Block Mixture

Contents: Introduction * Noteworthy Block Mixed Manuscripts * Bibliography

Introduction

All known manuscripts are copied and corrected from previous manuscripts. Usually the manuscripts are taken and corrected from a single exemplar, but this is by no means universal. A scribe's exemplar might be damaged as some point, forcing him to refer to another manuscript. Or he might come into the scriptorium one day to find his exemplar in use, and have to refer to another for that day. Or the exemplar might have been very thoroughly corrected in different places from different manuscripts. Or a scribe might suffer revisor fatigue and, for practical purposes, correct only part of a manuscript. Or, conceivably, a scribe might have started to copy from one manuscript, decided he didn't approve of its text, and turned to another.

All of these are possible causes of block mixture, where a manuscript displays a sudden shift of text-type within a corpus. (If a manuscript shows a change in type between one corpus and another, this is not considered block mixture; this situation is too common to invite comment. We should simply keep in mind that the fact a document is Alexandrian in, say, the Gospels, does not mean it will belong to that type in other parts of the New Testament.)

Block mixture should not be confused with ordinary mixture, in which elements of different text-types occur constantly throughout a manuscript. Ordinary mixture is thought to be the result of correcting a manuscript of one type from a manuscript of another (meaning that readings from both manuscripts will become jumbled together), while block mixture arises from the sole use of multiple exemplars.

One might give an analogy from baking. One can take a measuring cup of sugar, and a measuring cup of flour. The sugar might be Alexandrian readings, the flour Byzantine. As long as the sugar is in one cup and the flour in another, the texts are block mixed. If we take the two and mix them together, then put them back in the cups, they are mixed, not just block mixed.

Or let's try another analogy: Let's think of ordinary mixture as being like mixing paints, while block mixture is like mixing colored tiles. If you mix red and yellow paint, you get orange paint -- not paint with splotches of red and splotches of yellow. The two are thoroughly united; you can't take them back apart or point to one section of paint and say "this is from the can of red paint."

But, instead of painting the wall or floor, think of covering it with tiles, some red, some yellow. Whoever laid the tiles brought in several boxes. He laid red tiles until the box ran out, then started on the yellow, then perhaps went back to red. For any given tile, you can tell which box it came out of. The overall floor is not red or yellow, but there is no place where it is orange. In any given section, it is red or yellow. Similarly, a block-mixed text may have Alexandrian and Byzantine strands (for example), but any particular section is either from the Alexandrian or the Byzantine source, not both. In an ordinary mixed manuscript, you will see Alexandrian and Byzantine readings in immediate proximity throughout.

The phenomenon is not solely confined to Biblical manuscripts; I have read of it occurring in Chaucer manuscripts, though I cannot verify this of my own knowledge. And reading catalogs of Piers Plowman manuscripts (where there are three easily distinguishable recensions) gives the impression that the majority of manuscripts are block-mixed! (The problem is so extreme in that case that it almost certainly deserves some sort of examination to try to understand how it came about.)

Block mixture is not overly common, but neither is it rare. Students should always be alert to it, and never assume, simply because a manuscript belongs to a certain text-type in one book or section of a book, that it will belong to that type in another section.

Incidentally we should note that even printed editions, especially those from the early days of printing, may be block mixed; printed texts rarely used more than one source at a time, so if (say) Q3 of a Shakespeare play was set from Q2 of the same play, but the compositor's copy of Q2 has a damaged leaf, the compositor might dig up a copy of Q1 and set the one page from that -- and then go right back to setting from Q2, even though Q1 is earlier and, very possibly, more authoritative. Something like this appears to have been true of "Richard III," for instance: most of the text of the First Folio is believed to derive from a 1622 quarto corrected from manuscript, but some parts are derived from a 1602 quarto which was not corrected from manuscript.

Noteworthy Block Mixed Manuscripts

The following list highlights some of the better-known examples of block mixture.

• Sinaiticus. In the Gospels, ℵ is generally Alexandrian. The first nine or so chapters of John, however, do not belong with the Alexandrian text; they are often considered "Western." (For a recent examination of this, see the article by Fee.)
• C/04. The fragmentary nature of C makes it difficult to define its mixture. But it is generally agreed that, in the gospels, it is mixed. Some have argued that it is block mixed. Gerben Kollenstaart reports on the work of Mark R. Dunn, who concludes, "C is a weak Byzantine witness in Matthew, a weak Alexandrian in Mark, and a strong Alexandrian in John. In Luke C's textual relationships are unclear." C's textual affiliations certainly change after that; in the Acts and Paul, it belongs with ℵ and A. In the Catholics, it is closer to 1739. Is this block mixture, or simply changes between corpuses? A more detailed examination is probably needed.
• L/019. Codex Regius, L of the Gospels, is mostly Alexandrian in Mark, Luke, and John. In the first three-quarters of Matthew, however, Byzantine elements predominate. (This is probably the result of incomplete correction in an ancestor due to revisor fatigue, but it is possible that two sources were involved.)
• R/027. The general run of the text of this copy of Luke is about 80% Byzantine (the remainder being Alexandrian). In chapters 12-16, however, Alexandrian elements come to dominate, constituting about 60-70% of the total.
• W/032. The Freer Gospels are the most noteworthy example of block mixture, containing a high number of textual shifts and no particular pattern to their occurrence. (This has led to significant speculation about the manuscript. Henry A. Sanders, the original editor, believed W was copied from scraps of manuscripts which survived Diocletian's persecution; Streeter instead suggested that the various books were copied from multiple exemplars, which showed different patterns of corrections.)
  Metzger lists the books' contents as follows: Matthew -- Byzantine. Mark 1:1-5:30 -- "Western." Mark 5:31-end -- "Cæsarean." Luke 1:1-8:12 -- Alexandrian. Luke 8:13-end -- Byzantine. John 1:1-5:11 -- Supplement with mixed text. John 5:12-end -- Alexandrian. (Hurtado, however, argues that the break in Mark occurs not in Mark 5 but around the end of Mark 4, and that while Mark 1-4 are "Western," Mark 5-16 do not align clearly with any text-type. This should serve as a reminder that it is not always possible to know exactly where one block ends and another begins; since most types of text agree most of the time, there will almost always be a certain amount of text around the boundary which might come from either source.)
• Δ/037. Byzantine in Matthew, Luke, and John, but with a strong Alexandrian element in Mark (especially in the first half of the book).
• Ψ/044. In the gospels, Ψ is defective for Matthew and the first half of Mark, but the second half of Mark is strongly Alexandrian, Luke is almost entirely Byzantine, and John is mostly Byzantine but with a significant number of Alexandrian readings, implying some sort of block mixture. In Acts and Paul, it it mostly Byzantine, and less Byzantine in the Catholics, but I know of no evidence of block mixture.
• 28. 28 is for all intents and purposes purely Byzantine in Matthew, Luke, and John, but has other elements (usually regarded as "Cæsarean") in Mark.
• 33. In Paul, 33 is largely Byzantine in Romans (Davies, who points out that Romans comes from another hand, believes it has an affinity with 2344); in the other Pauline writings it is a strong Alexandrian witness. In the Gospels it is an Alexandrian/Byzantine mix, and purely Alexandrian in Acts and Catholics, but there is no sign of block mixture in those books.
• 323. In the Catholics, 323 (and presumably its sister 322) is mostly Byzantine in James, but gives way gradually to a Family 1739 text in the later epistles. (This very possibly results from revisor fatigue in an ancestor rather than true block mixture.)
• 579. Mostly Alexandrian in Mark, Luke, and John, but mostly Byzantine with scattered Alexandrian readings in Matthew.
• 630. In Paul, 630 (and its close relative 2200) are rather poor members of Family 1739 in Romans-Galatians, but entirely Byzantine in the later books.
• 1022. In Paul, 1022 is Byzantine for Romans through Thessalonians, but affiliates with the text of Family 1611 in the Pastorals and Hebrews.
• 1175. In Paul, 1175 is Byzantine in Romans, but generally Alexandrian elsewhere. It may also be block-mixed in the Catholics; James and 1 Peter seem clearly Alexandrian, but Richards reports that it is Byzantine in the Johannine Epistles.
• 1241. In the Gospels, 1241 has both Alexandrian and Byzantine readings throughout, but the Byzantine element is strongest in Matthew and Mark; in Luke it almost disappears. John falls in between. In Paul, the text shifts between purely Byzantine and Alexandrian/Byzantine mix; however, this is the result of supplements. The basic run of the text is Byzantine; where it has been supplemented, it is mixed.
• 2464. In Paul, 2464 is Byzantine in Romans; it has a much more Alexandrian text in the other books.
• 2492. In Paul, according to Gary S. Dykes, 2492 shifts between a 330-type text and a text unrelated to 330 (but probably mostly Byzantine).

Bibliography

Davies: M. Davies, The Text of the Pauline Epistles in MS. 2344 (Studies and Documents 38, 1968)

Fee: Gordon D. Fee, "Codex Sinaiticus in the Gospel of John: A Contribution to Methodology in Establishing Textual Relationships," now available as Chapter 12 of Eldon J. Epp and Gordon D. Fee, Studies in the Theory and Method of New Testament Textual Criticism (Studies and Documents 45, Eerdmans, 1993).

Hurtado: Larry W. Hurtado, Text-Critical Methodology and the Pre-Cæsarean Text: Codex W in the Gospel of Mark (Studies and Documents 43, Eerdmans, 1981).

Metzger: Bruce M. Metzger, The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration (third edition, Oxford, 1992)

Richards: W. L. Richards, The Classification of the Greek Manuscripts of the Johannine Epistles (SBL Dissertation Series 35, Scholars Press, 1977).

Sanders: Henry A. Sanders, Facsimile of the Washington Manuscript of the Four Gospels in the Freer Collection (University of Michigan, 1912).

Streeter: B. H. Streeter, The Four Gospels: A Study of Origins (Macmillan, 1924)