Versions based on degenerative copy practices:
understanding 'ancient xerox copies'

koot van wyk (DLitt et Phil; ThD)

Kyungbook National University

Sangju Campus

South Korea

Conjoint lecturer of Avondale College

Australia

14 March 2010

One of the most controversial investigations is the one that investigate the variants in the versions and their relation to the perfect standard of the consonantal text of the Masoretic tradition (Hebrew). Of course this Hebrew text in full form is late, 1008 CE for Codex Alleppo but when one looks at 4QDana and compares this Qumran fragment with this late Hebrew text, the accuracy is 99.9%. Very high. It is the highest percentage of accuracy in comparison to any version, no matter which Orthodox churches' version.

Does this mean that our Bible is defective? No, it depends which English or other language Bible we do have. Is it based on the Vulgate, the Syriac, the Targum, the Coptic, the socalled Greek said to be the LXX or any other translation? That answer will be yes, they are defective.  Fact remains, all of them were made with defective manuscripts full of errors and oversights or slips of various kinds.

If the translation was made with the Hebrew for the Old Testament and the translation is very literal, one is on the right track and safe.

Case study: Judges 6:4

The copyist for 4QJudga came to this verse and due to orthographical difficulties was confused with a slip of the eye. What happened is that the scribe tried to avoid dittography, thinking that he already wrote bysrael when he wrote wlo-ysyrw. In reality, the scribe was to write both of these expressions. So, what happened? In the first writing of 4QJudga the word bysrael "in Israel" fell out. By second reading, the correction was made by supplying this ommission supralinear. One can clearly see the supralinear addition of the error. Were the Qumran manuscripts full of errors? Without doubt.

Second phase errors

Someone copied a manuscript similar to 4QJudga in future and at this verse something interesting happened. The variants increased. This phenomenon may be due to a kind of "ancient Xerox copying agency" that existed in which their task was to duplicate a few of these, probably to seel them or whatever the purpose. This will account for the errors abounding in the manuscripts also. There are other factors also possible, of which we will mention below some. The Hebrew copyist also added bysrael supralinear just as in 4QJudga but now the beth-preposition in the supralinear correction was misread as a lamed and wrongly copied as lysrael. Orthographical difficulties caused the scribe to read ybwl as kol. Beth and kaph are very similar and such a misreading is no surprise. So, in essence the scribe wrote it correct, took away his eyes from what he wrote and when he read the manuscript he read the same word he just copied but his time wrongly as kol = "all". 

This copy of a manuscript very similar to 4QJudga served then the translator of the Syriac centuries later. The reader to the Syriac scribe also copied the extra kol as the previous copy had but when he came to the reading of the supralinear correction lysrael, but wrote it twice, namely the second time as lysr and also inverted the next two nouns following this misreading. The Syriac text was based upon a defective Hebrew manuscript that someone copied of a manuscript similar to 4QJudga since some of the  errors overlap.

What happened in ancient copy practices at times, is that someone went into a library, memorized the verses, went out and dictate it to a scribe. This dictation was done on a wax sheet and written cryptic which became a notebook from which another reader or the same reader dictate to a scribe to write with neat handwriting. He can read the "notebook" by himself or he can let someone read for him. With the discovery of old notebooks, there was no other way than sorting out the orthography by themselves. After the neat form was created, women were used to copy these manuscripts neatly to make several copies. Each of these phases of the scribal copy process will have its own set of errors involved. The nature of the errors will be different at each phase. It is not always easy to figure out which phase of the scribal process we are dealing with when we are focussing on the variants but at times, there is helpful clarity. The copy process is a complicated process and scholars who study manuscripts do not pay enough attention to this aspect of variants. They just list the variants and try to use statistics to guess a scenario.  

Third phase errors

This second copy of a manuscript similar to 4QJudga was then copied by a third Hebrew scribe who copied from the second error-ful copy.

He left out the initial waw-consecutive due to a slip of the eye. The kol that was added to the previous Hebrew manuscript of the second phase, moved later in the sentence probably because of a slip of the memory. It moved now later in the sentence to a position just before ysrael. The lamed before ysrael was severed from ysrael and substituted with the mem before hayah, which was dropped. A slip of the ear is clear in hayah which was wrongly written as haya. However, both entered the text, error and correct form.

This Hebrew errorfull copy fell into the hands of the scribe of the Vetus Latina in 190 CE and that explains his misreading with additions omnino, ad, huic in this verse. Slips of the eye, slips of the ear and slips of the memory are in this text.  We see the phenomenon of supralinear corrections that are floating. Floating means that they are written above a word but a scribe misunderstood and connect it to the wrong noun. The copy of the Vetus Latina by Lucifer of Cagliari in the early fourth century included all these variants as well. He misheard (slip of the ear) the Gazan as Gazam.

Fourth phase of errors

The copyist of the Hebrew to the Aramaic translation of the Targum of this verse also copied the phrase welo ysayrw mehayah wrongly as leysr by hayah twice. Why? Because someone before made the error of writing wrongly leysr hayah and then supralinear in that notebook was written the correction welo ysayrw mehayah. So what happened? The Targumist scribe did not know which of the two is the correct one and wanted to keep both the error and correction in the text, thus the supralinear was placed before the error in that order.

Fifth phase of errors

The third phase of copyist errors of the Hebrew manuscript that the Vetus Latina used was copied again for Jerome. But the copying was no simple matter. The errors of the Vetus Latina copyist of the Hebrew manuscript entered were kept, namely also omnino, ad and pertinens, just like the Vetus Latina. Now in 392-402 CE the Hebrew scribe that would produce a manuscript that Jerome used, copied very sloppy. Slips of the ear are committed and alehem is read as ahelehem = tentoria. Normally the error was written first and the correction afterwards. In this case the correction before the error in this copy. It is possible that it was written supralinearly and that the copyist did not know what to do with it and thus dictated both. This slip of the ear as error was followed soon with a slip of the eye since weyeshytw et-ybwl was misread as keyes beziz kol = sicut erant in herbis. Here we have orthographical problems. However, the scribes had no definite surety that their manuscript is correct since they entered both the error and correction into the text, error first and then and thus, anyone who is trying to find the true Word of God in this translation of Jerome, will have to first "fix" the text.

For this very reason, we have to say that the versions are based upon defective copies during a time of degenerative scribal practices. It was difficult times in those days with Romans burning vaticinia ex eventu books like prophecy genre and especially Jewish works. It was book stealing times and copying thereof and leaving the copy in the libraries from where they were stolen, for example in Alexandria Library by those who stole during the time of the writing of the socalled LXX. Difficult times due to the stealing of public libraries by the empires in succession. Difficult times due to persecution in which a certain religion, whether Christian or Jewish or both were illegal and their books also. Christian Jewish polemics also made it difficult to procure good copies.

Why do we not say that the versions copied 4QJudga? Because there is a large omission in 4QJudga of three verses Judges 6:7-10 that is not shared by these versions and neither by the standard text, the consonantal text of the Masoretic tradition. Yet, the area of variants on the whole are similar. That is why we suspect that the same "xerox factory" copied more than just one manuscript and that errors were duplicated in this way. 

People may ask if Jesus used the defective LXX or Greek Septuagint in the New Testament since it appears as if the New Testament authors used the LXX and not the consonantal text of the Masoretic tradition. In brief, no. This explanation we will answer in a separate article. Scholars have commented on links or connection that they saw in Qumran, Vetus Latina and the Lucian Greek manuscript families of manuscripts dptv and nglw. We will comment on this relation in another article.