Editing Minuscule 918 (section)

==[[Elijah Hixson]]==
[[Elijah Hixson]] said on the Evangelical Textual Criticism blog in his article [https://evangelicaltextualcriticism.blogspot.com/2020/01/the-greek-manuscripts-of-comma.html The Greek Manuscripts of the Comma Johanneum (1 John 5:7–8)]:

:GA 918 is another manuscript with a Catholic provenance. It is one of three manuscripts (the other two are 61 and 429marg) that have a CJ in exactly the same form as Erasmus’ third edition, so Erasmus is likely the source of the CJ here. If that were not enough, Wachtel ([https://www.google.com.au/books/edition/Der_byzantinische_Text_der_katholischen/lbTYAAAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1 Der byzantinische Text]) places 918 in “Group 453”. It is the youngest member of that group by a couple of centuries and the only member to have the CJ, so per my remarks above, it’s beyond a reasonable doubt that the CJ is an addition derived from Erasmus. We might have expected the Complutensian Polyglot here given its Spanish Catholic provenance (see below), but there are a number of differences between Erasmus’ third edition and the Complutensian Polyglot in the CJ, and 918 matches Erasmus perfectly. Consequently, 918 is not a witness to a pre-Erasmian CJ.

:We can say a bit more about 918. We know that the scribe is one Nicolás de la Torre (sometimes written as Νικόλαος Τουρριανός; see the reference in Ernst Gamillscheg and Dieter Harlfinger, Repertorium der griechischen Kopisten 800–1600). Nikolaos was born in Crete, but he worked for Philip II of Spain at the Library of El Escorial beginning in 1573. Nikolaos’ dated manuscripts have a range of 1562–1586, but given the ties to El Escorial (where the manuscript remains to this day), and given what we know about Nikolaos employment there and travels elsewhere, I would expect that he made the manuscript between 1573 and 1578.

:Conclusion: GA 918 is a manuscript of Spanish Catholic provenance from the 1570s that broke from its textual tradition by adding the CJ from Erasmus’ third edition.

[[Elijah Hixson]] says that 918 is a member of a manuscript group (Group 453) and not a copy of a printed edition. His claim is that it copied Erasmus' third edition at 1 John 5:7. The fact that it breaks from the rest of its Group (Group 453) at that point shows it is a distinctive reading. The variations in form of the [[Comma Johanneum]] point to Erasmus' third edition and similar texts being the source.

Joey McCollum did a mathematical analysis of Wasserman's full collations of Jude and concluded that it's group members are 453, which include 94, 307, 180, 424, 453, 468, 720, 918, 1678, 1840, 2186, 2197, and 2818. 

Group 453 as found in a [http://rosetta.reltech.org/TC/v07/SWH2002/fig6.html?fbclid=IwY2xjawNXo7xleHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETFGUmtCS1VUM21kVVUwNjl6AR5z26tS0D2mL4tlxJUFgPmKSTxqcS6YVhxLiAbT6k7PWBesKwcY2F_kxLIoBA_aem_wzNinKVtAwvqWpULvfdfzQ phylogentic tree (in blue)]] Here is a [http://rosetta.reltech.org/TC/v07/SWH2002/ link to an article in TC Journal] (see Para 35) where they were able to isolate the group by using phylogenetic analysis.

Jeff Riddle responded on his [http://www.jeffriddle.net/2020/01/wm-149-hixson-cj-and-roman-catholic.html blog]:
:EH begins by stating that “this is another manuscript with a Catholic provenance.”

:He also points out that this is one of three mss. of these ten (along with 61 and 429marg) which agree with Erasmus. So, “Erasmus is likely the source,” adding, “consequently 918 is not a witness to the pre-Erasmian CJ.”

:Questions: As with 429marg do the conclusions here risk the charge of circular reasoning? Is it possible that 918 and Erasmus were both dependent on a common source?

:EH adds this conclusion: “GA 918 is a manuscript of Spanish Catholic provenance from the 1570s that broke from its textual tradition by adding the CJ from Erasmus’ third edition.”

:How strange indeed that a Spanish mss. would follow the reading of Erasmus and not the Complutension!