The Manuscript
THE MANUSCRIPT
small size of the letters together with the rapidity at which they were evidently written, the remodeling of the letters to fit the flow of the hand, their unusually even alignment and the tasteful, but economical, placing of the text on the page, all testify to the writer's experience. He shows considerable skill in observance of a right-hand margin and, like many writers of the eighteenth century, fills out his short lines with two dots (:) to keep the margin straight. His tiny writing, too, is an eighteenth-century trait and one closely connected with scholarship. That century produced innumerable manuscripts of classical Greek texts with interlinear transla tions into modern Greek or with scholia in hands so minute that it is impossible to read them without a glass.
That the writer was a scholar is also shown by his spelling. Although confusion of the various vowels sounded as e was common in his time, he has only once fallen into it (ε'ξαντλ ήται, for εξαντλείται, II. g,1 unless έξήντληται is to be read). He always writes iota subscript and writes it as subscript. He usually writes the coronis. He frequently distinguishes grave from acute accents, and does so correctly; there is only one misplaced accent in the whole text (βλασφημόν for βλάσφημον, II. 7), and this is probably due to haste rather than ignorance, as is his use of 0 for 6 in the preceding line and his omission of the accent of καί at the ends of lines (1.2,7 and III. 1 1 ) . That he consistently accentuates Μάρκος rather than Μάρκος reflects the usage common in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. His most frequent fault is one to which modern Greeks are especially liable — failure to notice rough breath ings. He has written what are probably smooth breathings in four places where rough breathings should have appeared (1.23,26, II. 2 1,22), and he once has ούκ instead of ούχ before a rough breathing (III. 13). These errors do not prove that the manuscript he copied was incorrect in these points; nor does the usual correctness of his spelling prove that it was generally correct. He probably copied by reading the phrases and then repeating them as he wrote them down. Therefore it is not surprising that what he wrote should sometimes reflect either his knowledge or his pronunciation, rather than the reading of the text he w2s copying.
That he was a scholar is shown also by the shapes of his letters. The whole style of the hand shows the influence of the Greek typography of western Europe. I am indebted to A. Angelou for the observation that the shape of the nu , in particular, is characteristically western. Western influence, however, is no proof of western origin, and here the basic hand, on which the influence has been exercised, seems to be native Greek. Most of the larger and many of the smaller Greek monasteries stocked their libraries, during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, with western editions of the Church fathers, and the type used in these editions perceptibly influenced monastic hands. Professor Scouvaras has produced an eighteenth-century ecclesiastical document in a native Greek hand strikingly similar to that of our manuscript. (See Plate IV.) A number of the nus, in particular, are practically identical. Since Scouvaras' document is an autograph codex of the Oecumenical
Patriarch Callinicus III and was written about 1760 in the Phanariot hand which i . References in this form are to the plates at the end of the volume and to the lines of the text as shown on the plates.
THE MANUSCRIPT
had been formed in Constantinople shortly before that time, we may suppose with some probability that the writer of the present letter had been trained in the Patri archal Academy in Constantinople.
Further proof of the writer's scholarship is his familiarity with many of the older
Greek manuscript abbreviations and ligatures. A list of all his abbreviations and a number of his more drastic ligatures will be found in Appendix A; it contains perhaps slightly more of these forms than would normally be found in a manuscript of the mid-eighteenth century. The writer's usage of these special forms is universally correct, though sometimes ambiguous. The use of a flourish to indicate both the smooth breathing and the circumflex reduces both -ου and οΰ to / or ; the cir cumflex combined with the rough breathing is sometimes no more florid than without \ oy= ου or -ου). In general, the hand is remarkably cursive.
As the manuscript progresses the cursive character of the hand becomes more marked. The writer was evidently in a hurry. It may be that lack of time forced him to break off, as he did, in the midst of a page and of a sentence; on the other hand, the text he was copying may itself have been a fragment and have broken off at this point. The copyist's haste appears unmistakably in the greater size and sweep of the letters at the end of his text, by comparison with those at the beginning. It is shown also by a number of minor mistakes of writing besides those already men tioned. ταταυτοΰ, probably for τα αύτοΰ, in 1. 19 may reflect uncertainty rather than haste, and αποθνήσκων written over άττοθανων ( ?) in 1. 28 may be a deliberate correction of the reading of the manuscript he was copying. But in II. 20 τών seems to have been omitted by haplography after αυτών (though such omission of the article is not uncommon in later Greek prose), and on III the curious υς ligature at the end of the first word probably results from correction of a minor slip of the pen, immedi ately after it was made; the 7 τ of ini in 1 1 1. 8 shows another slip of the pen, uncorrected, and the T of eonv in III. 17 shows yet another, caught and corrected at once. For the most part, however, the text is amazingly correct, especially considering the small size and obvious speed of the writing. These characteristics prove it to be a copy of some earlier manuscript. That anyone in the seventeenth or eighteenth centuries should have written such Greek at such speed as an original composition is incredible.
From all these observations taken together it would seem that our text was copied probably in the eighteenth century, by a monk (he began his work with a cross) who pronounced his words in modern Greek fashion but had an excellent knowledge of patristic Greek. His handwriting had been influenced by his study of patristic texts in western editions which were presumably available to him in his monastery and had probably come by way of Venice. He was interested not only in patristics, but also in the beginnings of western critical scholarship, for the book into which he copied our text — Voss's edition of the genuine epistles of Ignatius — was no mere reprint of a standard author, but one of the most advanced works of scholarly criticism of its time.
Since the copyist was a scholar, it is impossible to decide how far his copy owes its amazing orthographic correctness to him. For the same reason it is difficult to
THE MANUSCRIPT
say whether the avoidance of hiatus by elision, when it is thus avoided, is due to the copyist or to the original. Admittedly the copyist was in a hurry while he copied, but he might previously have studied the text and inserted minor corrections. For the time being we shall assume that his corrections, if any, were minor. With this assumption we proceed to the primary test for authenticity — examination of the wording.
TWO The Letter
Text and commentary,
II.
Synthesis of Findings,
A. Linguistic and stylistic data, 67 1. Vocabulary, 67 2. Verbal association, 67 3. Comparisons and metaphors, 71 4. Forms of reference, 72 5. Formulas beginning sentences, 73 6. Prepositions, 73 7. Syntax, 75 8. Euphony, 75 9. Clausulae, 75 B. Conclusions from the linguistic and stylistic data, 76
C. Content, 77 1. Knowledge and use of Scripture, 77 2. Knowledge of the classics, 79 3. Knowledge, faith, and gnosis, 80 4. The secret tradition, 81 5. Attitude toward the Carpocratians, 82
6. Differences, real or apparent, 82 I. Text and commentary The following commentary illustrates the relationship between the style of the letter and that of the generally accepted works of Clement of Alexandria. However, it does not present the parallels to extremely common expressions, which could be paralleled from any good Greek author of the period; these seemed insignificant for the question of authenticity. Similarly, when Clement has provided plentiful parallels, the usage of other authors has not been cited. The discussion of points of content, likewise, has been limited as far as possible to the presentation of evidence relevant