page_title: Codex Sinaiticus
section_title: Scribes and correctors
hierarchical_section_title: Codex Sinaiticus / History / Early history / Scribes and correctors
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Caesarea maritima, Amphitheater des Herodes English: Caesarea maritima, Amphitheatre of Herod
context_page_description: Codex Sinaiticus or "Sinai Bible" is one of the four great uncial codices, ancient, handwritten copies of a Christian Bible in Greek. The codex is a historical treasure.
  The codex is an Alexandrian text-type manuscript written in uncial letters on parchment and dated paleographically to the mid-4th century. Scholarship considers the Codex Sinaiticus to be one of the most important Greek texts of the New Testament, along with the Codex Vaticanus. Until Constantin von Tischendorf's discovery of the Sinaiticus text, the Codex Vaticanus was unrivaled.
  The Codex Sinaiticus came to the attention of scholars in the 19th century at Saint Catherine's Monastery in the Sinai Peninsula, with further material discovered in the 20th and 21st centuries. Although parts of the codex are scattered across four libraries around the world, most of the manuscript is held today in the British Library in London, where it is on public display. Since its discovery, study of the Codex Sinaiticus has proven to be useful to scholars for critical studies of biblical text.
  While large portions of the Old Testament are missing, it is assumed that the codex originally contained the whole of both Testaments.
context_section_description: Tischendorf believed that four separate scribes (whom he named A, B, C and D) copied the work and that five correctors (whom he designated a, b, c, d and e) amended portions. He posited that one of the correctors was contemporaneous with the original scribes, and that the others worked in the 6th and 7th centuries. It is now agreed, after Milne and Skeat's reinvestigation, that Tischendorf was wrong, in that scribe C never existed. According to Tischendorf, scribe C wrote the poetic books of the Old Testament. These are written in a different format from the rest of the manuscript – they appear in two columns (the rest of books is in four columns), written stichometrically. Tischendorf probably interpreted the different formatting as indicating the existence of another scribe. The three remaining scribes are still identified by the letters that Tischendorf gave them: A, B, and D. Correctors were more, at least seven (a, b, c, ca, cb, cc, e).
  Modern analysis identifies at least three scribes:
  Scribe A wrote most of the historical and poetical books of the Old Testament, almost the whole of the New Testament, and the Epistle of Barnabas
  Scribe B was responsible for the Prophets and for the Shepherd of Hermas
  Scribe D wrote the whole of Tobit and Judith, the first half of 4 Maccabees, the first two-thirds of the Psalms, and the first five verses of Revelation
  Scribe B was a poor speller, and scribe A was not very much better; the best scribe was D. Metzger states: "scribe A had made some unusually serious mistakes". Scribes A and B more often used nomina sacra in contracted forms (ΠΝΕΥΜΑ contracted in all occurrences, ΚΥΡΙΟΣ contracted except in 2 occurrences), scribe D more often used forms uncontracted. D distinguished between sacral and nonsacral using of ΚΥΡΙΟΣ. His errors are the substitution of ΕΙ for Ι, and Ι for ΕΙ in medial positions, both equally common. Otherwise substitution of Ι for initial ΕΙ is unknown, and final ΕΙ is only replaced in word ΙΣΧΥΕΙ, confusing of Ε and ΑΙ is very rare. In the Book of Psalms this scribe has 35 times ΔΑΥΕΙΔ instead of ΔΑΥΙΔ, while scribe A normally uses an abbreviated form ΔΑΔ. Scribe A's was a "worse type of phonetic error". Confusion of Ε and ΑΙ occurs in all contexts. Milne and Skeat characterised scribe B as "careless and illiterate". The work of the original scribe is designated by the siglum א*.
  A paleographical study at the British Museum in 1938 found that the text had undergone several corrections. The first corrections were done by several scribes before the manuscript left the scriptorium. Readings which they introduced are designated by the siglum אᵃ. Milne and Skeat have observed that the superscription to 1 Maccabees was made by scribe D, while the text was written by scribe A. Scribe D corrects his own work and that of scribe A, but scribe A limits himself to correcting his own work. In the 6th or 7th century, many alterations were made (אᵇ) – according to a colophon at the end of the book of Esdras and Esther the source of these alterations was "a very ancient manuscript that had been corrected by the hand of the holy martyr Pamphylus" (martyred in 309). If this is so, material beginning with 1 Samuel to the end of Esther is Origen's copy of the Hexapla. From this colophon, the correction is concluded to have been made in Caesarea Maritima in the 6th or 7th centuries. The pervasive iotacism, especially of the ει diphthong, remains uncorrected.
caption: In the 6th or 7th century the codex may have been housed at Caesarea
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