Jude 12 has an above average number of variants in it. But one in particular is quite striking. It’s the addition of the words γογγυσταὶ μεμψίμοιροι κατὰ τὰς ἐπιθυμίας αὐτῶν πορευόμενοι (“grumblers, malcontents, following their own desires”). This longer reading is found in 01*, 04C, 1270, 1297, 1827, and some Coptic witnesses at the end of v. 11 and must come from v. 16. How did it get here? Probably by dittography caused by the presence of οὗτοί εἰσιν in both verses. But that is a long way for an eye to skip as seen in Codex Sinaiticus.
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| The red lines mark the shared verbiage in v. 12 and v. 16 (οὗτοί εἰσιν). |
Is it really possible that a scribe’s eye skipped that far? I doubt it. Thankfully, Tommy Wasserman’s dissertation cites J. Rendel Harris who provides a better explanation. He suggests that the mistake happened when the two verses were on the same level in parallel columns. The scribe’s eye jumped, not just from one verse to the other, but from one column to the other. The longer reading wasn’t always corrected, in part, because as Tommy notes, it fits pretty well in v. 12 given the reference to Korah’s rebellion in v. 11 and the grumbling that was a key part of it (cf. Num 16.11; 17.6 etc.).
All this is well and good. It explains how the scribe got off track. What it doesn’t answer is how he got back on. How does a scribe go from jumping columns like this and not leave out everything in between (vv. 12–15) as a result? A mistake that big would not have gone unnoticed and therefore would not have survived like it has in the tradition. What gives?
At this point, the corrector in Sinaiticus may offer a clue. Just after the addition (marked as such), we find another correction in the small addition of οἱ out in the margin before ἐν ταῖς κτλ.
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| The article οἱ has been added in the margin in 01 |
Sure enough, the other three Greek manuscripts with the longer reading also lack the article οἱ after the addition (04 is not extant at this point per ECM). Since those are the same last two letters in the addition (πορευόμενοι), might it be possible that, having skipped to the wrong verse, the scribe’s eye now skipped back to the right one thanks to the letters -οι? From there, he carried on with the rest of v. 12, missing only the οἱ. This would explain why his mistake went completely unnoticed and how he managed to skip from v. 12 to v. 16 without leaving out everything in between. In short, he managed to get himself back on track without ever having realized he left it.
If so, then we have a rather fun case where one parablepsis led to a lengthy addition and a second parablepsis kept it from leading to a much larger omission—while the combination kept the scribe from noticing he made either mistake.
Thoughts?