3. The writing materials. The usual pen, as at present in hither Asia, was made of a small, delicate, hard reed; of which there are many specimens in this country. But sometimes a pen (penna, lit. a quill) was employed; and not unfrequently an iron, brass, or silver stylus, formed somewhat like our present steel pens, but usually with a body or handle attached to the writing part, which was slender up to near the top, and there was usually made broad, for the convenience of such as might wish to write on waxen tablets, and be able to make erasures. In 3 John 13, the apostle speaks of writing διὰ μέλανος καὶ καλάμου by ink and reed, or with a reed pen. Ornamented manuscripts exhibit a great variety of inks, red, blue, green, yellow, etc. 4. Forms of the letters and mode of writing. In all the older manuscripts, the form of the letter is what critics technically name uncial. This means literally any thing (and in this case a letter) which is an inch in length, breadth, or height. But as no manuscripts were written in a hand so large, the expression is to be taken as designating what we now call a large text hand, or, as we express ourselves, any thing written in capital letters. But the reader must not imagine, that these capitals were uniformly of the same shape as those now employed in printed Greek. On the contrary, almost every manuscript differs from its neighbour in some of the minutiae of form; yet the small cursive letters, which we now employ almost exclusively in printing Greek, did not, so far as we know with certainty, make their appearance in New Testament manuscripts until the ninth and tenth centuries. After this period, they came into almost exclusive use. But still, there was a great variety even in the forms of these, as well as in the uncial letters. The best exhibition of all these varieties is in Montfaucon's Palaeographia Graeca, a work which would have immortalized the author as an antiquarian, if he had written nothing else, and which still remains the coryphæus of all works of such a nature. As to the mode of writing in the older manuscripts, it is in most codices continuous, i. e. written from the beginning to the end of each line, without any other division or separation of words or indication of their limits, than what the very few final letters of the Greek indicate. The Iota, now written and printed as subscript, was anciently written in the line; e. g. ПIOⱭEMOI i.q. noλéμœ, AE KATEI i. q. 8ɛxάry, where, moreover, short O and E, in the last syllables, stand, as in innumerable cases in the manuscripts, for 2 and H. The reader of manuscripts written in such a style, must of course be very familiar with the Greek, in order to read correctly and with facility. Every thing, as to sense, depended on the division of words which he himself made. How this difficulty was in some measure remedied, after a while, we shall see in the sequel. But that it would naturally give birth to not a few different modes of reading the text, must be quite obvious. Thus in Phil. 2, 4, some codices have ἕκαστοι σκοποῦντες, but the Cod. Boern. reads ἑκάστοις κοποῦντες, which arises from a different manner of dividing the text. As to the accents, breathings, and Iota subscript, they are generally omitted in the older codices; at least the accents are omitted, and in the generality of them the breathings and Iota subscript also. It was not until the year 462, when Euthalius published the Acts and Epistles iv orizous, that the text of the New Testament began to be fully both accented and aspirated. After this work of Euthalius, it soon became somewhat common to provide the Greek text with the apparatus of the diacritical signs. Yet codices still continued, more or less, to be written without them. It was so late as the tenth century, before the diacritical signs of the Greek became, in a good measure, universal. The reader is requested to take notice of these facts, because an important use is to be made of them in the sequel. Mention has just been made of an edition of the Acts and Epistles v orizons, by Euthalius, a deacon of Alexandria, about A. D. 462. Some further explanation of origo now becomes necessary, inasmuch as this was the first important departure from the old custom of writing the New Testament serie continuâ. It has been said, indeed, that the continuous method of writing was universal or without exception, until about this period. But this is a mistake. Aristophanes of Byzantium, about 200 B. C. made use of some diacritical points, which answered nearly the same purpose as the origo, and nearly the same as our modern interpunction. A point of the same form as our present period, he put behind the last letter in a full sentence, and near its top; a point (of the same form) he also placed at the bottom of the last letter, in a clause which we should mark with a semicolon or colon; and a point placed at the middle of the last letter of a word, denoted a comma-clause. The addition to the text of accents and aspirates is also ascribed to the same individual. But, obvious as the utility of all his diacritical apparatus was, it does not appear to have been employed, except in the schools, until after the fifth century came in. Slowly did the diacritical signs, even then, make their way; so that at last, in the ninth and tenth centuries, they became all but universal. So far as the New Testament is concerned, it is a matter of indifference how early, or how late, the present diacritical apparatus was employed in the heathen Greek schools. Enough that we cannot trace the employment of it in the New Testament, with certainty, to a period antecedent to that of Euthalius, excepting indeed some mere scraps of this apparatus; and that we have full assurance, that Euthalius, according to the testimony of Epiphanius, wrote the Scriptures (Acts and Epistles), xaτà 7q0owdíar, xai περὶ τῶν προσωδῶν τάδε· ἐξεῖα, δασεία, βαρεῖα, ψιλή, περισπωμένη, x. 7. 2. that is, he wrote the acute accent, the aspirate, the barytone or grave, the smooth breathing, the circumflex, etc.' We have just adverted to the fact, that Euthalius (A. D. 462) made out a copy of the Acts and Epistles v origos. Although this was a novel thing, as to the codices of the New Testament at that period, yet it was not in itself novel, nor was it an original invention of Euthalius. Josephus, near the close of his Archaeology says, that he had comprised it in twenty books, ž dè μvgiáoi orízois, i. e. and in six myriads (60,000) of orizo. This shows, that in his time it was a common thing to write in this way. The obvious advantages to unpractised readers of such a method, could not fail of being duly appreciated. It was making a large advance toward our present punctuation. A brief specimen of it, comprising Tit. 2, 2. 3, will at once show the reader the truth of this allegation: ΠΡΕΣΒΥΤΑΣ ΝΗΦΑΛΙΟΥΣ ΕΙΝΑΙ ΣΩΦΡΟΝΑΣ ΥΓΙΑΙΝΟΝΤΑΣ ΤΗ ΠΙΣΤΕΙ ΤΗ ΑΓΑΠΗ Epiph. de Ponder. et Mens. c. 2. ΤΗ ΥΠΟΜΟΝΗ ΠΡΕΣΒΥΤΙΔΑΣ ΩΣΑΥΤΩΣ ΕΝ ΚΑΤΑΣΤΗΜΑΤΙ ΙΕΡΟΠΡΕΠΕΙΣ ΜΗ ΟΙΝΩ ΠΟΛΛΩ ΔΕΔΟΥΛΩΜΕΝΑΣ ΚΑΛΟΔΙΔΑΣΚΑΛΟΥΣ This specimen is from the Codex Coislinianus, and is copied from Montfaucon. It exhibits a division of words, as well as of clauses which accord with punctuation. It also exhibits the Omega, but omits any sign of the aspirate. Yet we are not to suppose, that so great advances were made all at once by Euthalius. A small specimen of Acts 1, 1, will show how the matter probably stood in his day: ΤΟΝ ΜΕΝ ΠΡΩΤΟΝ ΛΟΓΟΝΕΠΟΙΗΣΑΜΗΝ ΠΕΡΙΠΑΝΤΩΝΩΘΕΟΦΙΛΕ In our present cursive Greek we write the same thus: Τὸν μὲν πρῶτον λόγον ἐποιησάμην περὶ πάντων, ὦ Θεόφιλε. It would seem quite probable, then, that the first advances toward interpunction did not include any division of words, but only of clauses. Yet even this was a great relief to the reader. No wonder that Euthalius found so ready a welcome in his improvements, as to the mode of writing out the New Testament text. It was not long before the Gospels were written in the same manner, i. e. v oriyos, as well as the Acts and the Epistles edited by Euthalius. But whether these orizou were introduced by himself into manuscripts of the Gospels, or by some other person, is not certainly known. Erelong, this mode of copying the New Testament began to be regarded as too expensive. Parchment was dear; and the volume or codex was made too bulky by this process; for the greater portion of the lines were not half filled out. The consequence was, a relapse into the old method of filling out each line; but, at the same time, the copyist inserted a point or colon where the end of each orizo would be, so that the reader might be advertised where he should make his pauses. The Codex Cyprius, assigned by Montfaucon to the eighth century, and by Scholz to the ninth, exhibits a complete specimen of this mode of writing. The defect in this however, is, that one point (colon) stands for all sorts of stops, whether period, colon, or comma. This defect was soon felt, and after many different substitutes,-e. g. a revival of the old diacritical signs of Aristophanes of Byzantium already mentioned, then the use of a point, and also the sign of the cross, and in some manuscripts, of two points for the end of a sentence,--the final result was, our modern and present Greek interpunction. From the tenth century onwards, nearly all the Greek codices exhibit this, although with considerable variety of forms in the symbols. Indeed, the forms of interpunction can hardly be considered as stationary and fixed, until they became so by the art of printing. It is obvious that the division of words, as exhibited above in the specimen of the Codex Coislinianus, would soon take place, after interpunction had become an object of attention. But still, there were always some who loved and reverenced the antique manuscripts, and copied them out in all their peculiarities. This was very natural; and hence it is, that some of the more modern manuscripts preserve the form of the ancient ones, and consequently the mere form or appearance of any manuscript does not entitle it, as a matter of course, to any just and valid claim of antiquity. Let the critic beware, moreover, since such is the state of the case, how he trusts implicitly in the mere absence of accents and of Iota subscript, as certain indications of antiquity. Down to the tenth century it was not uncommon to write in this way.' On the other hand, the breathings belong to some of the oldest manuscripts of the Greek Testament, e. g. Cod. Vaticanus, Claromontanus, San-Gallensis, etc. The letter H is the usual symbol of the aspirate, and when thus employed, it is written as a letter in the same line with other letters; yet there is a variety of forms or symbols besides this, for the breathings; and the presence or absence of them, moreover, is no certain test either of antiquity or of the contrary. Let us pause here, for a moment, and see what influence the facts now before us ought to have on the critical exposition of the New Testament. No division of words now existing in our copies, no punctuation, See Montfaucon, Pal. Graec. pp. 276, 278, 295. De Wette Einleit. § 29. |