Texual Criticism

This article investigates not whether one person, using one form
of shorthand, on one occasion, copied Q1 Hamlet, but whether some people, using any form of handwriting they liked, on any number of occasions, could have penned Hamlet Q1. It considers evidence that plays, like sermons, were noted during
performance; it looks at what might constitute ‘note traces’ in the text of Hamlet and asks why watchers might want to capture in notes – and then publish – the uttered performances that they heard.

In Sen. const. 2,1, Heracles and Ulixes are considered as examples of Stoic Sages, and defined victores omnium terrarum (codex reading) or victores omnium terrorum (Lipsius, followed by modern editors). Terrarum clearly does not fit the two characters; but terrorum would weaken the subsequent image of Cato depicted as a sage far better than them, in that he did not fight against beasts or monsters, but against worst entities, such as ambition and struggle for power. So, I propose to correct terrarum in ferarum, which is plausibile on a palaeographic level, and fits the context better than terrorum.

Contemporary research on the Codex Bezae has arrived at apparently contradictory results. On the one side, there are those who accentuate its anti-Jewish tendency (Epp, Ehrman); on the other side, there are those who highlight its Jewish tendencies (Rius-Camps, Read-Heimerdinger). Building on our hypothesis of a Christian Jewish identity of the scribe (see our article in NTS, forthcoming), the present research seeks to offer a solution for this tension. This will be achieved by the use of social identity approach, more specifically through the theory of self-categorization.