PointyHaired Calvinist
Puritan Board Junior
I keep hearing that Dr. Erasmus had access to the Vatican Codex (B), but rejected it as inferior. Are there any references to this?
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Dating:
The dating of the umlauts is very problematic. Payne and Canart think that they were all written by the first hand and that many of them have been enhanced later by the reinforcer. They think so because there are some umlauts (probably overseen by the reinforcer) which show the same brown ink as the original script. Some umlauts appear to be slightly imperfectly enhanced so that the original brown ink below it can be seen. This is a good argument.
It is not sure though that the original scribe wrote these umlauts. It is also possible that they have been added even a century later or so. The brown ink is not confined to the first hand. The larger amount of the "old stuff" in Vaticanus looks like this. E.g. there are many marks of unknown meaning (probably pericope/reading markers). These all show the same faint, brown colour. The question is, in what period can we file all those brown things. Probably early, to allow for the significant fading. Maybe we can say 4th to 6th CE?
It is also possible, and difficult to disprove that the reinforcer added umlauts on his own. He presumably new about the meaning, because he reinforced them (he did not for instance, enhance the ">" marks for OT quotations). So it might be the case that he added some umlauts. There are many umlauts where it is impossible to judge if there was an original below it. We see only the dark, near black ink.
Niccum thinks that the umlauts have been added much later (15th CE). He suggests Juan Ginés de Sepulveda (1490-1574). Sepulveda had access to Codex Vaticanus (from 1521 on) and supplied Erasmus with 365 readings in the year 1533 to show that these readings agreed with the Vulgate against the TR. Maybe then the differences in colour now visible are just the result of deterioration and mishandling over time? This is problematic though because why should some umlauts fade and the neighbouring text not? Nevertheless the argument is suggestive, because in this period a lot of printed Greek NT's came up and it is quite possible that someone in the Vatican library did a detailed comparison. The different colour is a serious objection though.
Another argument put forth by Niccum is the fact that there is one umlaut on the first page of the minuscule addendum (p. 1519). This is differently interpreted by the authors. Niccum thinks that this indicates a later date. Eventually the comparing scholar recognized the change in textual character and stopped marking umlauts. Payne and Canart think that the 15th CE restorer had a last torn folio from which he copied what he could read and so added also this last umlaut.
I keep hearing that Dr. Erasmus had access to the Vatican Codex (B), but rejected it as inferior. Are there any references to this?
Through his study of the writings of Jerome and other Church Fathers Erasmus became very well informed concerning the variant readings of the New Testament text. Indeed almost all the important variant readings known to scholars today were already known to Erasmus more than 460 years ago and discussed in the notes (previously prepared) which he placed after the text in his editions of the Greek New Testament. Here, for example, Erasmus dealt with such problem passages as the conclusion of the Lord’s Prayer (Matt. 6:13), the interview of the rich young man with Jesus (Matt. 19:17-22), the ending of Mark (Mark 16:9-20), the angelic song (Luke 2:14), the angel, agony, and bloody seat omitted (Luke 22:43-44), the woman taken in adultery (John 7:53-8:11), and the mystery of godliness (1 Tim. 3:16).
Wherefore also Mark, the interpreter and follower of Peter, does thus commence his Gospel narrative: “The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God; as it is written in the prophets,….” Plainly does the commencement of the Gospel quote the words of the holy prophets, and point out Him at once, whom they confessed as God and Lord.
If a particular version or manuscript is not truthful, pure and does not faithfully represent what God said, it cannot properly be called “the word of God.”
For instance, the NIV perverts Mark 1:2-3 into a lie as it reads