# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_October 1863_S320
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

320                              Church and Contemporary History.

...nothing less than a new authority has been gained. We share here only the conclusion of the article, which contains the result of the investigations. It reads:

"From this it follows, then, once again: 1) that Cod. Sinait. has flowed from more than one of the old codices, namely precisely from Vatic. and Alexandr., or at least from literal copies of the same, since these surely could not have shared in the scribal errors of the Sinait. ("quae miro vitio laborant" — which labor under a strange defect); that Sinait., accordingly, offers a base text that is dependent on these, not independent, yet eclectic, and one already itself furnished with inner criticism; and next, 2) also this, that it belongs to the Alexandrian family of manuscripts, and to that extent — as the forms also show — represents only a one-sided, and in particular a grammatical, recension. To be sure, that Alexandrian class receives through it a reinforcement; but it still remains, after all, only an itio in partes [a division taking sides], in which, for the individual divergent readings, no decisive weight is gained through a new witness that counts only toward the testimony of its own kinship.

Perhaps this is also the place to say something about the already-mentioned ending of the Gospel of Mark. This the Sinaiticus likewise closes off, like its counterpart Vaticanus (which, along with it, in like manner also omits John 5:3 ἐκδεχ[ομενων] — 4 νοσήματι, and then 7:53—8:11, for inwardly quite plausible reasons — reasons which, however, are entirely lacking for the later insertion at that place), with the philologically as well as theologically bankrupt εφοβουντο γαρ [for they were afraid] and the customary wavy cross-mark.

This has already given some clergymen who heard of the newest "discovery" pause, since in the section thus dropped there would be lost, among other things, not only this Gospel's fuller testimony to the resurrection, but at the same time also the chief proof-text on the blessedness made conditional on faith and baptism (Mark 16:16). A wholly unnecessary worry!

The principal uncial manuscripts A, C, D, etc. have this closing pericope of Mark ("that passage is read in the codices surviving today, all of them without exception, B alone excepted," Griesbach, Comm. crit. P. II. p. 198); but if B (that is, precisely the Vatican manuscript) does not have it, then no especially increased weight accrues to that fact through the addition of its counterpart (Sin.).

Indeed, a further circumstance is added which weakens the point still more, one that above we could only touch on provisionally. For according to Dr. Tischendorf's own observation, the corrector D, besides certain individual leaves, on one occasion also wrote out entirely two connected leaves, namely the close of Mark and the beginning of Luke. According to the explanation given above, he can only have done this in his role as corrector.

What, then, is more natural than that the closing portion of Mark — offensive to him for whatever reasons (compare also verse 17 and following), yet one which, having already been written by A, he could not entirely erase or strike through — gave him occasion rather to rewrite the whole leaf extending as far as Luke 1:18, and, in coherence with it, the following leaf as well, which had probably likewise grown together with it materially! (For the remaining 5 individual leaves of the New Testament, similar reasons for their having been rewritten will perhaps yet be found.) It is only a wholesale correction.

Thus, however, the Sinaiticus is rather a witness against the breaking-off of the Gospel with εφοβουντο γαρ. In all likelihood its first hand was opposed to this, and the present gap is only a subjective later addition."

Hesse. The "Evangelische Blätter" from the Grand Duchy of Hesse report, from a good source, that the territorial magnates of the land are said to have recently formally pledged to one another to present, in future, only candidates for the preaching office of a pronouncedly confessional bent.                    (Stader Sonntagsblatt.)