Codex Sinaiticus

Column 1

Codex Sinaiticus. So far as A is concerned I am unable to
see any difference of script, and in the absence of any such
difference I should hesitate to accept the very minute differ-
ences of treatment of the sacred names original: "nomina sacra"; these are traditional abbreviated forms of names like God, Jesus, or Christ used in early Christian manuscripts as sufficient proof of a
change of scribe. Reserving, however, out of respect to the
opinion of so distinguished a palaeographer A scholar who studies ancient handwriting, the possibility
that Barnabas is by a different hand, it is tolerably clear that
A originally wrote all the text of the New Testament except
Hermas, which was the work of B, and that D wrote the text
on the conjugate leaves Pairs of leaves that form a single sheet of parchment, folios 10 and 15, 29 and 30, 88 and 91, and
possibly on part of folio 126. Specimens of these three scripts, A,
B, and D, are arranged side by side in the three first columns
of Plate III.
There is possibly room for legitimate doubt whether
Tischendorf Constantin von Tischendorf (1815–1874), the biblical scholar who discovered the Codex at Saint Catherine's Monastery was right in distinguishing A from B, but
personally I entirely accept his judgement, for after the pro-
longed acquaintance with the style of A, necessitated by
photographing each page, I felt while watching the script
‘come up’ on the negative in the developing dish, that the first
page of Hermas was different from the others, as it seemed
to ‘come up’ differently, though from the nature of the case I
did not know until afterwards which this particular plate was.
The same thing was still more noticeable in the case of the
D plates. It would, however, be too much to claim that this
purely personal experience ought to weigh strongly in the
judgement of others, and I admit both that I am unable to
analyse satisfactorily the difference between A and B, and
that it is not so clear to my own perception now as it was
when I was spending the greater part of each day in the
company of the manuscript. Nevertheless, it seems to me that if any
one will spend some time in turning over a few leaves of
Hermas, and then a few leaves of the rest of the New
Testament, he will feel that there is a difference of script,
and, if he concentrate his attention on the right-hand ends of
the lines, he will receive the superficial impression that more
lines end in the horizontal stroke representing final -N in
Hermas than elsewhere. Analysis will, however, show that
this is not the case, or at all events not to any remarkable
degree. The impression is solely created by the fact that the
strokes in Hermas are longer, somewhat heavier, and instead
of being partly over the final vowel, are inclined to begin
after it, and to project far into the margin. This is no doubt

c 2

Column 2

a small point, but it goes to justify the view that Hermas
was written by a different scribe from the rest of the New
Testament.
The discrimination of D from A and B is easier and
admits of no reasonable doubt. There is a distinct difference
in the script, though it is more easily perceived than de-
scribed; possibly the letters are somewhat squarer in D than
in A—the height being less in proportion to the breadth—
and D is altogether prettier than A. But the decisive point
is that D constantly fills out the end of a line with the sign

, which is rarely or never used by A or B. A specimen
column of D is given in the third column of Plate III.
It was D whom Tischendorf identified with the scribe of the
New Testament in the Codex Vaticanus; a specimen of
the latter is shown in the fourth column of Plate III, and it
will probably be at once conceded by those who compare
this with the third column, which is by D, that there is no
trace of justification for Tischendorf’s theory. The wonder
is that the fine eye, which saw the difference between A, B,
and D—differences which any one might be excused for
overlooking—could ever think for a moment that the script
of D was identical with that of the Codex Vaticanus.
The conjugate leaves written by D are clearly ‘cancel-
leaves’; that is to say, they were written after the manuscript had
been completed, in order to take the place of others, written
no doubt by A, which were for some reason imperfect or
spoiled. Such replacing of rejected leaves would naturally
form part of the correction original: "διόρθωσις" (diorthosis); the process of proofreading and correcting a manuscript of the manuscript in the scriptorium The room in a monastery or workshop where manuscripts were copied, and
that this was the case is rendered practically certain by the
fact that D actually wrote the whole of Tobit and Judith in
the Old Testament, so that he was clearly a member of the
scriptorium. The importance of this point is that it shows
that any work done on the manuscript before the ‘cancel-leaves’
were added must also be regarded as work done in the
scriptorium, and it is convenient at this point to indicate the
details of which this can be proved. (a) The Eusebian
apparatus A system of cross-referencing the Gospels created by Eusebius of Caesarea must have been added before the cancel-leaves in
Matthew (folios 10 and 15), as these leaves, and these only, lack
the Sections and Canons. Thus the scribe who added the
Eusebian apparatus belonged to the scriptorium. (b) Similar
reasoning shows that the scribe who added the line-counts original: "στίχοι" (stichoi); measurements of the length of the text in the
Epistles belonged to the scriptorium, for, after the Epistle to

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