Hill—Irenaeus, the Scribes, and the Scriptures 127Diplae Sacrae?
In any case, it is significant that the author or the scribe of P.Oxy. 405 (whether Irenaeus
himself or another) is very conscious that Irenaeus is at this point in the manuscript
quoting a literary text. Do the diplai tell us anything more? In particular, would the
scribe have marked Irenaeus’s quotations of the writings of Ptolemy the Valentinian,
or pagan authors, or only quotations of what Irenaeus (or the scribe) regarded as scrip-
ture? It is a pity that no more of the manuscript survives, from which alone we might
be able to gain a definitive answer to this question. But the surrounding evidence may
help us form a reasonably solid provisional answer.
The only discussion of this phenomenon from antiquity which I have to this point
discovered is that of Isidore of Seville (560–636) in his Etymologies I.21.13^63 compiled
between 615 and the early 630s. In his section on critical marks, he says of the diple,
“Our scribes place this in books of churchmen to separate or to make clear the cita-
tions of Sacred Scriptures.”^64 Isidore links the diple to the marking of quotations of
Sacred Scripture, and mentions no other forms of literature. How does this accord
with our evidence?
Most closely contemporary with Irenaeus is P.Mich. 764, in which diplai marking
the citations of both Jeremiah 18:3-6 and 1 Corinthains 3:13 are visible. The fragment
contains no other quotations of non-biblical materials, but it is at least noteworthy that
1 Corinthians, a New Testament text, is marked in the same context as an Old Testa-
ment text. The diplai in the margin of the Philo codex Paris Bib. Nat. P.Gr. 1120 mark
scriptural citations but apparently not citations from other sources. The first treatise in
this codex, Who is the Heir of Divine Things, contains a few short quotations of non-
scriptural sayings, most notably his citation of the comic poets (“If a slave is always
dumb, he is scarcely worth a crumb: let him, freely told, boldly speak”),^65 is unmarked
by a diple where in the same context three citations of Genesis are so marked.^66
In Vaticanus,^67 Paul’s citation of two pagan writers in his speech at the Areopagus
in Acts 17:28 provides an interesting case. Though he does not mark Paul’s quotation
of Epimenedes,^68 the scribe does mark in the same verse Paul’s brief citation of Aratus.
This would seem at first glance to show that the scribe at least once used the diple for a
non-scriptural citation. But the introductory formula in Vaticanus, along with several
later witnesses, reads here not “As even some of your (καθ ̓ ὑμᾶς) poets have said” but
“As even some of our (καθ ̓ ἡμᾶς) poets have said.”^69 Thus, it would appear that the
scribe thought Paul was quoting a Jewish, scriptural poet.
Titus does not survive in Vaticanus for us to check the quotation of Epimenides
in Titus 1:12. Jude’s quotation of 1 Enoch at Jude 14–15, however, provides another
interesting case. The scribe uses the diple at the beginning of the quote but stops about
halfway through. Did the scribe deem 1 Enoch a “semi- or deutero-canonical” book,
worthy of only “half-quotes”? Or did he or she realize halfway through that the text
being copied was not a scriptural text and abort?^70 The latter of these two options seems
the most likely for a fourth-century Christian scribe.^71 In any case, if we accept that the
marking of the Aratus citation in Acts 17:28 was done on the faulty assumption that
Paul was citing a scriptural poet, we may say that the scribe of Vaticanus intends the
diple to mark only scriptural texts.