In the late 19th century, textual scholars Westcott and Hort established a classification of types of ancient Greek manuscripts of the New Testament. The reason for the classification was an attempt to understand the history of the development of the Greek text and determine the earliest witness to the text. Three of the oldest and most complete codices (Sinaiticus, Alexandrinus, and Vaticanus) had come from Egypt and so were placed in one group which was classified as Alexandrian texts. The conclusion that they were of the same type was based on the comparison of these texts with the majority of what were classified as the Byzantine texts. But in making the classification, little consideration was given to the comparison of the three codices to one another.

With the digitization of the Vaticanus in 1999, and now that of the Sinaiticus,  comparison has become a possibility.  The result is that the three manuscripts, although closely related in terms of geographic origin and time of composition, are in fact now considered three distinct types of text. That finding provides an interesting commentary to the statement of Origen of Alexandria, Egypt, who lamented:

‘. . . the differences among the manuscripts [of the Gospels] have become great, either through the negligence of some copyists or through the perverse audacity of others; they either neglect to check over what they have transcribed, or, in the process of checking, they lengthen or shorten, as they please.^[1]

Origen’s comments are well displayed in the case of the Apocalypse represented in the Sinaiticus. Juan Hernandez Jr. of Bethel University, St. Paul, MN, presented a paper titled “Codex Sinaiticus: The Earliest Greek Christian Commentary on John’s Apocalypse?”  In an abstract he states:

The Apocalypse in codex Sinaiticus is a striking example of a fourth-century text that differs substantially from modern critical editions. It exhibits dozens of differences at key points, reflecting the concerns, interests, and idiosyncrasies of its earliest copyists and readers. Taken as a whole, Sinaiticus’s text of Revelation may constitute one of our earliest Christian commentaries on the book, disclosing its fourth-century milieu and anticipating the later concerns of Oecumenius and Andrew of Caesarea. This is no commentary in the contemporary sense, however. Sinaiticus’s readings range from the spectacular to the mundane and include the theological, the liturgical, the commonplace and even the infelicitous. It is a text ever in tension with itself, effective both in its capacity to obscure as well as in its regulation of meaning. Clarity and confusion co-reign and compete for our attention. Despite that, we can discern a concerted effort to elucidate the Apocalypse’s message by scores of changes throughout. Some of these are inherited. Others created. All affected the reading of the text.

So what can really be learned from old texts?  It’s apparent that scribes used their role to establish ideas that supported their views of scripture just as translators may do today. It’s our job to cut through the confusion and establish what may have been intended given our understanding of the milieu of the first century. It will be interesting to see what impact this realization of the differences between Sinaiticus, Alexandrinus and Vaticanus will have on the establishment of future eclectic texts. For the last century they have been given first priority in view of their age. But now that the extent of variation and text type has been established, that could well change.