Family II and the Codex Alexandrinus

Abstract

JBL 56 (1937) =57-6o Family II and the Codex Alexandrinus. The Text according to Mark, by Silva Lake, [Studies and Documents V] Christophers, London, 1937. For many years Mrs. Lake has been engaged in the study of the text of the New Testament, and is well known as a collaborator with her husband. In this independent study she reveals the results of this incomparable training. The present volume is of value not only for the light it throws on this particular type of text, but as an example of the way such a study should be carried out. Similarities between the texts of K and II have long been noticed. Von Soden recognized that these manuscripts were but two in a long list derived from a common archetype. At first he classified the group as K^sup a^, that is, a subdivision of his K text. Later he reclassified them as I^sup k^. He furthermore considered that A was a member of the same group. Mrs. Lake has studied the group for Mark. Mark was selected because it provided more variants per page than any of the other gospels. It also provided the opportunity for comparison of this type of text with the Caesarean text of Mark 1 and 11, in the reconstruction of which she had been associated with her husband and Professor Blake (Harvard Theological Review, XXI (1928), 397 ff.). Naturally this limit may conceivably obscure some of the characteristics of this type of text which would be found in the other gospels. Furthermore, some eccentricities may be included as a result of forced harmonization of Mark's text with that of Matthew or Luke and which no apparatus criticus can hope to reveal. None the less a start had to be made, and the selection of Mark is a happy one. It soon became clear that K^sup a^ (or I^sup k^) was a real family (not merely a text) and that since II is the best example and the probable ancestor of all the others it might well be styled Fam II. To cite the evidence A KII is very misleading. K is a distinctly inferior example of this family text-in a list of twenty-one witnesses it stands thirteenth, and should be placed in the eleventh century (not ninth)while, even more important, A is not, as von Soden thought, a member of the family at all, although it is closely related through a (lost) common ancestor x. To eighteen of the twenty-eight manuscripts which von Soden had listed as the best witnesses for this type she added three others 1313,1318, and 1780 which her husband and Dr. Huffman had identified as of the same family, and from them reconstructed the family text. Furthermore, she has constructed a family tree from these twenty-one members. In this are (at least) seven missing links (called a, b, c, etc.). All but five of the twenty-one (II, 114,1079,1219, and 1500) are descendants of 1219. None (even of the other four) is a direct descendent of II, but of a lost uncial a. Since the text of Fam II is a constructed text based on the majority readings of the best five (II, 1219,1079,1346,265), often this text is that of a (not of II itself). In addition to the text and the reconstruction of the stemmata of the family she has made a full and careful examination of the textual peculiarities of all twenty-one members, with especial attention to the singularly interesting type of text found in 389. The text of Fam II flourished during the last quarter of the tenth century and through the twelfth, although many of its witnesses are earlier. Where it was produced and where it flourished is not at present known, although it would appear that Mrs. Lake plays with the possibility that it might have been on Mt. Athos. Furthermore, it is at least possible that this text is essentially that of the hypothetical but probable recension of Lucian mentioned by Jerome. What is the relation of A to II? Although it is closely related, it is not a direct ancestor. …