Alexandrinus is Alexandrine

This blog has assumed codex A/02, for "Alexandrinus" (like B/03 is for Ватиканус) to be, in fact, Alexandrine. One hiccup was A's Gospel foursome which proved less Sinaitic/Vaticanic, than Byzantine - like, KJV-style. I've been seeing hints in the past four years the codex might actually be Ephesian, and brought to Egypt under some Byzantine deal.

Although not impossible... I was never seeing how likely the Ephesian theory be. Constantinople worried about an attack from the Muslims. Why not just send the thing to Rome, where the Muslims weren't? or to, I dunno... Vienna. So I hadn't poasted.

Brett Nongbri might be offkilter on the B / 𝔓⁷⁵ side, but now he's been reporting on the A/02: Mina Monier. Monier is the real deal on MSS scholarship.

The argument is that A/02 was kept by Copts. It then went to the Melkites: I am unsure why, but it may be that Melkites were Graeco/Arabs in a land where Copts were Aegypto/Arabs, who were (then) seeing Greek as the thirdplace loser. Coptic enjoyed a surgence in the AD 700s, when Greek was stuck in Anatolia, embargoed from Islamic supremacy, and associated with an iconoclasm Copts didn't want. After the 700s, the Greeks started doing rather better, but now they were an existential enemy to Islam. As far as Copts went, meanwhile, their decline started in earnest I think around the 1000s. But after that they'd probably be better off with Latin than with Greek.

Monier points to all the "paratext" in the codex, the scribblings which the readers stuck on the pages over the generations. Which show Coptic and Egyptian Melkite culture, none of it west-Anatolian.

BACKDATE 12/11