Codex Bezae (D05) Reading #9

Clwinbery at aol.com Clwinbery at aol.com
Fri Aug 23 16:45:51 EDT 2002



In a message dated 8/23/02 11:56:49 AM, cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu writes:

>At 10:38 AM -0400 8/23/02, Clwinbery at aol.com wrote:
>>
>>I do not have Metzger, Textual Commentary with me, but I know the committee
>>often saw the difficult reading as the cause of the other readings. Is
>the
>>truncated EMNHSTEUMENH (But remember the morphology in which a word whose
>>stem begins with a double consonant like MN or ST often simply added E
>for
>>reduplication - EGNWKA) the cause of two corrections?  Caesarean
>>MEMNHSTEUMENHN and western - MEMNHSMENHN as Carl has pointed out from
>BDAG.
>>Metzger describes the Western scribes as having a tendency to substitute
>>synonyms without much cause. The other instances cited so far are indeed
>>mostly synonyms. I think the D reading is both a correction of a perceived
>>error and use of a word actually more appropriate to the context.
>
>This does make sense, Carlton--that the scribe meant to correct a perceived
>error. But I would repeat the two points I made earlier about this: (1)
>the
>form EMNHSTEUMENH is in fact NOT erroneous but a legitimate perfect passive
>participle of an active verb MNHSTEUW; (2) the form MEMNHSMENHN may be
>intended as derived from MNAOMAI but as this is a "middle" (so-called
>"deponent") verb, the form MEMNHSMENHN ought not to be thought of normally
>as a "passive." And there's another point: (3) in Lk 2:5 Codex Bezae (D05)
>reads SUN MARIA - TH EMNHSTEUMENH AUTW (w/o subcript iotas, of course,
>while NA27/USB4 reads SUN MARIAM THi EMNHSTEUMENHi AUTWi. This suggests
>to
>me that MARIA is given a Hellenized spelling and a true dative as opposed
>to the indeclinable MARIAM and that EMNHSTEUMENH actually did stand in
>the
>text copied by the scribe of Codex Bezae. I grant, of course, that this
>is
>speculative.
>-- 
Yes, you are right that the form in the text is the ligitimate perfect form. 
Also the scribe of D had no trouble with it at Luke 2:5. So I would say that 
the UBS committee went with the Alexandrian in 1:27 and the Alexandrian and 
Western in 2:5. Since the Scribe of D did not change it in 2:5 also, I would 
think that this is just one of those instances when the scribe substituted a 
synonym MNAOMAI.

Carlton Winbery
Louisiana College



More information about the B-Greek mailing list