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EDWARD D. ANDREWS (AS in Criminal Justice, BS in Religion, MA in Biblical Studies, and MDiv in Theology) is CEO and President of Christian Publishing House. He has authored over 140 books. Andrews is the Chief Translator of the Updated American Standard Version (UASV).
A lacuna* (pl. lacunae or lacunas) is a gap in a manuscript, inscription, text, painting, or musical work. A manuscript, text, or section suffering from gaps is said to be “lacunose” or “lacunulose”. Some books intentionally add lacunas to be filled in by the owner (e.g., “The _____ played with the _____ in the _____.”), often as a game or to encourage children to create their own stories.
* From Latin lacūna (“ditch, gap”), literally “little lacus” (“lake, basin”).
Lacuna (pl: Lacunae): an unfortunate loss of text within a manuscript due to accident or wear and tear. Even more unfortunate, lacunae usually are more frequent and more damaging in early manuscripts, especially the papyri. The essential elements of the missing text can be supplied from other manuscripts, of course, but not sufficiently to reconstruct a variant reading. To attempt any kind of reconstruction, one must have access to an accurate facsimile of the damaged manuscript. – Dr. Don Wilkins
Weathering, decay, and other damage to old manuscripts or inscriptions are often responsible for lacunae—words, sentences, or whole passages that are missing or illegible. Palimpsests are particularly vulnerable. To reconstruct the original text, the context must be considered. In papyrology and textual criticism, this may lead to competing reconstructions and interpretations. Published texts that contain lacunae often mark the section where text is missing with a bracketed ellipsis. For example, “This sentence contains 20 words, and […] nouns,” or, “Finally, the army arrived at […] and made camp.”
The first page of the Codex Boernerianus with lacuna in Romans 1:1-4
Notable Examples
In the British Library manuscript Cotton Vitellius A. xv, the Old English poem Beowulf contains the following lacuna:
hyrde ich thæt [… …On]elan cwen.
— Fitt 1, line 62
This particular lacuna is always reproduced in editions of the text, but many people have attempted to fill it, notably editors Wyatt-Chambers and Dobbie, among others, who accept the verb “waes” (was). Malone (1929) proposed the name Yrse for the unnamed queen, as that would alliterate with Onela. This, however, is still hotly debated amongst editors. [G. Jack, “Beowulf: A Student Edition”, Oxford University Press, Oxford: 1994. Pp.31-32, footnote 62.]
The eight-leaves-long Great Lacuna in the Codex Regius, the most prominent source for Norse mythology and early Germanic heroic legends. Parts of it survived in independent manuscripts and in prose form in the Völsunga saga.
In Codex Leicester, the text skips from Acts 10:45 to 14:17 without a break; possibly a scribe rewrote it from a defective manuscript.
Most of Tablet V of the Enûma Eliš, the Babylonian creation myth, has never been recovered.
The didactic Latin poem Astronomica (Marcus Manilius, c. AD 30–40) contains a lacuna in its fifth book; some believe that only a small portion is missing, while others that whole books are lost.
Cantar de mio Cid contains several lacunae. [Smith, Colin; Smith, Colin J. (24 March 1983). “The Making of the Poema de Mio Cid”. Cambridge University Press – via Google Books]
