Biblical Hebrew Forum

[James Christian <jc.bhebrew AT googlemail.com>]

Hi,

in the question of dating the Vaticanus MSS I think the tsade issue is of
minor importance. i.e. we are making a mountain out a molehill. I'm not a
dating expert but as far as I'm aware dating was primarily a matter of
philology via examining the style of the handwriting. Personally, I'm not
sure how objective such a method of dating could be.

Obviously, nobody is about to give portions of ancient MSS to destructive
(and unreliable) dating methods like carbon dating. In summary, if the truth
be told we have absolutely no idea of how old the MSS is and don't really
seem to have any real scientific basis for dating MSS other than MSS found
in archeologically dated sites. But don't even these rely on pottery shard
dating? Just how reliable a system is that?

James Christian

On 24 July 2010 16:47, Arnaud Fournet <fournet.arnaud AT wanadoo.fr> wrote:

>
> ----- Original Message ----- From: James Christian
> To: Arnaud Fournet
> Cc: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
> Sent: Saturday, July 24, 2010 3:09 PM
>
> Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] T-SADE
>
>
> Hi,
>
> I've got to be honest. I'm not entirely sure what your question is.
> ***
> As written below, there are several questions.
>
> At the present time, we can say that:
> 1. apparently, the Codex Vaticanus writes tsade with a T plus a Sigma on
> top of it.
> 2. some other Codices don't do that, just a plain Sigma.
> 3. there's a number of references dealing with that issue.
> 4. I have not understood why this feature about T+superscript S is due to
> Greek instead of Hebrew.
>
> Do we have any reason to doubt that the Codex Vaticanus is dated 4th c. AD.
> ?
>
> A.
> ***
>
>
>
> Are you asking a dating question about the Codex Vaticanus? i.e. are you
> asking if we uphold the 4th century dating on the basis of this tsade line
> of evidence?
> James Christian
> ***
> And what is the answer to the latter question?
>
> Arnaud Fournet
> ***
>
>
>
>