How the Corrector of Sinaiticus Made the Cancel-Sheet at the End of Mark
37818,
Here is a hypothesis i developed to account for the extraordinary shifts in the rate of letters-per-column in the cancel-sheet. I don't have video-tape of the proof-reader-copyist at work, but I think this theory has compelling elegance.
When the proof-reader sat down to make this cancel-sheet, he realized that the main challenge would involve making the text of Luke 1:56a dovetail with the text of Luke 1:56b on the following page. If this was not accomplished properly, he would have to start over. To reduce the risk of wasting time and effort, he did not begin to make the cancel-sheet at the beginning, in Mark 14:54; instead, he began writing at the top of column 11, with Luke 1:1. To repeat: the proof-reader began writing on the cancel-sheet at the top of column 11, as a practical precautionary step; if his attempt was unsuccessful, he would have thus saved himself the trouble of writing out the text of Mark 14:54-16:8 only to have to start the whole thing over.
Having successfully fit Luke 1:1-56 into the last six columns of the cancel-sheet, the corrector then turned his attention to the text of Mark 14:54-16:8. In column 4, he reverted to the use of the lettering-compression he had used when writing the text of Luke 1:1-56; this is why there are 707 letters in column 4. This appears accidental. (The possibility cannot be absolutely ruled out that the proof-reader compressed his lettering at this point because he changed his mind, decided to follow an exemplar that contained Mark 16:9-20, and then changed his mind again. It seems worth noticing that if he had continued to compress his lettering throughout the rest of the text of Mark, and if he had also adopted the text of an exemplar that contained verses 9-20, he would have been able to reach the end of Mark 16:20 in the available space, with room to spare. But it is simpler to figure that the proof-reader simply lost track of what he was doing.)
Then the proof-reader stopped compressing his lettering, and began to compensate for the letter-compression by slightly stretching out his lettering in columns 5, 6, 7, and 8. But after accidentally skipping most of Mark 16:1, he still did not have enough text to reach column 10, even writing at a rate of 600 letters per column (30 letters less than usual).
He could have simply written the rest of chapter 16, up to verse 8, in his normal lettering, and thus finished Mark in column 9, with a blank column between the end of Mark and the beginning of Luke, but he made a conscious decision not to do that. Instead, he stretched out his lettering even more, so as to write only 552 letters in column 9. Thus he had 37 letters remaining to place in column 10.
Thus it is clear that although the proof-reader had no aversion to large blank spaces elsewhere in the manuscript, he deliberately avoided leaving a blank column between Mark 16:8 and Luke 1:1 on the cancel-sheet. This feature, by itself, sufficiently demonstrates that the proof-reader was aware of at least one other way the text of Mark could end.
In addition, when he reached the end of Mark 16:8, he added a uniquely emphatic decoration – similar to his usual design, but embellished so as to leave no doubt that he believed that the text of Mark ought to end there.
The surprising significance of the cancel-sheet’s embellished arabesque was noticed in the 1800’s by John Gwynn, F.H.A. Scrivener, Edward Miller, and George Salmon. Salmon observed that the decorative line’s basic design “occurs three or four times in the Vatican Old Testament, but the prolongation of the arabesque has no parallel in either MS. We see that the scribe who recopied the leaf betrays that he had his mind full of the thought that the Gospel must be made to end with εφοβουντο γαρ, and took pains that no one should add more.” (p. 147-148, Introduction to the NT, 1904 edition)
John Gwynn wrote the following in 1883: “As regards the omission of the verses of S. Mk. xvi. 9-20, it is not correct to assert that Cod. Sinaiticus betrays no sign of consciousness of their existence. For the last line of ver. 8, containing only the letters ΤΟΓΑΡ, has the rest of the space (more than half the width of the column) filled up with a minute and elaborate “arabesque” executed with the pen in ink and vermilion, nothing like which occurs anywhere else in the whole MS. (O.T. or N.T.).” (from p. xiii (Addenda et Corrigenda) of the third edition of Scrivener’s Plain Introduction.) Miller expanded Gwynn’s remarks on pp. 300-301 of The Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels with carefully chosen words: “It seems hardly possible to regard these carefully executed works of the pen of the diorthota otherwise than as precautions to guard against the possible restoration, by a subsequent revisor, of a portion of text deliberately omitted by him (the diorthota) from the end of the Gospel.”
It seems a very sound deduction that the corrector added the embellished arabesque in order to convey that nothing should follow 16:8. Salmon’s observation is solid: the corrector’s mind was full of the thought that Mark should end at the end of 16:8. And this implies that the corrector’s mind also held an awareness of at least one alternative to that abrupt ending.
But which ending was the corrector thinking about: verses 9-20, or the Short Ending, or both? Codex Sinaiticus was almost certainly produced at Caesarea, and, as I mentioned already, Eusebius, when commenting about the ending of Mark in Ad Marinum, displayed no knowledge whatsoever of the Short Ending. Taken together, these factors tilt the probabilities distinctly in favor of the conclusion that the corrector of Sinaiticus had verses 9-20 in mind when he avoided leaving a blank column between Mark 16:8 and Luke 1:1, and added the arabesque after Mark 16:8 in the cancel-sheet, in the hope that it would prevent any would-be corrector from adding verses 9-20 in small letters in the underlying space and/or lower margin.
These details about these pages of Codex Sinaiticus, which are hardly ever mentioned in commentaries (because Metzger didn't mention them), show that although Sinaiticus is a witness to the existence of the ending of Mark at 16:8, it is also a witness to its creators' awareness of a continuation after 16:8 which almost certainly consists of verses 9-20.
Yours in Christ,
James Snapp, Jr.
37818,
Here is a hypothesis i developed to account for the extraordinary shifts in the rate of letters-per-column in the cancel-sheet. I don't have video-tape of the proof-reader-copyist at work, but I think this theory has compelling elegance.
When the proof-reader sat down to make this cancel-sheet, he realized that the main challenge would involve making the text of Luke 1:56a dovetail with the text of Luke 1:56b on the following page. If this was not accomplished properly, he would have to start over. To reduce the risk of wasting time and effort, he did not begin to make the cancel-sheet at the beginning, in Mark 14:54; instead, he began writing at the top of column 11, with Luke 1:1. To repeat: the proof-reader began writing on the cancel-sheet at the top of column 11, as a practical precautionary step; if his attempt was unsuccessful, he would have thus saved himself the trouble of writing out the text of Mark 14:54-16:8 only to have to start the whole thing over.
Having successfully fit Luke 1:1-56 into the last six columns of the cancel-sheet, the corrector then turned his attention to the text of Mark 14:54-16:8. In column 4, he reverted to the use of the lettering-compression he had used when writing the text of Luke 1:1-56; this is why there are 707 letters in column 4. This appears accidental. (The possibility cannot be absolutely ruled out that the proof-reader compressed his lettering at this point because he changed his mind, decided to follow an exemplar that contained Mark 16:9-20, and then changed his mind again. It seems worth noticing that if he had continued to compress his lettering throughout the rest of the text of Mark, and if he had also adopted the text of an exemplar that contained verses 9-20, he would have been able to reach the end of Mark 16:20 in the available space, with room to spare. But it is simpler to figure that the proof-reader simply lost track of what he was doing.)
Then the proof-reader stopped compressing his lettering, and began to compensate for the letter-compression by slightly stretching out his lettering in columns 5, 6, 7, and 8. But after accidentally skipping most of Mark 16:1, he still did not have enough text to reach column 10, even writing at a rate of 600 letters per column (30 letters less than usual).
He could have simply written the rest of chapter 16, up to verse 8, in his normal lettering, and thus finished Mark in column 9, with a blank column between the end of Mark and the beginning of Luke, but he made a conscious decision not to do that. Instead, he stretched out his lettering even more, so as to write only 552 letters in column 9. Thus he had 37 letters remaining to place in column 10.
Thus it is clear that although the proof-reader had no aversion to large blank spaces elsewhere in the manuscript, he deliberately avoided leaving a blank column between Mark 16:8 and Luke 1:1 on the cancel-sheet. This feature, by itself, sufficiently demonstrates that the proof-reader was aware of at least one other way the text of Mark could end.
In addition, when he reached the end of Mark 16:8, he added a uniquely emphatic decoration – similar to his usual design, but embellished so as to leave no doubt that he believed that the text of Mark ought to end there.
The surprising significance of the cancel-sheet’s embellished arabesque was noticed in the 1800’s by John Gwynn, F.H.A. Scrivener, Edward Miller, and George Salmon. Salmon observed that the decorative line’s basic design “occurs three or four times in the Vatican Old Testament, but the prolongation of the arabesque has no parallel in either MS. We see that the scribe who recopied the leaf betrays that he had his mind full of the thought that the Gospel must be made to end with εφοβουντο γαρ, and took pains that no one should add more.” (p. 147-148, Introduction to the NT, 1904 edition)
John Gwynn wrote the following in 1883: “As regards the omission of the verses of S. Mk. xvi. 9-20, it is not correct to assert that Cod. Sinaiticus betrays no sign of consciousness of their existence. For the last line of ver. 8, containing only the letters ΤΟΓΑΡ, has the rest of the space (more than half the width of the column) filled up with a minute and elaborate “arabesque” executed with the pen in ink and vermilion, nothing like which occurs anywhere else in the whole MS. (O.T. or N.T.).” (from p. xiii (Addenda et Corrigenda) of the third edition of Scrivener’s Plain Introduction.) Miller expanded Gwynn’s remarks on pp. 300-301 of The Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels with carefully chosen words: “It seems hardly possible to regard these carefully executed works of the pen of the diorthota otherwise than as precautions to guard against the possible restoration, by a subsequent revisor, of a portion of text deliberately omitted by him (the diorthota) from the end of the Gospel.”
It seems a very sound deduction that the corrector added the embellished arabesque in order to convey that nothing should follow 16:8. Salmon’s observation is solid: the corrector’s mind was full of the thought that Mark should end at the end of 16:8. And this implies that the corrector’s mind also held an awareness of at least one alternative to that abrupt ending.
But which ending was the corrector thinking about: verses 9-20, or the Short Ending, or both? Codex Sinaiticus was almost certainly produced at Caesarea, and, as I mentioned already, Eusebius, when commenting about the ending of Mark in Ad Marinum, displayed no knowledge whatsoever of the Short Ending. Taken together, these factors tilt the probabilities distinctly in favor of the conclusion that the corrector of Sinaiticus had verses 9-20 in mind when he avoided leaving a blank column between Mark 16:8 and Luke 1:1, and added the arabesque after Mark 16:8 in the cancel-sheet, in the hope that it would prevent any would-be corrector from adding verses 9-20 in small letters in the underlying space and/or lower margin.
These details about these pages of Codex Sinaiticus, which are hardly ever mentioned in commentaries (because Metzger didn't mention them), show that although Sinaiticus is a witness to the existence of the ending of Mark at 16:8, it is also a witness to its creators' awareness of a continuation after 16:8 which almost certainly consists of verses 9-20.
Yours in Christ,
James Snapp, Jr.
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