About Philip B. Payne Man and Woman, One in Christ Philip B. Payne, and the cover of his latest book, Man and Woman, One in Christ
January 14th
2010
written by phil

So you don’t have to just imagine what the distigme-obelus symbol looks like just before 1 Cor 14:34-35, I have provided photographs of it and another distigme-obelus at the end of Luke 14:24 just before the interpolation that likewise would have occurred immediately after the end of the line marked by the distigme-obelus or at the very beginning of the following line, namely the interpolation between Luke 14:24 and Luke 14:25, “many are called but few are chosen,”which is not in the RSV, nor is it mentioned in an RSV footnote). Below both of these distigme-obelus photographs are photographs of other shorter horizontal bars called paragraphoi from that same page. To see these photographs, click here.

There are only six instances in the NT where this distigme-obelus symbol occurs. All the other twenty-two horizontal bars next to a distigme in Vaticanus are shorter, like typical paragraphoi, which extend into the margin on average 2 mm. None of the other horizontal bars adjacent to a distigme extend into the margin approximately 3 mm or more like all of the distigme-obelus symbols do. Five of the six occur by widely-acknowledged interpolations of a block of text. The other three, followed by the interpolated text on that line are:

Matt 18:10 “for the Son of Man has come to seek and to save the lost” (relegated to a footnote in the RSV)

Luke 1:28 “blessed are you among women”  (relegated to a footnote in the RSV)

Acts 2:47 “in the church, in those days” (not even mentioned in the RSV)

The sixth is Mark 5:40, where other manuscripts insert “but Jesus” in the middle of this Vaticanus line. The next longest bar next to a distigme is at Rom 16:5, but its horizontal bar sticks out into the margin less than any distigme-obelus. Other manuscripts replace Asia with Achaia in this Vaticanus line at Rom 16:5.

To learn more about these, see the description of them in Man and Woman, One in Christ pages 237-40.

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