Aristotle’s Earliest Extant Manuscripts. New Doubts and Perspectives

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This paper follows up on two previous contributions in Aristotelica (3 and 5) that focused on the early transmission of Phys. 250b13 as a case study. Here, the discussion broadens to general questions about the scribal hands behind Aristotle’s earliest manuscripts J (ms. Vindobonensis Phil. gr. 100) and E (ms. Parisinus gr. 1853), their roles in textual history, and their connections to the earliest reconstructable archetype. Current scholarship holds that while the sources of J and E overlap for the Metaphysics (labeled Π by Jaeger’s 1957 critical apparatus), they diverge entirely for the other works held by both codices, i.e. Physics, De caelo, De generatione et corruptione, Meteorology. How can this be explained? A major, recent development is Ronconi’s (2012) identification of two distinct tenth-century volumes later combined into ms. E. Each has a main early scribe at work. Thereafter, no attempt has been made to differentiate their approaches to the text. In Aristotelica 5, E’s two early scribes are distinguished and labeled, the one, EMet (responsible for the Metaphysics) the other, EPhys (responsible for the Corpus Physicum). The two exhibit differing approaches. Through closer analysis of their methodologies, it is possible to investigate and eventually to detect what I call a “β agenda” in EPhys’s Corpus Physicum, by analogy with the socalled β manuscripts of the Metaphysics.