Abstract This study seeks to enhance our understanding of scribal activity by examining scribal tendencies in relation to the transcription of the name “Mary.” Though other forms of this very common name appear in materials that date to around the time the New Testament, the textual tradition of the New Testament effectively preserves precisely two forms of the name outside of the genitive. Thus, in transcribing this name, scribes appear to have understood the choice between forms as binary. That situation created space not so much for scribal creation as scribal discretion. This study suggests that an understanding of how scribes exercised this discretion should shape text-critical judgements about the form of a name at any given place of variation. It further suggests that the initial text of each of the gospels contained mixed forms in a distribution not precisely reflected in any contemporary edition of the Greek New Testament. Though there was a tendency among some later scribes to regularize the name forms (for example, by reserving the non-Hellenized form for the mother of Jesus) this was not the case at the earliest stage of transmission. However, the mixing of forms does not appear to be entirely random. Though the reason for the phenomenon is not clear, the study indicates a pronounced tendency for scribes to preserve one exceptional form for particular figures or clusters of uses. In at least some cases the phenomenon seems to have been a feature of the initial form of the text.
Steven M. Bryan (Fri,) studied this question.