Some Observations on the Copying Practices of Scribe 5 of Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Tanner 10

Abstract The work of Scribe 5 (T5) of Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Tanner 10 (x 1 ; T), the earliest extant witness to the Old English Bede ( OEB ), is generally described in negative terms: the script is labeled ugly and copying mechanical. The present article discusses the copying practices. It takes a comparative approach to punctuation and linguistic characteristics of T5’s stint. It shows that punctuation in T5’s stint is discourse- and content-based. In this segment of the text, T agrees with at least one other extant manuscript of the OEB on the placement of the punctus that signals the discourse chunks boundaries in 97% of instances, which means that this type of punctuation is inherited from a common ancestor. In contrast, the punctus that marks the noteworthy information is found only in T. Linguistic features likewise include archaic and dialectally-marked forms faithfully copied from the exemplar as well as contemporary and dialectally-unmarked ones attributable to T5. T5’s conservatism renders his work invaluable for reconstructing the antecedent copies of the OEB . His innovations shed light on the evolution of punctuation and the English language in the ninth-tenth centuries.