hand in Aleph? The marginal note contains information about an insertion of Chronicles into 2 Esdras by mistake. What kind of sloppy scribe would not only miss a verse here and there in 2 Esdras, but get the entire book copy wrong? Maybe a bored 19 year old kid?

It reads

μεχρι του ϲημειου τω

τριων ϲταυρων εϲτι
το τελοϲ των επτα
φυλλων τω
περιϲϲων κ(αι)
μη οντω
του εϲ

δρα

SA: ‘at the sign of the three crosses is the end of the seven leaves which are superfluous and not part of Esdras’.


μεχρι του ϲημειου τω τριων ϲταυρων εϲτι
το τελοϲ των επτα φυλλων τω περιϲϲων κ(αι) μη οντω του εϲδρα

Q35-4r "a large intrusion from 1 Chronicles into 2 Esdras "
(7th 8th century "at the sign of the three crosses


Three Crosses
1 Chronicles (duplicate), 18:15 - 19:17 / 2 Esdras, 9:9 - 9:11 library: LUL folio: iv_v scribe: A
https://codexsinaiticus.org/en/manu...lioNo=4&lid=en&quireNo=35&side=r&zoomSlider=0

... This note is a key. This note is truly bizarre. This does not appear to be anything but a practice and correction copy. I suppose a professional scribe could accidentally begin copying the wrong book into 2 Esdras, but that doesn't sound too likely to me. If this is the best commissioned scribe they could find, they had problems indeed.

... the hand of this corrector's note I have learned is c. 7th century. So, what they expect me to believe is that a corrector did not catch this error till the 7th century? Really? That's what I'm supposed to believe? This went on happily for 300 years until one keen scribe in the 7th century noticed that Chronicles had been inserted into 2 Esdras? They didn't read it much apparently. There's a lot of funny business about this manuscript. Too many things don't add up.

... here's the rub: this note actually makes no logical sense. It certainly looks to be a 7th century script. I can't argue with that. And our Sinaiticus script appears to be from the 5th century according to the Handbook of Greek and Latin Paleography. So, we have an 'apparent' spread of 200 years presumably. Except this is not the kind of note that would have been spread over 200 years. This copy of this Bible would not have even made it out of the scriptorium in such shoddy state. So, there is no sense in this at all. This one note is a time bomb.

... I sure can't make any kind of sense out of it if this Sinaiticus is supposed to be an ancient document. I mean here is one real example of something that simply would never have happened. Word corrections, maybe. Entire sections of books inserted into the wrong book not caught for 200 years? Uh, no.

noticed the strangeness of the claim that this note was only put in approximately 300 years after the production of the manuscript!

compare 1846 book
1667559532490.png


For dating theories that involve this three crosses note, e.g. from Elijah Hixson

the hand of the three crosses note is—and I believe this strongly enough that I am tempted to write a short note on the date of the cpamph corrections and try to publish it in a journal—upright ogival majuscule that is completely consistent with a 6th century date, I might allow something into the early 7th, but most likely 6th century.

or Michael Swift, this is one resource, especially the section p. 149-158. (As we know, Tischendorf did not give reasons for his dates.)

A handbook of Greek and Latin palaeography (1893)
Edward Maunde Thompson
https://archive.org/stream/handbookgreekan00thomgoog#page/n176/mode/2up/
1912 edition begins here
https://books.google.com/books?id=wYjgAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA198

Is there anything especially unique in the note that would not show up in the everyday writing of a Simonides or a Tischendorf?

================

PureBibleForum Info Collation


three crosses note - 7th century? - scribal mess noticed 300 years after production ?
https://www.purebibleforum.com/index.php/threads/a.563

the script of Simonides - the 'three crosses' note
https://www.purebibleforum.com/index.php/threads/a.169


twofold signification of the three crosses note
https://www.purebibleforum.com/index.php/threads/a.167

CPamph corrector - only on the Leipzig section - 2nd quire numbers - knows ancient style - Tischendorf?
https://www.purebibleforum.com/index.php/threads/a.549

two copies of Chronicles is evidence that work was done on the manuscript in Sinai
https://www.purebibleforum.com/index.php/threads/a.233

navigating the Codex Sinaiticus Project (CSP) pictures and data - where is the CFA
https://www.purebibleforum.com/index.php/threads/a.95

================


Smaller Refs

why the James Keith Elliott book tells you very little about Sinaiticus authenticity
https://www.purebibleforum.com/index.php/threads/a.240
p. 50 - Elliott mixes up the Esdras note with the three crosses note
 
Last edited:

Steven Avery

Administrator
the duplicate section - Wright conjectures about Zosimas and the scribal blunder

The Reader (1863)
Genuineness of the "Codex Sinaiticus"
William Aldis Wright

https://books.google.com/books?id=fX1NAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA69

I will add one note from the "Codex Friderico-Augustanus." In the fourth column of the reverse of the fourth folio, the scribe, without even beginning a fresh line, breaks off from 1 Chr. xix. 17 to 2 Esdr. ix. 11. At the bottom of the column are three crosses, and a note to the effect that up to the sign of the three crosses extend the seven superfluous leaves, which do not belong to Esdras. This mistake might have been made by an ancient copyist, but not by one who had before him the Moscow edition of tho Old and New Testaments.

Actually the spacing in Zosimas should be checked, since it might match up well with the blunder. Plus, Zosimas was a starting point, but there were likely intervening steps. The text of Zosimas here would be interesting to check with the duplicates.
 
Last edited:

Steven Avery

Administrator
Henry Barclay Swete on the duplicate and the three crosses

An Introduction to the Old Testament in Greek: The history of the Greek Old Testament and of its transmission (1900)
Henry Barclay Swete
https://books.google.com/books?id=U9Y8AAAAYAAJ&pg=PA131
http://www.ccel.org/ccel/swete/greekot.iii.v.html
http://biblehub.com/library/swete/an_introduction_to_the_old_testament_in_greek_additional_notes/chapter_v_manuscripts_of_the.htm


After 1 Chron. xix. 17 cod. א (FA) passes without break to 2 Esdr. ix. 9, but the place is marked by the corrector אc.a with three crosses and the note μέχρι τούτου [τοῦ] σημείου τῶν τριῶν σταυρῶν ἐστιν τὸ τέλος τῶν ἑπτὰ φύλλων τῶν περισσῶν καὶ μὴ ὄντων τοῦ Ἔσδρα. Five of these leaves remain, and the two which preceded them probably contained 1 Chron. vi. 50—ix. 27a (H. St J. Thackeray in Hastings' D.B., i. p. 762). Westcott (Bible in the Church, p. 307) supposes that the insertion of this fragment of 1 Chron. in the heart of 2 Esdras is due to a mistake in the binding of the copy from which the MS. was transcribed; comp. the similar error in the archetype of all our Greek copies of Sirach 353. Whether 1 Esdras formed a part of cod. א is uncertain, the heading Ἔσδρας βʹ does not prove this, since cod. א contains 4 Maccabees under the heading Μακκαβαίων δʹ although it certainly did not give the second and third books (Thackeray, 1.c.).

[353] Another explanation (suggested by Dr Gwynn) is given by Dr Lupton in Wace's Apocrypha, i., p. 2.
Swete .jpg


mechri toutou [tou] semeiou ton trion stauron estin to telos ton hepta phullon ton perisson kai me onton tou
Esdra.

The Bible in the Church: A Popular Account of the Collection and Reception of the Holy Scriptures in the Christian Churches (1864)
Brooke Foss Westcott
https://archive.org/stream/thebibleinthechu00westuoft#page/306/mode/2up/
https://books.google.com/books?id=npsNAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA307
1896 reprint


1 Chronicles fragments inserted in 1 Esdras from a mistake in binding in the copy from which the MS. was transcribed), [part in Cod. Frid.-Aug.]

Fine section in the

Henry Wace (1836-1924)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Wace_(priest)

Apocrypa

includes the

John Gwynn (1827-1917)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Gwynn_(professor)

reference above.


The Holy Bible: According to the Authorized Version (A. D. 1611 ... Volume 1) (1888)
edited by Henry Wace


A note in a later hand, at the foot of the fourth column of this leaf 4 verso, calls attention to the error of
“the seven leaves which are redundant and are not of Esdras."

The next is pretty much the same.

Hastings Dictionary of the Bible (1905)
section by Henry St. John Thackeray
1669514520408.png


A note at the bottom of that leaf in a later hand calls attention to the seven superfluous leaves that are 'not of Esdra'
 
Last edited:

Steven Avery

Administrator
Dirk Jongkind

Studies of the Scribal Habits of Codex Sinaiticus (2005)
Dirk Jongkind

Sinaiticus shows a few interesting features that help us test the method of singular readings and getting to know the scribal habits. Firstly, in the Old Testament part of the manuscript we find five leaves containing text from 1 Chronicles. This section ends with 1 Chronicles 19:17 and finishes within the 26th line of the fourth column of a leaf. The same line continues with text from 2 Esdras 9:9 and the following leaves complete this book. Two of the running titles placed above the section from Chronicles read εϲδραϲ; β and it seems clear that the scribe was not aware that he was dealing with a large intrusion from 1 Chronicles into 2 Esdras. There is a note in Sinaiticus telling us that ‘at the sign of the three crosses is the end of the seven leaves which are superfluous and not part of Esdras’. This note is in a later hand from the seventh or eight century and informs us that the original intruded text from 1 Chronicles contained two more leaves. These two leaves are now lost, together with most of the Old Testament before this point. Tischendorf had already suggested that it was likely that a gathering of leaves, a quire, was misplaced in the exemplar from which the scribe was copying and that neither he nor his colleagues noticed this. Indeed, we find corrections on the text by the scribes both before and after the transition from 1 Chronicles to 2 Esdras without any indication that something had gone fundamentally wrong. This unique situation provides us with an opportunity to learn something more about the copying errors which the scribes made. On the five extant leaves of 1 Chronicles, two of the scribes made 90 corrections in total. It is highly unlikely that they used any other manuscript for these corrections than the one that was used for the copying of the text in the first place. This means that every correction is a correction of a real copying error and that the correction is the true text of the exemplar. Using the corrections, we were able to create a catalogue of scribal errors. Interestingly, not all the 90 readings that were corrected are singular readings. Thirteen out of 90 readings also occur in other manuscripts and, consequently, would not have been detected using just the method of singular readings. These thirteen readings consist mainly of the addition and omission of small words such as articles, some orthographic variants, and harmonisations to the immediate context.
scribal.jpg

Scribal habits of Codex Sinaiticus (2007)
Dirk Jongkind
Singular Readings and Corrections in 1 Chronicles p. 144-164 (includes detailed singular analysis)

Introduction
Sinaiticus preserves approximately 10 chapters of 1 Chronicles. These chapters precede, without any clear break, the text of 2 Esd 9:9 and it seems clear that the text of 1 Chronicles is a large intrusion into 2 Esdras. Though the beginning of this intruded section is lost, we may assume that it was regarded by the scribes as a genuine part of the text of 2 Esdras. This misplaced section of 1 Chronicles was, like the rest of 2 Esdras, corrected by the earliest scribes, and as the correctors did not note the intrusion of 1 Chronicles in 2 Esdras, it follows that they compared Sinaiticus against a codex with exactly the same intrusion. As it is unlikely that such an error would go unnoticed for long, we may assume therefore that the manuscript with which Sinaiticus was compared for the corrections was the same manuscript from which Sinaiticus was copied in the first place.32 If this is true, it means that each correction is a correction of an error the scribe created whilst copying his text. ...

32 Milne-Skeat,2.

This Jongkind full singulars section can be made available for Zosima studies.
 
Last edited:

Steven Avery

Administrator
note sense is that it was written by original scribes

‘at the sign of the three crosses is the end of the seven leaves which are superfluous and not part of Esdras’.

"superfluous" - that looks like a scribal note, ignore what we did there ... not what someone puzzling it out 300 years later would say
 
Last edited:

Steven Avery

Administrator
History of Three Crosses Note scholarship

Mountfaucon - Tischendorf uses once, and brags over
Tischendorf
A handbook of Greek and Latin palaeography (1893)
1863 - William Aldis Wright
1863 - Simonides
1864 - Westcott - mistake in binding
1888 - Wace uses Gwynn
1893 - Edward Maunde Thompson
1900-1914 - Swete
1905-1911 Henry St. John Thackery in Hastings Dictionary of the Bible
1911 - Joseph Hirst Lupton
Kirsopp Lake (nothing in 1911 which does have colophons, checking 1922)
Milne & Skeat
1982 - Elliott p. 50 mixup
2005 - Jongkind

(2009) CSP - find urls and corrector
(2010) David Parker
(2015) Perspectives

Elijah Hixson
Michael Swift
Cooper and Sorenson and Moorman
McGrane

(2018) David Daniels
(2021) David Daniels

Pure Bible forum

============

Establishment biggies

Tischendorf - sounds like scriptorium note, more checking
Swete - 1900 1902 1914 nothing about scribes, only duplicate text
Kirsopp Lake
Milne & Skeat
CSP
Dirk Jongkind - follows Milne Skeat, sounds like Scriptorium
David Parker
Perspectives
 
Last edited:

Steven Avery

Administrator
BCHF
Advanced class: David Charles Parker on the 1 Chronicles duplication.
Codex Sinaiticus: The Story of the World's Oldest Bible David Charles Parker, 2020

The text (of Sinaiticus as a whole) proper begins in the middle of 1 Chronicles, and here immediately we notice an anomaly. The careful reader of the list of contents in Chapter I (Codex Sinaiticus in outline, p. 7-9) will have noticed that 1 Chronicles 17:14-17, 21-25; 18.1-4, 7-10, 12 appears twice. The explanation lies on Q35-F4V ... The note reads:

The sign of the three crosses marks the end of the seven redundant folios and is not part of Esdras.

The text changes from 1 Chronicles to 2 Esdras in the middle of line 26, so that the first two words are from I Chronicles 19.17 and last is from 2 Esdras 9.9 ... (gives English text to focus on duplication)

The note tells us that the seven folios (i.e. fourteen pages, of which five are extant) are a repetition of text that had already been copied. ... How did they miss this nonsense? And how did the scribe copy fourteen pages twice without noticing? ...

We now have a better insight into what happened, because of the first copy of the text (also by Scribe A) is among the New Finds.(continues with more conjectures and more anomalous aspects) p. 65-67
====================================

For the yellow duplicate of Chronicles, in the British Library (white parchment is in Leipzig)

1 Chronicles (duplicate), 9:27 - 10:11 library: BL folio: 1 scribe: A Quire 34, Folio 8r
http://codexsinaiticus.org/en/manuscrip ... omSlider=0

1 Chronicles (duplicate), 10:11 - 11:22 library: BL folio: 1b scribe: A - Quire 34, Folio 8v
http://codexsinaiticus.org/en/manuscrip ... omSlider=0

Although the Sinaiticus website calls the above two urls "duplicate", it is not a section given by Parker, who only gives parts of ch. 17 and 18 as extant duplicates, ie. the following from the New Finds (allowing a distinction between 18:11 and 18:12) :

1 Chronicles, 17:14 - 18:1 library: SC folio: scribe: A - Quire 29, Folio 7r
http://codexsinaiticus.org/en/manuscrip ... omSlider=0

1 Chronicles, 18:1 - 18:11 library: SC folio: scribe: A - Quire 29, Folio 7v
http://codexsinaiticus.org/en/manuscrip ... omSlider=0

So far, it seems like Parker is right, and the British Library erred on that "duplicate" indication above. However, that is tentative.

Note that most of the duplication is not continuous extant text, it is extrapolating from the New Finds fragments, which gives the appearance of bookmarks or discards (this is not referenced by Parker.)

====================================

This explanation above includes elements of the very unusual duplication, our white parchment anomaly, and the 1975 New Finds all in one. Rather a handful. And I include it so we have at least some perspective on the issues involved with the duplication.

My tentative conclusion: It does not appear that the duplication difficulty affects the white parchment anomaly in a direct way. The white part of the duplication went to Leipzig, the yellow part was "left behind".

The fact that duplicate pages and pages contiguous to those taken early by Tischendorf and Uspensky are in the hidden-till-1975 New Finds, can be considered as a bit of an additional smoking pistol.

====================================
 

Steven Avery

Administrator
The Three Crosses Note of Codex Sinaiticus - Chronological Dissonance with 4th century theories
(see letter prepared for Brent Nongbri on Scrivener page.)

There is a
 

Steven Avery

Administrator
Milne & Skeat

1667909792453.png

1667909880630.png

1667909976020.png

PICTURE

1667910045162.png


των περισσων και μη οντων του Εσάρα ! ( “ At the sign of the three crosses is the end of the seven leaves which are superfluous and not part of Esdras ” ) . Actually , however , these crosses should have been set against line 26 , where where indeed there can be seen traces of an earlier but obliterated cross . The reason for the transference of the sign to the end of the page is obscure , unless it was a desire to give a literal interpretation to the round expression 'seven leaves ' . How to be Such an extraordinary intrusion of 1 Chronicles i Chronicles into 2 Esdras explained is probably to be explained , as Westcott was the first to suggest , by the transposition of two quires in the exemplar from which this portion of the ...


============================================

Taken from

Scribes and Correctors of the Codex Sinaiticus (1938)
Herbert John Mansfield Milne, Theodore Cressy Skeat, Douglas Cockerell


ORIGINAL CONTENTS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

The portions or the Old Testament covered by the Codex in its present condition are specified in the table printed on pp. 94-112 below: here an attempt will be made to determine the probable

==

I . THE LOST INITIAL QUIRES - The intrusive section of 1 Chronicles

Before we consider the contents of the lost beginning it is necessary to explain the anomaly with which the extant portion of the manuscript opens. The first five consecutive leaves contain I Chronicles ix. 117—xix. 17, but at the end of this passnge, in line 36 of the last column on the verso of the fifth leaf, the text skips without warning into the midst of 2 Esdras ix. 9, and continues normally from that point onwards of the page in which the change-over occurs (see Fig. 2), a scribe of perhaps the seventh or eighth century (certainly not the corrector Ca as is generally stated) has written three crosses and, in the vacant space below the text, the following note: (pic of 3 crosses with Greek)

============================================

More from Skeat on the SUPERFLUOUS leaves
 
Last edited:

Steven Avery

Administrator
CSP URL
TWO CORRECTORS INVOLVED

Three Crosses
1 Chronicles (duplicate), 18:15 - 19:17 / 2 Esdras, 9:9 - 9:11 library: LUL folio: iv_v scribe: A
http://www.codex-sinaiticus.net/en/manuscript.aspx?foliono=4&quireno=35&side=v
or
https://codexsinaiticus.org/en/manu...lioNo=4&lid=en&quireNo=35&side=r&zoomSlider=0
No Corrector named
Colophons
Cpamph

======================

2 Esdras
Colophon
https://codexsinaiticus.org/en/manu...lioNo=4&lid=en&quireNo=36&side=v&zoomSlider=0
Scribe Called Pamphilus!

Esther - translation by Karen Jobes
Colophon
https://codexsinaiticus.org/en/manu...lioNo=2&lid=en&quireNo=37&side=v&zoomSlider=0
https://codexsinaiticus.org/ru/manuscript.aspx?book=9&lid=en&side=r&zoomslider=1
Scribe Called Pamphilus!
αντεβληθη προϲ παλαιω
τατον λιαν αντιγραφον

Timothy Mitchell
http://thetextualmechanic.blogspot.com/2015/03/the-church-fathers-and-useful-life-of.html
The Colophon of Pamphilus in Sinaiticus

======================

CSP
https://codexsinaiticus.org/en/project/transcription_reconstructing.aspx

Calculating backwards to confirm this
The first large block of text in the manuscript begins at Quire 34, Folio 8r, which starts in 1 Chronicles 9.27. This is in fact within a block of text which had been copied by mistake, as the ‘Three crosses’ note on Quire 35, Folio 4v makes clear. [8]
[8] μεχρι του ϲημειου τω(ν) τριων ϲταυρων εϲτι(ν) το τελοϲ των επτα φυλλων τω(ν) περιϲϲων κ(αι) μη οντω(ν) του εϲδρα.
The repeat section of 1 Chronicles must have begun on Quire 34, Folio 6. Since the text on Quire 34, Folio 8r after the 1 Chronicles intrusion is the middle of 2 Esdras 9.9, the text before the 1 Chronicles intrusion was 2 Esdras 1.1-9.9.
 
Last edited:

Steven Avery

Administrator
Codex Sinaiticus
New Perspectives on the Ancient Biblical Manuscript - 2015
Chapter 21
The Transcription and Reconstruction of Codex Sinaiticus
David Parker
p. 289
1669522125385.png
p. 293
1669522068968.png



David Parker
Calculating backwards - CSP note - p. 189
Milne and Skeat in bibliography
 
Last edited:
Top