John 8:12 (א-01) ἔζει "he was boiling" the light of life

Forum rules
Please quote the Greek text you are discussing directly in your post if it is reasonably short - do not ask people to look it up. This is not a beginner's forum, competence in Greek is assumed.
Post Reply
Stephen Hughes
Posts: 3323
Joined: February 26th, 2013, 7:12 am

John 8:12 (א-01) ἔζει "he was boiling" the light of life

Post by Stephen Hughes »

Alan,
This is a "chain of evidence" question about the CNTR.

I remember that there was a spelling mistake in the the photo of the manuscript when Peter Mänder was planning his tattoo. In John 8:12, Codex Sinaiticus has a mis-spelling of ἔξει τὸ φῶς τῆς ζωῆς "he will have the light of life" as ἔζει τὸ φῶς τῆς ζωῆς "he was boiling the light of life".

Personally, I feel that small (human) errors in the text are a reminder to us to worship the person whom the book is about, rather than the book itself as faultless. I would rather see them presented openly so we can see our common human frailty.

In your Center for New Testament Restoration (CNTR) project, you have generally recorded / presented a "corrected" transcription of the manuscript, rather than the actual manuscript including minor orthographic errors like this. What is your general editorial policy, or what was the policy of the sites / sources, from which you have taken the data presented on your site?
Γελᾷ δ' ὁ μωρός, κἄν τι μὴ γέλοιον ᾖ
(Menander, Γνῶμαι μονόστιχοι 108)
Jonathan Robie
Posts: 4165
Joined: May 5th, 2011, 5:34 pm
Location: Durham, NC
Contact:

Re: John 8:12 (א-01) ἔζει "he was boiling" the light of life

Post by Jonathan Robie »

Alan is generally pretty painstaking, down to recording whether each individual character is legible, and using the original spellings. I'm not sure your generalization is true, and I'm not sure you are right about this particular example.

Here is the relevant text from http://www.codexsinaiticus.org/:
εξει.png
εξει.png (103.99 KiB) Viewed 1214 times
I'm not good at reading papyrii, but it looks like this character was illegible and corrected on the original manuscript. When I look at the ζ in the last word, ζωηϲ, it doesn't look like the character you are talking about could have originally been a ζ in that scribe's handwriting, it's missing at least the bottom line. Perhaps the scribe started to write ζ, recognized the mistake half-way through, corrected it ti χ, thought again, and wrote ξ above the line as the correct letter?

Alan doesn't seem to have a category that precisely captures all that. What do other people do for such transcriptions? Personally, I'd rather see his data released before adding to the kinds of things he might choose to record to cover this case, especially if it is not common practice to record that level of detail.
ἐξίσταντο δὲ πάντες καὶ διηποροῦντο, ἄλλος πρὸς ἄλλον λέγοντες, τί θέλει τοῦτο εἶναι;
http://jonathanrobie.biblicalhumanities.org/
Jonathan Robie
Posts: 4165
Joined: May 5th, 2011, 5:34 pm
Location: Durham, NC
Contact:

Re: John 8:12 (א-01) ἔζει "he was boiling" the light of life

Post by Jonathan Robie »

Another note: the Codex Sinaiticus project provides two transcriptions for this word, εχει and εξει, based on the two scribal corrections I highlighted above.

Code: Select all

<app>
<rdg type="main-corr"><w n="29">εχει</w></rdg>
<rdg type="corr" n="ca"><w n="29">εξει</w></rdg>
</app> 
ἐξίσταντο δὲ πάντες καὶ διηποροῦντο, ἄλλος πρὸς ἄλλον λέγοντες, τί θέλει τοῦτο εἶναι;
http://jonathanrobie.biblicalhumanities.org/
Alan Bunning
Posts: 299
Joined: June 5th, 2011, 7:31 am
Contact:

Re: John 8:12 (א-01) ἔζει "he was boiling" the light of life

Post by Alan Bunning »

Yes, I am not sure what Stephen is talking about. I do show damages states of letters as well as edits made. In this case, the correction presumably occurs after 400 AD, and I only retain edits that occur before 400 AD. I am not interested in changes scribes made after that.
Stephen Hughes
Posts: 3323
Joined: February 26th, 2013, 7:12 am

Re: John 8:12 (א-01) ἔζει "he was boiling" the light of life

Post by Stephen Hughes »

Jonathan Robie wrote:I'm not good at reading papyrii, but it looks like this character was illegible and corrected on the original manuscript. When I look at the ζ in the last word, ζωηϲ, it doesn't look like the character you are talking about could have originally been a ζ in that scribe's handwriting, it's missing at least the bottom line. Perhaps the scribe started to write ζ, recognized the mistake half-way through, corrected it ti χ, thought again, and wrote ξ above the line as the correct letter?

Alan doesn't seem to have a category that precisely captures all that. What do other people do for such transcriptions? Personally, I'd rather see his data released before adding to the kinds of things he might choose to record to cover this case, especially if it is not common practice to record that level of detail.
Yes. You are completely right. :oops: I had assumed that spelling mistake in the photo was from the scribe and not from Peter.
Alan Bunning wrote:Yes, I am not sure what Stephen is talking about. I do show damages states of letters as well as edits made. In this case, the correction presumably occurs after 400 AD, and I only retain edits that occur before 400 AD. I am not interested in changes scribes made after that.
Thank you for that. I'm sorry for my earlier misinterpretation.
Γελᾷ δ' ὁ μωρός, κἄν τι μὴ γέλοιον ᾖ
(Menander, Γνῶμαι μονόστιχοι 108)
Jonathan Robie
Posts: 4165
Joined: May 5th, 2011, 5:34 pm
Location: Durham, NC
Contact:

Re: John 8:12 (א-01) ἔζει "he was boiling" the light of life

Post by Jonathan Robie »

Stephen Hughes wrote:Yes. You are completely right. :oops: I had assumed that spelling mistake in the photo was from the scribe and not from Peter.
So ... does this mean that one of us needs to break the news to Peter?
ἐξίσταντο δὲ πάντες καὶ διηποροῦντο, ἄλλος πρὸς ἄλλον λέγοντες, τί θέλει τοῦτο εἶναι;
http://jonathanrobie.biblicalhumanities.org/
Stephen Hughes
Posts: 3323
Joined: February 26th, 2013, 7:12 am

Re: John 8:12 (א-01) ἔζει "he was boiling" the light of life

Post by Stephen Hughes »

Jonathan Robie wrote:
Stephen Hughes wrote:Yes. You are completely right. :oops: I had assumed that spelling mistake in the photo was from the scribe and not from Peter.
So ... does this mean that one of us needs to break the news to Peter?
Thank goodness, no. It seems that that it was corrected by during the discussion of here. The mosttthird last line in the first column has the Xi. Phew.
Γελᾷ δ' ὁ μωρός, κἄν τι μὴ γέλοιον ᾖ
(Menander, Γνῶμαι μονόστιχοι 108)
Jonathan Robie
Posts: 4165
Joined: May 5th, 2011, 5:34 pm
Location: Durham, NC
Contact:

Re: John 8:12 (א-01) ἔζει "he was boiling" the light of life

Post by Jonathan Robie »

Stephen Hughes wrote:
Jonathan Robie wrote:So ... does this mean that one of us needs to break the news to Peter?
Thank goodness, no. It seems that that it was corrected by during the discussion of here. The mosttthird last line in the first column has the Xi. Phew.
Here's what I see.
εζει.png
εζει.png (25.41 KiB) Viewed 1135 times
To me, that's "none of the above", it looks like a capital sigma, a form not used in Sinaiticus. It's not a ζ, see the last word in this image for ζωης. It's not a lunar sigma or χ or ξ. I do think I should mention this to Peter. I have no idea if tattoos can be repaired, or if he would want to do so.
ἐξίσταντο δὲ πάντες καὶ διηποροῦντο, ἄλλος πρὸς ἄλλον λέγοντες, τί θέλει τοῦτο εἶναι;
http://jonathanrobie.biblicalhumanities.org/
Stephen Hughes
Posts: 3323
Joined: February 26th, 2013, 7:12 am

Re: John 8:12 (א-01) ἔζει "he was boiling" the light of life

Post by Stephen Hughes »

Look at νυξ in the first line if the third column.The top of a capital sigma woukd reach forward, not back. His back reads έξει which is an attested reading - the one most attested.
Γελᾷ δ' ὁ μωρός, κἄν τι μὴ γέλοιον ᾖ
(Menander, Γνῶμαι μονόστιχοι 108)
Post Reply

Return to “New Testament”