TY - JOUR A1 - Gordon, Nehemia A1 - Patrick, Andrist A1 - Hahn, Oliver A1 - Vasileiadis, Pavlos D. A1 - Calvillo, Nelson A1 - Rabin, Ira T1 - Did the Original Scribes Write the Distigmai in Codex Vaticanus B of the Bible (Vat. gr. 1209)? N2 - The fourth-century Greek Bible manuscript Codex Vaticanus B (Vat. gr. 1209) contains pairs of horizontally aligned marginal dots known as distigmai, which correspond to textual variants in other manuscripts. The production of the distigmai has been variously dated to the 4th or 16th centuries. A fourth-century date would prove the early existence of hundreds of textual variants, many of which are otherwise only witnessed by later manuscripts. Near infrared microscope reflectography combined with micro-X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy proved that the distigmai, both those categorized as “apricot” (which are visually similar to the ink of the original main text) and “chocolate” (which are visually similar to the reinking of the main text) were written with ink(s) made from chemically purified vitriol, a process that only became standard in the 16th century. As a result, there is no reasonable chance that the distigmai were written in the fourth century. Horizontal lines that have been hypothesized to function as text-critical obeloi were written in the same ink as the original main text, which differs completely from that of the distigmai. In other words, the distigmai and horizontal lines tested were not produced during the same writing session and are separated by more than 1,000 years, making it impossible for them to have functioned as conjoining text-critical symbols in the 4th century. KW - Bible manuscripts KW - New Testament KW - Paratextual features KW - Textual criticism KW - Obelos KW - Septuagint KW - XRF KW - Greek palaeography PY - 2024 UR - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:kobv:b43-622902 DO - https://doi.org/10.1163/27728641-00302005 SN - 2772-8633 VL - 3 IS - 2 SP - 125 EP - 156 PB - Brill CY - Leiden AN - OPUS4-62290 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER -