360 Clarence Russell Williams, 



We find, therefore that the scribes of both B and S knew of one 

 or more conclusions of the Gospel which seem to have gained some 

 currency by the fourth century, but which apparentlj^ were not yet 

 looked upon as authentic. The best MSS they considered ended at 

 V. 8. in which they agree with the testimony of Eusebius. 



But have we in S an independent witness, or simply a duplication 

 of the witness of B? 



Six leaves of N, among them Fols. 28 and 29 on which Mk. 14 : 54— 

 Luke 1 : 56 are written, were not copied by the usual scribe of N but 

 by a scribe who is usually designated D. Tischendorf identified this 

 scribe with the scribe who wrote the whole of Codex Vaticanus. On 

 the basis of this identification, accepted by Dr. Hort and many other 

 critics, Dr. Scrivener argued that S and B must be considered as 

 furnishing one witness, not two. Lake however, in his recent edition 

 of N holds that Tischendorf was probably mistaken in this iden- 

 tification, and in proof presents on the same page specimens of the 

 writing of the scribes of N beside a column from Codex Vaticanus. 

 This shows, as he claims, a greater difference betw'een the scribe of 

 Vaticanus, and scribe D of Sinaiticus than between scribes D and C 

 of the latter. 



But a solution of the problem of the identity or difference of the 

 scribes of the two codices at the end of Mark is not required for a 

 decision of the still more important question whether in these codices 

 we possess two witnesses or only one, since the last verses of Mark 

 in S and B were evidently copied from different exemplars, as is shown 

 by their text. Therefore, since S and B go back to different exem- 

 plars, they must be considered two separate, if not in all points in- 

 dependent, witnesses. 



However, for those who accept the identification of Tischendorf it 

 furnishes an additional, though slight, support for the interpretation 

 of the significance of the arabesque of iS given above, since if both 

 codices were at this point copied by the same scribe, we might ante- 

 cedently expect that in »S as in B he would furnish some indication 

 of his knowledge of the existence of a conclusion for Mark. Since 

 these sheets seem to have been written to take the place of canceled 

 folios, he may have found it impossible to indicate his knowledge by 

 a blank column as in B, and therefore have used this less obtrusive 

 method, — which has been generally overlooked or ignored, — of an 

 elaborate arabesque, to indicate his knowledge of an ending to Mark, 

 current in his day, which nevertheless he rejected. Here again, we are 

 unable to say whether this rejection was due to his knowledge of 

 the best texts of the day, or to his faithfulness in copying his exemplar. 



