442 
raemi (see pl. 2). Originally written 
in the fifth century, this Greek Bible 
was erased in the twelfth century and 
many of the sheets rewritten with the 
text of a Greek translation of 38 
treatises or sermons by a Syrian Church 
Father of the fourth century, St. 
Ephraem. (This was not the only time 
when the text of the Scriptures has 
been obscured by sermons.) By the 
application of certain chemical re- 
agents scholars have been able to re- 
store with some success the almost 
obliterated underwriting, although the 
task of reading it is most trying to the 
eyes. Sometimes palimpsests can be 
read by photographing them under 
infrared rays or with special fluorescent 
lamps. 
The Dating and Editing of Manuscripts 
How does a scholar determine the 
date when a Greek manuscript of the 
New Testament was written? In some 
medieval manuscripts the scribe would 
occasionally include certain personal 
and chronological information which 
enables the modern editor to reckon 
the scribe’s date. But most manu- 
scripts Jack such scribal colophons, as 
they are called. Scholars are then 
compelled to judge the age of the docu- 
ment on the basis of its style of hand- 
writing and artistic decorations (if the 
manuscript has such). 
Until about the ninth century most 
books were written with large letters, 
quite like our capitals, called uncials. 
In the course of the centuries, however, 
these uncial letters became thick and 
clumsy. Then, in the ninth century, 
Theodore the Studite, or some of his 
associates in the monastery of the 
Studium in Constantinople, popular- 
ized a bookhand of small letters (mi- 
nuscules is the technical name) as we 
write, in a running or cursive script. 
Because this script was adopted almost 
at once throughout the Greek world, 
manuscripts of the New Testament fall 
into two well-defined groups, the older 
being those written with uncial letters 
and the later with minuscule letters. 
It is possible, however, to date manu- 
ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1948 
scripts within much more narrow 
limits than is afforded by the distinc- 
tion between large and small letters. 
Styles in handwriting change from age 
to age. Tables of typical letters of the 
alphabet have been drawn up from 
dated manuscripts of each century and 
even half century, and by comparing 
the script of an undated document 
with these it is possible to estimate its 
age with tolerable accuracy. 
In addition to dating a manuscript, 
the editor of a newly found document 
will describe fully its external appear- 
ance and physical dimensions and con- 
dition. Further, he will make its text 
available to other scholars. This is 
done either by publishing the entire 
text as it stands or, more frequently, by 
publishing only those words or phrases 
which differ from a generally accepted 
norm. This process of comparing the 
text of the manuscript word by word 
and letter by letter with a printed text 
accepted as a standard is called col- 
lating the document, and the resulting 
collation supplies material for a critical 
apparatus of variant readings. When 
it has been observed that a number of 
manuscripts of the New Testament 
consistently agree in adding, omitting, 
or otherwise altering various words 
and phrases, such manuscripts are said 
to be related to each other in families 
or types of text. The final task of an 
editor is to seek to determine to which 
of the previously isolated families his 
newly discovered document belongs. 
Statistics of Greek Sources of the New 
Testament 
It is customary to classify the Greek 
manuscripts of the text of the New 
Testament into several categories, 
partly according to the material out of 
which they are made, partly according 
to their script, and partly according 
to the use to which they were put. 
At first, editors of the New Testa- 
ment used abbreviations of cumber- 
some titles to designate Greek manu- 
scripts. Since no one system was 
agreed upon by all editors, it was 
exceedingly confusing to compare the 
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