TEXTUAL Evidence for John 8:1-11

[Nazaroo]

Those who have been following the textual evidence and arguments will want to stop at some point and ask a few good questions:

You had 4 ancient manuscripts, Nazaroo: 2 from the 2nd or 3rd century, and two from the 4th century.

You showed us that Codex Vaticanus (B) and Codex Sinaiticus (Aleph) showed guilty knowledge the existance of the passage in its traditional place in John, even while leaving it out.

But this was to be expected, if Jerome's testimony is given its due. The passage was found in Greek manuscripts long before Codex Aleph and B.

You showed us that the earliest copy of John, Papyrus 66, also was a sophisticated edited work, also betraying signs of knowing about the passage.

But what about P75? Sure its another manuscript prepared for public reading and church use. But is that all? Doesn't it after all represent an early ancestor of Codex Vaticanus? And doesn't it simply omit the verses? Isn't P75 a good example of a 'clean' manuscript, a simple copy of John?

Glad you asked.

Even though we don't have a good photo of P75 at hand, we are by no means unable to ascertain many surprising facts about P75.

We can start with the text it contains at the relevant page, carefully re-collated and published by Philip Comfort and David Barrett, in their excellent volume, The Text of the Earliest NT Greek Manuscripts (Tyndale 2001).

We have made a careful chart of the page, and used color-coding to indicate some important features of this manuscript:

One of the first things you may note, since we've highlighted them in red, are the "Dot and Space" marks sprinkled across the page. These are recorded without comment by Comfort and Barrett, but much needs to be said.

First of all, these are really marks on the manuscript. We can confirm that Comfort and Barrett have not merely added these on their own, by comparing an available photo of the first page of John with their collation. Indeed the marks are there, both in the photo and in C and B's text, in the same place. So we have reason to have some confidence in their collation of the important markings of the manuscript.

Second, one may notice that unlike the same marks in earlier manuscripts (like P66), these appear to be uncannily spaced almost according to modern verse numbers. This is indeed a remarkable coincidence, since verse numberings weren't invented until the Middle Ages. However, the correspondence isn't actually that accurate. Here on this page it seems high, but on other pages the match isn't so hot.

Yet this does seem to indicate a new use for the 'Dot and Space' marks. Indeed, they could be something like 'pause' marks for public reading in this case (P75). P75 is estimated to be about 50 years newer than P66, so its quite possible that the symbol was appropriated or even misunderstood and extended to meet a need in organized worship.

Again we note however, that there is at least one 'Dot and Space' at the point of interest, namely point where John 7:53-8:11 would have been inserted or deleted. Indeed the connection between chapter 7 and 8 without the passage is certainly 'abstract', if not completely mythical. Yet the previous history of P66 and its use of this mark in this place should be taken into account in any thorough evaluation of the mark here in P75.

For the moment we simply note that P75, just like all the other known manuscripts in existance, whether early or late, is not a simple or clean copy of the text minus the passage. P75 has a complicated appearance, and comes complete with some important marks, suspiciously similar to the marks found in other early manuscripts.

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Next we want to note the coloring of the various parts of the text. The explanation is as follows: Comfort and Barret follow the standard practice of indicating letters that have been 'restored' one of two ways.

Letters that are damaged, but not difficult to determine are marked with a dot underneath them in the apparatus. This indicates that the value of the letter is not in serious dispute, at least according to the editors. For our purposes, we have indicated these letters with a lighter gray text on the same light brown background.

Letters which are entirely missing, but have been conjectured (based upon the surrounding context) have been placed in square [ ] brackets. For our purposes, we have indicated these letters with a dark grey background and light grey text.

The missing letters are a result of either actual missing papyrus (deteriorated or broken off and lost) or of a surface completely rotted or turned to dust, or suffering from abrasion and wear to such an extent that the writing has been worn off.

Those familiar with the forensics of ancient manuscripts will recognise many easily explained areas in the chart immediately. For instance, the upper right betrays a crack in the papyrus with some lost letters along the eroded crack. The lower left, a common place where hands grab the page to turn it, has been broken off and has fallen to pieces from wear and tear.

But what is of special interest to us is the unusual hole in the middle of the page, between line 9 and line 12. Here of course is the very part of the manuscript if intense interest to us, and we find a gaping hole right at the point of the text where the passage was omitted!

Those who have pursued the story of the Pericope de Adultera will immediately sigh, "Not Again!" It seems everytime we want to examine an actual important or interesting manuscript with something to say about the passage, we come across the most bizzare and extreme acts of vandalism and inexplicable phenomenae. Sometimes a page is erased. Sometimes a page is replaced. Sometimes a page or even two or three are just torn completely out and apparently the evidence burned.

So it although perhaps frustrating, we cannot say we are really surprised to find what might be yet another case of ancient (or subsequent) sabotage or vandalism. Yet this might not really be the case. We will comment further on this shortly.

 

[Nazaroo]

The manuscript shows the typical pattern of damage for most of the leaves: that is, the first and last, the outer edges, the least-well protected pages, these suffer the most damage. And typically, the damage is around the edges of just about every page, not in the center.

P75 in fact is not even a complete manuscript. it consists of some passages from Luke and some passages from John. Many pages are completely missing. Notably those at one end or the other, but also a few pages from the inside, as though they had fallen out.



The only thing that can be called 'random' about wear and tear is the bookworms. They actually have random tunnelling patterns which aren't predictable (except as to range or extent) other than a certain 'fractal' sizing and change of direction.

Other types of wear and tear, such as that caused by handling and usage conforms to simple and straightforward laws of physics and laws of probability.

For instance, the front and back, the outside pages, the exposed edges of an ancient papyrus book will suffer the most damage, due to exposure to air (oxidizing agents like oxygen, causing a slow deterioration from the outside in).

Next comes factors like 'wear and tear', that is actual usage. In this respect our manuscript (P75) is no different than any others. The frontal edges (the vertical edge of a page which faces outward toward the reader) suffer the most damage, being buffeted and subjected to human touch by far the most.

As a matter of fact, the pattern of damage for the page under examination above is quite easy to interpret generally:

(1) At the upper-right, a crack in the papyrus has caused the loss of a column of letters along the crack-line. These can nonetheless be restored with near-certainty.​

(2) At the lower-left, the outer corner of the page (its the verso or left-hand page we are looking at) has been broken off, due to it being the the most common point by which a page is grabbed and turned.​

(3) On the right near the lower middle, there is another crack, caused by flexing, and an imbalance or imperfection in the binding and sewing, resulting in another fault-line of lost letters, this time on an angle upward to the left across the page.​

It is actually in our interest, to identify as much as possible of the damage that can be accounted for by accidental or expected causes. This leaves us with a much smaller residue of damage to account for in other ways.

So you see, a lot can be ascertained from a basic knowledge of manuscript forensics, and some accurately collated data, even without a photograph of the page in hand. The collation itself acts like a 'fingerprint', describing unique features of wear and tear, however in this case, all the wear and tear has rational explanations and physical causes. Nothing is random here; its all Newtonian mechanics.

 

[Nazaroo]

We have quite reasonably and successfully accounted for the 'normal' and expected damage to the manuscript, around the exposed edges and in regions of heavy contact and use, like the bottom left corner.
To this we can add the 'theta' in line 17 as another example of edge-wear.


The 'Normal' Condition for an Internal Page in the Book

Next we can accept small random examples of damage, such as the lost 'omicron' (short 'o') in line 06 and the faded 'zeta' in line 14 and the 'tau' in line 38, as well as the 'eta' in line 42.

This group of minor imperfections and faded letters is a combination of surface deterioration and perhaps copying variations.

But what it does provide us is a base in conjunction with the undamaged background surface area, to give an overall expected state of preservation for the areas of the page which have not suffered special wear, and which have been protected by being pressed inside the outer pages of the book. This is the 'best case' state of the page.

The 'epsilon' in line 32 and 'omicron' in line 33 might also fall into this category. We can take those faded/damaged letters and get a rough estimate of the damaged/undamaged area ratio.

Taking the left half of the page from line 30 to 34 as a sample, we have 14 letters by 5 lines = 70 characters versus 3 damaged, i.e. less than 3% of the textual surface. Similar estimates come from the lower right section from line 37 to 44.

These are large sections of the surface area of the page, and are therefore good samples of 'best' condition of the page.


The Remaining Sections

Now we need to account for why there is a huge 'hole' in the upper center of the manuscript. thankfully there is a very typical and common cause for such deteriorations, and its mechanisms are well known.

Its called erasure. In an erasing procedure, a scribe essentially uses an abrasive (like sand, or a rubbing stick), with or without a liquid (water or vinegar or some vegetable-based cleaner) to remove a word, or a line or two, to start again.

But what is important for forensics, is that the physical treatment of the surface flexes and weakens the fibres a significant amount, as well as embedding fragments of papyrus and grit into the surface.

The result is that although the manuscript appears to be 'normal', and often shows no signs of erasure, the area of the surface that has been weakened and pulverized loses particles more quickly, and the fibres holding it together break more frequently. Eventually, writing over this area begins to fade and fall apart at a much quicker rate than the rest of the page.

Not only can areas of a page which have suffered erasure or similar treatment become easier to detect with time, due to uneven aging and deterioration, but also other accompanying side-effects are well known and easy to spot also.

For instance, in our manuscript, there is obviously a large area that has apparently suffered erasure and re-writing (between line 09 and line 13).

But re-enforcing and confirming this diagnosis is the naturally accompanying wear-mark below this area, between line 18 and 22, where the heel of the hand rested heavily during the erasure, and where the copyist's hand rested again for the second copying session. This area, although undergoing less contact and abuse than the erased area, still suffers some damage, by absorption of moisture, natural oils and dead skin from the hand of the workman.

The result after a thousand years, is that each of the two remaining areas of the manuscript undergo accelerated deterioration through Ph imbalance (acidic substances in the papyrus, like sweat and bacteria) and oxidation, in spite of this page being protected by being sandwiched in the center and covered over from the elements.

In summary then, the forensic evidence also indicates that the page was probably tampered with to some extent, and it cannot now be ascertained exactly what went on at this critical point in the manuscript.

 

[Nazaroo]

When we look at the numbers of surviving manuscripts, we come across something very strange.

Instead of following the normal exponential shape of curve for manuscript multiplication through copying, there is a huge gap of missing manuscripts for the period from the 4th to the 9th century.

What happened to all the manuscripts that were made between the 4th and 9th centuries?

The Roman Emperor and the new 'Holy Roman Empire' destroyed them all, while trying to impose their own text.

The text without John 8:1-11, because Emperor Constantine in a fit of jealous rage murdered his own son wrongly for committing adultery with his queen, then boiled his queen to death for Adultery.

No hard feelings there....

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Quote:
As time goes on, the more the manuscripts are preserved.

Unfortunately, this statement does nothing to explain the actual state of the manuscripts.

Of course the rate of increase of manuscripts can and will be affected by expansion of copying centers, improved copying techniques, and even fluctuations in economic factors (droughts, taxes, wars, plagues.)
Finally anomalies in local climates (such as the dryness of Egypt) can affect raw numbers of surviving manuscripts for key periods.

But none of these factors explain the data at hand.

NO variation in the rate of increase of manuscripts can cause a NEGATIVE rate of increase. Even if manuscript production were to stop dead for a short period, the number of manuscripts, and the rate of multiplication will always have a slope that is between zero and a positive number.

Only the destruction of existing manuscripts can cause a decrease in the actual number of manuscripts for any given short window of time or snapshot from the timeline, which would show up as a negative rate of increase.

But you can only destroy manuscripts which are already in existance, not manuscripts that have not been written yet, or counted.

Nor do any of the listed factors have any power to cause the actual raw number of manuscripts for each century (and a century is a VERY long period for copying manuscripts) to drop. Only DESTRUCTION of manuscripts of a specific age can cause this.

When we see the Papyri increasing, then decreasing in absolute numbers, the explanation is simple: Copying is a multiplicative process, accounting for the increase.

The practice of making papyri was phased out when resources and techniques arrived for the more durable parchment making. This accounts for the later decrease in papyri. There was an active conscious choice which transferred preference to parchments.

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There is no such process available for UNCIALS/Miniscules. These are merely different forms of handwriting on the same materials. Physically the manuscripts must be lumped together. And now, the problem is clearly apparent.

There can be no talk of a 'decrease in uncials', with a corresponding 'increase in miniscules' during an entirely different period FIVE WHOLE CENTURIES LATER.

The DIP in the ABSOLUTE number of surviving manuscripts for each period must be explained. The techniques of manufacture didn't deteriorate. The climate didn't change. In fact, as Robinson et al have noted, production INCREASED.

The quality of manuscripts was already good enough to easily survive till the present from the 4th century onward. To put it bluntly, manuscripts from the 6th, 7th, 8th, and 9th centuries are hardy and durable objects, meant to survive abuse and withstand deterioration, and they were adored and cared for in dry libraries, churches and monasteries, and were looked after carefully by librarians, monks, scribes.

There can be no explanation for the missing manuscripts from the 4th to the 9th centuries, other than wilfull gathering and destruction on a massive scale.

Even Robinson is painfully aware of this problem, and must conjecture a wholescale 'procedure' of recopying and DESTROYING the exemplars, to account for the huge number of manuscripts from all over the empire in the 9th, 10th, 11th, 12th, 13th, centuries, and yet to have virtually NO SURVIVING MANUSCRIPTS FOR THE PREVIOUS FIVE CENTURIES.

A handful (less than a few hundred uncials and fragments) simply won't explain this.

FIVE CENTURIES WORTH OF MANUSCRIPTS ARE MISSING.

The handful of 'approved' MSS from the 4th and 5th centuries had no trouble surviving on the bookshelves of the Vatican and in various monasteries throughout the Mediterranean. This just means what we expect: a handful of ancient MSS somehow escaped destruction. But this only makes sense against a background of massive wholesale destruction.

Since there is a plethora of MSS from the 9th century forward, this massive operation of destruction must have stopped after five centuries of destruction.

The only other option is one late 'pogrom' of destruction in the 9th century that virtually wiped out all old MSS, but somehow left a remnant (hidden from the destroyers) from which the Christians were able to recover and replenish the supply.

But even this theory falls upon its face, because then there should be a large number of 'seed' manuscripts from which the mass of 5,000 manuscripts dating from the 10th to the 15th century were copied. Some of those should have been UNCIALS of various ages, covering the whole period targeted by previous persecution and destruction.

The only explanation for the missing manuscripts is as Robinson has proposed: namely that those replenishing the MSS supply were the same people who destroyed the MSS from whence they were copying, ensuring no trace of their sources.

Yet there is one more problem with it:

There is no such procedure of 'destroying the MSS you are copying from', that has been recorded throughout the history of a whole millenium of copying. This has to have been a practice almost universally, but SILENTLY adopted by the scribes themselves, and with little protest or rebellion (or else severe punishments).

And the mystery is really solved. The church destroyed its own manuscripts, as it did to the commentaries and homilies of its own doctors, each of whom was in turn declared a heretic and damned, and their works put to the flames.

They made it illegal to make or possess your own copies of the Scriptures, and killed and tortured Jew and Christian alike who dared to preach their contents independantly. They abused the very power of govenment, of state, to impose control and enforce a standard which guaranteed their stranglehold over all other powers in Europe. This was the very cause of the Reformation.

The suppression of the Scriptures for FIVE centuries after the establishment of the 'Christian-Roman Empire', and the final escape and burst of copying activity in the following five centuries is the story of the suppression of true Christianity and religion by authoritarian dictatorship, and the final victory of the common working-class people over their rulers.

This was the prepatory PRE-REFORMATION, the necessary spread of the Gospel to the people BEFORE any Reformation could take place. The invention and spread of the power of the printing press was only the icing on the cake, the final reward for centuries of quiet extrication from the yoke of ROME.

Once the critical number of manuscripts and copy-centers was reached, the cat was out of the bag, and power of Rome broken. There was a brief attempt to reinstate this power during the Nazi occupation of Europe, but this was no longer Medieval Europe. The Dark Side, though vicious and dangerous, and immensely destructive, could not defeat the force of education and literacy, largely driven by religious devotion and belief.

 

[Nazaroo]

Simple question.

In this theory if the folks who willfully destroyed early uncial vellum manuscripts for doctrinal purposes, to keep away from sight the ancient texts, did not like the Byzantine readings in those manuscripts (e.g. Pericope Adultera) - why did they include those same readings in all the new minuscle copies they were making ?
The minuscles in Greek are uniformly Byzantine (in a general sense and large numbers of manuscripts). And in Syriac are a mostly Byzantine Text. And there is the mixed Latin Vulgate text and copying from the Old Latin line. The focus is mostly on the Greek but the others are significant too.

These are critically important questions, Steven.
But before I address them, I'd like to take a moment to talk about modelling this kind of mechanism.
The first graph I posted probably doesn't accentuate the key problem as well as it needs to be articulated.

The Essential Model
For our purposes at the moment, we can put aside the question of text, and just talk about the number of MSS and the engine which generates them over time. Just as people have 'free will' which is limited by overriding constraints (like gravity preventing them from flying), so in this case, the mechanisms involved impose serious limits to the potential of the process.
Our case of manuscript generation can be modelled along the lines of a simple 'stock market' system. That is, a basic production process which has a small amount of iterative feedback, allowing for a limited 'runaway growth'. This is a classic 'Fibonacci' style series, similar to rabbit reproduction and a 'life cycle' for individuals in the MSS population.

Here in the first graph we can see net manuscript production as a result of the amount of new MSS made, from which is subtracted the # of MSS worn out or destroyed over a given time period. There is obviously the potential for 'negative growth' over short bursts, when MSS production cannot keep up with MSS destruction for one reason or another.
Most of the time however, MSS production will be greater than MSS loss.
Over these shorter periods, MSS production capacity will be relatively constant, limited by the number of production centers and available scribes, as well as the amount of resources available and scheduling of harvests (seasonal growth cycles for papyri) and slaughters (herding and butchering for meat and skins for parchment).
The effect of constant capacity over short time periods will be that fluctuations in production (measured best as a % of total MSS) will gradually be diminished by the ever increasing total numbers of MSS.

Just as in the simple Stock Market model, short term fluctuations and instabilites are absorbed and averaged out by longer term trends, in our case the steady increase in the total number of MSS.

In the long term however, the number of production centers and the quantity of MSS produced will increase alongside the expanding Christian population. This is a simple 'market driven' process, of supply and demand, limited by opportunity and resource management, and periodically affected by outside uncontrolled forces, like drought, short bursts of persecution, discovery of production centers or caches of MSS, and killing of key skilled personnel such as copyists.
However, these short-term instabilities in production and catastrophic bursts of MSS destruction will have a typical 'stock-market' morphology. Recently, physicists have analysed the stock-market in terms of Catastrophy Theory and similar models, in order to spot signs of instability and predict follow-up trends.
For our purposes, the point of interest is the tell-tale 'Saw-Tooth' shape of the market plot. Whenever there is a local short-term burst of instability in the model (which could be either production failure or destruction of MSS in our case), a Saw Tooth fingerprint will appear in the long-term trend plot:

 

[Nazaroo]

What is important to realise is that this kind of 'catastrophe' has a distinct shape, which is determined by the nature of the feedback mechanisms of the model. It is not arbitrary but predetermined by the 'market' forces. In our even simpler case, variations from this pattern are even more difficult to produce.

The key point is that even allowing for severe short-term catastrophes, the overall trends and final overall curve is still the same. The largest displacement of the standard expected Fibonacci curve will be a short 'blip' in the shape of a sawtooth.
And this is the thing. This is precisely what we DON'T see in the actual data for the extant MSS. Instead we see a footprint, a signature for an entirely different kind of process: a LONG TERM universal process, or else a short-term DIRECTED universal process against MSS of a specifically selected age range:

This can only imply one of two basic situations:
(1) Either MSS were systematically and universally destroyed over a long period, from about 400 A.D. to about 900 A.D., or else,
(2) MSS were selected at the end of this period (about 900 A.D.) and selectively destroyed by age-range as the criterion.
In either case, this can only be a conscious, perpetrated and universal act of vandalism.

As to the choice of text which was destroyed, as Praxeus correctly points out, BOTH MSS with and without the PA were destroyed. There was no selection based upon the content or text-type, but rather age alone.

 

[Nazaroo]

The key thing to understand is that the copying and multiplying of MSS is a very simple Fibonacci process. There really is no 'choice of models' per se or the curves that will be generated. Remember we are here only modelling the physical copying process, not modelling the morphological or evolutionary changes to the actual text itself.

So the problem is just a simple 'curve-fitting' by stretching or compression along one axis or another to align it with the most reliable and complete parts of the data.

This allows us to extrapolate the existance (and rough sizing) of the missing data.

Thankfully, many things work in our favour to make the modelling reliable and reasonably accurate. For instance, the bulk of the late manuscripts are not hidden or unknown, but readily available and in the care of public museums, governments, religious institutions and private collectors. We don't even need access to the MSS themselves for things like a simple 'head count' for each century or rough dating-range.

Keeping in mind that the dating of MSS (unless they are actually dated internally) are + or - 50 years, using paleaontology. This sets up natural approximate segmentation into 'eras'.

Certain things then, like the approximate numbers of MSS copied in the last five centuries (1000 - 1500 C.E.) of copying are well known, and not in any serious dispute.

But the critical implications are provided by the copy process itself. Each known manuscript must have been copied from a previous one. So we can extrapolate backward rather confidently regarding the basic 'exponential' (Fibonacci) curve that must lie behind the known manuscripts from the late period. We are 'curve-fitting' against the most solid and reliable part of the data.

When other well-known factors (like the invention of 'moveable type' printing in 1500, and the decay and collapse of the Byzantine Empire) are taken into account, and these layers are peeled off of the raw number counts, we have a good idea of the size of the MSS count from the missing centuries prior to the 10th century.

Then when we compare the numbers of surviving MSS from the previous five centuries we can see quite clearly the approximate number of MSS which are actually missing, but are presupposed from the model and the physical copying process.

 

[Nazaroo]

Could the analysis be fallacious because the number of manuscripts we have for a given time period are only representative of what we have discovered and not necessarily representative in any proportional way to the number of manuscripts produced during that time period?

This is a good question, but one that can be easily answered for the later centuries. Not only did the Greek copyists flee the Islamic hordes, but the majority of them came to live and work in the Holy Roman Empire, where many of them were accommodated and continued to ply their trade copying Greek MSS. Thus it is no real secret the number of MSS actually produced during this last 500 years. We are not likely to have missed very many.

Some 5% of these may have ended up in the private hands of a few wealthy European monarchs and Dukes, but even these have been for the most part returned or donated to museums in our era. An even smaller percentage may have been destroyed by accident or neglect, but this won't significantly affect the basic picture of hand-copying of Greek MSS in Europe during the last few centuries before the Reformation.

There really is no more scientific procedure feasible than working backward from the known to the unknown.

The basic facts are rather transparent. Many MSS (of which there must have been thousands made in each century) dating from the 5th to the 9th centuries are simply completely missing.

And this corresponds quite well to what we know of other NON-biblical MSS from this period. They are missing because they were destroyed by church authorities.

The problem is not really in the question of the fact that the MSS are missing. This is rather obvious. The real question is HOW and WHY they were destroyed, and by exactly whom?

And everything points to a church unwilling to release education to the masses, and unwilling and resistant to the process of reform and change that inevitably came with or without their help.

Its the basic story of the Grinch who stole Christmas, but who couldn't stop Christmas from coming, even though he burnt all the MSS.

... and yet, a simpler answer may serve as a partial explanation:

It may be that as old uncial manuscripts were copied in the new, fashionable, minuscule script that the old fashioned originals were no longer thought worth the bother of carefully preserving.

Andrew criddle

This idea here is almost inconceivable, in the light of the extreme cost and value of used parchment. This material was recycled at every opportunity, because of its extreme expense and difficulty in manufacture. What we know is that copyists would recycle anything they could get their hands on to save labour and resources.

And if any other fate is plausible it would rather be that older worn out copies would be gifted to poorer smaller churches or passed to missionaries working in the field, or given to families of church members. In this case, we should have expected that at least some several hundred uncials from every century would have survived, out of the thousands made.

This again is just sophistry, and goes against everything we know about the thinking and behaviour of early copyists. Jews, Jewish Christians, and even later Gentile Christian copyists treasured and carefully retired worn out MSS, as archeaological discoveries continue to demonstrate.

We continue to find "MSS burial grounds", places like caves, 'tombs', and sealed up walls filled with worn but carefully cherished and protected MSS, too frail to use, but that their owners were too reluctant to just throw away. The discovery of Codex Sinaiticus (and many other MSS) in a room under a collapsed roof is the paradigm of how ancient copyists in scriptoriums dealt with worn out MSS.

What has happened here in the 5th to the 9th century may simply be a part of a massive recycling program in the 9th or 10th century.

A kind of 'emergency recycling program'. IT may be that perhaps many miniscule MSS yet to be more carefully examined may turn out to be palimpsests of previous Uncials sacrificed and simultaneously restored to circulation. In this case, we can presume that the text of the new 'Miniscules' is simply essentially the text of the recycled Uncials.

An explanation along these lines would go far in explaining both the ancient readings and the uniformity of text among the later Byzantine (traditional and popular) MSS of the 10th to the 15th centuries.

In this case, while most Uncials may have been sacrificed in a good cause; their texts were actually saved for the most part by re-surfacing and recycling of the best pages, while using their best representatives as master-copies or exemplars.

This may inadvertantly answer the mystery created by Praxeus' key questions, as best as they can be.

 

[Nazaroo]

We have turned the most recent discussions on the missing MSS for John 8:1-11 from the 5th to the 8th centuries into a complete article.

You can download it here:


Missing MSS for John<-- Click Here!

Peace,
Nazaroo

 

[Nazaroo]

We cleaned up the navigation and look of the Pericope de Adultera Website, so it should be easier to find articles and quickly get where you want to go.

Because the amount of material online is large, it has taken some time to get to some details. Our apologies for any difficulty in navigating.

Pericope De Adultera Homepage <-- Click Here!

Pericope De Adultera Onsite Materials <-- Click Here!

 

[Nazaroo]

We have put Codex Alexandrinus (Gospel of John only) online for easy viewing here:

Codex Alexandrinus: John <-- Click

Here.

 

[Nazaroo]

We have put Codex Alexandrinus online in an easy to view format:

Codex Alexandrinus: John <-- Click Here.

 

[Nazaroo]

Another article on John 8:1-11.

This Lightfoot was a predecessor to Metzger. In fact you can see Metzger's rather blatant plagarism of his mentor between the lines here:


R.H. Lightfoot on John 8:1-11 <--Click here.

peace, Nazaroo

 

[Nazaroo]

We have already noted that there are tell-tale marks indicating a knowledge of John 8:1-11 in 3 out of 4 of the oldest manuscripts of John.

The oldest of these, P66 (late 2nd century or early 3rd), shows evidence that the mark used (a DOT AND SPACE) is a 'text-critical' mark, not some kind of punctuation.

Since the second-oldest, P75 (early 3rd century) seems to use the DOTS differently, (apparently as 'verse markers'), it is important to test the question of how the DOT is used in Codex Sinaiticus (early 4th century).

If Sinaiticus uses the dots the same way as P66, and these were copied from an earlier manuscript, this would be good evidence that Sinaiticus is a copy of a much older text, as is currently believed.

How to test the question?

We do this by examining both the DOT at John 7:52/8:12 and also the other dots on the page.

Lets begin with a review of the evidence so far:

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To show that we are not merely exaggerating or ignoring other marks, we can look at Tischendorf's printed fascimile:

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The two basic cases are these:

(1) Dots incorporated into the text on the first pass by the original scribe.

(2) Dots added AFTER the page was penned. Many of these dots can be easily differentiated on the basis of two things:

a) the original scribe didn't allow a space for them, and so they are not a true "space and dot" but just a dot added later by an unknown hand.​

b) they are often in the margin or at the end of a line.​

The obvious problem with this second group of dots is that they can be given no credible authority since they can easily be distinguished from the original scribe, but cannot be associated with certainty to any other scribe or even the age in which they were added.

For instance, Codex Sinaiticus has been worked over by a dozen or more hands over almost eight centuries, and anyone of those 'correctors' or even other unknown parties could have added the dots, at any time between the 5th to the 15th centuries.

Because of this, the second group of dots, those added by later hands, cannot be given any authority, or even a fixed single meaning or purpose.

So the obvious procedure is to ignore the dots subsequently added by later parties and only consider the dots that can definitely be or with high probability be assigned to the original scribe. These dots can be granted the same date and authority as the original scribe who executed the manuscript in about 320-330 A.D.

we have to distinguish carefully and clearly between dots that can be established as by the original hand of the scribe who penned Sinaiticus, copying it from an older exemplar, and the confused and unverifiable markings of subsequent 'correctors'.

And in that direction, we would have to methodologically eliminate the dot at the end of the line (the second one)



Quote:

Third:

These suspended dots are all over Sinaiticus. This one comes after John 9.25.

This third example is a 'real' one. (although the second dot in this photograph is a useless insertion).

However, an incredible clue as to the purpose of the 'single dot' is shown by this second added dot. It is obvious that here the dot indicates indeed a textual variant, and the corrector is using the dot to show the insertion point of the word "palin", because he believes it to have been wrongly omitted by accident.

Again, methodology is the key here. While 'suspended dots' may be "all over" Sinaiticus, few (less than a third) can be identified as by the original scribe.

The actual 'dot density' is extremely important, because it clearly establishes that the dots are not normal or standard punctuation or breathing-marks.

What readers of this thread will not be able to tell from these close-ups is that one page of Sinaiticus contains three or four times as much text as a single page from P66.

Since there are about the same number of legitimate dots on a page of Sinaiticus as on a page of P66, this means that P66 has four times as many dots as Sinaiticus per unit of text.

So a more careful analysis then reveals that dots are not "all over Sinaiticus" with even a quarter of the frequency of P66. And P66 hasn't enough dots to allow any claims of a grammatical function for the dots.

They are clearly secondary to punctuation and rare; in the case of Sinaiticus, four times as rare as in P66.

On the subject of Tischendorf, one poster has said:

Quote:
(BTW, there is no need to rely on the Tischendorf facsimile any longer. The Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts has actual scans of Sinaiticus available, and I have its NT portion referenced by folio on my site; the folio that lacks John 7.53-8.11 is 53a.)

Ben.

Unfortunately we cannot so easily dispense with Tischendorf as we would like. Many of the photos of pages of Sinaiticus are difficult to read, and can only be double-checked by comparison to Tischendorf's transcript. It must be remembered that Tischendorf examined Sinaiticus and collated more than any other textual scholar, either living or dead.

Operating with the photos alone would be like putting out one eye in order to explore the continent of Africa.

 

[Nazaroo]

Originally Posted by Sauron

Why?

What makes it a later addition, vs being from the hand of the original scribe?

Fair question:

Its not that it IS necessarily by the hand of another scribe, but simply that we can't verify that a correction is by the hand of the original scribe. And that means that we have to be skeptical and give dots added later secondary status and weight.

We simply can't establish whether a simple dot added later to the text was added in 320 A.D. or 1500 A.D., and that means its useless for a discussion of original readings.

But how do you know that it was added later in the first place?

We don't. But scientific method requires that we don't rely upon 'evidence' that cannot be substantiated.

Imagine if we did.

Let's say you write me a cheque for $100.

And I add two more zeroes to it.

Obviously the bank (if its on the ball) will say "No." This looks like it was added, so you'll have to get the original signer's initial or autograph to confirm the change.

Otherwise any idiot could empty your bankaccount without a legitimate mandate.

Let me start over to make sure:

1. You claim there are two sets of dots:

(a) those from the original scribe, and
(b) those added later - maybe a few years later, or maybe centuries later. Whatever.

2. You claim to be able to tell the difference in this picture, as to which kind of dots these are.

How are you doing that?

.The key is the SPACE. Did the scribe allow a space for the dot, or was the dot crammed in later, and can we see that if the dot is removed, there is no leftover space.

While the lack of a discernable space doesn't "prove" the dot is NOT original, there is no evidence that the dot IS original without the space.

It works quite well. and for your checks too.

If the two extra zeros look like they've been crammed into a space that the original cheque-writer didn't allow room for, the bank assumes the check has been tampered with.

It may not have been tampered with, but the bank puts its money on the original handwriting, color of pen, and fluiditiy and coherence and planning of the execution of the writing on the cheque.

Sure, you could have added the extra zeroes yourself as an afterthought, but if you are in your right mind, you don't want any bank to cash that cheque anyway. You want to rip it up and start again, and if you don't, you still want the bank to.


We use what can be established with certainty, and if there is enough GOOD evidence that we can establish some kind of probability for the rest, great, we can account for that too.

To try a different example,

Suppose your ex-girlfriend (or your bosses wife) accuses you of fathering her child.

Are you just going to go "Okay, that must be mine." because you can't PROVE it isn't? Aren't paternity suits ruled the other way around? Don't you want her to prove it really is your child first, before granting the child status as your heir?

The point is, if the bank is wrong in not cashing the cheque, there is no danger, no loss, only a minor inconvenience. If the bank chose the opposite rule, fraud would run rampant.

So space IS a useful indicator of tampering, even when it is not 100% correct. Its correct often enough, and the consequences are serious enough, to justify a rule that doesn't have to be 'perfect'.

Within the limits of reasonable probability we can be quite certain that most dots WITH a space are authentic, while most dots WITHOUT a space have an unknown and probably unknowable status. We don't need a 'perfect' rule to do historical science, only a statistically probable one.

Its the most sensible rule possible under the circumstances.

What prevents the original scribal work from having left a generous amount of spacing, and then someone coming along later and inserting a dot?

Absolutely nothing, in principle. But we can simply inspect the manuscript to see if this is a statistically significant possibility. In the case of codex Sinaiticus, there are more spaces than spaces with dots, so it is unlikely that a corrector went along filling up spaces.

For example, if a later scribe saw the original, extra spacing, they might be worried that someone might try to fill it in, perhaps by inserting an unauthorized change. So this later scribe might want to prevent that from happening by inserting a dot to fill up the space (or at least make it easy to detect any future tampering).

Indeed. And this sometimes happened, that a scribe would fill up the end of a row of letters, or add a flourish to the end of a book to prevent someone adding to it. But most of these cases can be identified, and we simply don't find scribes using DOTS for this purpose, but rather OTHER larger glyphs, like pointed arrow-brackets and mini-scrolls. And again in the case of Sinaiticus, this just didn't happen. We have to move from the general to the specific.

2. If you're admitting the possibility of tossing away valid, original dots because the spacing is too tight, then what kind of boundaries does that put on any of your conclusions? It seems to me that your statements ought to be highly tentative.

In fact, I'm certain of tossing away a few valid dots highly likely to be have been from the original scribe. But not enough to significantly skew the results of a study of the purpose of the dots, which is the whole point.

As a test, we can always insert the other dots back into our data and see if there is a significant difference, or a new purpose suggested by the new larger group of dots that might change our conclusions.

But instead of worrying about a bunch of 'what ifs', we can proceed ahead and test and get answers. So why worry?

The approach is reliable enough.

Most people can easily understand that marks added AFTER the manuscript was written, and squeezed into the cracks and margins are most likely to be by ANY unknown hand, especially when we KNOW that a dozen hands have worked the manuscript over.

Most people would only accept marks that look like they likely were made by the original scribe. And these would have to be marks that looked like they belonged there, because the scribe planned for them and allocated space for them.

On the [DOT] after [Jn] 8:12 [in Aleph] I do not understand why you would omit that as from the original scribe (whatever the meaning). You point out that the space is extra at the end of the line. Therefore deliberate, it would seem, and therefore designed to be a dot-indicator. Why exclude it from the data set ?

The short answer is that we have less surety about it than a case where a space is left in the middle of a line where the normal practice is not even to put spaces between words, and even to break up words over to the next line.

Yes, the space at the end of the line (a couple of letters in size) has a significant appearance, but its very rarity works against its weighting. lines are left unfilled by letters so rarely that we must admit the sampling is an order in magnitude smaller in size (per unit text) than the normal case of a space in midline.

Some of the strength in the type of phenomenon comes from its statistical base or 'sample size'. Even if we can't quantify such features with hard numbers, we can at least order them in terms of relative magnitude and importance.

We can always say that examining the cases of 'space and dot' in the middle of lines will give us more reliable information, because there are more cases.

Another thing works in our favour here too. Because the case of a dot at the end of a line is so much rarer, we can ignore it with less worry about the result of our analysis.

This is not to say that we should or need to ignore any data, but you are perfectly familiar I am sure, of the idea of the relative weight of different qualities and kinds of witness to a fact.

We can ignore the handful of cases of a dot at the end of a line, because they are so rare and relatively insignificant for our question of what MOST of the dots are doing.

We should ignore this handful of cases, because we are less sure that they are from the original hand, since we have a less certain indicator than a simple single space tailored to the size of the dot.

 

[Nazaroo]

The problem is that there is another factor, one that you mentioned in another context. This is the same book, the same manuscript, the same page. (And the dot is almost surely the same scribe.) Ergo such an example is far more significant in trying to understand how this scribe meant the dot than most others in the forthcoming data set. Same scribe, same text, same time.

You might weigh it a smidgen less because it is end-of-line rather than mid-line. However the upsides above are more important than being at the end-of-line. Especially as we can see immediately that the end-of-line spacing is ususual for that scribe on that page. We can compare it visually with eight other lines and note that it has an extra character off all of them, a strong marker for the dot being related to the first scribe's text.

Shalom,
Steven Avery

If you want to include this dot in the group to take under consideration initially, fine. I said from the beginning my inclination was that it was by the original scribe. Either way I don't think it will significantly affect the final results in terms of evaluating the range of meanings possible for the 'space and dot' in Sinaiticus.

One important point (and it should be underlined) is that it is extremely likely that the scribe is here copying the dots from his master-copy, hence the variation in the position of the dots and the length of a less than complete line ending with a dot or a full 'colon'. That is, these marks are not invented by the scribe of Sinaiticus, nor is their meaning.

Originally Posted by Riverwind
if you'd just back up or even elaborate a bit more on the following claims:

(1) ...that the "space and dot" is a truly a "space and dot"
as opposed to a "space dot space", "space dot no space",
or "no space dot no space"

You can't conform the evidence to your own notions of categories.
Your categories above are largely inefficient and unnecessary groupings, that probably can't be sustained by the nature of the physical picture.

All I ever claimed to be able to distinguish with reasonable certainty in most cases,
is this: There are dots that show no signs of the original scribe
allowing a space to accomodate, and hence are suspected of being added later, either by the same scribe performing a different task, or else a different 'corrector' entirely. Which might be the case is by its very nature indeterminable,
and so these dots ("dot no space") cannot be used in the same way that dots clearly in the hand of the original scribe can be.

End of story.

The second kind of dot is that which CAN be determined with reasonable
certainty to be by the original scribe, since he appears to have left a space for it.
Whatever the purpose of these dots ("space and dot" - not to be understood
as being in some particular order, but a much simpler idea: a dot occupying a space,
usually in about the middle, or perhaps with a little more space on the right),
whatever their purpose, this can be determined by examination and analysis,
but this discovery cannot be carried over to dots (e.g. "dot no space")
that can't be determined to be by the original scribe.

If anything is to be made of the dots that CAN'T be identified as by the original scribe,
it must be done separately, and with far less surety, all else being equal.

(2) ...that the "space and dot" where John 7:53-8:11 should be
is actually a text-critical mark intentionally acknowledging and marking
the absense of those verses.

(3) ...that at least one (preferably more) other of these dots
("space and dots" or whatever) marks another variant somewhere
in the New Testament (anywhere, Nazaroo!)

These can be investigated by and by.

 

[Nazaroo]

-------------------------------------------

Now lets turn to the very page under consideration:
Folio 53a of John for Codex Sinaiticus.

Here are the first two columns at a reasonable resolution,
with the following highlights:

(1) "DOT AND SPACE" - meaning a dot with ample space, indicating it was
planned and executed by the original scribe who spaced out the letters.
These we have highlighted with a RED Circle. there are only SIX on the
entire page of four columns that can be so identified with reasonable surety.

(2) "DOT NO SPACE" - meaning dots with all the appearance of being added
later on a second pass, either by the original scribe or a second hand.
There is no way of determining the case.
These we have marked with a BLUE SQUARE. There are at least 36 such marks
squeezed inbetween the letters penned by the original scribe,
averaging over TEN per Column.

(3) "DOT at End of Line" - meaning a SINGLE DOT at the end of a line,
whether the line is shorter, or the same length and average # of letters
as other lines. There are again only FIVE of these. There are almost a
dozen cases of a very small sigma ("C" in uncial script) or an omicron ("o"),
but these should not be confused with the DOTS, which are not letters.

There we have marked with a GREEN TRIANGLE.

There are three plain lines that fall far short of a full line of letters,
and they seem to indicate paragraph or section endings copied from
the original exemplar. Two are marked with a COLON (NOT a dot),
and one is unmarked.

In NO CASE was a line filled to the end with a dot, row of dots,
or other glyph for the apparent purpose of preventing further additions,
or decoration. This means that the idea of the DOT as a short End Of Line
Marker is a complete dud.

[IMG]http://cadesign.webworkercanada.com/CHARTS/Aleph-Jn8a-dot.jpg[/IMG]
 
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...

And here is the second half of the page:

[IMG]http://cadesign.webworkercanada.com/CHARTS/aleph-Jn8b-dot.jpg[/IMG]
..
...
...
...
...
...
...
...

Initial Analysis:


(1) One observation immediately apparent concerns the 'BLUE SQUARE' dots (the DOT NO SPACE type) which appear to have been added later. A large majority of them appear to be marking the separation of words, and sometimes clauses, for the simple purpose of assisting in reading the manuscript. This is a very good indication that whoever added these dots was NOT the original scribe, (because the original scribe forsaw no problem in reading the MS as he penned it).

Thus we seem to be able to distinguish a difference in the ability of the reader who added this group of dots and the original scribe, a professional Greek reader and calligrapher. These dots may have been added for liturgical use (i.e. public reading), anticipating the difficulty volunteer readers might experience. They could even have been added by an appointed reader.

This would also allow for the possibility of a large space of time between the penning of the MS and the addition of these particular dots.

-------------------------------------------

Next, as we remarked earlier, there is no indication that the dots are 'decorative' or added for the purpose of thwarting additions or emendations. The three largest blank lines have no SINGLE DOTS at all, and plenty of space.

------------------------------------------

A relatively large number of single dots can be identified clearly as indicators that a word, a group of letters, or a single letter are to be inserted into the text at the DOT point. These we have left unmarked, as their meaning and purpose is not under serious dispute. It is important to note however that the main or 1st Corrector of the MS used the 'SINGLE DOT' (no space) this exact way: that is for TEXTUAL EMENDATIONS TO THE TEXT.

Thus this single page of the MS supplies a significant number of examples where the DOT (no space) is a TEXTUAL MARKER, not an indicator of any grammatical morpheme, such as a modern semi-colon, colon, or period. For examples see column Two line 8 and 34 end.

This evidence that the DOTS used by True Correctors are for the most part TEXTUAL in nature should satisfy even skeptics like Riverwind.

------------------------------------------

On several contractions of Jesus (IS) a dot as well as an overline is added, probably again by a second hand. Here once again, the dot has a purpose, but it is not a grammatical mark or accent, but rather a generic indicator for the reader to look more closely (and notice the Noma Sacra).

 

[Nazaroo]

My methodology is fairly simple here. I am examining all that can be examined piece by piece, for the purpose of eliminating the trivial, the obvious, the reasonably certain, and categorizing whatever is left over that needs accounting for in the most plausible manner.

------------------------------------------------

To continue in this vein, I want to consider next the SINGLE DOTS at the end of a line:

These dots could be grouped as EITHER "DOT AND SPACE" (original scribe) or "DOT NO SPACE" (possible later corrector). The problem is, there is no demarcation AFTER the dot to tell us if the original scribe planned the dot.

In fact, almost half of these (unmarked on photos) are at the end of a line that has NO space on it (missing letters) and look suspiciously like later additions. Again this fits in well with our observed purpose of the "DOT NO SPACE" (Blue squares) already discussed above. For examples see Column One line 17 etc. They again seem to be reader's marks, indicating clause endings, or pauses.

-----------------------------------------------

We may also mention the 'real' colons, marking apparent paragraph endings. Although one paragraph end is missing a colon, the others (judging by the fading) appear to be either original or at least very ancient (unlike the majority of DOT NO SPACE which seem too dark and clear to be that old).

Thus one colon seems to be almost disappearing.

-----------------------------------------------

On the topic of inserted letters or short words, in many cases, no DOT or other mark is used, but rather the letters are inserted in whatever space is available when possible, even if the letters must be written so small as to risk being mistaken for a DOT!

In these cases, we may suspect a few corrections made long after the original scribe wrote and proofread his MS. Sometimes a mini-scroll is used in a way similar to the "Obelisk" found in Codex Vaticanus. In any case the meaning is clear: the marginal letters are to be inserted into the manuscript as corrections. Its worth noting that apparently 90% of the mistakes caught by the corrector(s) are accidental omissions of a letter or two, or a short word. But the Pericope de Adultera cannot be classed as 'accidental' in this period (3rd - 4th century), so this is not directly applicable to our problem.

----------------------------------

The original scribe (and apparently subsequent correctors) was frugal with accents, averaging one true accent (pronunciation assist) every 2 to 5 lines. The following correctors (and Tischendorf apparently identified nine or more) did not add much to this, even if they are responsible for most of the accents now extant.

----------------------------------

One last comment is in regard to the use of an upper 'mini-scroll' to represent the 'Moveable N' at the ends of words. Interestingly, most of these seem to fall at the end of the line, and this indicates that the original scribe is responsible for at least the bulk of them. (the moveable n is sometimes dropped but replaced with a small mark to keep a neat appearance and constant width for most lines in the MS.) It is at the end of a line that this opportunity presents itself, and the timing (spacing) can be anticipated somewhat by the original scribe.

This contradicts the usage of a very similar 'mini-scroll' by the corrector, and seems to indicate two different people responsible for the two uses.
-------------------------------------

--------------------------------

Other marks we need to recognise as independant and later additions are the 'Eusebian canons' and other marginal numberings designed for ecclesiastical use.

Like the 'Blue Squares' (DOT NO SPACE), i.e, reader's helps, these marginal markings (usually on the left side of a column) were always added later after a manuscript was copied, to prepare them for church service.


--------------------------------------------------------

That just about covers all the markings and special features of this page of
the manuscript, except for the remaining six (DOT AND SPACE) RED CIRCLES.

These are found two per column, excepting the 3rd column, and so for convenience we skip that column and move the 4th column over. Keep in mind that there is then a long paragraph (and two shorter ones) between the dots in the 2nd column and the 4th.

These, we noted previously, are the best candidates for markings that could
be plausibly and reasonably ascribed to the original copyist.

The first thing to note is that they are spaced so far apart and clustered seemingly randomly, and completely independant of recognizable paragraph or section beginnings /endings. At the same time, they are too infrequent to be standard grammatical markings.

Because the standard practice of a professional copyist on the 'first pass' is to copy verbatum everything he finds in the mastercopy (excluding obvious errors), there is strong precedent to attribute these six marks to the exemplar.

The scribe of Sinaiticus is a careful and accurate copyist, even when he
shows awareness of suspicion or error in his exemplar. This is part of the function of a 'second pass', in which corrections and notes are added by a
corrector.

All those who have studied Sinaiticus have come to similar conclusions about
quality of the original copyist. Early assessments of his 'sloppiness' or
'carelessness' were based upon a comparison of his text with that of the
Byzantine (traditional) text, without due consideration to the fact that he
was copying an earlier mastercopy complete with its errors and idiosyncrasies.

It is now widely recognized that the bulk of significant variants ('errors') in
Sinaiticus are traceable to his exemplar, which indicates the seriousness with
which he was willing to copy it, even when it made no sense.

This tendency of the original scribe of Sinaiticus to copy come hell or high-water means he is likely to have copied any marks or important variants as well, like the 'DOT AND SPACE' we see embedded in the text.

This may also explain why he only copies two colons, even though logic would dictate he copy three. If there was a missing colon in his mastercopy, his work-ethic may have caused him to reproduce the missing colon also.

 

[Nazaroo]

Lets now look at the final six marks in isolation, and their position on the page:

 

[Nazaroo]

Examining the "DOT AND SPACE":


Lo and behold, when we come to examine the remaining six dots, which stand out by virtue of rather certainly being from the hand of the original scribe, we find just what Riverwind was demanding: each represents a serious and significant textual variant in the verse so marked.

-------------------------------
DOT 1: Obviously, the omission of 7:53-8:11, duly noted by the original scribe or his exemplar.

--------------------------------
DOT 2: (8:16 - line 42) - There are actually two serious variants here, both noted by the critical apparatus of UBS for instance, and one not so noted.

a) the contraction of kai ean to kan by Sinaiticus.

b) the substitution of alhqhV for alhqinh (incorrectly reported by UBS).

c) the omission of pathr by Aleph, along with codex D and the Syriac!

Given the ancient age of these variants and their diverse support, it is quite plausible that they were known and noted by Sinaiticus or his exemplar.

-------------------------------------------------------
DOT 3: (8:20 - column2 line 22) - the omission of a whole clause(!):

didaskwn en tw ierw .

This looks like an omission by haplography (similar ending to previous line), and would quite reasonably be marked for notice by the copyist.


-------------------------------------------------------
DOT 4: (8:21 - column 2 line 29) - again several variants all
in the same verse:

a) substitution of elegen for eipen .

b) omission of palin .

c) substitution of verb forms zhthsetai , dunasqai .

Enough serious variation in one verse to merit a DOT by the copyist once again.

------------------------------------
DOT 5: (8:34b/35a - column 4 line 16) - again an interesting variant:

Aleph has thV amartiaV, whereas Codex D, Italian, Coptic, Syriac MSS as well as Clement, Cyprian, Faustus and Gregory omit this phrase. It is plainly a very ancient reading, as is its variant.

Our verse numbers are of course modern divisions of the text, but the close proximity of the inclusion prior to the DOT shows its placement to be precisely similar in style as the others.

But the BIG eye-opener is the omission by Aleph of another whole clause, undocumented by UBS, right at the position of the DOT:

o uioV menei eiV ton aiwna.

This again is an incredibly significant error by haplography, duly marked by either the original scribe or the scribe of the master-copy he is following.

-----------------------------------


-------------------------------
DOT 6: (8:38 - column 4 line 30) - another complex variant

Here Sinaiticus reads:

a ego ewraka para tw patri MOU lalw (no punctuation dot here as in critical text)
kai umis (sp) oun a EWRAKATE (P66, D etc.) para tou patroV UMWN poieita (SPACE AND DOT HERE).

Unusual added words are capitalized.

Here the text, besides being much fuller (modifiers for 'Father'), agrees with the 2nd century P66 and D against both the majority of MSS and the critical text too.

That this place was recognized as a textual variant is shown by the attempt at a partial correction in the margin by a later (but still early) hand.

Another important and obviously very early Egyptian variant has been flagged by someone. Of note is the fact that the text is wordier overall, indicating that the original text is not always shorter, even in Alexandria.