119ChAPtER tEnIrenaeus, the Scribes, and the Scriptures
Papyrological and Theological Observations
from P.Oxy. 405
Charles E. hillA
s a reader and as a writer, Irenaeus was well aware of the problem of scribal imper-
fection in the production of books. Eusebius preserves for us a colophon Irenaeus
placed at the end of his On the Ogdoad probably written around the year 190,^1 which
illustrates the gravity of textual corruption and Irenaeus’s efforts to ensure faithful trans-
mission: “I adjure [ὁρκίζω] you, who shall copy out this book [τὸν μεταγραψόμενον],
by our Lord Jesus Christ, by his glorious advent when he comes to judge the living and
the dead, that you compare [ἀντιβάλῃς] what you shall transcribe [ὃ μετεγράψω] and
correct [κατορθώσῃς] it with this copy [ἀντίγραφον] from which you shall transcribe
[μετεγράψω], with all care [ἐπιμελῶν], and you shall likewise transcribe [μεταγράψειν]
this oath and put it in the copy” (On the Ogdoad, Eusebius, HE V.20.2).
Irenaeus’s attitude toward the copying of scriptural texts was certainly no less strin-
gent than this, a fact borne out by another famous comment about the copying of the
book of Revelation. Mentioning a scribal fault^2 by means of which, intentionally or
unintentionally, the number 666 in Rev. 13:18 was changed to 616, Irenaeus reminds
the reader, “there shall be no light punishment [inflicted] upon him who either adds
or subtracts anything from the Scripture,” alluding to the curse laid on copyists by the
author of the book of Revelation in Rev. 22:18-19 (Hae r. V.30.1). Irenaeus was thus
aware of the varying scribal quality of scriptural books then circulating. Some copies
of Revelation, he says, were both “ancient” and “most approved” or (perhaps better)
“most excellent,”^3 others evidently not.^4
There is thus no mistaking Irenaeus’s ideal of copying texts of scripture, at least in
continuous manuscripts. In Irenaeus’s day, however, and for a long time both before
and after, scripture did not necessarily come through the citation process quite intact.
Like all literary borrowings, borrowings from scripture too were subjected to minor
modification to fit the quoting author’s context, or perhaps to highlight a point the
quoting author thought was latent in the text. Exact reproduction was evidently not
the necessary concomitant of a regard even for the sacredness of the material quoted.^5
In the often adversarial writings of Irenaeus, however, in which contested interpre-
tations often hung on words, even letters, we see perhaps a greater care in getting the