middle of the line, that of a comma ; and at the foot of the line, thai of a semicolon. In a few extant papyri these distinction! are obser\'ed ; but oftener they are Dej,'lected, and the dot ia placed above the line to denote all values. — Accentxiation ia not unknown, as it is in the eiirliest vellum uncials, but is rarely and sporadically applied- No papyrus MS has accents fully and systematically supplied, biit some of the best-written of them (notably the Bacchylides SIS) have them fairly plentifully. Leae well-written MSS liave fewer of them, and MSS in non-literary hands practically do not have them at all. — Si'paratwn of word8 is not found, except in a few cases where ambiguity might result : here a single point is sometimes used to indicate th« correct division. This is again especially the case in carefully written MSS, which are always more fully suppUed with aids to comprehension than their commoner kindrecf. It is not at tU likely that any of the early copies of the books of the NT were supplied with accents or punctuation, or harl an,v indication of the division of words. — The use of abhreviatutm in non-literary hands has been mentioned above. In addition to the symbola there described, a common method of abbreviation is to drop the tei-uiination of a word, writing the last letter which la retained above the Une : e.g. etv"^ or awT* for auric or auTAv, yoo." for yptifjtuec or ypxc^fxaTtui, Toiitff^ for ^onliriiatt and 80 On. Abbreviation by the omission of letters from the middle of a word is not practised, except in the common theological com>
pendia (%.', (/;, ;tf . trfi^ X.T.X.), which are found from the 3rd cenL onwards.
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FIB. 4. — GREEK CTJCIAIj COPET, STH CR.NT.
(Codex Sarravianus, Leyden University Library, reduced.)
Ephraemi in the Apocalypse must have been copied from a M.S composed of small leaves; and it is possible that it was such a one as those which we have been describing, — a private copy, without beauty of workmanship, and perhaps witliout much attention to precise accuracy of transcription. From this predilection for the codex form even on papyrus, the Christian Church was well prepared to make use of it when vellum began to come to the front as the material for book production.
Before considerinij, however, the progress of paleography upon vellum, it will be as well to say something as to the minutiip of Greek writing upon papyrus. In ordinary literary papyri, the writing is arranged in narrow columns, often leaning to the right, in \mcial characters of medium size (smaller than is nmial upon vellum), admitting of ligatures between them to a limited extent. Enlarged initials are not used. Pauses in the sense are indicated (if at all) by small blank spaces in the text, often accompanied by a paragraphm^ or short horizontal stroke below the first letters of the line in which ft sentence ends. — Punctuation in the ordinary- sense is veri' rarely found in prose MSS, but it occurs sponviically in a few MSS. In one or two very early MSS a double dot, like a colon, is used to separate sentences; but usually only a single dot is employed. According to the strict system, developed by the Alexandrian grammarians, a dot placed above the line has the value of a full stop ; in the
LiTERATFRE. — Thompson, Kenyon, Birt, Qardthausen, opp, eitt. ; Ulass, art. * Palaographie,' in Miiller's Handbuch d«r ktasMltchen Alterthumswis&enschaft (1S92) ; Grenfell and Hunt, Oxyrhrjnchus Papyri, pts. i. ii. (1899-1900).
V. Greek Uncial Writino on Vellum. — The .supersession of papyrus by vellum has been de- scribed in § ii. The supersession, however, was not immediate and absolute ; for it is clear that copies of the Scriptures continued occa.sionally to be inscribed on papyrus as long as the material itself was accessible. Frajjments of such MSS are in existence (such as a P.s.alter in the British Museum, and the Books of Zechariah and Malachi in a MS at Heidelberg) which are attributable to the 7tli cent. ; and much later than this no Greek MS on papjTus can be, on account of the Arab con- quest, which closed Egypt to the Christian world. But from the 4th cent, onwards papyrus takes a secondary place. From that century we have the Vatican and Sinaitic Codices, and we know by tradition of the 50 volumes prepared for the churches of Constantinople ; and it is not likely that any papyrus MS, extant or hereafter to be