Last Updated:

Mar 13, 2010


  Textual Evidence


Skeat on Sinaiticus


Excerpt for review from: T.C. Skeat, J.K. Elliott, The Collected Biblical Writings of T.C. Skeat, (Brill, 2004)

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Skeat: - on Codex Sinaiticus (א)


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Skeat on Sinaiticus

Taken from:
'Especially the Parchments':
A Note on 2nd Timothy 4:13
:
Dating and Origin of
Codex Vaticanus (& Sinaiticus)

Headings/formatting may have been added for clarity and navigation purposes.

A Note on 2nd Timothy...

Dating and Origin of Codex Vaticanus (p.290)

...

(1) Sinaiticus seems to have been in Caesarea in the 6th century when parts of it were collated against a Biblical manuscript used by Pamphilus and Antoninus which, before their martyrdom in Palestine in 309 A.D., they had corrected against the Hexapla of Origen. Notes in Sinaiticus at the end of 2nd Esdras and at the end of Esther explain this. The 6th century corrections were presumably executed in the library of Pamphilus in Caesarea.

(2) Sinaiticus has links with the 6th century manuscript [Codex Coislinianus, GA#] 015 (HPaul).  015 at the end of Paul notes that this manuscript too was corrected against the copy (in Caesarea) of the manuscript used by Pamphilus.

(3) Sinaiticus and Vaticanus share a distinctive chapter division in Acts related to the so-called Euthalian material, found in certain other codices. Euthalian material was associated with Caesarea, and this implies that our two codices spent some time there. 23 The Armenian tradition contains Euthaliana and that version also has strong links with Caesarea.

(4) More importantly, Cod. Sinaiticus has certain readings that are strongly suggestive of Palestinian provenance. The reading for at Matt. 13:54 suggests that a Ceasarean-based scribe erroneously wrote the name of a nearby town. The reading at Acts8:5 is even stronger evidence that the writer was in Caesarea. There is anothe similar variant: replaces at 1st Macc. 14:5. Here the Palestinian scribe may have been thinking of the nearby town of Hippos on Lake Galilee.

(5) The Eusebian Section numbers in Cod. Sinaiticus were added by the original scribes (initially by scribe A, then by scribe D, but Luke was never completed), and it is more likely that these were known and copied in the early 4th century in Caesarea than in, say, Alexandria.


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