designated a, b, c, d and e). He posited one of the correctors was contemporaneous with the original scribes, and the others worked during the sixth and seventh centuries. After Milne and Skeat's reinvestigation, it is now agreed Tischendorf was incorrect, as scribe C never existed. According to Tischendorf, scribe C wrote the poetic books of the Old Testament. These are written in a different format from the rest of the manuscript – they appear in two columns (the rest of books is in four columns), written stichometrically. Tischendorf probably interpreted the different formatting as indicating the existence of another scribe. The three remaining scribes are still identified by the letters Tischendorf gave them: A, B, and D. There were in fact more correctors, with at least seven (a, b, c, ca, cb, cc, e). Modern analysis identifies three scribes: Scribe A wrote most of the historical and poetical books of the Old Testament; almost the whole of the New Testament; and the Epistle of Barnabas Scribe B was responsible for the Prophets and for the Shepherd of Hermas Scribe D wrote the whole of Tobit and Judith; the first half of 4 Maccabees; the first two-thirds of the Psalms; and the first five verses of Revelation Scribe B was a poor speller, and scribe A was not much better; the best scribe was D. Metzger states: "scribe A had made some unusually serious mistakes". Scribes A and B used nomina sacra in contracted forms most often (ΠΝΕΥΜΑ contracted in all occurrences, ΚΥΡΙΟΣ contracted except in 2 occurrences), whereas scribe D mostly used the uncontracted forms. Scribe D distinguished between sacral and nonsacral uses of ΚΥΡΙΟΣ. His spelling errors are the substitution of ΕΙ for Ι, and Ι for ΕΙ in medial positions, both equally common. Otherwise substitution of Ι for initial ΕΙ is unknown, and final ΕΙ is only replaced in the word ΙΣΧΥΕΙ. The confusion of Ε and ΑΙ is very rare. In the Book of Psalms, this scribe has ΔΑΥΕΙΔ instead of ΔΑΥΙΔ 35 times, while scribe A normally uses an abbreviated form . Scribe A made the most phonetic errors: confusion of Ε and ΑΙ occurs in all contexts. Milne and Skeat characterised scribe B as "careless and illiterate". The work of the original scribe is designated by the siglum *. A paleographical study at the British Museum in 1938 found the text had undergone several