Irenaeus

Hill—Irenaeus, the Scribes, and the Scriptures 123

Pap. Louvre E 10295 (van Haelst 638 (2)), a sixth- or seventh-century copy of Cyril of Alexan-

dria’s On the Adoration and the Worship in Spirit and Truth found at El Deirin in the Fayum.^34

I have, so far, found no New Testament papyrus manuscript that uses diplai to mark
quotations.^35 The first Biblical manuscript I know of which does so, also the only one
of the period that does so consistently, is Codex Vaticanus (early to middle fourth-
century). The diplai belong to the original hand^36 (scribe B, who penned the New Tes-
tament), as is visible, for example, at John 7:42, where the scribe presumed there was a
citation of the Old Testament (in reality there is not).^37 There the diple is much fainter
than the writing of the text, preserving the original hand which was not overwritten by
a later hand, as were the letters in the text.^38 It is clear that this scribe’s attempt was to
use diplai comprehensively throughout the New Testament. The last surviving page of
Codex Vaticanus contains Hebrews 8, where the quotation of Jeremiah 31 takes nearly
a whole column of text, each line of which is carefully marked by a diple in the margin.
“Scribe A” of Codex Sinaiticus also knows the practice. Milne and Skeat say, “It
seems indeed that the Eusebian apparatus and the paragraphi are both part of a thor-
ough-going revision of the manuscript by A, for in these same early pages of Matthew
accents and breathings have been carefully supplied, quotations from the Old Testa-
ment marked with arrow-heads (and, in the earlier cases, the name of the book as
well), and a number of corrections in a minute hand... inserted. The Old Testament
quotation-marks cease after the third page (N.T. 2), the accents and breathings in the
middle of the fifth” (NT 3, col. 3, l. 10).^39
The diplai return at the beginning of Romans, but do not extend throughout the
book or the Pauline corpus, then again they appear at the beginning of Acts^41 and once
again fade out. In addition, there are two instances in 1 Peter (2:22; 3:10).
Codex Alexandrinus^42 uses the diplai but shows us some irregularities in the Gospels.
In its present state, it contains only the last part of Matthew, but from where it begins,
at 25:6, there are no diplai marking the Old Testament citations. In Mark, only five cita-
tions are marked, all in chapters 10–12, and using an irregular form: a dot followed by a
small diple (Illustration 5) and sometimes followed by an obel (Illustration 6).^43

Illustration 3. Codex Sinaiticus (q. 74, f. 1v), Matthew 2:6 citing Micah 5:2. Note scribal mis-

take in attribution to HCAIOY. What look like dots following the diplai are actually line pricks.^40