Dittography is the accidental, erroneous act of repeating a letter, word, phrase or combination of letters by a scribe or copyist.12 The term is used in the field of textual criticism, especially in critical studies of ancient or biblical literature. The opposite phenomenon, in which a copyist omits text by skipping from a word or phrase to a similar word or phrase further on, is known as haplography.
Example
Papyrus 98 in Rev 1:13 has περιεζωσμμενον instead of περιεζωσμενον (doubled μ). The Codex Vaticanus repeats the word διδασκαλος in John 13:14. The phrase "Great is Artemis of the Ephesians" appears twice in Acts 19:34 in the Codex Vaticanus, while it only appears once in other manuscripts.3
References
References
- Flusser, David; Rylaarsdam, J. Coert. "Biblical literature - Writing Materials, Methods". www.britannica.com. Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 4 February 2025.
- Paul D. Wegner, A student's guide to textual criticism of the Bible: its history, methods, and results Archived 21 May 2021 at the Wayback Machine, InterVarsity Press, 2006, p. 48.
- "Dittography". earlham.edu. Archived from the original on 12 June 2010.