128 Irenaeus: Life, Scripture, LegacyCodex Alexandrinus offers another lucid example. The scribe clearly does not use
diplai for Paul’s citations of two pagan authors at Acts 17:28 (the text of A has καθ ̓
ὑμᾶς not καθ ̓ ἡμᾶς), nor for the citation of Enoch in Jude 14–15, nor for the citation of
Epimenides in Titus 1:12.^72 Undoubtedly it was the intention of the scribe or scribes of
Alexandrinus, or its archetype, to mark only Scriptural citations.
Similarly, the scribe of Boernerianus (Paul) does not use the diple at Titus 1:12,
again, presumably because Epimenides is not a Scriptural author.
At least in manuscripts where we can make the distinction, then, Isidore’s comment
proves true. Early Christian scribes adopted this siglum for marking quotations of Holy
Scripture. Apart from Vaticanus’s probably unwitting marking of Aratus in Acts and its
partial marking of 1 Enoch in Jude, we have uncovered no instance of a Christian scribe
(or scribe of a Christian text) marking non-scriptural quotations—this pertains even
to the Christian copy of Philo mentioned above.
If we may presume that this was the case also with P.Oxy. 405, it will be even more
significant that its diplai mark not an Old Testament but a New Testament writing, the
Gospel according to Matthew. This would mean the scribe is using the diple to mark
Matthew’s scriptural status. We already know from the contents of Irenaeus’s writings
that he considered Matthew’s Gospel, like the other three Gospels, to be scripture.^73 So
if indeed the diplai are an indicator of scriptural status, this would not tell us anything
new about Irenaeus, or, presumably, about many of his early readers.
The adoption of this new scribal convention to mark scriptural status would, how-
ever, be quite significant, as it would parallel a better known and more pervasive scribal
convention, the nomina sacra.^74 As the nomina sacra apparently mark out certain
names as holy, the marginal diple marks certain texts as holy, according to the testi-
mony of Isidore of Seville, and consistent with the evidence collected so far. P.Oxy. 405
uses both scribal conventions, and is probably the oldest manuscript we have which
does so.^75
Conclusion
Irenaeus tells us he was “most properly assured that the Scriptures are indeed per-
fect, since they were spoken by the Word of God and His Spirit” (II.28.2).^76 For him,
the Gospels according to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were among these perfect
and divinely authored scriptures (II.27.2, etc.). It seems a natural outgrowth of such
a doctrine of scripture that certain measures should develop, even scribally, to signify
it, to make it visible. The physical properties of P.Oxy. 405 show us two ways in which
this was done. First, this copy of Irenaeus’s writing is made on a roll. As Roberts and
many others have observed, Christians used the codex for their scriptural writings.
Larry Hurtado says, “there is no New Testament text copied on an unused roll among
second- or third-century Christian manuscripts.”^77 Second, the words of scripture con-
tained in this roll are distinguished from the words of Irenaeus by diplai in the margin.
Some Christian scribes, whether on their own or on the instruction of their clients,
employed this siglum to enact visually what, one might say, was expected to take place
in the mind or heart of the reader (perhaps of the next copyist as well, as per On the
Ogdoad!), a setting-apart of certain words by quite literally “pointing them out.” Thus