Jesus, Prophet of Islam - The Islamic Bulletin

The Gospel of Barnabas 135

The authenticity of a text, and of even the most vener­
able manuscript, is always open to debate. The Codex
Vatîcatlus is a good example of this. The facsimile repro­
duction edited by the Vatican City, 1%5, contains an
accompanying note from its editors informing us that,
'several centuries after it was copied (believed to have
been in circa the Tenth or Eleventh century), a scribe
inked over all the letters except those he thought were a
mistake.' There are passages in the text where the origi­
nalletters in light brown still show through, contrast­
ing visibly with the rest of the text which is in dark
brown. There is no indication that it was a faithful res­
toration. The note states moreover that, 'the different
hands that corrected and annotated the manuscript over
the centuries have not yet been definitively discemed;
a certain number of corrections were undoubtedly made
when the text was inked over.' In all the religious manu-
ais the text is presented as a Fourth century copy. One
has to go to sources at the Vatican to discover that vari­
ous hands may have altered the text centuries later.
One might reply that other texts may be used for com­
parison, but how does one choose between variations
that change the meaning? It is a well known fact that a
very old scribe's correction can lead to the definitive
reproduction of the corrected text. We shaIl see further
on howa single-word in a passage from John concern­
ing the Paraclete radically alters its meaning and com­
pletely changes its sense when viewed from a theologi­
cal point of view.
O. Culmann, in ms book, The New Testament, writes
the following on the subject ofvariations:

'Sometimes the latter are the result of inadvertent flaws:

the copier misses a word out, or conversely writes it

twice, or a whole section of a sentence is carelessly omit­

ted because in the manuseript to be copied il appeared

between two identicaI words. Sometimes it is a matter

of deliberate corrections, either the copier has taken the

liberty of correcting the text according to ms own ideas

or he has tried to bring it into line with a parallel text in

a more or less skilful attempt to reduce the number of