Terrance Callan, «Reading the Earliest Copies of 2 Peter», Vol. 93 (2012) 427-450
An examination of the three earliest extant copies of 2 Peter (namely those found in Papyrus 72, Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus) is made in order to determine how the meaning of 2 Peter is affected by differences among the three copies, especially the textual variations among them. These textual variations produce significantly different understandings of Jesus in the three copies of 2 Peter, as well as other less prominent differences in meaning.
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Testament is now missing; so the codex does not contain Hebrews
9,15-end, 1 and 2 Timothy, Titus, Philemon and Revelation. How-
ever, it may originally have included these writings. Readers of this
copy of 2 Peter would have known from the codex that they were
reading part of the Bible.
1. The Work of the Scribe
The scribe who wrote 2 Peter in Codex Vaticanus was the best of
the scribes who wrote the early copies of 2 Peter we are examining.
The text of 2 Peter in Codex Vaticanus has remarkably few scribal
errors. Most common are itacisms in which ei has been written in-
stead of i; this occurs 11 times (in 1,1.4.17.20 [twice]; 2,6; 3,1.3.8
[twice].17).
There is one case of misspelling where part of a word is omitted,
namely esxa instead of esxata in 2,20. In 2,14 akatapastouj
has been mistakenly written instead of akatapaustouj. In 2,18
mataioththj has been mistakenly written instead of mataiothtoj.
In 3,5 sunestwshj has been mistakenly written instead of
sunestwsa.
A few errors have been corrected in the manuscript:
1. In 1,16 an e has been written above the line before the i in mega-
liothtoj, making it megaleiothtoj. Likewise, in 2,1 an e has
been written above the line before autoij, making it eautoij.
2. In 2,7 a t has been written above the q in lwq, making it lwt. In
the same verse a r has been written above the line over erusato,
making it errusato.
3. In 2,8 and 16 a g has been written above the first n in enktoikwn
and elencin respectively, making them egkatoikwn and elegcin.
4. When the letters of the text were traced over at a later point in its
history, the e in all of the itacisms mentioned above was not dark-
ened. To this extent they were all corrected.
The scribe of 2 Peter in Vaticanus is the one called B who wrote
the entire New Testament. He also wrote part of the Old Testament;
the rest was written by the scribe called A. Tischendorf suggested
that scribe B of Vaticanus was the same as scribe D of Sinaiticus.