An Apparatus of the Greek Manuscripts for the Editio Critica Maior

Instructions

The Negative Apparatus

The negative apparatus is available at http://www.iohannes.com/ECMgreek/negative/index.html, and it has also been archived at http://epapers.bham.ac.uk/3277/1/index.htm.

For navigation, first select the chapter from the drop-down menu. The corresponding list of verses appears in the next drop-down menu. Select the verse, which then loads the base text and the apparatus below. The Previous and Next hyperlinks enable users to navigate easily to the verses either side. To go directly to a complete transcription (in a new window), select the relevant witness from the drop down menu in the top-right corner.

For each verse, the apparatus gives:

1. The base text of the verse, which is that of Nestle-Aland²⁸.
2. A list of witnesses which are deficient for (Def.) or omit (Om.), the entire verse.
3. An apparatus of variant readings giving for each (a) the lemma in the base text and (b) a statement of each variation from it with a list of the witness(es) supporting it.
4. The variants are identified by lower case letters, with lacunae signalled by a dash (—). Orthographic variants are listed as subreadings in grey, with the suffix 'o' by the variant identifier (e.g. ao. ειπαν). Erroneous readings which have not been regularised are indicated by the addition of an f in parentheses (e.g. a(f). της). Readings which may reflect multiple variants are indicated by the relevant variant identifiers separated by a slash (e.g. a/b/d. σοι λεγω σοι).
5. First hand readings are indicated by a * suffix to the witness siglum; corrections by the suffix C. The suffix V stands for ut videtur. Readings which have been regularised are indicated by the addition of the suffix r to the witness siglum. Lectionary readings are identified by the occasion on which they were read: e.g. S1W6D3 means Day 3 of Week 6 of part 1 of the Synaxarion, while M3D13b means the second reading (b) on Day 13 of Month 3 (November) in the Menologion.
6. Illegible text is indicated as ⟨lac⟩ or the approximate number of missing characters (e.g. ποι[2-3])
7. Clicking on the witness siglum opens the full transcription of that manuscript in a new window. The transcription retains the original orthography and lineation.

To access the apparatus (in a new window), please click on the link on the menu on the left.

The Positive Apparatus

A positive apparatus is available at http://www.iohannes.com/ECMgreek/positive/index.html. The features are identical to those of the negative apparatus, with the additional benefit that all witnesses supporting the reading of the base text are listed.

Notes on the Manuscripts

The full transcriptions of the manuscripts are hosted on the website www.iohannes.com, to which this apparatus links. Details about the conventions for the transcriptions are provided at www.iohannes.com/transcriptions/index.html. Alterations to the transcriptions after the generation of this apparatus may lead to very occasional inconsistencies between the reading in the apparatus and the transcription, although all readings which have been regularised in the transcription have been indicated by the r suffix (see above). Abbreviations have been silently expanded in the apparatus.

Supplements are included, but their presence in the edition does not guarantee that they qualify for inclusion on the same grounds as the witness which they supplement.

Papyri

Most of these were included in the printed edition made by the IGNTP. But that edition did not include transcriptions of P66 and P75. The following papyri have been published since that edition was made:

P106, P107, P108, P109, P119, P120, P121, P122

The transcriptions of these papyri were made from their editiones principes in the Oxyrhynchus series. In making that edition, we recognised that the material numbered P44 comprised two items, which we described as P44A and P44B. These have been assigned the new Gregory-Aland numbers P44 and P128.
The printed material has on occasion been revised, notably in the parts of P66 not included in the original edition.
The following papyri were transcribed by autopsy:

P5, P22, P45, P90

Of those included in the papyrus volume, the remainder were transcribed from photographs. Particular readings were then checked by autopsy in:

P2, P6, P36, P55, P59, P60

Majuscules

The majuscule manuscripts have been divided into two categories:

• Category 1. Those which are fragmentary and difficult to read. These have been transcribed with the highest possible level of representation of all that is visible. In practice, this will vary depending on the parts of a leaf that are extant (e.g. lack of margins to show original line breaks, presence of page numbers or running titles, uncertainty over use of nomina sacra in small fragments).
• Category 2. Those which are either complete or extensive or, even if they are fragmentary, are easy to read. What is described as ‘standard formatting’ in the descriptions of individual transcriptions below applies to manuscripts in this category. It consists of the following:
  
  
  1. Layout: division of text into folios (with numbers found in the MS given), columns and lines.
  2. Punctuation: upper-case letters indicating enlarged initial letters.
  3. Orthography: as in the manuscript transcribed, with superline for nu when the MS uses it, other abbreviations indicated with brackets (e.g. κ(αι) indicates use of the και compendium), and nomina sacra indicated by a superline over the second letter of the contraction. Note that we use this superline as an indication of the nomen sacrum, and not as a reproduction of precisely what is in the manuscript. Thus it is present even when it is omitted by the copyist. This represents a difference from our practice in the papyrus volume. The change has been made in order to allow the program to recognise all readings in this category.
  4. Original text and subsequent corrections are all shown, with the following sigla:
     * the text as first written by the original hand
     C* a correction made by the original hand
     C a correction by another hand. C1 or C2 is used where more than one correction is made Other sigla are indicated in the descriptions of individual transcriptions.
     Where the first hand (or a correction) is illegible, we enter the number or probable number of letters. For example, see the reading of 02 at 4.19.
     Note that in the printed transcriptions, corrections to manuscripts are given in the footnotes, the corrected text being in italics.
  5. Lacunae: missing text is indicated by these signs:
     lac parchment is missing and the text is lost (this includes places where the parchment is present, but the text cannot be read); where the parchment is lost, and has been replaced, the text has been transcribed in a separate file
     [ουτωc] restoration of missing text is given in brackets. Sometimes we give a number or range of numbers in square brackets
     ο̣υ̣τ̣ω̣c̣ dots under letters indicate that the restoration of the text is uncertain
  6. Superscription and subscription are provided when present.

As with the papyri, the edition’s goal was to transcribe all fragmentary and difficult-to-read witnesses by autopsy. Where verification was not possible, the decision was sometimes taken to exclude the witness.
In the case of Codex Sinaiticus, further revision and refinement was developed in the project to make an online edition of the manuscript.

Minuscules

The minuscule transcriptions were developed over a longer period of time. Initial work on some in the 1970s in the USA was in the form of hand-written collations against the Textus Receptus. Some of these were turned into transcriptions and used as second versions for checking, using software developed by Dr Catherine Smith to produce a list of differences between two versions. All witnesses were also transcribed in a format containing layout down to the line level.
Other transcriptions were made as separate files. The joint set of transcription guidelines adopted by the IGNTP and INTF for transcribing minuscule manuscripts using Unicode Greek fonts is available in the University of Birmingham ePapers Repository.

Lectionaries

Only passages from John were transcribed from the lectionaries selected for this edition. A full lectionary index is available on the IGNTP website as a text file or a Word document.