Satan in the Latin Freer Logion

Anyone interested in the textual criticism of the New Testament knows about the so-called Freer Logion. This is a passage found in only one known New Testament manuscript, Codex Washingtonianus (ca. 400), also called the Freer Codex after the art collector who bought it in the beginning of the twentieth century. The Freer Logion can be found in Mark 16, in between vss 14 en 15. So we are talking about words that were inserted into the unauthentic 'longer ending'. The Freer Logion starts as follows:

And those ones excused themselves, saying, “This age of lawlessness and unbelief is under Satan (ὑπὸ τὸν σατανᾶν), who does not permit ... (transl. Craig Evans, WBC)

Although the Freer Logion became known as a manuscript reading only in the twentieth century, the first half of it was already known from the very beginning of the textual criticism in the age of the printed book. In the annotationes to his 1516 NT edition, Erasmus refers to Jeromes Dialogues against the Pelagians. Here (in section 15 of book 2) Jerome quotes, in Latin, an addition to the ending of Mark he says can be found especially in Greek copies.

Well then, while I was reading the Freer Logion in the text of Erasmus, I was surprised. Something was missing there, that is, Satan was dropped. The Freer Logion in the annotationes of Erasmus:

Et illi satisfaciebant dicentes: seculum istud iniquitatis et incredulitatis substantia est, quae non sinit ...

These words may be translated  as something like:

And they excused themselves, saying: this age 'consists of' (?) lawlessness and unbelief, which does not permit ...

I'm not sure whether the way 'substantia' (for which Lewis & Short offer, among others, the meaning 'that of which a thing consists') is used here, is awkward or not. But apparently, this is what Erasmus found in his manuscript or manuscripts of the Dialogues, and also what he prints in his edition of Jerome. Moreover, until the end of the twentieth century, this is printed as text in every edition of Jerome's Dialogues.

It is not so difficult to see what went wrong in the transmission of the Latin Freer Logion. SUBSATANA ('under Satan') was misread (or misheard) as SUBSTANTIA. The following relative pronoun, the masculine 'qui', was subsequently changed into the feminine 'quae' to make it correspond with 'substantia'.

In fact, Migne, who published Jerome's works in the second half of the nineteenth century, knew about a Vatican manuscript that had the reading 'sub Satana'. Migne acknowledges that this reading makes much more sense than 'substantia'. However, since he thought this manuscript continued with the wrong pronoun 'quae', he did not dare to adopt this reading, and to print, without manuscript evidence, the right pronoun 'qui'. In other words: he did not want to resort to conjectural criticism. Migne's reluctance is typical for a theological tradition of fear to go beyond the manuscripts.

Migne's remark ended up in the Nestle-editions. E.g. in the most recent 28th edition one finds in the apparatus at Mark 16, in the quotation of Jerome, 'substantia (= sub Satana?)'.

A final twist, then. Migne was mistaken. The Vatican manuscript from which he knew about the reading 'sub Satana' simply continues with the right pronoun: qui. In fact, the oldest manuscript of the Dialogues known today, a 6th/7th century codex in possession of the library of Lyon, also has 'sub Satana..., qui'. This is also the reading of the modern critical edition, the 1990 CCSL volume of Moreschini. Therefore, it no longer makes sense to refer to 'sub Satana' between brackets, like Nestle-Aland does. (I have been told that in the forthcomoning third print of NA28 'sub Satana ..., qui' will replace 'substantia ..., quae'.)

Moral from this story? I would say: strange things can happen in the transmission of ancient texts. And to this I would add, as a student of New Testament conjectural criticism, we should not reject a conjecture too quickly, simply because it is too brilliant to be true. Imagine we would not have Codex Washingtonianus, nor Latin manuscripts with 'sub Satana'. And then a clever scholar would conjecture 'sub Satana'. Probably we would smile, appreciate the creativity, but reject it as too far-fetched, and point at the pronoun that needs to be changed to show that the scenario of textual corruption is highly implausible.
Again, strange things happen.

Erasmus, Opera Omnia, Amsterdam edition

In November 2009, I posted on the older Basel and Leiden editions of Erasmus’ Opera Omnia.

As I recently found out, most volumes of the vast and ongoing project of the Amsterdam edition are now online as well, in open access, and as PDF with OCR text. The latter is not perfect, but it still facilitates research enormously, of course.

For New Testament scholars, most important are the sixth “ordo”, with Erasmus’ NT texts and annotations (five volumes available, out of six published so far; two more volumes are to be published shortly), and the seventh, with the “paraphrases” (only one volume so far). Also the ninth “ordo”, with Erasmus’ “apologiae” etc. is important for a good impression of his New Testament scholarship.

But why not see for yourself the real critical Latin edition of the Praise of Folly, or of the Dialogue on the correct pronunciation of Latin and Greek? I could go on, but I won’t, this time.

For more information on the ASD edition, readers are referred to the site of the Huygens Institute.

Finally, most volumes of Allen’s edition of Erasmus’ letters are available at the Internet Archive. This is actualy the third “ordo” of Erasmus’ works, not repeated in the Amsterdam edition.

Erasmus’ New Testament editions online

[This post is regularly updated to reflect new finds and possibilities; for any suggestions, please use the comments.]

Erasmus published five editions of his Latin-Greek New Testament, with annotations, in 1516, 1519, 1522, 1527, and 1535. Gradually, all these editions have become available online. There were also Latin-only editions (not listed here).

1516

The Swiss www.e-rara.ch has Erasmus’ Novum Instrumentum omne of 1516, with the Annotationes (actually one of the copies of the Universtätsbibliothek Basel, shelf mark BibG B 3).

Navigation is easy, and the site’s table of contents is extensive (though not as exhaustive as to contain each NT book or even chapter). The quality of the images is good. From the contents page, one can download PDF files of parts of the book. One can also download a PDF of the entire book.

There is another copy in the digital collections of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek (Staatliche Bibliothek, Regensburg, shelf mark 999/2Script.238).

There are also GB versions of the 1516 edition: Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, shelf mark 4.D.10; Universiteitsbibliotheek Gent, shelf mark BIB.ACC.015856).

Yet another, interesting copy is found in the Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek Düsseldorf (shelf mark ULBD DUE 01 α); it is from the collection of (first owner) Johannes Cincinnius von Lippstadt, who even noted on which day he bought the book, and how much he paid for it (see f. aaa 1v), and who made extensive use of it.

Another copy is found at the Bibliothèque humaniste de Sélestat: Novum Instrumentum with Annotationes (shelf mark K0929).

Another copy is found at the Thüringer Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek Jena (Bibliotheca Electoralis, shelf mark 2 Theol.VIII,1).

1519

Erasmus’ second edition of 1519, with the Annotationes, is available as well at e-rara (Universitätsbibliothek Basel, shelf mark FG V 40-41).

There is another copy of the text volume at e-rara (Universitätsbibliothek Basel, shelf mark AN VI 217).

Another copy is found at the Bibliothèque humaniste de Sélestat: NT (shelf mark K1093); Annotationes (shelf mark K1002).

GB has the text volume of Universiteitsbibliotheek Gent (shelf mark BHSL.RES.1676).

This second edition of 1519 is also available at at the Thüringer Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek Jena (Bibliotheca Electoralis, shelf mark 2 Theol.VIII,2).
It is further possible to make links to specific page views, e.g. Erasmus’ conjecture φθονεῖτε at Jas 4:2, for example, or his annotation on the reading:

1522

Erasmus’ third edition of 1522, with the Annotationes, is available as well at e-rara (Universitätsbibliothek Basel, shelf mark FG V 42-42a).

Another copy is found at the Bibliothèque humaniste de Sélestat: NT (shelf mark K1096); Annotationes (shelf mark K1098).

Another copy is found at the Thüringer Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek Jena: NT and Annotationes (Bibliotheca Electoralis, shelf mark 2 Theol.VIII,3a).

GB has the annotations volume of Universiteitsbiblioteek Gent (shelf mark BIB.ACC.017827).

1527

Erasmus’ fourth edition of 1527, with the Annotationes, is available as well at e-rara (Universitätsbibliothek Basel, shelf mark FG V 43-43a).

The 1527 volume with the Annotationes is available in the Württembergische Landesbibliothek Stuttgart.


Another copy at the Bibliothèque humaniste de Sélestat: NT (shelf mark K1002); Annotationes (shelf mark K1099).

1535

Erasmus’ fifth edition of 1535, with the Annotationes, is available as well at e-rara (Universitätsbibliothek Basel, shelf mark UBH FG V 44:1-2).

The 1535 edition can also be found at the Erasmus Centre for Early Modern Studies, but only the New Testament text, not the Annotationes. Previously the Centre used the DjVU format, but since 2014 it provides PDFs instead.

Another copy at the Bibliothèque humaniste de Sélestat: NT (shelf mark K1092); Annotationes (shelf mark K1100).

Other copies can be found at GB: Österreichische Nationalbibliothek (shelf mark 4.O.18: Text and Annotationes); Universiteitsbibliotheek Gent (shelf mark BIB.TH.004088; in one volume).

[updates]
[12 January 2015: added more 1516 editions and supplied shelf marks for these; updated information on the 1535 copy at ECEMS; updated the page view links to the Jena copy of the 1519 edition; added GB/ONB copies of the 1535 edition.]
[1 Februari 2017: added the e-rara 1519 and 1535 editions; added some more shelf marks; updated URLs to DOI]
[13 May 2017: added some Gent volumes: the 1516 edition; the 1519 text volume; the 1522 annotations volume; the 1535 edition.]
[10 June 2017: added the e-rara 1519 text volume.]
[18 September 2017: added the Sélestat volumes (all five editions).]
[25 February 2018: added the Jena 1516 and 1522 volumes; updated the 1519 volume.]

The scribal blunder in the Codex Corsendoncensis (min. 3)

As I was given access to the expert mode of the INTF Virtual Manuscript Room (thanks Martin), I decided to finally see for myself what the famous scribal blunder in min. 3 (VMR no. 30003) looks like. The example was discussed briefly last year on the Evangelical Textual Criticism blog.

Minuscule 3 (Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Suppl. gr. 52) contains the entire Greek New Testament except Revelation. It is named Codex Corsendoncensis , because it was one of two manuscripts from Corsendonk used by Erasmus when he was working on the second edition of his New Testament (published in 1519). Its date is given as twelfth-century. [The other Corsendonk manuscript is a Latin Gospel manuscript, now in the Berlin Staatsbibliothek (Ms. theol. lat. qu. 4)].

The manuscript has not yet been indexed for the VMR (any volunteers?), so it took me some time to find the correct page. It turns out to be f. 376^v; the VMR number is 8110.

The blunder itself concerns 2 Cor 8:4. The normal Greek text of 2 Cor 8:4-5a runs as follows: ... ⁴ μετὰ πολλῆς παρακλήσεως δεόμενοι ἡμῶν, τὴν χάριν καὶ τὴν κοινωνίαν τῆς διακονίας τῆς εἰς τοὺς ἁγίους· ⁵ καὶ οὐ καθὼς ἠλπίσαμεν, ... (‘... ⁴ begging us earnestly for the favor of taking part in the relief of the saints -- ⁵ and this, not as we expected, ... - RSV, taking τὴν χάριν καὶ τὴν κοινωνίαν together). As indicated in NA²⁷, some manuscripts add δέξασθαι ἡμᾶς at the end of verse 4, thereby having an AcI depending from δεόμενοι: ‘that we accept the favor and the community ...’
Min. 3 also has this addition. Its text, however, is as follows: ... ⁴ μετὰ πολλῆς παρακλήσεως δεόμενοι ἡμῶν τὴν χάριν καὶ τὴν κοινωνίαν τῆς εἰς τοὺς ἁγίους, δέξασθαι ἡμᾶς ἐν πολλοῖς τῶν ἀντιφράφων οὕτως εὕρηται ⁵ καὶ οὐ καθὼς ἠλπίσαμεν, ...
Note the omission of τῆς διακονίας after τὴν κοινωνίαν, which could already qualify as a scribal blunder (due to homoeoarchton), for the following τῆς can no longer be understood. The real blunder, however, is found in the words just after δέξασθαι ἡμᾶς: ἐν πολλοῖς τῶν ἀντιφράφων οὕτως εὕρηται (‘thus it is found in many copies’). This simply has to be a marginal note, mistaken for a correction, and put into the text by a scribe who was apparently thinking of quite other matters than the relief of the saints.
One can surmise that the original note included (began with) δέξασθαι ἡμᾶς. Thus, the scribe’s exemplar signalled the variant reading δέξασθαι ἡμᾶς and even added some information on it.

With the kind permission of the VMR team, I can now show the image on this blog (taken from the VMR jpg, which represents the INTF microfilm; slightly enhanced for b/w contrast; f. 376^v; VMR no. 8110). As can be seen, someone marked the blunder in the text and even put a mark in the left margin to draw attention to it.

The reception history of the scribal blunder itself is interesting as well. It was mentioned for the first time by none other than Erasmus. In his 1519 edition, he added a long note to his annotation on these verses. The example must have been very welcome to him, for it is clear proof that even the sacred texts are not free from ridiculous scribal errors and that textual criticism is necessary, whatever theologians may say. He concluded the note by saying that ‘we found innumerable places corrupted for this same cause'. Even before the 1519 edition, he had already mentioned the case in his apology against Faber Stapulensis. There, the point made was somewhat more specific. He warned his colleague to not naively trust (Greek) manuscripts. Keep thinking critically.

I would not be surprised if Erasmus were the one responsible for the underlining and marginal note in the manuscript. However the microfilm image cannot be conclusive in this respect. What we do know is that Erasmus did not hesitate to put a personal note in the manuscript he used. In this case, he did so even twice, once in Latin, on f. 1^r (VMR no. 80), and once in Greek, on f. 181^v (VMR no. 3970). Let me show you an enhanced image of the latter:

 Well, at least he wanted the manuscript to be kept safe ...

In subsequent centuries, the blunder was frequently mentioned in text-critical books. Bengel, in his 1734 Greek New Testament, refers to Erasmus. Metzger also mentions the case in his Text of the New Testament (3-1992, p. 194; see also Metzger/Ehrman 4-2005, pp. 258-259), referring to Bengel. Perhaps in a future edition, Erasmus himself could be mentioned as well.

The example itself may indeed have some importance for text-critical reasoning in general and conjectural emendation in particular. It shows that marginal annotations which were mistakenly adopted into the text did occur. The question remains, however, how widespread the phenomenon actually is, and how it can be demonstrated in cases that are less clear than the one in min. 3.

The Basel and Leiden editions of Erasmus' Opera omnia online

The Erasmus Center for Early Modern Studies, an initiative of the Erasmus University Rotterdam and Rotterdam City Library, has an impressive website, which is gradually expanding. An important element is ‘Erasmus online’ (EOL) a full database of the Erasmus collection in Rotterdam.

I recently found out that the complete Basel edition of Erasmus’ works (edited by Beatus Rhenanus; published in 1540; some 9500 pages!), as well as the Leiden edition (LB; edited by Clericus; published 1703-1706; more than 6000 large pages!), are available (in DjVU format).

Of course, for those volumes that are available, scholarly work has to be done on the basis of the Amsterdam edition (ASD) and the Toronto Collected Works of Erasmus (CWE). Still, these resources are very welcome, and, as far as I can see, very well done.
Finally, a tip for querying the database: select an author (e.g. Erasmus) by using the index and choose facsimiles only. And perhaps it is not a very good idea to try downloading these massive works ...

Hoskier on Greek scholars

While reading Hoskier's Concerning the Text of the Apocalypse, I came across a nice generalization made by Hoskier. Discussing min. 617 (his no. 74), he writes (Vol. I, p. 238):

This MS. is written by a Greek scholar, a thing fatal to the accurate transmission of the sacred text, it would seem.

Which reminds me of a statement once made by Erasmus (against Stunica, ASD IX-2, p. 200):

... no one corrupts books more, or more dangerously, than the half-learned or the learned even when they are for the most part careful. (... nulli magis aut periculosius depravant libros quam semidocti aut docti etiam partim attenti.)

In general, I find that Hoskier's work bristles with emotion, something one would not immediately expect from these hundreds of pages with manuscript descriptions and collations.