Blog (1) Nic Lefebvre

    The bit of information that I found to be the most intriguing from the reading regarding the origin of the cannon was that the manuscripts were written in a scriptua continuo style. It is difficult for me to imagine copying, by hand, a piece of writing longer than 10 pages, never mind the size of the New Testament. To do this from a text that is written in a style that leaves out “punctuation, capitalization of letters, or paragraph and sentence division”1, seems impossible. Some of the later scribes copying down the manuscripts written in this style, would be responsible for not only copying the texts into their language, but they would need to install these various grammatical devices. I imagine this task to be painstakingly difficult for a few reasons in addition to those given by the book.
    First off, the placement of certain punctuation will contribute to how a sentence or phrase is interpreted. Even if the basic idea remains despite the addition of punctuation, the reader’s aesthetic experience will be effected. Consider the following passage: “Our father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” The only change I have made to this passage from the version my New Oxford Annotated Bible has is that I have omitted all the paragraph breaks and one comma. Though the meaning of this prayer is the same, it does not have the same resounding effect that the version my bible possess. Is this resounding effect consistent with the initial intentions of the author?
    Furthermore, it seems unlikely that the language used in this style, even after translated into the language of the scribes, would be completely compatible with their punctuation. Some words might  be changed around, or phrases might be flipped out of necessity. Though often these changes would be trivial, I think it is fair to assume that there are cases in which the meaning was, perhaps inevitably, dramatically altered.
    Learning about the style from which scribes had to copy and translate the books of the cannon has given me a greater insight on and respect for their duties. I am inclined to read the New Testament with an increased level of skepticism, but also a greater level tolerance for the variation.

1. B. D. Ehrman, The New Testament (3; New York; Oxford; 2004), 492.
Bibliography
Ehrman, Bart D. The New Testament. Fourth Edition. New York: Oxford, 2008.