Having a bad day? Scribes did too.

       January is coming to an end, and it has certainly been a full month! School starting back up threw me for a loop, and it was hard to concentrate for the first week or two. At one point, I even wrote several equations on the white board, all of which were meant for another class - and the students were very lost for a few moments! Everyone has an off day (or a longer/shorter period). Not surprisingly, scribes and monks in the ancient and medieval periods had bad days as well, as evidenced by mistakes in their manuscripts! One notable example is Codex Neapolitanus, Minuscule 109, a gospels book from the 14th century. 

       The monk or scribe that worked on this text was having a really bad day. In the source manuscript being copied down, the Gospel of Luke chapter 3 [the genealogy of Jesus] was in a two-column format (like most Bibles today). Unfortunately, the scribe seems to have copied the text as if it were one single column. He may have gotten lazy, or more likely, could not understand or comprehend the language that he was transcribing. The result was a genealogical mishmash, and it gave everyone in the passage the the wrong father. In fact, the scribe goofed in such a way that the text makes Phares the creator of the world, and God was made the son of Aram. In any case, the mistake is one that has far outlived the original author... The moral of the story? On the rougher days, it is especially important to pay attention to what you are doing!