Codex Sinaiticus: Old Testament (Facsimile)

Column 1

...this particular plate was. This same observation was even more noticeable in the case of the Scribe D plates. However, it would be going too much to claim that this purely personal experience should carry great weight in the judgment of others. I admit both that I am unable to satisfactorily analyze the difference between Scribe A and Scribe B, and that the distinction is not as clear to my own perception now as it was when I was spending most of each day studying the manuscript.

Nevertheless, it seems to me that if anyone spends time turning over a few leaves of the Shepherd of Hermas An early Christian literary work from the 2nd century, included in Codex Sinaiticus or of the Prophets, and then looks at a few leaves of the rest of the New Testament or of 1 Maccabees, they will feel that there is a difference in the handwriting. If they concentrate their attention on the right-hand ends of the lines, they will receive the superficial impression that more lines end in the horizontal stroke representing a final "N" In Greek manuscripts, a horizontal bar over a vowel at the end of a line often represented the letter Nu (N) in that script than elsewhere. This is especially marked in Hermas.

Analysis will show, however, that this is not actually the case, or at least not to any remarkable degree. The impression is created solely by the fact that the strokes are longer and somewhat heavier; instead of being placed partly over the final vowel, they tend to begin after it and project far into the margin. This is admittedly a small point, but it helps justify the differentiation of Scribe B from the other scribes.

There seems to be nothing quite so decisive as this in the handwriting of Scribe C. In general, it is more like Scribe D than Scribes A or B, but Scribe C does not use the sign ">" in the manner mentioned below as being characteristic of Scribe D.

The identification of Scribe D is easier and leaves no room for reasonable doubt.

Column 2

There is a distinct difference in the handwriting, though it is more easily perceived than described. Possibly the letters are somewhat squarer—the height being less in proportion to the breadth—and Scribe D’s work is altogether more attractive than that of Scribes A and B.

The decisive point of difference between Scribe D and the others is that he constantly fills out the end of a line with the sign ">" A "filling sign" or diple used to justify the right margin, which is rarely or never used by the other scribes. It was Scribe D whom the scholar Tischendorf Constantin von Tischendorf (1815–1874), the discoverer of the codex identified as being the same person who wrote the New Testament in the Codex Vaticanus Another of the oldest and most important biblical manuscripts, housed in the Vatican Library. A specimen of the latter is shown in the first column of Plate III in the facsimile of the New Testament. It will probably be immediately granted by those who compare this with the second column—which is by Scribe D—that there is no evidence to justify Tischendorf’s theory.

The wonder is that the keen eye which saw the difference between Scribes A, B, and D—differences which anyone might be excused for overlooking—could ever think for a moment that the handwriting of Scribe D was identical to that of the Codex Vaticanus.

The conjugate leaves Leaves that form a single sheet of parchment folded in half written by Scribe D in the New Testament are clearly "cancel-leaves." That is to say, they were written after the manuscript had been completed to replace others (likely written by Scribe A) which were for some reason imperfect or spoiled. Such replacing of rejected leaves would naturally form part of the revision original: διόρθωσις (diorthosis), the formal process of correcting a manuscript of the manuscript in the writing room original: scriptorium. That this was the case is made practically certain by the fact that Scribe D actually wrote the whole of Tobit and Judith, and probably the Pentateuch The first five books of the Old Testament in the Old Testament. Thus, he was clearly a member of the professional writing staff.