It's been almost a week since I've blogged. I can sense busy-ness between now and the ETS and AAR/SBL meetings, so blogging will be sporadic.

That said, I do have a question.

I was looking at Mk 1.14-15 this morning. The pastor at the church I attend has commenced a series on Mark, and this was the text for this morning. So it made sense to look at it prior to going to church.

Here's the text in the ESV:

Now after John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee, proclaiming the gospel of God, and saying, "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel." (Mk 1:14-15)

Here's the text in the NA27:

Μετὰ δὲ τὸ παραδοθῆναι τὸν Ἰωάννην ἦλθεν ὁ Ἰησοῦς εἰς τὴν Γαλιλαίαν * κηρύσσων τὸ εὐαγγέλιον τοῦ θεοῦ καὶ λέγων ὅτι πεπλήρωται ὁ καιρὸς καὶ ἤγγικεν ἡ βασιλεία τοῦ θεοῦ· μετανοεῖτε καὶ πιστεύετε ἐν τῷ εὐαγγελίῳ. (Mk 1:14-15)

I read the text, understood it, and even diagrammed it! Cool stuff is going on here. So I thought I'd check variants. Byzantine editions of v. 14 have a variant that makes "preaching the gospel of God" read as "preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God". This is also represented in Codex Bezae (D).

However, Codex Bezae (D) has another (potential) variant that isn't listed in either the NA27 apparatus or in Tischendorf. Here's the Greek of Codex Bezae (from Scrivener's transcription, which I picked up rather reasonably priced from Amazon):

                         και μετα το παραδοθηναι
τον ιωαννην· ηλθεν ο ΙΗΣ εις την γαλαλαιαν
κηρυσσων το ευαγγελιον της βασιλιεας του ΘΥ
λεγων οτι πεπληρωνται οι καιροι
και ηγγικεν η βαβασιλεια του ΘΥ
μετανοειτε και πιστευεται εν τω ευαγγελιω

Upper-case letters mark nomina sacra; Scrivener's transcription uses overlines for these.

If you compare this to NA27 above, you'll see several variants. But the one that isn't attested anywhere is βαβασιλεια (D) vs. βασιλεία (NA27). Curious, and knowing that a photographic facsimile of Bezae (D) was on the web, I looked it up. Here are the verses (line breaking is the same as above, starting in the middle of line two, if you're interested in tracking):

The sixth line is the line in question. This is really blurry, but there is something down there, illegible though it may be. But βαβασιλεια makes no sense to me. Please enlighten me if it is some attic reduplication or something else going on that I'm just not catching.

Would the actual Bezae be more legible than this photo? I'm guessing so, but how much more, really? The second blurry letter does appear to be consistent with the other alphas in proximity. The first blurry letter may really be a beta, but that only makes sense to me after considering Scrivener, not before. Are there any other possibilities here? Or is βαβασιλεια it? And if so, what does the prepended βα indicate? Or is it just a mistake in transcription (homoioarcton)?

Update (2005-10-31): Jim West responds with a note that he sees the area in question as (from what I can tell) as simply a smudge that shouldn't be read, and that Scrivener's transcription is therefore mistaken. I'm not so sure it's that easy; Scrivener is reconciling the smudge the best he can.

This also would bring up a question regarding transcription: Shouldn't the transcriber try to transcribe the document as best reflects the document, not what may or may not make sense? That is, if you look at the graphic again, you'll see lots of stuff of uneven quality (in the photo, anyway) that could be written off as difficult to read but that obviously represents real content. Shouldn't the transcriber try to encode that in the transcription instead of writing it off as a smudge, even if the smudge doesn't make sense?

For now I'm writing the variant off as homoioarcton of the first two letters of the word. If there are other options (in addition to smudge/error and homoioarcton) please comment, drop an email, or post on your own blog and let me know.

Update II (2005-11-01): Pete responds in the comments with more helpful info. You need to read the comment, but Pete's tentative conclusion is:

OK. Definitely BABASILEIA. Whole page does exhibit damage, so not quite confident that it is a correction by erasure, although that would be my hunch

I'll take Pete's word for it. So, I'm guessing error by homoioarcton (errant duplication of the first two letters of the word) with potential correction by erasure, thus resulting in smudgieness. The bottom line seems to be that this is an error and not witness to the underlying Bezan source; thus βασιλεία should be read here.

Thanks for the help, Pete!