Book contents
- Front Matter
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- Preface
- Abbreviations and textual conventions
- Introduction
- PART I The palaeography
- PART II The scribe and the tradition
- Chapter Five The sense-lines
- Chapter Six The nomina sacra
- Chapter Seven The orthography
- Chapter Eight The Codex Bezae and its ancestors
- PART III The correctors
- PART IV The bilingual tradition
- Part V Text and codex
- Appendices
- Plates
- Notes on the plates
- Indexes
Chapter Seven - The orthography
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 November 2009
- Front Matter
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- Preface
- Abbreviations and textual conventions
- Introduction
- PART I The palaeography
- PART II The scribe and the tradition
- Chapter Five The sense-lines
- Chapter Six The nomina sacra
- Chapter Seven The orthography
- Chapter Eight The Codex Bezae and its ancestors
- PART III The correctors
- PART IV The bilingual tradition
- Part V Text and codex
- Appendices
- Plates
- Notes on the plates
- Indexes
Summary
There are older studies that describe the spelling of our manuscript at some length. Scrivener (pp. xxxf) and Harris (Codex, pp. 16–30) in particular based their theories of its origins on their interpretation of the orthography. Today's far more advanced knowledge of the documents of the period spares us the need to repeat the exercise. Stone has produced a full and very valuable study and word list of the Latin column. He examined the morphology as well as the phonology. He concluded that the phonology of the manuscript presents few irregularities. The simple fact is that the Latin column is full of spellings typical of Late Latin. Stone's findings may easily be summarized.
The vowel changes are 'relatively few, and are regular' (p. 17). a remains constant, is > es (e.g. omnes for omnis) is very common. e > a, e > ae and es > is are all common. Less frequent are e > i (ten occurrences), and i > e (eleven). e > o, i > ei, o > ae, u > e, all occur once. o > u, u > i, u > o and u > y are all rare. Of the diphthongs, ae > e is common; ae > a is found once, and oe > oi twice. There are three instances of syncope and four of added vowels.
Of the consonantal shifts, the most common are b > u and u > b. d and t at the ends of words are regularly confused.
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- Codex BezaeAn Early Christian Manuscript and its Text, pp. 107 - 111Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1992
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