Copying Early Christian Texts (eBook)

A Study of Scribal Practice

Alan Mugridge (Autor)

eBook Download: PDF

2016 | 1. Auflage
578 Seiten
Mohr Siebeck (Verlag)
978-3-16-154760-7 (ISBN)

Infos

It is widely believed that the early Christians copied their texts themselves without a great deal of expertise, and that some copyists introduced changes to support their theological beliefs. In this volume, however, Alan Mugridge examines all of the extant Greek papyri bearing Christian literature up to the end of the 4th century, as well as several comparative groups of papyri, and concludes that, on the whole, Christian texts, like most literary texts in the Roman world, were copied by trained scribes. Professional Christian scribes probably became more common after the time of Constantine, but this study suggests that in the early centuries the copyists of Christian texts in Greek were normally trained scribes, Christian or not, who reproduced those texts as part of their trade and, while they made mistakes, copied them as accurately as any other texts they were called upon to copy.

Born 1952; 1981-84 church minister; 1987-92 lecturer at St. Philip's Theological College, Kongwa, Tanzania (East Africa); 1993-2003 lecturer in New Testament, since 2004 Senior Lecturer in New Testament at Sydney Missionary and Bible College; 2010 PhD.

Inhalt

Cover 1
Preface 8
Contents 12
List of Figures and Graphs 16
Abbreviations & Sigla
Glossary 20
Chapter 1: The papyri and their handwriting 22
1. Purpose and argument of this book 22
a. Purpose 22
b. Argument 23
2. The papyri in this study – Christian papyri and the comparison set 23
a. ‘Christian’ papyri 23
b. The comparison set 26
c. Dates 27
d. Language 28
e. ‘Papyri’ 28
f. Papyri including other Greek texts 29
g. Provenance 30
h. Code numbers 31
3. Writers and writing in the Roman Imperial period 32
a. Writers 32
i. ‘Slow-writers’ 32
ii. ‘Occasional writers’ 33
iii. ‘Scribes’ 34
b. Writing in the early Roman Imperial period 39
4. The writers and writing of the papyri 41
a. Levels of competence 41
b. Classification of the writing and writers of the papyri 42
Chapter 2: Content, material, form and size 47
1. Content 47
a. Textual content 47
b. Other languages 50
2. Material 51
a. Writing surface 52
b. Re-use of a papyrus 54
3. Form 56
4. Size 59
a. Codices 59
i. Papyrus codices 60
ii. Parchment codices 63
b. Rolls 66
c. Sheets 67
d. Wooden ‘tablets’ 69
Conclusion 70
Chapter 3. Page layout 72
1. Rolls 73
a. Column height, upper margin and lower margin 73
b. Column breadth and inter-columnar space 75
2. Codices 78
a. Column height, upper and lower margins 78
b. Column breadth, inner and outer margins 81
c. Inter-columnar space 85
3. Sheets 86
a. Column height, upper and lower margins 86
b. Column breadth, left and right margins 88
c. Column breadth and inter-columnar space 89
4. Wooden tablets 89
Conclusion 90
Chapter 4. Reading aids 92
1. Pagination 93
2. Titles and headings 96
3. Section markers 97
4. Sense lines and stichometric layout 99
5. Punctuation 101
6. Lectional signs 104
a. Diaeresis (trêma) 104
b. Apostrophe 107
c. Breathings 109
d. Accents 110
Conclusion 111
Chapter 5. Writing the text 113
1. Number of writers 113
2. Letter height, interlinear spacing and leading 115
3. Letters per line, even right margin and line-fillers 118
a. Letters per line 118
b. Even right margin and line-fillers 120
4. Lines per column 121
5. Critical signs and corrections 122
a. Critical signs 123
i. Anchor 123
ii. Asterisk 123
iii. Diplê 124
iv. Obelus 124
v. Signs with uncertain meaning 124
b. Corrections 125
i. Omission or correction indicated by a sign 126
ii. Deletion of text 126
iii. Insertion of text 127
6. Marginal notes 129
7. Decorations and illustrations 130
8. Linguistic features 134
a. Phonology and orthography 135
b. Morphology and selected syntactic features 137
9. Abbreviations 138
10. The Tetragrammaton 140
11. Nomina sacra 142
a. .e.. 144
b. ...... 145
c. ...... 145
d. ....t.. 146
e. p.e.µa 147
f. a....p.. 148
g. pat.. 148
h. .... 149
i. ...a.. 149
j. ...a... 149
k. ..t.. 150
l. da..d 150
m. µ.t.. 151
n. .e....a..µ 151
o. .ta...., .ta.... 151
p. Other abbreviations 152
12. Stichometric counts 158
13. Accuracy of textual transmission 159
Conclusion 163
Chapter 6. Conclusion 165
1. Copyists and scribes 168
2. Copyists and faith 172
3. A new model 174
Catalogue of Papyri 176
Excluded papyri 432
Bibliography 435
Tables 466
Concordance 539
Index of Publications of Papyri 558
Index of Ancient Sources in Papyri 567
Index of Authors 575
Index of Subjects 578

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 1.7.2016
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Geschichte ► Allgemeine Geschichte ► Altertum / Antike
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Religion / Theologie ► Christentum
• ISBN-10: 3-16-154760-8 / 3161547608
• ISBN-13: 978-3-16-154760-7 / 9783161547607