IV. THE LARGER UNCIAL MANUSCRIPTS OF THE GREEK TESTAMENT

We proceed to describe in detail the uncial manuscripts of the Greek Testament, arranged separately as copies of the Gospels, of the Acts and Catholic Epistles, of the Pauline Epistles, and of the Apocalypse. They are usually indicated by the capital letters of the English and Greek alphabets, and stand on the list not in the order of their relative value or antiquity, but mainly as they were applied from time to time to the purposes of Textual criticism.

א (Aleph). CODEX SINAITICUS, now at St. Petersburg, the justly celebrated copy which sometime ago for a quarter of a century attracted general attention in the learned world. Tischendorf (Notitia Ed. Cod. Sinaitici, pp. 5, 6) when travelling in 1844 under the patronage of his own sovereign, King Frederick Augustus of Saxony, picked out of a basket full of papers destined to light the oven of the Convent of St. Catherine on Mount Sinai, the forty-three leaves of the Septuagint which he published in 1846 as the Codex Friderico-Augustanus (see p. 32). These, of course, he easily got for the asking, but finding that further portions of the same codex (e.g. the whole of Isaiah and 1, 4 Maccabees) were extant, he rescued them from their probable fate, by enlightening the brotherhood as to their value. He was permitted to copy one page of what yet remained, containing the end of Isaiah and the beginning of Jeremiah, which he afterwards published in the first volume of his “Monumenta Sacra Inedita” (1855), pp. xxx. and 213-16; and he departed in the full hope that he should be allowed to purchase the whole. But he had taught the monks a sharp lesson, and neither then, nor on his subsequent visit in 1853, could he gain any tidings of the leaves he had left behind;—he even seems to have concluded that they had been carried into Europe by some richer or more fortunate collector. At the beginning of 1859, after the care of the seventh edition of his N. T. was happily over, he went for a third time into the East, under the well-deserved patronage of the Emperor of Russia, the great protector of the Oriental Church; and the treasure which had been twice withdrawn from him as a private traveller, was now, on the occasion of some chance conversation, spontaneously put into the hands of one sent from the champion and benefactor of the oppressed Church. Tischendorf touchingly describes his surprise, his joy, his midnight studies over the priceless volume (“quippe dormire nefas videbatur”) on that memorable 4th of February, 1859. The rest was easy; he was allowed to copy his prize at Cairo, and ultimately to bring it to Europe, as a tribute of duty and gratitude to the Emperor Alexander II. To that monarch’s wise munificence both the larger edition (1862), and the smaller of the New Testament only (1863), are mainly due.

The Codex Sinaiticus is 13-½ inches in length by 14-7/8 inches high, and consists of 346-½ leaves of the same beautiful vellum as the Cod. Friderico-Augustanus which is really a part of it whereof 199 contain portions of the Septuagint version, 147-½ the whole New Testament, Barnabas’ Epistle, and a considerable fragment of Hermas’ Shepherd. It has subsequently appeared that the Russian Archimandrite (afterwards Bishop) Porphyry had brought with him from Sinai in 1845 some pieces of Genesis xxiii, xxiv, and of Numbers v, vi, and vii, which had been applied long before to the binding of other books(113). Each page comprises four columns (see p. 27), with forty-eight lines in each column, of those continuous, noble, simple uncials (compare Plate iv. 11 a with 11 b). The poetical books of the Old Testament, however, being written in στίχοι, admit of only two columns on a page (above, p. 52). “In the Catholic Epistles the scribe has frequently contented himself with a column of forty-seven lines(114).” The order of the sacred books is remarkable, though by no means unprecedented. St. Paul’s Epistles precede the Acts, and amongst them, that to the Hebrews follows 2 Thess., standing on the same page with it (p. 74). Although this manuscript has hitherto been inspected by few Englishmen (Tregelles, however, and Dean Stanley were among the number), yet its general aspect has grown familiar to us by the means of photographs of its most important pages taken for the use of private scholars(115), as well as from the facsimiles contained in Tischendorf’s several editions. Breathings and accents there are none except in Tobit vi. 9, and Gal. v. 21, as has been already mentioned: the apostrophus and the single point for punctuation are entirely absent for pages together, yet occasionally are rather thickly studded, not only in places where a later hand has been unusually busy (e.g. Isaiah i. 1-iii. 2, two pages), but in some others (e.g. in 2 Cor. xii. 20 there are eight stops). Even words very usually abridged (except θσ, κσ, ισ, χσ, πνα which are constant) are here written in full though the practice varies, πατηρ, υιος, ουρανος, ανθρωπος, δαυειδ: we find ϊσραηλ´, ισλ or ιηλ: ϊερουσαλημ´, ιημ, ιλμ, ιηλμ´. Tischendorf considers the two points over iota and upsilon (which are sometimes wanting) as seldom from the first hand: the mark >, besides its rather rare marginal use in citations (see p. 64, note 4), we notice in the text oftener in the Old Testament than in the New. Words are divided at the end of a line: thus Κ in ΟΥΚ, and Χ in ΟΥΧ are separated(116). Small letters, of the most perfect shape, freely occur in all places, especially at the end of lines, where the superscript (see p. 50) is almost always made to represent Ν (e.g. seventeen times in Mark i. 1-35). Other compendia scribendi are Κ for και, and ΗΝ written as in Plate i. No. 2(117). Numerals are represented by letters, with a straight line placed over them, e.g. μ Mark i. 13. Although there are no capitals, the initial letter of a line which begins a paragraph generally (not always) stands out from the rank of the rest, as in the Old Testament portion of Cod. Vaticanus, and less frequently in the New, after the fashion of certain earlier pieces on papyrus. The titles and subscriptions of the several books are as short as possible (see p. 65). The τίτλοι or κεφάλαια majora are absent; the margin contains the so-called Ammonian sections and Eusebian canons, but Tischendorf is positive that neither they nor such notes as στιχων ρπ (see p. 53, note 3) appended to 2 Thessalonians, are by the original scribe, although they may possibly be due to a contemporary hand. From the number of ὁμοιοτέλευτα and other errors, one cannot affirm that it is very carefully written. Its itacisms are of the oldest type, and those not constant; chiefly ι for ει, and δε and ε, and much more rarely η and υ and οι interchanged. The grammatical forms commonly termed Alexandrian occur, pretty much as in other manuscripts of the earliest date. The whole manuscript is disfigured by corrections, a few by the original scribe, or by the usual comparer or διορθώτης (see p. 55); very many by an ancient and elegant hand of the sixth century (אa), whose emendations are of great importance; some again by a hand but little later (אb); far the greatest number by a scholar of the seventh century (אc), who often cancels the changes introduced by (אa); others by as many as eight several later writers, whose varying styles Tischendorf has carefully discriminated and illustrated by facsimiles(118).

The foregoing considerations were bringing even cautious students to a general conviction that Cod. א, if not, as its enthusiastic discoverer had announced, “omnium antiquissimus” in the absolute sense of the words, was yet but little lower in date than the Vatican manuscript itself, and a veritable relic of the middle of the fourth century—the presence in its margin of the sections and canons of Eusebius [d. 340?], by a hand nearly if not quite contemporaneous, seems to preclude the notion of higher antiquity(119)—when Constantino Simonides, a Greek of Syme, who had just edited a few papyrus fragments of the New Testament alleged to have been written in the first century of the Christian era, suddenly astonished the learned world in 1862 by claiming to be himself the scribe who had penned this manuscript in the monastery of Panteleemon on Mount Athos, as recently as in the years 1839 and 1840. The writer of these pages must refer to the Introduction to his Collation of the Codex Sinaiticus (pp. lx-lxxii, 2nd edition, 1867) for a statement of the reasons which have been universally accepted as conclusive, why the manuscript which Simonides may very well have written under the circumstances he has described neither was nor possibly could be that venerable document. The discussion of the whole question, however, though painful enough in some aspects, was the means of directing attention to certain peculiarities of Cod. א which might otherwise have been overlooked. While engaged in demonstrating that it could not have been transcribed from a Moscow-printed Bible, as was “Cod. Simoneidos” (to borrow the designation employed by its author), critics came to perceive that either this copy or its immediate prototype must have been derived from a papyrus exemplar, and that probably of Egyptian origin (Collation, &c. pp. viii; xiv; lxviii), a confirmation of the impression conveyed to the reader by a first glance at the eight narrow columns of each open leaf (p. 28). The claim of Simonides to be the sole writer of a book which must have consisted when complete of about 730 leaves, or 1460 pages of very large size (Collation, &c. p. xxxii), and that too within the compass of eight or ten months(120) (he inscribed on his finished work, as he tells us, the words Σιμωνίδου τὸ ὅλον ἔργον), made it important to scrutinize the grounds of Tischendorf’s judgement that four several scribes had been engaged upon it, one of whom, as he afterwards came to persuade himself, was the writer of its rival, Codex Vaticanus(121). Such an investigation, so far as it depends only on the handwriting, can scarcely be carried out satisfactorily without actual examination of the manuscript itself, which is unfortunately not easily within the reach of those who could use it independently; but it is at all events quite plain, as well from internal considerations as from minute peculiarities in the writing, such as the frequent use of the apostrophus and of the mark > (see above, p. 50) on some sheets and their complete absence from others (Collation, &c. pp. xvi-xviii; xxxii; xxxvii), that at least two, and probably more, persons have been employed on the several parts of the volume(122).

It is indeed a strange coincidence, although unquestionably it can be nothing more, that Simonides should have brought to the West from Mount Athos some years before one genuine fragment of the Shepherd of Hermas in Greek, and the transcript of a second (both of which materially aided Tischendorf in editing the remains of that Apostolic Father), when taken in connexion with the fact that the worth of Codex Sinaiticus is vastly enhanced by its exhibiting next to the Apocalypse, and on the same page with its conclusion, the only complete extant copy, besides the one discovered by Bryennios in 1875, of the Epistle of Barnabas in Greek, followed by a considerable portion of this self-same Shepherd of Hermas, much of which, as well as of Barnabas, was previously known to us only in the Old Latin translation. Both these works are included in the list of books of the New Testament contained in the great Codex Claromontanus D of St. Paul’s Epistles, to be described hereafter, Barnabas standing there in an order sufficiently remarkable; and their presence, like that of the Epistles of Clement at the end of Codex Alexandrinus (p. 99), brings us back to a time when the Church had not yet laid aside the primitive custom of reading publicly in the congregation certain venerated writings which have never been regarded exactly in the same light as Holy Scripture itself. Between the end of Barnabas and the opening of the Shepherd are lost the last six leaves of a quaternion (which usually consists of eight) numbered 91 at its head in a fairly ancient hand. The limited space would not suffice for the insertion of Clement’s genuine Epistle, since the head of the next quaternion is numbered 92, but might suit one of the other uncanonical books on the list in Cod. Claromontanus, viz. the Acts of Paul and the Revelation of Peter.

With regard to the deeply interesting question as to the critical character of Cod. א, although it strongly supports the Codex Vaticanus in many characteristic readings, yet it cannot be said to give its exclusive adherence to any of the witnesses hitherto examined. It so lends its grave authority, now to one and now to another, as to convince us more than ever of the futility of seeking to derive the genuine text of the New Testament from any one copy, however ancient and, on the whole, trustworthy, when evidence of a wide and varied character is at hand.

A. CODEX ALEXANDRINUS in the British Museum, where the open volume of the New Testament is publicly shown in the Manuscript room. It was placed in that Library on its formation in 1753, having previously belonged to the king’s private collection from the year 1628, when Cyril Lucar, Patriarch of Constantinople (whose crude attempts to reform the Eastern Church on the model of Geneva ultimately provoked the untoward Synod of Bethlehem in 1672(123)), sent this most precious document by our Ambassador in Turkey, Sir Thomas Roe, as a truly royal gift to Charles I. An Arabic inscription, several centuries old, at the back of the Table of Contents on the first leaf of the manuscript, and translated into Latin in another hand, which Mr. W. Aldis Wright recognizes as Bentley’s (Academy, April 17, 1875), states that it was written by the hand of Thecla the Martyr(124). A recent Latin note on the first page of the first of two fly-leaves declares that it was given to the Patriarchal Chamber in the year of the Martyrs, 814 [A.D. 1098]. Another, and apparently the earliest inscription, in an obscure Moorish-Arabic scrawl, set at the foot of the first page of Genesis, was thus translated for Baber by Professor Nicoll of Oxford, “Dicatus est Cellae Patriarchae in urbe munitâ Alexandriâ. Qui eum ex eâ extraxerit sit anathematizatus, vi avulsus. Athanasius humilis” (Cod. Alex. V.T., Prolegomena, p. xxvi, note 92). That the book was brought from Alexandria by Cyril (who had been Patriarch of that see from 1602 to 1621) need not be disputed, although Wetstein, on the doubtful authority of Matthew Muttis of Cyprus, Cyril’s deacon, concludes that he procured it from Mount Athos. In the volume itself the Patriarch has written and subscribed the following words: “Liber iste scripturae sacrae N. et V. Testamenti, prout ex traditione habemus, est scriptus manu Theclae, nobilis foeminae Aegyptiae, ante mile [sic] et trecentos annos circiter, paulò post Concilium Nicenum. Nomen Theclae in fine libri erat exaratum, sed extincto Christianismo in Aegypto a Mahometanis, et libri unà Christianorum in similem sunt reducti conditionem. Extinctum ergo est Theclae nomen et laceratum, sed memoria et traditio recens observat.” Cyril seems to lean wholly on the Arabic inscription on the first leaf of the volume: independent testimony he would appear to have received none.

This celebrated manuscript, the earliest of first-rate importance applied by scholars to the criticism of the text, and yielding in value to but one or two at the utmost, is now bound in four volumes, whereof three contain the Septuagint version of the Old Testament almost complete(125), the fourth volume the New Testament with several lamentable defects. In St. Matthew’s Gospel some twenty-five leaves are wanting up to ch. xxv. 6 ἐξέρχεσθε, from John vi. 50 ἵνα to viii. 52 καὶ σύ(126) two leaves are lost, and three leaves from 2 Cor. iv. 13 ἐπίστευσα to xii. 6 ἐξ ἐμοῦ. All the other books of the New Testament are here entire, the Catholic Epistles following the Acts, that to the Hebrews standing before the Pastoral Epistles (see above, p. 74). After the Apocalypse we find what was till very recently the only known extant copy of the first or genuine Epistle of Clement of Rome, and a small fragment of a second of suspected authenticity, both in the same hand as the latter part of the New Testament. It would appear also that these two Epistles of Clement were designed to form a part of the volume of Scripture, for in the Table of Contents exhibited on the first leaf of the manuscript under the head Η ΚΑΙΝΗ ΔΙΑΘΗΚΗ, they are represented as immediately following the Apocalypse: next is given the number of books, ΟΜΟΥ ΒΙΒΛΙΑ, the numerals being now illegible; and after this, as if distinct from Scripture, the eighteen Psalms of Solomon. Such uncanonical works (ἰδιωτικοὶ ψαλμοὶ ... ἀκανόνιστα βιβλία) were forbidden to be read in churches by the 59th canon of the Council of Laodicea (A.D. 363?); whose 60th canon, which seems to have been added a little later, enumerates the books of the N. T. in the precise order seen in Cod. A, only that the Apocalypse and Clement’s Epistles do not stand on the list.

This manuscript is in quarto, 12-¾ inches high and 10-¼ broad, and consists of 773 leaves (of which 639 contain the Old Testament), each page being divided into two columns of fifty or fifty-one lines each, having about twenty letters or upwards in a line. These letters are written continuously in uncial characters, without any space between the words, the uncials being of an elegant yet simple form, in a firm and uniform hand, though in some places larger than in others. Specimens of both styles may be seen in our facsimiles (Plate v, Nos. 12, 13)(127), the first, Gen. i. 1, 2, being written in vermilion, the second, Acts xx. 28, in the once black, but now yellowish-brown ink of the body of the Codex. The punctuation, which no later hand has meddled with, consists merely of a point placed at the end of a sentence, usually on a level with the top of the preceding letter, but not always; and a vacant space follows the point at the end of a paragraph, the space being proportioned to the break in the sense. Capital letters of various sizes abound at the beginning of books and sections, not painted as in later copies, but written by the original scribe in common ink. As these capitals stand entirely outside the column in the margin (excepting in such rare cases as Gen. i. 1), if the section begins in the middle of a line, the capital is necessarily postponed till the beginning of the next line, whose first letter is always the capital, even though it be in the middle of a word (see p. 51). Vermilion is freely used in the initial lines of books, and has stood the test of time much better than the black ink: the first four lines of each column on the first page of Genesis are in this colour, accompanied with the only breathings and accents in the manuscript (see above, pp. 45, 46). The first line of St. Mark, the first three of St. Luke, the first verse of St. John, the opening of the Acts down to δι, and so on for other books, are in vermilion. At the end of each book are neat and unique ornaments in the ink of the first hand: see especially those at the end of St. Mark and the Acts. As we have before stated this codex is the earliest which has the κεφάλαια proper, the so-called Ammonian sections, and the Eusebian canons complete. Lists of the κεφάλαια precede each Gospel, except the first, where they are lost. Their titles stand or have stood at the top of the pages, but the binder has often ruthlessly cut them short, and committed other yet more serious mutilation at the edges. The places at which they begin are indicated throughout, and their numbers are moreover set in the margin of Luke and John. The sections and Eusebian canons are conspicuous in the margin, and at the beginning of each of these sections a capital letter is found. The rest of the New Testament has no division into κεφάλαια, as was usual in later times, but paragraphs and capitals occur as the sense requires.

The palaeographic reasons for assigning this manuscript to the beginning or middle of the fifth century (the date now very generally acquiesced in, though it may be referred even to the end of the fourth century, and is certainly not much later) depend in part on the general style of the writing, which is at once firm, elegant and simple; partly on the formation of certain letters, in which respect it holds a middle place between copies of the fourth and sixth centuries. The reader will recall what we have already said (pp. 33-40) as to the shape of alpha, delta, epsilon, pi, sigma, phi, and omega in the Codex Alexandrinus. Woide, who edited the New Testament, believes that two hands were employed in that volume, changing in the page containing 1 Cor. v-vii, the vellum of the latter portion being thinner and the ink more thick, so that it has peeled off or eaten through the vellum in many places. This, however, is a point on which those who know manuscripts best will most hesitate to speak decidedly(128).

The external arguments for fixing the date are less weighty, but all point to the same conclusion. On the evidence for its being written by St. Thecla, indeed, no one has cared to lay much stress, though some have thought that the scribe might belong to a monastery dedicated to that holy martyr(129), whether the contemporary of St. Paul be meant, or her namesake who suffered in the second year of Diocletian, A.D. 286 (Eusebius de Martyr. Palaestin. c. iii). Tregelles explains the origin of the Arabic inscription, on which Cyril’s statement appears to rest, by remarking that the New Testament in our manuscript at present commences with Matt. xxv. 6, this lesson (Matt. xxv. 1-13) being that appointed by the Greek Church for the festival of St. Thecla (see above, Menology, p. 87, Sept. 24). Thus the Egyptian who wrote this Arabic note, observing the name of Thecla in the now mutilated upper margin of the Codex, where such rubrical notes are commonly placed by later hands, may have hastily concluded that she wrote the book, and so perplexed our Biblical critics. It seems a fatal objection to this shrewd conjecture, as Mr. E. Maunde Thompson points out, that the Arabic numeration of the leaf, set in the verso of the lower margin, itself posterior in date to the Arabic note relating to Thecla, is 26(130); so that the twenty-five leaves now lost must have been still extant when that note was written.

Other more trustworthy reasons for assigning Cod. A to the fifth century may be summed up very briefly. The presence of the canons of Eusebius [A.D. 268-340?], and of the epistle to Marcellinus by the great Athanasius, Patriarch of Alexandria [300?-373], standing before the Psalms, place a limit in one direction, while the absence of the Euthalian divisions of the Acts and Epistles (see above, p. 64), which came into vogue very soon after A.D. 458, and the shortness of the ὑπογραφαί (above, p. 65), appear tolerably decisive against a later date than A.D. 450. The insertion of the Epistles of Clement, like that of the treatises of Barnabas and Hermas in the Cod. Sinaiticus (p. 92), recalls us to a period when the canon of Scripture was in some particulars a little unsettled, that is, about the age of the Councils of Laodicea (363?) and of Carthage (397). Other arguments have been urged both for an earlier and a later date, but they scarcely deserve discussion. Wetstein’s objection to the name Θεοτόκος as applied to the Blessed Virgin in the title to her song, added to the Psalms, is quite groundless: that appellation was given to her by both the Gregories in the middle of the fourth century (vid. Suicer, Thesaur. Eccles. i. p. 1387), as habitually as it was a century after: nor should we insist much on the contrary upon Woide’s or Schulz’s persuasion that the τρισάγιον (ἅγιος ὁ θεός, ἅγιος ἰσχυρός, ἅγιος ἀθάνατος) would have been found in the ὕμνος ἑωθινός after the Psalms, had the manuscript been written as late as the fifth century.

Partial and inaccurate collations of the New Testament portion of this manuscript were made by Patrick Young, Librarian to Charles I(131), who first published from it the Epistles of Clement in 1633: then by Alexander Huish, Prebendary of Wells, for Walton’s Polyglott, and by some others(132). The Old Testament portion was edited in 1707-20, after a not very happy plan, but with learned Prolegomena and notes, by the Prussian J. E. Grabe, the second and third of his four volumes being posthumous.

In 1786, Charles Godfrey Woide, preacher at the Dutch Chapel Royal and Assistant Librarian in the British Museum, a distinguished Coptic scholar [d. 1790], published, by the aid of 456 subscribers, a noble folio edition of the New Testament from this manuscript, with valuable Prolegomena, a copy of the text which, so far as it has been tested, has been found reasonably accurate, together with notes on the changes made in the codex by later hands, and a minute collation of its readings with the common text as presented in Kuster’s edition of Mill’s N. T. (1710). In this last point Woide has not been taken as a model by subsequent editors of manuscripts, much to the inconvenience of the student. In 1816-28 the Old Testament portion of the Codex Alexandrinus was published in three folio volumes at the national expense, by the Rev. Henry Hervey Baber, also of the British Museum, the Prolegomena to whose magnificent work are very inferior to Woide’s, but contain some additional information. Both these performances, and many others like them which we shall have to describe, are printed in an uncial type, bearing some general resemblance to that of their respective originals, but which must not be supposed to convey any adequate notion of their actual appearance. Such quasi-facsimiles (for they are nothing more), while they add to the cost of the book, seem to answer no useful purpose whatever; and, if taken by an incautious reader for more than they profess to be, will seriously mislead him. In 1860 Mr. B. H. Cowper put forth an octavo edition of the New Testament pages in common type, but burdened with modern breathings and accents, the lacunae of the manuscript being unwisely supplied by means of Kuster’s edition of Mill, and the original paragraphs departed from, wheresoever they were judged to be inconvenient. These obvious faults are the more to be regretted, inasmuch as Mr. Cowper has not shrunk from the labour of revising Woide’s edition by a comparison with the Codex itself, thus giving to his book a distinctive value of its own. An admirable autotype facsimile of the New Testament was published in 1879, and afterwards of the Old Testament, by Mr. E. Maunde Thompson, then the Principal Keeper of Manuscripts, now the Principal Librarian, of the British Museum.

The Codex Alexandrinus has been judged to be carelessly written; many errors of transcription no doubt exist, but not so many as in some copies (e.g. Cod. א), nor more than in others (as Cod. B). None other than the ordinary abridgements are found in it (see pp. 49-50): numerals are not expressed by letters except in Apoc. vii. 4; xxi. 17: ι and υ have usually the dots over them at the beginning of a syllable. Of itacisms it may be doubted whether it contains more than others of the same date: the interchange of ι and ει, η and ι, ε, αι, are the most frequent; but these mutations are too common to prove anything touching the country of the manuscript. Its external history renders it very likely that it was written at Alexandria, that great manufactory of correct and elegant copies, while Egypt was yet a Christian land: but such forms as λήμψομαι, ἐλάβαμεν, ἦλθαν, ἔνατος, ἐκαθερίσθη, and others named by Woide, are peculiar to no single nation, but are found repeatedly in Greek-Latin codices which unquestionably originated in Western Europe. This manuscript is of the very greatest importance to the critic, inasmuch as it exhibits (especially in the Gospels) a text more nearly approaching that found in later copies than is read in others of its high antiquity, although some of its errors are portentous enough, e.g. θ_υ_ for ιυ in John xix. 40. This topic, however, will be discussed at length in another place, and we shall elsewhere consider the testimony Codex A bears in the celebrated passage 1 Tim. iii. 16.

B. CODEX VATICANUS 1209 is probably the oldest large vellum manuscript in existence, and is the glory of the great Vatican Library at Rome. To this legitimate source of deep interest must be added the almost romantic curiosity which was once excited by the jealous watchfulness of its official guardians. But now that an acquaintance with it has been placed within the reach of scholars through the magnificent autotype edition issued by the authorities of the Vatican, it may be hoped that all such mystic glamour will soon be left with the past. This book seems to have been brought into the Vatican Library shortly after its establishment by Pope Nicolas V in 1448, but nothing is known of its previous history(133). It is entered in the earliest catalogue of that Library, made in 1475. Since the missing portions at the end of the New Testament are believed to have been supplied in the fifteenth century from a manuscript belonging to Cardinal Bessarion, we may be allowed to conjecture, if we please, that this learned Greek brought the Codex into the west of Europe. It was taken to Paris by Napoleon I, where it was studied by Hug in 1809. Although this book has not even yet been as thoroughly collated, or rendered as available as it might be to the critical student, its general character and appearance are sufficiently well known. It is a quarto volume, arranged in quires of five sheets or ten leaves each, like Codex Marchalianus of the Prophets written in the sixth or seventh century and Cod. Rossanensis of the Gospels to be described hereafter, not of four or three sheets as Cod. א, the ancient, perhaps the original, numbering of the quires being often found in the margin. The New Testament fills 142 out of its 759 thin and delicate vellum leaves, said to be made of the skins of antelopes: it is bound in red morocco, being 10-½ inches high, 10 broad, 4-½ thick. It once contained the whole Bible in Greek, the Old Testament of the Septuagint version (a tolerably fair representation of which was exhibited in the Roman edition as early as 1587(134)), except the books of the Maccabees and the Prayer of Manasses. The first forty-six chapters of Genesis (the manuscript begins at πολιν, Gen. xlvi. 28) and Psalms cv-cxxxvii, also the books of the Maccabees, are wanting. The New Testament is complete down to Heb. ix. 14 καθα: the rest of the Epistle to the Hebrews (the Catholic Epistles had followed the Acts, see p. 74), and the Apocalypse, being written in the later hand alluded to above. The peculiar arrangement of three columns on a page, or six on the opened leaf of the volume, is described by eye-witnesses as very striking: in the poetical books of the Old Testament (since they are written στιχηρῶς) only two columns fill a page. Our facsimile (Plate viii, No. 20) comprises Mark xvi. 3 μιν τον λιθον to the end of verse 8, where the Gospel ends abruptly; both the arabesque ornament and the subscription ΚΑΤΑ ΜΑΡΚΟΝ being in a later hand (for M see p. 37). All who have inspected the Codex are loud in their praises of the fine thin vellum, the clear and elegant hand of the first penman, the simplicity of the whole style of the work: capital letters, so frequent in the Codex Alexandrinus, were totally wanting in this document for some centuries. In several of these particulars our manuscript resembles the Herculanean rolls, and thus asserts a just claim to high antiquity, which the absence of the divisions into κεφάλαια, of the sections and canons, and the substitution in their room of another scheme of chapters of its own (described above, p. 56), beyond question tend very powerfully to confirm. Each column contains ordinarily forty-two lines(135), each line from sixteen to eighteen letters, of a size somewhat less than in Cod. A, much less than in Cod. א (though they all vary a little in this respect), with no intervals between words, a space of the breadth of half a letter being left at the end of a sentence, and a little more at the conclusion of a paragraph; the first letter of the new sentence occasionally standing a little out of the line (see pp. 51, 93). It has been doubted whether any of the stops are primâ manu, and (contrary to the judgement of Birch and others) the breathings and accents are now universally allowed to have been added by a later hand. This hand, referred by some to the eighth century (although Tischendorf, with Dr. Hort’s approval, assigns it to the tenth or eleventh(136)), retraced, with as much care as such an operation would permit, the faint lines of the original writing (the ink whereof was perhaps never quite black), the remains of which can even now be seen by a keen-sighted reader by the side of the thicker and more modern strokes; and, anxious at the same time to represent a critical revision of the text, the writer left untouched such words or letters as he wished to reject. In these last places, where no breathings or accents and scarcely any stops(137) have ever been detected, we have an opportunity of seeing the manuscript in its primitive condition, before it had been tampered with by the later scribe. There are occasional breaks in the continuity of the writing, every descent in the genealogies of our Lord (Matt. i, Luke iii(138)), each of the beatitudes (Matt. v), of the parables in Matt. xiii, and the salutations of Rom. xvi, forming a separate paragraph; but such a case will oftentimes not occur for several consecutive pages. The writer’s plan was to proceed regularly with a book until it was finished: then to break off from the column he was writing, and to begin the next book on the very next column. Thus only one column perfectly blank is found in the whole New Testament(139), that which follows ἐφοβοῦντο γάρ in Mark xvi. 8: and since Cod. B is the only one yet known, except Cod. א, that actually omits the last twelve verses of that Gospel, by leaving such a space the scribe has intimated that he was fully aware of their existence, or even found them in the copy from which he wrote. The capital letters at the beginning of each book are likewise due to the corrector, who sometimes erased, sometimes merely touched slightly, the original initial letter, which (as in the Herculanean rolls) is no larger than any other. The paragraph marks (usually straight lines, but sometimes [symbol](140)) are seen quite frequently in some parts; whether from the first hand is very doubtful. The note of citation > is perpetual, not occasional as in Cod. א. Fewer abridgements than usual occur in this venerable copy. The formation of delta, pi, chi; the loop-like curve on the left side of alpha; the absence of points at the extremities of sigma or epsilon; the length and size of rho, upsilon, phi, all point to the FOURTH century as the date of this manuscript. The smaller letters so often found at the end of lines preserve the same firm and simple character as the rest; of the use of the apostrophus, so frequent in Codd. א, A and some others, Tischendorf enumerates ten instances in the New Testament (N. T. Vatican. Proleg. p. xxi), whereof four are represented in the Roman edition of 1868, with two more which Tischendorf considers as simple points (Acts vii. 13, 14).

Tischendorf says truly enough that something like a history might be written of the futile attempts to collate Cod. B, and a very unprofitable history it would be. The manuscript is first distinctly heard of (for it does not appear to have been used for the Complutensian Polyglott(141)) through Sepulveda, to whose correspondence with Erasmus attention has been seasonably recalled by Tregelles. Writing in 1533, he says, “Est enim Graecum exemplar antiquissimum in Bibliothecâ Vaticanâ, in quo diligentissimè et accuratissimè literis majusculis conscriptum utrumque Testamentum continetur longè diversum a vulgatis exemplaribus”: and, after noticing as a weighty proof of excellence its agreement with the Latin version (multum convenit cum vetere nostrâ translatione) against the common Greek text (vulgatam Graecorum editionem), he furnishes Erasmus with 365 readings as a convincing argument in support of his statements. It would probably be from this list that in his Annotations to the Acts, published in 1535, Erasmus cites the reading καῦδα, ch. xxvii. 16 (“quidam admonent” is the expression he uses), from a Greek codex in the Pontifical Library, since for this reading Cod. B is the only known Greek witness, except a corrector of Cod. א. It seems, however, that he had obtained some account of this manuscript from the Papal Librarian Paul Bombasius as early as 1521 (see Wetstein’s Proleg. N. T., vol. i. p. 23). Lucas Brugensis, who published his Notationes in S. Biblia in 1580, and his Commentary on the Four Gospels (dedicated to Cardinal Bellarmine) in 1606, made known some twenty extracts from Cod. B taken by Werner of Nimeguen; that most imperfect collection being the only source from which Mill and even Wetstein had any acquaintance with the contents of this first-rate document. More indeed might have been gleaned from the Barberini readings gathered in or about 1625 (of which we shall speak in the next section), but their real value and character were not known in the lifetime of Wetstein. In 1698 Lorenzo Alexander Zacagni, Librarian of the Vatican, in his Preface to the Collectanea Monumentorum Veterum Eccles., describes Cod. B, and especially its peculiar division into sections, in a passage cited by Mill (Proleg. § 1480). In 1669 indeed the first real collation of the manuscript with the Aldine edition (1518) had been attempted by Bartolocci, then Librarian of the Vatican; from some accident, however, it was never published, though a transcript under the feigned name of Giulio a Sta. Anastasia yet remains in the Imperial Library of Paris (MSS. Gr. Supplem. 53), where it was first discovered and used by Scholz in 1819, and subsequently by Tischendorf and Muralt, the latter of whom (apparently on but slender grounds) regards it as the best hitherto made; others have declared it to be very imperfect, and quite inferior to those of Bentley and Birch. The collation which bears Bentley’s name (Trin. Coll. B. xvii. 3, in Cephalaeus’ N. T. 1524) was procured about 1720 by his money and the labour of the Abbate Mico, for the purpose of his projected Greek Testament. When he had found out its defects, by means of an examination of the original by his nephew Thomas Bentley in 1726, our great critic engaged the Abbate Rulotta in 1729 for forty scudi (Bentley’s Correspondence, p. 706) to revise Mico’s sheets, and especially to note the changes made by the second hand. Rulotta’s papers came to light in 1855 among the Bentley manuscripts in the Library of Trinity College, Cambridge (B. xvii. 20), and have lately proved of signal value(142); Mico’s were published in 1799 at Oxford, by Henry Ford, Lord Almoner’s Reader in Arabic there (1783-1813), together with some Thebaic fragments of the New Testament, in a volume which (since it was chiefly drawn from Woide’s posthumous papers) he was pleased to call an Appendix to the Codex Alexandrinus. A fourth collation of the Vatican MS. was made about 1780 by Andrew Birch of Copenhagen, and is included in the notes to the first volume of his Greek Testament 1788, or published separately in three volumes which were issued successively 1798 (Acts, Cath. Epp., Paul.), 1800 (Apoc.), and 1801 (Evans). Birch’s collation does not extend to the Gospels of St. Luke and St. John, and on the whole is less full and exact than Mico’s. In 1810, however, when, with the other best treasures of the Vatican, Codex B was at Paris, the celebrated critic J. L. Hug sent forth his treatise “de Antiquitate Vaticani Codicis Commentatio,” and though even he did not perceive the need of a new and full collation when he examined it in 1809, he has the merit of first placing it in the paramount rank it still holds as one of the oldest and most venerable of extant monuments of sacred antiquity. His conclusion respecting its date, that it is not later than the middle of the fourth century, has been acquiesced in with little opposition, though Tischendorf declares rather pithily that he holds this belief “non propter Hugium sed cum Hugio” (Cod. Ephraem. Proleg. p. 19). Some of his reasons, no doubt, are weak enough(143); but the strength of his position depends on an accumulation of minute particulars, against which there seems nothing to set up which would suggest a lower period. On its return to Rome, this volume was no longer available for the free use and reference of critics. In 1843 Tischendorf, after long and anxious expectation during a visit to Rome that lasted some months, obtained a sight of it for two days of three hours each(144). In 1844 Edward de Muralt was admitted to the higher privilege of three days or nine hours enjoyment of this treasure, and on the strength of the favour published an edition of the New Testament, ad fidem codicis principis Vaticani, in 1846. Tregelles, who went to Rome in 1845 for the special purpose of consulting it, was treated even worse. He had forearmed himself (as he fondly imagined) with recommendatory letters from Cardinal Wiseman, and was often allowed to see the manuscript, but hindered from transcribing any of its readings(145).

What the Papal authorities would not entrust to others, they had at least the merit of attempting and at length accomplishing themselves. As early as 1836 Bishop Wiseman announced in his Lectures on the Connection between Science and Revelation, vol. ii. pp. 187-191, that Cardinal Mai, whose services to classical and ecclesiastical literature were renowned throughout Europe, was engaged on an edition of the Codex Vaticanus, commenced under the immediate sanction of Pope Leo XII (1823-29). As years passed by and no such work appeared, adverse reports and evil surmises began to take the place of hope, although the Cardinal often spoke of his work as already finished, only that he desired to write full Prolegomena before it should appear. In September 1854 he died, honoured and ripe in years; and at length, when no more seemed to be looked for in that quarter, five quarto volumes issued from the Roman press in 1857, the New Testament comprising the fifth volume, with a slight and meagre preface by the Cardinal, and a letter to the reader by “Carolus Vercellone, Sodalis Barnabites,” which told in a few frank manly words how little accuracy we had to expect in a work, by the publication of which he still persuaded himself he was decorating Mai’s memory “novâ usque gloriâ atque splendidiore coronâ” (tom. i. p. iii). The cause of that long delay now required no explanation. In fact so long as Mai lived the edition never would have appeared; for though he had not patience or special skill enough to accomplish his task well, he was too good a scholar not to know that he had done it very ill. The text is broken up into paragraphs, the numbers of the modern chapters and verses being placed in the margin; the peculiar divisions of the Codex Vaticanus (see p. 56) sometimes omitted, sometimes tampered with. The Greek type employed is not an imitation of the uncials in the manuscript (of which circumstance we do not complain), but has modern stops, breathings, accents, ι subscript, &c., as if the venerable document were written yesterday. As regards the orthography it is partially, and only partially, modernized; clauses or whole passages omitted in the manuscript are supplied from other sources, although the fact is duly notified(146); sometimes the readings of the first hand are put in the margin, while those of the second stand in the text, sometimes the contrary: in a word, the plan of the work exhibits all the faults such a performance well can have. Nor is the execution at all less objectionable. Although the five volumes were ten years in printing (1828-38), Mai devoted to their superintendence only his scanty spare hours, and even then worked so carelessly that after cancelling a hundred pages for their incurable want of exactness, he was reduced to the shift of making manual corrections with moveable types, and projected huge tables of errata, which Vercellone has in some measure tried to supply. When once it is stated that the type was set up from the common Elzevir or from some other printed Greek Testament, the readings of the Codex itself being inserted as corrections, and the whole revised by means of an assistant who read the proof-sheets to the Cardinal while he inspected the manuscript; no one will look for accuracy from a method which could not possibly lead to it. Accordingly, when Mai’s text came to be compared with the collations of Bartolocci, of Mico, of Rulotta, and of Birch, or with the scattered readings which had been extracted by others, it was soon discovered that while this edition added very considerably to our knowledge of the Codex Vaticanus, and often enabled us to form a decision on its readings when the others were at variance; it was in its turn convicted by them of so many errors, oversights, and inconsistencies, that its single evidence could never be used with confidence, especially when it agreed with the commonly received Greek text. Immediately after the appearance of Mai’s expensive quartos, an octavo reprint of the New Testament was struck off at Leipsic for certain London booksellers, which proved but a hasty, slovenly, unscholarlike performance, and was put aside in 1859 by a cheap Roman edition in octavo, prepared, as was the quarto, by Mai, prefaced by another graceful and sensible epistle of Vercellone(147). This last edition was undertaken by the Cardinal, after sad experience had taught him the defects of his larger work, and he took good care to avoid some of the worst of them: the readings of the second hand are usually, though not always, banished to the margin, their number on the whole is increased, gross errors are corrected, omissions supplied, and the Vatican chapters are given faithfully and in full. But Mai’s whole procedure in this matter is so truly unfortunate, that in a person whose fame was less solidly grounded, we should impute it to mere helpless incapacity(148). Not only did he split up the paragraphs of his quarto into the modern chapters and verses (in itself a most undesirable change, see above, p. 70), but by omitting some things and altering others, he introduced almost as many errors as he removed. When Dean Burgon was permitted to examine the Codex for an hour and a half in 1860, on consulting it for sixteen passages out of hundreds wherein the two are utterly at variance, he discovered that the quarto was right in seven of them, the octavo in nine: as if Mai were determined that neither of his editions should supersede the use of the other. Dean Alford also collated numerous passages in 1861(149), and his secretary Mr. Cure in 1862, especially with reference to the several correcting hands: “in errorem quidem et ipse haud raro inductus,” is Tischendorf’s verdict on his labours. Thus critics of every shade of opinion became unanimous on one point, that a new edition of the Codex Vaticanus was as imperatively needed as ever; one which should preserve with accuracy all that the first hand has written (transcriptural errors included), should note in every instance the corrections made by the second hand, and, wherever any one of the previous collators might be found in error, should expressly state the true reading.

It would have been a grievous reproach had no efforts been made to supply so great and acknowledged a want. Early in 1866, Tischendorf again visited Rome, and when admitted into the presence of Pope Pius IX, boldly sought permission to edit at his own cost such an edition of Cod. B as he had already published of Cod. א. The request was denied by his Holiness, who obscurely hinted his intention of carrying out the same design on his own account. Tischendorf, however, obtained permission to use the manuscript so far as to consult it in such parts of the New Testament as presented any special difficulty, or respecting which previous collators were at variance. He commenced his task February 28, and in the course of it could not refrain from copying at length twenty pages of the great Codex—nineteen from the New Testament, and one from the Old. This licence was not unnaturally regarded as a breach of his contract, so that, after he had used the manuscript for eight days, it was abruptly withdrawn from him on March 12. An appeal to the generosity of Vercellone, who had been entrusted with the care of the forthcoming edition, procured for him the sight of this coveted treasure for six days longer between March 20 and 26, the Italian being always present on these latter occasions, and receiving instruction for the preparation of his own work by watching the processes of a master hand. Thus fourteen days of three hours each, used zealously and skilfully, enabled Tischendorf to put forth an edition of Cod. B far superior to any that preceded it(150). The Prolegomena are full of matter from which we have drawn freely in the foregoing description, the text is in cursive type, the nineteen pages which cost him so dearly being arranged in their proper lines, the remainder according to columns. Much that ought to have been noted was doubtless passed over by Tischendorf for mere pressure of time; but he takes great pains to distinguish the readings of the original writer or his διορθωτής (see p. 55)(151), both of whom supplied words or letters here and there in the margin or between the lines(152), from the corrections of a second yet ancient scribe (B2), and those of the person (B3) who retraced the faded writing at a later period(153). One notion, taken up by Tischendorf in the course of his collation in 1866, was received at first with general incredulity by other scholars. He has pronounced a decided opinion, not only that Codd. א and B are documents of the same age, but that the scribe who wrote the latter is one of the four [D] to whose diligence we owe the former. That there should be a general similarity in the style of the two great codices is probable enough, although the letters in Cod. א are about half as large again as those of its fellow, but such as are aware of the difficulty of arriving at a safe conclusion as to identity of penmanship after close and repeated comparison of one document with another, will hardly attach much weight to the impression of any person, however large his experience, who has nothing but memory to trust to. Tregelles, who has also seen both copies, states that Cod. א looks much the fresher and clearer of the two. Yet the reasons alleged above, which are quite independent of the appearance of the handwriting, leave scarcely a doubt that Tischendorf’s judgement was correct.

The Roman edition, projected by Vercellone and Cozza under the auspices of Pius IX, was designed to consist of six volumes, four containing the Old Testament, one the New, another being devoted to the notes and discrimination of corrections by later hands. The New Testament appeared in 1868(154), a second volume in 1869, containing the text from Genesis to Joshua; three more have since completed the Old Testament (1870, 1871, 1872). The learned, genial, and modest Vercellone (b. 1814) died early in 1869, so that the later volumes bear on their title-page the mournful inscription “Carolum Vercellone excepit Caietanus Sergio Sodalis Barnabites” as Cozza’s associate. These editors fared but ill whether as Biblical critics or as general scholars, under the rough handling of Tischendorf, whom the wiser policy of Vercellone had kept in good humour, but whose powers his successors greatly undervalued. There seems, however, to be no great cause, in spite of their adversary’s minute diligence in fault-finding (Appendix N. T. Vatic. 1869, p. xi, &c.)(155), for doubting their general correctness, although they persist in placing on the page with the rest of their text readings which are known or credibly stated to be of decidedly later date, in spite of the incongruousness of the mixture of what was original with matter plainly adscititious(156). Thus in the Roman edition αδελφων μου των Matt. xxv. 40, imputed by Tischendorf to B2 and B3, stands in the margin just in the same way as ο γαμος Matt. xxii. 10, which he refers to the first hand. But this is only one instance of a lack of judgement which deforms every page of their performance: e.g. Matt. xix. 12; xxiii. 26; 37; xxv. 16; xxvii. 12; 13; 45; xxviii. 15; Acts xv. 1: all which places exhibit, undistinguished from emendations of the original scribe or his “corrector,” readings in the margin or between the lines which Tischendorf asserts to belong mostly to B3, a few to B2.(157)

At length, after baffling delays only too readily accounted for by the public calamities of the Papal state, the concluding volume of this sumptuous and important work was published late in 1881. Sergius had now retired through failing eyesight, and his place was taken by “Henricus Canonicus Fabiani,” Cozza (who is now Abbot of the Grotta Ferrata at Tusculum near Frascati, the chief seat of the monks of the Greek order of St. Basil) still holding the second place. From the laudatory tone in which the latter is spoken of (p. xiv), it would seem that the Preface was written by his new colleague, who acknowledges the help of U. Ubaldi and the Basilian monk Ant. Rocchi, all three “adjutoribus et administris miratis equidem se tantis viris adjutores et successores datos” (p. xv). This Preface consists of twenty-two pages, and contains almost nothing that is interesting to the critic, much that displays superficial and newly-acquired acquaintance with the whole subject. Fabiani assigns the end of the fourth century as the date of the manuscript, regarding it as only a few years older than the Sinaitic copy(158), whose discovery he hails without a vestige of ungenerous jealousy: “Quorum tale est demum par, ut potius liber Vaticanus gaudere debeat quod tam sui similem invenerit fratrem, quam expavescere quod aemulum” (p. viii). Since that time a splendid edition has been issued of the New Testament in 1889, and the Old in 1890, under the care of the Abbate Cozza-Luzi, in which the whole is beautifully exhibited in photograph: so that all students can now examine for themselves the readings and characteristics of this celebrated manuscript with all but the advantage which is given in an examination of the original vellum itself (Novum Testamentum e Codd. Vat. 1209, &c. Rom. 1889, 4to): and gratitude is due from all textual scholars to the authorities of the Vatican.

Those who agree the most unreservedly respecting the age of the Codex Vaticanus, vary widely in their estimate of its critical value. By some it has been held in such undue esteem that its readings, if probable in themselves, and supported (or even though not supported) by two or three other copies and versions, have been accepted in preference to the united testimony of all authorities besides: while others, admitting the interest due to age, have spoken of its text as one of the most vicious extant. Without anticipating what must be discussed hereafter we may say at once, that, while we accord to Cod. B at least as much weight as to any single document in existence, we ought never to forget that it is but one out of many, several of them being nearly (and one quite) as old, and in other respects not less worthy of confidence than itself. One marked feature, characteristic of this copy, is the great number of its omissions, which has induced Dr. Dobbin to speak of it as presenting “an abbreviated text of the New Testament:” and certainly the facts he states on this point are startling enough(159). He calculates that Codex B leaves out words or whole clauses no less than 330 times in Matthew, 365 in Mark, 439 in Luke, 357 in John, 384 in the Acts, 681 in the surviving Epistles; or 2,556 times in all. That no small proportion of these are mere oversights of the scribe seems evident from the circumstance that this same scribe has repeatedly written words and clauses twice over, a class of mistakes which Mai and the collators have seldom thought fit to notice, inasmuch as the false addition has not been retraced by the second hand, but which by no means enhances our estimate of the care employed in copying this venerable record of primitive Christianity(160). Hug and others have referred the origin of Codex B to Egypt, but (unlike in this respect to Codex A) its history does not confirm their conjecture, and the argument derived from orthography or grammatical forms, is now well understood to be but slight and ambiguous(161). Dr. Hort, on no very substantial grounds, is “inclined to surmise that B and א were both written in the West, probably at Rome” (Introduction, pp. 265-7).

C. CODEX EPHRAEMI, No. 9, in the Royal Library of Paris, is a most valuable palimpsest containing portions of the Septuagint version of the Old Testament on sixty-four leaves, and fragments of every part of the New on 145 leaves, amounting on the whole to less than two-thirds of the volume(162). This manuscript seems to have been brought from the East by Andrew John Lascar [d. 1535], a learned Greek patronized by Lorenzo de’ Medici; it once belonged to Cardinal Nicolas Ridolphi of that family, was brought into France by Queen Catherine de’ Medici of evil memory, and so passed into the Royal Library at Paris(163). The ancient writing is barely legible, having been almost removed about the twelfth century to receive some Greek works of St. Ephraem, the great Syrian Father [299-378]. A chemical preparation applied at the instance of Fleck in 1834, though it revived much that was before illegible, has defaced the vellum with stains of various colours, from green and blue to black and brown. The older writing was first noticed by Peter Allix nearly two centuries ago; various readings extracted from it were communicated by Boivin to Kuster, who published them (under the notation of Paris 9) in his edition of Mill’s N. T., 1710. A complete collation of the New Testament was first made in 1716 by Wetstein, then very young, for Bentley’s projected edition, for which labour (as he records the fact himself) he paid Wetstein £50. This collation Wetstein of course used for his own Greek Testament of 1751-2, and though several persons subsequently examined the manuscript, and so became aware that more might be gathered from it, it was not until 1843 that Tischendorf brought out at Leipsic his full and noble edition of the New Testament portion; the Old Testament he published in 1845. Although Tischendorf complains of the typographical errors made in his absence in the former of these two volumes, and has corrected them in the other, they probably comprise by far the most masterly production of this nature up to that date published; it is said too that none but those who have seen Codex C can appreciate the difficulty of deciphering some parts of it(164), in fact, whatever is not patent at first sight. The Prolegomena are especially valuable; the uncial type does not aim at being an imitation, but the facsimile faithfully represents the original, even to the present colour of the ink. In shape Codex C is about the size of Cod. A, but not quite so tall; its vellum is hardly so fine as that of Cod. A and a few others, yet sufficiently good. In this copy there is but one column in a page, which contains from forty to forty-six lines (usually forty-one), the characters being a little larger than those of either A or B, and somewhat more elaborate(165). Thus the points at the ends of sigma, epsilon, and especially of the horizontal line of tau are more decided than in Codex A; delta, though not so fully formed as in later books, is less simple than in A, the strokes being of less equal thickness, and the base more ornamented. On the other hand, alpha and pi are nearer the model of Codex B. Iota and upsilon, which in Cod. A and many other copies have two dots over them when they commence a syllable, and are sometimes found with one dot, have here a small straight line in their place (see p. 36). There are no breathings or accents by the first hand: the apostrophus is found but rarely, chiefly with Proper names, as δαδ᾽ The uncial writing is continuous; the punctuation of Cod. C, like that of A and B, consisting only of a single point, mostly but not always put level with the top of the preceding letter; wherever such a point was employed, a space of one letter broad was usually left vacant: these points are most common in the later books of the N. T. The κεφάλαια are not placed in the upper margin of the page as in Cod. A, but a list of their τίτλοι preceded each Gospel: the so-called Ammonian sections stand in the margin, but not at present the Eusebian canons; though, since lines of the text written in vermilion have been thoroughly washed out, the canons (for which that colour was commonly employed) may easily have shared the same fate (see p. 61). There is no trace of chapters in the Acts, Epistles, or Apocalypse, and both the titles and subscriptions to the various books are very simple. Capital letters are used quite as freely as in Cod. A, both at the commencement of the (Ammonian) sections, and in many other places. All these circumstances taken together indicate for Cod. C as early a date as the fifth century, though there is no sufficient cause for deeming it at all older than Cod. A. Alexandria has been assigned as its native country, for the very insufficient reasons stated when we were describing A and B. It is carefully transcribed, and of its great critical value there is no doubt; its text seems to stand nearly midway between A and B, somewhat inclining to the latter. Two correctors have been very busily at work on Cod. C, greatly to the perplexity of the critical collator: they are respectively indicated by Tischendorf as C**, C***. The earliest, or the second hand, may have been of the sixth century, and his corrections are for some cause regarded by Dr. Hort as almost equally valuable for critical purposes with the manuscript itself: the second corrector, or the third hand, is perhaps of the ninth century, and he revised such portions as were adapted to ecclesiastical use, inserting many accents, the rough breathing, and some vocal notes. By him or more probably by a fourth hand (who did not change the text, but added some liturgical directions in the margin) small crosses were interpolated as stops, agreeably to the fashion of their times.

D OF THE GOSPELS AND ACTS, CODEX BEZAE GRAECO-LATINUS, belongs to the University Library at Cambridge, where the open volume is conspicuously exhibited to visitors in the New Building (Nn. ii. 41). It was presented to the University in 1581 by Theodore Beza, for whom and his master Calvin the heads of that learned body then cherished a veneration which already boded ill for the peace of the English Church(166). Between the Gospels (whose order was spoken of above, pp. 72-4) and the Acts, the Catholic Epistles once stood, of which only a few verses remain in the Latin translation (3 John ver. 11-15), followed by the words “epistulae Johannis III explicit, incipit actus apostolorum,” as if St. Jude’s Epistle were displaced or wanting. There are not a few hiatus both in the Greek and Latin texts(167). The contents of this remarkable document were partially made known by numerous extracts from it, under the designation of β´ in the margin of Robert Stephen’s Greek Testament of 1550, whose account of it is that it was collated for him in Italy by his friends (τὸ δὲ β´ ἐστὶ τὸ ἐν Ἰταλίᾳ ὑπὸ τῶν ἡμετέρων ἀντιβληθὲν φίλων. Epistle to the Reader)(168). It is not very easy to reconcile this statement with Beza’s account prefixed to the manuscript and still extant in his own cramped handwriting, wherein he alleges that he obtained the volume in 1562 from the monastery of St. Irenaeus at Lyons (“oriente ibi civili bello”), where it had long lain buried (“postquam ibi in pulvere diu jacuisset”). This great city, it must be remembered, was sacked in that very year by the infamous Des Adrets, whom it suited to espouse for a while the cause of the Huguenots; and we can hardly doubt that some one who had shared in the plunder of the abbey(169) conveyed this portion of it to Beza, whose influence at that juncture was paramount among the French Reformed(170).

Beza in his editions of the Greek Testament published in 1582, 1589, and 1598, made some occasional references to the readings of his manuscript. Archbishop Whitgift borrowed it from Cambridge in 1583, and caused a poor transcript to be made of its Greek text, which he bequeathed to Trinity College (whereof he had been Master), in whose Library it still remains (B. x. 3).

Patrick Young, of whom we have heard in connexion with Cod. A (p. 103 and note 1), sent extracts from Cod. D to the brothers Dupuy at Paris, through whom they reached Morinus and Steph. Curcellaeus. An unusually full collation was made for Walton’s Polyglott (Tom. vi, Num. xvi, 1657) by pious Archbishop Ussher, who devoted to these studies the doleful leisure of his latter years. Mill collated and Wetstein transcribed (1716) this document for their great editions of the Greek Testament, but they both did their work carelessly; and though Bentley was allowed to keep it at home for seven years, his notices of its readings, as represented by Mr. Ellis (Bentleii Critica Sacra, pp. 2-26), or preserved in Stephen’s N. T. of 1549 (Trin. Coll. B. xvii. 4), were put to no practical use. The best collation by far was made about 1732 by John Dickinson of St. John’s College for John Jackson of Leicester, with whose other books it came into Jesus College Library (O. θ. 2), where it has lain neglected. But a manuscript replete as this is with variations from the sacred text beyond all other example could be adequately represented only by being published in full; a design entrusted by the University of Cambridge to Dr. Thomas Kipling, Senior Wrangler in 1768 and afterwards Dean of Peterborough [d. 1822], whose “Codex Theodori Bezae Cantabrigiensis” 1793, 2 vols. fol. (in type imitating the original handwriting much more closely than in Cod. A and the rest), is a not unfaithful transcript of the text(171), though the Prolegomena too plainly testify to the editor’s pitiable ignorance of sacred criticism, while his habit of placing the readings of the several later hands (very loosely distinguished from each other) in the text, and those of the first hand in the notes (a defect we have also noted in the Roman editions of Cod. B), renders his volumes very inconvenient for use. Let Kipling be praised for the care and exact diligence his work evinces, but Herbert Marsh [1757-1839] was of all Cambridge men of that period the only one known to be competent for such a task. In 1864 the present writer was aided by the Syndics of the Cambridge Press in publishing an edition of Codex Bezae in common type, illustrated by a copious Introduction and critical notes, to which work the reader is referred for fuller information respecting this manuscript.

The Codex Bezae is a quarto volume 10 inches high by 8 broad, with one column on a page, the Greek text and its Latin version being parallel, the Greek on the left, or verso of each leaf, and the Latin on the right, opposite to it, on the recto of the next. Notwithstanding the Alexandrian forms that abound in it as much as in any other copy, and which have been held by some to prove the Egyptian origin of Codd. ABC, the fact of its having a Latin version sufficiently attests its Western origin. The vellum is not quite equal in fineness to that of a few others. There are thirty-three lines in every page, and these of unequal length, as this manuscript is arranged in στίχοι, being the earliest in date that is so (see p. 53). The Latin is placed in the same line and as nearly as possible in the same order as the corresponding Greek. It has not the larger κεφάλαια or Eusebian canons, but only the so-called Ammonian sections, often incorrectly placed, and obviously in a later hand of about the ninth century. The original absence of these divisions is no proof that the book was not at first intended for ecclesiastical use (as some have stated), inasmuch as the sections and canons were constructed for a very different purpose (see above, pp. 59-63), but is another argument for its being copied in the West, perhaps not far from the place where it rested so long. Other proofs of its Occidental, perhaps of its Gallican origin, especially that derived from the style of the Latin version, are collected in Scrivener’s edition (Introd. pp. xxxi, xl-xlv). The characters are of the same size as in C, larger on the whole than in AB, but betray a later age than any of these, although the Latin as well as the Greek is written continuously, excepting that in the titles and subscriptions of the several books (as in Codd. DH of St. Paul) the words are separated. This copy has paragraph divisions of unequal length peculiar to itself(172). They are indicated by placing the initial letter out in the margin, that letter being usually of the same size with the rest, though sometimes a little larger. Cod. D appears to be the earliest which exhibits larger letters after a pause in the middle of a line; but these are not very frequent. Instances of each case may be noticed in our facsimile (No. 42), wherein the shapes of kappa, rho and phi, as indicated before (pp. 32, note 1, 37, 39), are very observable. The Greek and Latin writing on the opposite pages are much like each other in appearance, the Latin letters being round and flowing, not square as in codices a little earlier in date, such as the Medicean and Vatican fragments of Virgil. This manuscript has been corrected, first by the original penman with a light stroke made by a pen nearly empty; after him by not less than eight or nine different revisers, some nearly coeval with the Codex itself, others not many centuries old. The changes they have made, especially when they employed a knife to scrape away the primitive reading, render too many places almost illegible. The first scribe often used a sponge to wash out his error before the ink was well dried in (see p. 27). In addition to the single point about three-fourths of the height of a letter up, which often subdivides the στίχοι in both languages (facsimile, No. 42, l. 9) the coarse late hand which inserted the Ammonian sections placed double dots (:) after the numerals, and often inserted similar points in the text, before or over the first letter of a section. Each member of the genealogy in Luke iii forms a separate στίχος, as in Cod. B: quotations are indicated by throwing the commencement of the lines which contain them, both Greek and Latin, about an inch back or less (e.g. Matt. xxvi. 31; Mark i. 2, 3; Acts ii. 34, 35; iv. 25, 26). The first three lines of each book, in both languages, were written in bright red ink, which was also employed in the alternate lines of the subscriptions, and in other slight ornaments. The traces of the scribe’s needle and lines (see p. 27) are very visible, the margin ample, and the volume on the whole in good keeping, though its first extant page (Latin) is much decayed, and it is stained in parts by some chemical mixture that has been applied to it. The portions supplied by a later hand are of course in the uncial Greek and cursive Latin characters usual at the dates assigned to them. The liturgical notes in the margin of the Saturday and Sunday lessons (ανναγνοσμα is the form often used) are in thick letters, of a yet later date than the Ammonian sections. A few others for the great Feasts and Fast days occur; and, in a hand of about the twelfth century, lessons for the Festivals of St. George and St. Dionysius, the patron saints of England and France, as may be seen in the table of Menology.

The vellum employed for Codex Bezae is arranged in quires of four sheets (or eight leaves) each even throughout(173), the numeral signatures of which are set primâ manu so low down in the margin at the foot of the last page of each, that they are mostly cut off, in whole or partly, by the binder. Assuming that it ended with the Acts of the Apostles, it originally consisted of upwards of sixty-four (probably of sixty-seven) quires, of which the first, forty-fourth, and sixty-fourth, have each lost some leaves, the thirty-fourth is entire though containing but six leaves, while those signed Γ (3), ΙΔ (14), ΚΒ (22), ΜΕ (45), down to ΝΒ (52), ΝΖ (57), and all after ΞΔ (64), are wholly wanting. The result is that out of the 534 leaves it originally contained, only 406 now survive, about twelve of them being more or less mutilated. It is not easy to surmise what may have been written on the sixty-seven leaves that intervened between ΜΔ 5 and ΝΓ 1; the gap ends with 3 John ver. 11 (Greek), but the space is apparently too great for the Catholic Epistles alone, even though we suppose that Jude was inserted (as appears in some catalogues) otherwise than in the last place. The leaves added by later hands are nine in number. The Greek portion of the supplement to St. John (xviii. 14-xx. 13) much resembles in text the style of the original manuscript, and is often supported by Codd. אAB(C). The Latin of this portion is taken from the Vulgate version.

The internal character of the Codex Bezae is a most difficult and indeed an almost inexhaustible theme. No known manuscript contains so many bold and extensive interpolations (six hundred, it is said, in the Acts alone), countenanced, where they are not absolutely unsupported, chiefly by the Old Latin and the Curetonian version: its own parallel Latin translation is too servilely accommodated to the Greek text to be regarded as an independent authority, save where the corresponding Greek is lost.

This passage was penned by Dr. Scrivener before the publication of the highly ingenious treatise by Mr. Rendel Harris, entitled “A Study of the Codex Bezae” (1891), being the beginning of the second volume of the Cambridge “Texts and Studies.” Mr. Harris from curious internal evidence, such as the existence in the text of a vitiated rendering of a verse of Homer which bears signs of having been retranslated from a Latin translation, infers that the Greek has been made up from the Latin, and traces the latter to the second century. He shows its affinity with the text of Irenaeus, and discovers traces in it of Montanism. He opens up many points of interest for any one who would examine this “singular Codex”: but injustice must not be done to the fertile author by supposing that in what is evidently ’a Study’ he concludes that he has settled all the numerous questions which he broaches. No one however can really investigate the Codex Bezae without studying this work, which will be found both instructive in the highest degree and amusing.

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V. UNCIAL MANUSCRIPTS OF THE GOSPELS

Of the manuscripts hitherto described, Codd. אABC for their presumed critical value, Cod. D for its numberless and strange deviations from other authorities, and all five for their high antiquity, demanded a full description. Of those which follow many contain but a few fragments of the Gospels, and others are so recent in date that they hardly exceed in importance some of the best cursive copies (e.g. FGHS)(174). None of these need detain us long.

E. CODEX BASILIENSIS (B vi. 21, now A. N. iii. 12) (κεφ. τ., κεφ., Am., Eus. at foot of the pages) contains the four Gospels, excepting Luke iii. 4-15; xxiv. 47-53, and was written about the middle of the eighth century, unless (with Dean Burgon) we refer it to the seventh. It measures 9 x 6-½ inches, and contains 318 folios. There are 247 folios verso, and 71 recto(175). Three leaves (160, 207, 214) on which are Luke i. 69-ii. 4; xii. 58-xiii. 12; xv. 8-20 are in a cursive and later hand, above the obliterated fragments of a homily as old as the main body of the manuscript. There is a “liber praedicatorum” on the first folio. This copy is one of the most notable of the later uncials, and might well have been published at length. It was given to a religious house in Basle by Cardinal John de Ragusio, who was sent on a mission to the Greeks by the Council of Basle (1431), and probably brought it from Constantinople. Erasmus much overlooked it for later books when preparing his Greek Testament at Basle; indeed it was not brought into the Public Library there before 1559. A collation was sent to Mill by John Battier, Greek Professor at Basle: Mill named it B. I, and truly declared it to be “probatae fidei et bonae notae.” Bengal (who obtained a few extracts from it) calls it Basil. a: but its first real collator was Wetstein, whose native town it adorns. Since his time, Tischendorf in 1843, Professor Müller of Basle and Tregelles in 1846, have independently collated it throughout. Judging from the specimen sent to him, Mill (N. T. Proleg. § 1118) thought the hand much like that of Cod. A; the uncial letters (though not so regular or neat) are firm, round, and simple: indeed “the penmanship is exceedingly tasteful and delicate throughout. The employment of green, blue, and vermilion in the capitals I do not remember to have met with elsewhere” (Burgon, Guardian, Jan. 29, 1873). There is but one column of about twenty-four lines on the page; it has breathings and accents pretty uniformly, and not ill placed; otherwise, from the shape of most of the letters (e.g. pi, facsimile No. 27, lines 1, 3), it might be judged of earlier date: observe, however, the oblong form of omicron where the space is crowded in the last line of the facsimile, when the older scribes would have retained the circular shape and made the letter very small (see facsimile No. 11 b. l. 6): delta also and xi betray a less ancient scribe. The single stop in Cod. E, as was stated above (p. 48), changes its place according to the variation of its power, as in other copies of about the same age. The capitals at the beginning of sections stand out in the margin as in Codd. AC. The lists of the larger κεφάλαια together with the numbers of the sections in the margin and the Eusebian canons beneath them, as well as harmonizing references to the other Gospels at the foot of the page, names of Feast days with their Proper lessons, and other liturgical notices, have been inserted (as some think, but erroneously in Burgon’s judgement) by a later hand. Under the text (Mark i. 5, 6) are placed the harmonizing references, in the order (varying in each Gospel) Mark, Luke, John, Matthew. Ιω (John) furnishes no parallel on this page. The first section (α) of Μρ (Mark i. 1, 2) corresponds to the seventieth (ο) of Λο (Luke vii. 27), and to the 103rd (ργ) of M (Matt. xi. 10). Again the second (β) of Mark (i. 3) is parallel to the seventh (ζ) of Luke (iii. 3), and to the eighth (η) of Matt. (iii. 3). The passage given in our facsimile (No. 27) is part of the third (γ) of Mark (i. 4-6), and answers to nothing in Luke, but to the ninth (θ) of Matt. (iii. 4-6). See p. 60, note 4. The value of this codex, as supplying materials for criticism, is considerable. It approaches more nearly than some others of its date to the text now commonly received, and is an excellent witness for it. The asterisk is much used to indicate disputed passages: e.g. Matt. xvi. 2, 3: Luke xxii. 43, 44; xxiii. 34: John viii. 2-11. (For the fragments attached to this Codex, see Apoc. 15.)

F. CODEX BOREELI, now in the Public Library at Utrecht, once belonged to John Boreel [d. 1629], Dutch ambassador at the court of King James I. Wetstein obtained some readings from it in 1730, as far as Luke xi, but stated that he knew not where it then was. In 1830 Professor Heringa of Utrecht discovered it in private hands at Arnheim, and procured it for his University Library, where in 1850 Tregelles found it, though with some difficulty, the leaves being torn and all loose in a box, and he then made a facsimile; Tischendorf had looked through it in 1841. In 1843, after Heringa’s death, H. E. Vinke published that scholar’s “Disputatio de Codice Boreeliano,” which includes a full and exact collation of the text. Cod. F contains the Four Gospels with many defects, some of which have been caused since the collation was made which Wetstein published: hence the codex must still sometimes be cited on his authority as Fw. In fact there are but 204 leaves and a few fragments remaining, written with two columns of about nineteen lines each on the page, in a tall, oblong, upright form; it was referred by Mr. H. Deane in 1876 to the eighth, by Tischendorf to the ninth, by Tregelles to the tenth century. In St. Luke there are no less than twenty-four gaps: in Wetstein’s collation it began at Matt. vii. 6, but now at Matt. ix. 1. Other hiatus are Matt. xii. 1-44; xiii. 55-xiv. 9; xv. 20-31; xx. 18-xxi. 5: Mark i. 43-ii. 8; ii. 23-iii. 5; xi. 6-26; xiv. 54-xv. 5; xv. 39-xvi. 19: John iii. 5-14; iv. 23-38; v. 18-38; vi. 39-63; vii. 28-viii. 10; x. 32-xi. 3; xi. 40-xii. 3; xii. 14-25: it ends at John xiii. 34. Few manuscripts have fallen into such unworthy hands. The Eusebian canons are wanting, the sections standing without them in the margin. Thus in Mark x. 13 (see facsimile No. 28) the section ρϛ (106) has not under it the proper canon β (2). The letters delta, epsilon, theta, omicron, and especially the cross-like psi (see p. 40), are of the most recent uncial form, phi is large and bevelled at both ends; the breathings and accents are fully and not incorrectly given.

Fa. CODEX COISLIN. I is that great copy of the Septuagint Octateuch, the glory of the Coislin Library, first made known by Montfaucon (Biblioth. Coislin., 1715), and illustrated by a facsimile in Silvestre’s Paléogr. Univ. No. 65. It contains 227 leaves in two columns, 13 inches by 9: the fine massive uncials of the sixth or seventh century are much like Cod. A’s in general appearance. In the margin primâ manu Wetstein found Acts ix. 24, 25, and so inserted this as Cod. F in his list of MSS. of the Acts. In 1842 Tischendorf observed nineteen other passages of the New Testament, which he published in his Monumenta sacra inedita (1846, p. 400, &c.) with a facsimile. The texts are Matt. v. 48; xii. 48; xxvii. 25: Luke i. 42; ii. 24; xxiii. 21: John v. 35; vi. 53, 55: Acts iv. 33, 34; ix. 24, 25; x. 13, 15; xxii. 22: 1 Cor. vii. 39; xi. 29: 1 Cor. iii. 13; ix. 7; xi. 33: Gal. iv. 21, 22: Col. ii. 16, 17; Heb. x. 26.

G. COD. HARLEIAN. 5684 or WOLFII A; H. COD. WOLFII B. These two copies were brought from the East by Andrew Erasmus Seidel, purchased by La Croze, and by him presented to J. C. Wolff, who published loose extracts from them both in his “Anecdota Graeca” (vol. iii. 1723), and barbarously mutilated them in 1721 in order to send pieces to Bentley, among whose papers in Trinity College Library (B. XVII. 20) Tregelles found the fragments in 1845 (Account of the Printed Text, p. 160). Subsequently Cod. G came with the rest of the Harleian collection into the British Museum; Cod. H, which had long been missing, was brought to light in the Public Library of Hamburg, through Petersen the Librarian, in 1838. Codd. GH have now been thoroughly collated both by Tischendorf and Tregelles. Cod. G appears to be of the tenth, Cod. H of the ninth century, and is stated to be of higher critical value. Besides the mutilated fragments at Trinity College (Matt. v. 29-31; 39-43 of Cod. G; Luke i. 3-6; 13-15 of Cod. H), many parts of both have perished: viz. in Cod. G 372 verses; Matt. i. 1-vi. 6; vii. 25-viii. 9; viii. 23-ix. 2; xxviii. 18-Mark i. 13; xiv. 19-25: Luke i. 1-13; v. 4-vii. 3; viii. 46-ix. 5; xii. 27-41; xxiv. 41-53: John xviii. 5-19; xix. 4-27 (of which one later hand supplies Matt, xxviii. 18-Mark i. 8: John xviii. 5-19; another Luke xii. 27-41): in Cod. H 679 verses; Matt. i. 1-xv. 30; xxv. 33-xxvi. 3; Mark i. 32-ii. 4; xv. 44-xvi. 14; Luke v. 18-32; vi. 8-22; x. 2-19: John ix. 30-x. 25; xviii. 2-18; xx. 12-25. Cod. G has some Church notes in the margin; Cod. H the sections without the Eusebian canons; G however has both sections and canons; its τίτλοι and larger κεφάλαια are in red (those of St. John being lost), and the Church notes seem primâ manu. Each member of the genealogy in Luke iii forms a separate line. Both G and H are written in a somewhat rude style, with breathings and accents rather irregularly placed, as was the fashion of their times; G in two columns of twenty-two lines each on a page, H in one column of twenty-three lines. In each the latest form of the uncial letters is very manifest (e.g. delta, theta), but G is the neater of the two. In G the single point, in H a kind of Maltese cross, are the prevailing marks of punctuation. Our facsimiles (Nos. 29 of G, 31 of H) are due to Tregelles; that of G he took from the fragment at Trinity College. Inasmuch as beside Matt. v. 30, 31 in Cod. G ΑΡ [with a χ between and above them] (ἀρχή) is conspicuous in the margin, and ΤΕ Τ_Η_Σ Λε (τέλος τῆς λέξεως) stands in the text itself, good scholars may be excused for having mistaken it for a scrap of some Evangelistarium.

I. COD. TISCHENDORFIAN. II at St. Petersburg, consists of palimpsest fragments found by Tischendorf in 1853 “in the dust of an Eastern library,” i.e. in the Convent of St. Saba near the Red Sea, and published in his new series of “Monumenta sacra inedita,” vol. i, 1855. On the twenty-eight vellum leaves (eight of them on four double leaves) Georgian writing covers the partially obliterated Greek, which is for the most part very hard to read. They compose portions of no less than seven different manuscripts; the first two, of the fifth century, are as old as Codd. AC (the first having scarcely any capital letters and those very slightly larger than the rest); the third fragment seems of the sixth century, nearly of the date of Cod. N (p. 139), about as old as Cod. P (see p. 143); the fourth scarcely less ancient: all four, like other palimpsests, have the pseudo-Ammonian sections without the Eusebian canons (see p. 61). Of the Gospels we have 190 verses: viz. (Frag. 1 or Ia) John xi. 50-xii. 9; xv. 12-xvi. 2; xix. 11-24: (Frag. 2 or Ib) Matt. xiv. 13-16; 19-23; xxiv. 37-xxv. 1; xxv. 32-45; xxvi. 31-45: Mark ix. 14-22; xiv. 58-70: (Frag. 3 or Ic) Matt. xvii. 22-xviii. 3; xviii. 11-19; xix. 5-14: Luke xviii. 14-25; John iv. 52-v. 8; xx. 17-26: (Frag. 4 or Id) Luke vii. 39-49; xxiv. 10-19. The fifth fragment (Ie), containing portions of the Acts and of St. Paul’s Epistles (1 Cor. xv. 53-xvi. 9; Tit. i. 1-13; Acts xxviii. 8-17) is as old as the third, if not as the first. The sixth and seventh fragments are of the seventh century: viz. (Frag. 6 or If, of two leaves) Acts ii. 6-17; xxvi. 7-18: (Frag. 7 or Ig, of one leaf) Acts xiii. 39-46. In all seven are 255 verses. All except Frag. 6 are in two columns of from twenty-nine to eighteen lines each, and unaccentuated; Frag. 6 has but one column on a page, with some accents. The first five fragments, so far as they extend, must be placed in the highest rank as critical authorities. The first, as cited in Tischendorf’s eighth edition of his Greek Testament, agrees with Cod. A thirty-four times, four times with Cod. B, and twenty-three times with the two united; it stands alone eleven times. The text of the second and third is more mixed though they incline more to favour Codd. אB; not, however, so decidedly as the first does Cod. A. Tischendorf gives us six facsimiles of them in the “Monumenta sacra inedita,”. Nova Collect. vol. i (1885), a seventh in “Anecdota sacra et profana,” 1855. From the same Armenian book, as Tischendorf thinks (and he was very likely to know), are taken the three palimpsest leaves of 2 and 3 Kings, and the six of Isaiah published by him in the same volume of the “Monumenta.”

Ib. See Nb, below.

K. COD. CYPRIUS, or No. 63 of the Royal Library at Paris, shares only with Codd. אBMSU the advantage of being a complete uncial copy of the Four Gospels. It was brought into the Colbert Library from Cyprus in 1673; Mill inserted its readings from Simon; it was re-examined by Scholz, whose inaccuracies (especially those committed when collating Cod. K for his “Curae Criticae in Historiam textûs Evangeliorum,” Heidelberg, 1820) have been strongly denounced by later editors, and it must be feared with too good reason. The independent collations of Tischendorf and Tregelles have now done all that can be needed for this copy. It is an oblong quarto, in compressed uncials, of about the middle of the ninth century at the latest, having one column of about twenty-one lines on each page, but the handwriting is irregular and varies much in size. A single point being often found where the sense does not require it, this codex has been thought to have been copied from an older one arranged in στίχοι; the ends of each στίχος may have been indicated in this manner by the scribe. The subscriptions, τίτλοι, the sections, and indices of the κεφάλαια of the last three Gospels are believed to be the work of a later hand: the Eusebian canons are absent. The breathings and accents are primâ manu, but often omitted or incorrectly placed. Itacisms and permutations of consonants are very frequent, and the text is of an unusual and interesting character. Scholz regards the directions for the Church lessons, even the ἀρχαί and τέλη in the margin at the beginning and end of lessons, as by the original scribe. He transcribes at length the ἐκλογάδιον τῶν δ᾽ εὐαγγελιστῶν and the fragments of a menology prefixed to Cod. K (N. T. vol. i, pp. 455-493), of which tables it affords the earliest specimen. The second hand writes at the end προσδέξηται αὐτὴν [τὴν δέλτον] ἡ παναγία θεοτόκος καὶ ὁ ἅγιος εὐτύχιος. The style of this copy will be seen from our facsimile (No. 19) taken from John vi. 52, 53: the number of the section (ξϛ´) or 66 stands in the margin, but the ordinary place of the Eusebian canon (ι or 10) under it is filled by a simple flourish. The stop in 1. 1 after λεγοντεσ illustrates the unusual punctuation of this copy, as may that after ὁ ισ in 1. 3.

L. COD. REGIUS, No. 62 in the Royal Library at Paris, is by far the most remarkable document of its age and class. It contains the Four Gospels, except the following passages, Matt. iv. 22-v. 14; xxviii. 17-20: Mark x. 16-30; xv. 2-20: John xxi. 15-25. It was written in about the eighth century and consists of 257 leaves quarto, of thick vellum, 9 inches high by 6-½ broad, with two columns of twenty-five lines each on a page, regularly marked, as we so often see, by the stilus and ruler (p. 27). This is doubtless Stephen’s η´, though he cites it erroneously in Acts xxiv. 7 bis; xxv. 14; xxvii. 1; xxviii. 11: it was even then in the Royal Library, although “Roberto Stephano” is marked in the volume. Wetstein collated Cod. L but loosely; Griesbach, who set a very high value on it, studied it with peculiar care; Tischendorf published it in full in his “Monumenta sacra inedita,” 1846. It is but carelessly written, and abounds with errors of the ignorant scribe, who was more probably an Egyptian than a native Greek. The breathings and accents are often deficient, often added wrongly, and placed throughout without rule or propriety. The apostrophus also is common, and frequently out of place; the points for stops are quite irregular, as we have elsewhere stated (p. 48). Capitals occur plentifully, often painted and in questionable taste (see facsimile No. 21, column 2), and there is a tendency throughout to inelegant ornament. This codex is in bad condition through damp, the ink brown or pale, the uncial letters of a debased oblong shape: phi is enormously large and sometimes quite angular; other letters are such as might be looked for from its date, and are neither neat nor remarkably clear. The lessons for Sundays, festivals, &c. and the ἀρχαί and τέλη are marked everywhere in the margin, especially in St. Matthew; there are also many corrections and important critical notes (e.g. Mark xvi. 8) in the text or margin, apparently primâ manu. Our facsimile is taken from a photograph of its most important page, Mark xvi. 8, 9, with part of the note cited at length below. Before each Gospel are indices of the κεφάλαια, now imperfect: we find also the τίτλοι at the head and occasionally at the foot of the several pages; the numbers of the κεφάλαια (usually pointed out by the sign of the cross), the sections and Eusebian canons stand in the inner margin(176) often ill put, as if only half understood. The critical weight of this copy may best be discussed hereafter; it will here suffice barely to mention its strong resemblance to Cod. B (less, however, in St. John’s Gospel than elsewhere), to the citations of Origen [186-253], and to the margin of the Harkleian Syriac version [A.D. 616]. Cod. L abounds in what are termed Alexandrian forms, beyond any other copy of its date.

M. COD. CAMPIANUS, No. 48 in the Royal Library at Paris, contains the Four Gospels complete in a small quarto form, written in very elegant and minute uncials of the end of the ninth century, with two columns of twenty-four lines each on a page. The Abbé François de Camps gave it to Louis XIV, Jan. 1, 1707. This document is Kuster’s 2 (1710); it was collated by Wetstein, Scholz, and Tregelles; transcribed in 1841 by Tischendorf. Its synaxarion and menology have been published by Scholz in the same place as those of Cod. K, and obviously with great carelessness. Ἀναγνώσματα, i.e. notes of the Church Lessons, abound in the margin (Tischendorf thinks them primâ manu) in a very small hand, like in style to the Oxford Plato (Clarke 39, above, p. 42). We find too Hippolytus’ Chronology of the Gospels, Eusebius’ letter to Carpianus with his canons, and some Arabic scrawl on the last leaf, of which the name of Jerusalem alone has been read, a note in Slavonic, and others in a contemporaneous cursive hand. Dean Burgon also observed at the foot of the several pages the same kind of harmony as we described for Cod. E. It has breathings, accents pretty fairly given, and a musical notation in red, so frequent in Church manuscripts of the age. Its readings are very good; itacisms and ν ἐφελκυστικόν are frequent. Tischendorf compares the form of its uncials to those of Cod. V; which, judging from the facsimile given by Matthaei, we should deem somewhat less beautiful. From our facsimile (No. 32) it will be seen that the round letters are much narrowed, the later form of delta and theta quite decided, while alpha and pi might look earlier. Our specimen (John vii. 53-viii. 2) represents the celebrated Pericope adulterae in one of its earliest forms.

N. CODEX PURPUREUS. Only twelve leaves of this beautiful copy were till recently believed to survive, and some former possessor must have divided them in order to obtain a better price from several purchasers than from one. Four leaves are now in the British Museum (Cotton, Titus C. xv), six in the Vatican (No. 3785), two at Vienna (Lambec. 2), at the end of a fragment of Genesis in a different hand. The London fragments (Matt. xxvi. 57-65; xxvii. 26-34: John xiv. 2-10; xv. 15-22) were collated by Wetstein on his first visit to England in 1715, and marked in his Greek Testament by the letter J: Scrivener transcribed them in 1845, and announced that they contained fifty-seven various readings, of which Wetstein had given but five. The Vienna fragment (Luke xxiv. 13-21; 39-49) had long been known by the descriptions of Lambecius: Wetstein had called it N; Treschow in 1773 and Alter in 1787 had given imperfect collations of it. Scholz first noticed the Vatican leaves (Matt. xix. 6-13; xx. 6-22; xx. 29-xxi. 19), denoted them by Γ, and used some readings extracted by Gaetano Marini. It was reserved for Tischendorf (Monumenta sacra inedita, 1846) to publish them all in full, and to determine by actual inspection that they were portions of the same manuscript, of the date of about the end of the sixth century. Besides these twelve leaves John Sakkelion the Librarian saw in or about 1864 at the Monastery of St. John in Patmos thirty-three other leaves containing portions of St. Mark’s Gospel (ch. vi. 53-xv. 23)(177), whose readings were communicated to Tischendorf, and are included in his eighth edition of the N. T. The others were probably stolen from the same place. This book is written on the thinnest vellum (see pp. 23, 25), dyed purple, and the silver letters (which have turned quite black) were impressed in some way upon it, but are too varied in shape, and at the end of the lines in size, to admit the supposition of moveable type being used, as some have thought to be the case in the Codex Argenteus of the Gothic Gospels. The abridgements ΘΣ, ΧΣ, &c. are in gold; and some changes have been made by an ancient second hand. The so-called Ammonian sections and the Eusebian canons are faithfully given (see p. 59), and the Vatican portion has the forty-first, forty-sixth, and forty-seventh τίτλοι of St. Matthew at the head of the pages. Each page has two columns of sixteen lines, and the letters (about ten or twelve in a line) are firm, uniform, bold, and unornamented, though not quite so much so as in a few older documents; their lower extremities are bevelled. Their size is at least four times that of the letters in Cod. A, the punctuation quite as simple, being a single point (and that usually neglected) level with the top of the letter (see our facsimile, Plate v, No. 14, l. 3), and there is no space left between words even after stops. A few letters stand out as capitals at the beginning of lines; of the breathings and accents, if such they be, we have spoken above (p. 47). Letters diminished at the end of a line do not lose their ancient shape, as in many later books: compendia scribendi are rare, yet [symbol] stands for Ν at the end of a line no less than twenty-nine times in the London leaves alone, but [symbol] for αι only once. Ι at the beginning of a syllable has two dots over it, Υ but one. We have discussed above (pp. 32-39) the shape of the alphabet in Ν (for by that single letter Tischendorf denotes it), and compared it with others of nearly the same date; alpha, omega, lambda look more ancient than delta or xi (see Plate ii. No. 4). It exhibits strong Alexandrian forms, e.g. παραλήμψομε, ειχοσαν (the latter condemned secundâ manu), and not a few such itacisms as the changes of ι and ει, αι and ε.

COD. Nb (Ib of Tischendorf’s N. T., eighth edition), MUSEI BRITANNICI (Addit. 17136), is a 12mo volume containing the hymns of Severus in Syriac, and is one of the books brought thither from the Nitrian desert. It is a palimpsest, with a second Syriac work written below the first, and, under both, four leaves (117, 118, 127, 128) contain fragments of seventeen verses of St. John (xiii. 16; 17; 19; 20; 23; 24; 26; 27; xvi. 7; 8; 9 although only one word—περί—is preserved; 12; 13; 15; 16; 18; 19). These Tischendorf (and Tregelles about the same time) deciphered with great difficulty, as every one who has examined the manuscript would anticipate, and published in the second volume of his new collection of “Monumenta sacra inedita.” Each page contained two columns. We meet with the sections without the Eusebian canons, the earliest form of uncial characters, no capital letters (see p. 51, note 2), and only the simplest kind of punctuation, although one rough breathing is legible. Tischendorf hesitates whether he shall assign the fragment to the fourth or fifth century. It agrees with Cod. A five or six times, with Cod. B five, with the two together six, and is against them both thrice.

O. No less than nine small fragments have borne this mark. O of Wetstein was given by Anselmo Banduri to Montfaucon, and contains only Luke xviii. 11-14: this Tischendorf discards as taken from an Evangelistarium (of the tenth century, as he judges from the writing) chiefly because it wants the number of the section at ver. 14. In its room he puts for Cod. O Moscow Synod. 120 (Matthaei, 15), a few leaves of about the ninth century (containing the fifteen verses, John i. 1, 3, 4; xx. 10-13; 15-17; 20-24, with some scholia), which had been used for binding a copy of Chrysostom’s Homilies on Genesis, brought from the monastery of Dionysius at Mount Athos, and published in Matthaei’s Greek Testament with a facsimile (see ix. 257 &c., and facsimile in tom. xii). Further portions of this fragment were seen at Athos in 1864 by Mr. Philip E. Pusey. Tregelles has also appended it to his edition of Cod. Ξ. In this fragment we find the cross-like psi, the interrogative “;” (John xx. 13), and the comma (ib. ver. 12). Alford’s Frag. Ath. b=Tisch. We—p. 145—and Frag. Ath. a are probably parts of O. The next five comprise N. T. hymns.

COD. Oa. Magnificat and Benedictus in Greek uncials of the eighth or ninth century, in a Latin book at Wolfenbüttel, is published by Tischendorf, Anecdota sacr. et prof. 1855; as is also Ob, which contains these two and Nunc Dimittis, of the ninth century, and is at Oxford, Bodleian, Misc. Gr. 5, ff. 313-4(178). Oc. Magnificat in the Verona Psalter of the sixth century (the Greek being written in Latin letters), published by Bianchini (Vindiciae Canon. Script. 1740). Od, Oe, both contain the three hymns, Od in the great purple and silver Zurich Psalter of the seventh century (Tischendorf, Monum. sacra inedita, tom. iv, 1869)(179); Oe of the ninth century at St. Gall (Cod. 17), partly written in Greek, partly in Latin. Of, also of the ninth century, is described by Tischendorf (N. T., eighth edition) once as “Noroff. Petrop.,” once as “Mosquensis.” Og (IX) in the Arsenal Library at Paris (MS. Gr. 2), containing, besides the Psalms and Canticle of the Old Testament, the Magnificat, Benedictus, and Nunc Dimittis, besides the Lord’s Prayer, the Sanctus and other such pieces. Oh. Taurinensis Reg. B. vii. 30 (viii or ix), 5-¾ × 4, ff. 303 (20)(180). Psalter with Luke i. 46-55; ii. 29-31. See Gregory, Prolegomena, p. 441.

P. CODEX GUELPHERBYTANUS A, and Q. CODEX GUELPHERBYTANUS B. These are two palimpsests discovered by F. A. Knittel, Archdeacon of Wolfenbüttel, in the Ducal Library of that city, which (together with some fragments of Ulphilas’ Gothic version) lie under the more modern writings of Isidore of Seville. He published the whole in 1762(181), so far at least as he could read them, though Tregelles believed more might be deciphered, and Tischendorf, with his unconquerable energy, collating them both in 1854, was able to re-edit them more accurately, Cod. Q in the third volume (1860) and Cod. P in the sixth (1869) of his Monumenta sacra inedita. The volume (called the Codex Carolinus) seems to have been once at Bobbio, and has been traced from Weissenburg to Mayence and Prague, till it was bought by a Duke of Brunswick in 1689. Codex P contains, on forty-three or forty-four leaves, thirty-one fragments of 518 verses, taken from all the four Evangelists(182); Codex Q, on thirteen leaves, twelve fragments of 247 verses from SS. Luke and John(183); but all can be traced only with great difficulty. A few portions, once written in vermilion, have quite departed, but Tischendorf has made material additions to Knittel’s labours, both in extent and accuracy. He assigns P to the sixth, Q to the fifth century. Both are written in two columns, the uncials being bold, round or square, those of Q not a little the smaller. The letters in P, however, are sometimes compressed at the end of a line. The capitals in P are large and frequent, and both have the sections without the canons of Eusebius (see p. 59). The table of τίτλοι found in the volume is written in oblong uncials of a lower date, as Knittel thought, possibly without good reason. Itacisms, what are termed Alexandrian forms, and the usual contractions (ΙΣ, ΞΣ, ΚΣ, ΘΣ, ΥΣ, ΠΗΡ, ΠΝΑ, ΙΛΗΜ, ΑΝΟΣ, ΔΑΔ, Μ [with symbol above it]) occur in both copies. Breathings also are seen here and there in Q. From Tischendorf’s beautiful facsimiles of Codd. PQ we observe that while delta is far more elaborate in P than in Q, the precise contrary is the case with pi. Epsilon and sigma in P have strong points at all the extremities; nu in each is of the ancient form exhibited in Codd. אNR (see p. 37); while in P alpha resembles in shape that of our alphabet in Plate ii. No. 5, eta that in Plate iii. No. 7. As regards their text we observe that in the first hundred verses of St. Luke which are contained in both copies, wherein P is cited for various readings 216 times, and Q 182 times, P stands alone fourteen times, Q not once. P agrees with other manuscripts against AB twenty-one times, Q nineteen: P agrees with AB united fifty times, Q also fifty: P sides with B against A twenty-nine times, Q thirty-eight: but P accords with A against B in 102 places, Q in seventy-five.

R. This letter, like some that precede, has been used to represent different books by various editors, a practice the inconvenience of which is very manifest. (1) R of Griesbach and Scholz is a fragment of one quarto leaf containing John i. 38-50, at Tübingen, with musical notes, which from its thick vellum, from the want of the sections and Eusebian canons, and the general resemblance of its uncials to those of late Service Books, Tischendorf pronounces to be an Evangelistarium, and puts in its room (2) in his N. T. of 1849, fourteen leaves of a palimpsest in the Royal Library of Naples (Borbon. ii. C. 15) of the eighth century, under a Typicum (see Suicer, Thes. Eccles. tom. ii. p. 1335), or Ritual of the Greek Church, of the fourteenth century. These are fragments from the first three Evangelists, in oblong uncials, leaning to the right. Tischendorf, by chemical applications, was able in 1843 to read one page, in two columns of twenty-five lines each (Mark xiv. 32-39)(184), and saw the sections in the margin; the Eusebian canons he thinks have been washed out (see p. 59): but in 1859 he calls this fragment Wb, reserving the letter R for (3) CODEX NITRIENSIS, Brit. Museum, Additional 17211, the very important palimpsest containing on forty-eight (53) leaves about 516 verses of St. Luke in twenty-five fragments(185), under the black, broad Syriac writing, being a treatise of Severus of Antioch against Johannes Grammaticus, of the eighth or ninth century. There are two columns of about twenty-five lines each on a page; for their boldness and simplicity the letters may be referred to the end of the sixth century; we have given a facsimile of the manuscript (which cannot be read in parts but with the utmost difficulty), and an alphabet collected from it (Nos. 5, 17). In size and shape the letters are much like those of Codd. INP, only that they are somewhat irregular and straggling: the punctuation is effected by a single point almost level with the top of the letters, as in Cod. N. The pseudo-Ammonian sections are there without the Eusebian canons, and the first two leaves are devoted to the τίτλοι of St. Luke. This most important palimpsest is one of the 550 manuscripts brought to England, about 1847, from the Syrian convent of S. Mary Deipara, in the Nitrian Desert, seventy miles N. W. of Cairo. When examined at the British Museum by the late Canon Cureton, then one of the Librarians, he discovered in the same volume, and published in 1851 (with six pages in facsimile), a palimpsest of 4000 lines of Homer’s Iliad not in the same hand as St. Luke, but quite as ancient. The fragments of St. Luke were independently transcribed, with most laudable patience, both by Tregelles in 1854, and by Tischendorf in 1855, who afterwards re-examined the places wherein he differed from Tregelles (e.g. chh. viii. 5; xviii. 7, 10), and discovered by the aid of Dr. Wright a few more fragments of chh. vi-viii. Tischendorf published an edition of Cod. R in his “Monumenta sacra inedita,” vol. ii, with a facsimile: the amended readings, together with the newly-discovered variations in chh. vi. 31-36, 39, vii. 44, 46, 47, are inserted in the eighth edition of his Greek Testament. In this palimpsest as at present bound up in the Museum the fragments of St. Luke end on f. 48, and the rest of the Greek in the volume is in later, smaller, sloping uncials, and contains propositions from the tenth and thirteenth books of Euclid. On the critical character of the readings of this precious fragment we shall make some comments below.

S. CODEX VATICANUS 354 contains the four Gospels entire, and is amongst the earliest dated manuscripts of the Greek Testament (p. 41, note 2). This is a folio of 234 leaves, written in large oblong or compressed uncials: the Epistle to Carpianus and Eusebian canons are prefixed, and it contains many later corrections (e.g. Luke viii. 15) and marginal notes (e.g. Matt. xxvii. 16, 17). Luke xxii. 43, 44; John v. 4; vii. 53-viii. 11 are obelized. At the end we read ἐγράφει ἡ τιμία δέλτος αὕτη διὰ χειρὸς ἐμοῦ Μιχαὴλ μοναχοῦ ἁμαρτωλοῦ μηνὶ μαρτίω α´. ἡμέρα ε´, ὡρα ϛ´, ἔτους ςυνζ. ινδ. ζ´: i.e. A.D. 949. “Codicem bis diligenter contulimus,” says Birch: but collators in his day (1781-3) seldom noticed orthographical forms or stated where the readings agree with the received text, so that a more thorough examination was still required. Tregelles only inspected it, but Tischendorf, when at Rome in 1866, carefully re-examined it, and has inserted many of its readings in his eighth edition and its supplementary leaves. He states that Birch’s facsimile (consisting of the obelized John v. 4) is coarsely executed, while Bianchini’s is too elegant; he made another for himself.

T. CODEX BORGIANUS I, now in the Propaganda at Rome (see below, Evan. 180), contains thirteen or more quarto leaves of SS. Luke and John, with a Thebaic or Sahidic version at their side, but on the opposite and left page. Each page consists of two columns: a single point indicates a break in the sense, but there are no other divisions. The fragment contains Luke xxii. 20-xxiii. 20; John vi. 28-67; vii. 6-viii. 31 (179 verses, since John vii. 53-viii. 11 are wanting). The portion containing St. John, both in Greek and Egyptian, was carefully edited at Rome in 1789 by A. A. Giorgi, an Augustinian Eremite; his facsimile, however (ch. vii. 35), seems somewhat rough, though Tischendorf (who has inspected the codex) says that its uncials look as if written by a Copt, from their resemblance to Coptic letters(186): the shapes of alpha and iota are specially noticeable. Birch had previously collated the Greek text. Notwithstanding the occasional presence of the rough and smooth breathing in this copy (p. 47)(187), Giorgi refers it to the fourth century, Tischendorf to the fifth. The Greek fragment of St. Luke was first collated by Mr. Bradley H. Alford, and inserted by his brother, Dean Alford, in the fourth edition of his Greek Testament, vol. i (1859). Dr. Tregelles had drawn Mr. Alford’s attention to it, from a hint thrown out by Zoega, in p. 184 of his “Catalogus codd. Copt. MSS. qui in Museo Borgiano Velitris adservantur.” Romae, 1810.

Ts or Twoi is used by Tischendorf to indicate a few leaves in Greek and Thebaic, which once belonged to Woide, and were published with his other Thebaic fragments in Ford’s Appendix to the Codex Alexandrinus, Oxon. 1799. They contain Luke xii. 15-xiii. 32; John viii. 33-42 (eighty-five verses). From the second fragment it plainly appears (what the similarity of the facsimiles had suggested to Tregelles) that T and Ts are parts of the same manuscript, for the page of Ts which contains John viii. 33 in Greek exhibits on its reverse the Thebaic version of John viii. 23-32, of which T affords us only the Greek text. This fact was first noted by Tischendorf (N. T. 1859), who adds that the Coptic scribe blundered much over the Greek: e.g. βαβουσα Luke xiii. 21; so δεκαι for δεκα και, ver. 16. He transcribed T and Twoi (as well as Tb, Tc, Td, which we proceed to describe), for publication in the ninth volume of his “Monumenta sacra inedita” (1870), but owing to his death they never appeared. But Bp. Lightfoot gives reasons (see below, vol. ii. c. 2) for thinking that this fragment was not originally a portion of T.

Tb at St. Petersburg much resembles the preceding in the Coptic-like style of writing, but is not earlier than the sixth century. It contains on six octavo leaves John i. 25-42; ii. 9-iv. 50, spaces left in the text answering the purpose of stops. Tb has a harmony of the Gospels at the foot of the page.

Tc is a fragment of about twenty-one verses between Matt. xiv. 19 and xv. 8, also of the sixth century, and at St. Petersburg, in the collection of Bishop Porphyry. Its text in the twenty-nine places cited by Tischendorf in his eighth edition accords with Cod. א twenty-four times, with Cod. B twenty times, with Codd. C and D sixteen times each, with Cod. 33 nine times. Cod. A is wanting here. Compared with these primary authorities severally, it agrees with א alone once, with 33 alone twice, with אB united against the rest four times: so that its critical character is very decided.

Td is a fragment of a Lectionary, Greek and Sahidic, of about the seventh century, found by Tischendorf in 1866 among the Borgian manuscripts at Rome. It contains Matt. xvi. 13-20; Mark i. 3-8, xii. 35-37; John xix. 23-27; xx. 30-31: twenty-four verses only. This fragment and the next have been brought into this place, rather than inserted in the list of Evangelistaria, because they both contained fragments of the Thebaic version.

Te is a fragment of St. Matthew at Cambridge (Univ. Libr. Addit. 1875). Dr. Hort communicated its readings to Dr. C. R. Gregory, for his Prolegomena to the eighth edition of Tischendorf’s N. T. It is “a tiny morsel” of an uncial Lectionary of the sixth century, containing only Matt. iii. 13-16, the parallel column probably in the Thebaic version having perished. It was brought, among other Coptic fragments, from Upper Egypt by Mr. Greville Chester. Dr. Hort kindly enables me to add to his description of Te (Addenda to Tregelles’ N. T. p. 1070) that this “tiny morsel” is irregular in shape, frequently less than four inches in width and height, the uncial Greek letters being three-eighths of an inch high. There seem to have been two columns of either eight or more probably of twenty-four lines each on a page, but no Coptic portions survive. “If of twenty-four lines the fragment might belong to the inner column of a bilingual MS. with the two languages in parallel columns, or to the outer column of a wholly Greek MS. or of a bilingual MS. with the section in the two languages consecutively, as in Mr. Horner’s Graeco-Thebaic fragment (Evst. 299: see p. 398). In the latter case it might belong to the inner column of a wholly Greek MS. or of a bilingual MS. with the section in two consecutive languages. The size of the letters renders it improbable, however, that the columns were of eight lines only.” (Hort.)

Tf Horner. See below under Thebaic or Sahidic MSS. at the end.

Tg Cairo, Cod. Papadopulus Kerameus [vi or vii], 9-½ x 8-¼, ff. 3 (27), two cols., written in letters like Coptic. Matt. xx. 3-32; xxii. 4-16. Facsimile by the Abbate Cozza-Luzi in “N. T. e Cod. Vat. 1209 nativi textus Graeci primo omnium phototypice representatum”—Danesio, Rome, 1889. See Gregory, Prolegomena, p. 450.

U. CODEX NANIANUS I, so called from a former possessor, is now in the Library of St. Mark, Venice (I. viii). It contains the four Gospels entire, carefully and luxuriously written in two columns of twenty-one lines each on the quarto page, scarcely before the tenth century, although the “letters are in general an imitation of those used before the introduction of compressed uncials; but they do not belong to the age when full and round writing was customary or natural, so that the stiffness and want of ease is manifest” (Tregelles’ Horne, p. 202). It has Carp., Eus. t., κεφ. τ. τίτλ., κεφ., pict., with much gold ornament. Thus while the small ο in l. 1 of our facsimile (No. 22) is in the oldest style, the oblong omicrons creep in at the end of lines 2 and 4. Münter sent some extracts from this copy to Birch, who used them for his edition, and states that the book contains the Eusebian canons. Accordingly in Mark v. 18, B (in error for H) stands under the proper section μη (48). Tischendorf in 1843 and Tregelles in 1846 collated Cod. U thoroughly and independently, and compared their work at Leipsic for the purpose of mutual correction.

V. CODEX MOSQUENSIS, of the Holy Synod, is known almost(188) exclusively from Matthaei’s Greek Testament: he states, no doubt most truly, that he collated it “bis diligentissimè,” and gives a facsimile of it, assigning it to the eighth century. Judging from Matthaei’s plate, it is hard to say why others have dated it in the ninth. It contained in 1779, when first collated, the Four Gospels in 8vo with the sections and Eusebian canons, in uncial letters down to John vii. 39, ουπω γαρ ην, and from that point in cursive letters of the thirteenth century, Matt. v. 44-vi. 12; ix. 18-x. 1 being lost: when re-collated but four years later Matt. xxii. 44-xxiii. 35; John xxi. 10-25 had disappeared. Matthaei tells us that the manuscript is written in a kind of stichometry by a diligent scribe: its resemblance to Cod. M has been already mentioned. The cursive portion is Matthaei’s V, Scholz’s Evan. 250.

Wa. COD. REG. PARIS 314 consists of but two leaves at the end of another book, containing Luke ix. 34-47; x. 12-22 (twenty-three verses). Its date is about the eighth century; the uncial letters are firmly written, delta and theta being of the ordinary oblong shape of that period. Accents and breathings are usually put; all the stops are expressed by a single point, whose position makes no difference in its power. This copy was adapted to Church use, but is not an Evangelistarium, inasmuch as it exhibits the sections and Eusebian canons(189), and τίτλοι twice at the head of the page. This fragment was brought to light by Scholz, and published by Tischendorf, Monumenta sacra inedita, 1846.

Wb. Tischendorf considers the fragment at Naples he had formerly numbered R (2) as another portion of the same copy, and therefore indicates it in his seventh edition of the N. T. (1859) as Wb. It has seventy-nine leaves, of which the fourteen last are palimpsest, is written in two columns, with twenty-five lines in each page; has the Ammonian sections and lections, and contains Matt. xix. 14-28; xx. 23-xxi. 2; xxvi. 52-xxvii. 1; Mark xiii. 21-xiv. 67; Luke iii. 1-iv. 20. (Prolegomena to Tischendorf, p. 395.)

Wc is assigned by Tischendorf to three leaves containing Mark ii. 8-16; Luke i. 20-32; 64-79 (thirty-five verses), which have been washed to make a palimpsest, and the writing erased in parts by a knife. There are also some traces of a Latin version, but all these were used up to bind other books in the library of St. Gall. They are of the eighth century, or the ninth according to Tischendorf, edd. 7 and 8, and have appeared in vol. iii of “Monumenta sacra inedita,” with a facsimile, whose style closely resembles that of Cod. Δ, and its kindred FG of St. Paul’s Epistles.

Wd was discovered in 1857 by Mr. W. White, sub-librarian of Trinity College, Cambridge, in the College Library, and was afterwards observed, and arranged by Mr. H. Bradshaw, University Librarian, its slips (about twenty-seven in number) having been worked into the binding of a volume of Gregory Nazianzen: they are now carefully arranged under glass (B. viii. 5). They comprise portions of four leaves, severally containing Mark vii. 3-4; 6-8; 30-36; 36-viii. 4; 4-10; 11-16; ix. 2; 7-9, in uncial letters of the ninth century, if not rather earlier, slightly leaning to the right. The sections are set in the margin without the Eusebian canons, with a table of harmony at the foot of each page of twenty-four lines. The τίτλοι are in red at the top and bottom of the pages, their corresponding numerals in the margin. The breathings and accents are often very faint: lessons and musical notes, crosses, &c. are in red, and sometimes cover the original stops. In text it much resembles Codd. אBDLΔ: one reading (Mark vii. 33) appears to be unique. Dr. Scrivener has included it in a volume of fresh collations of manuscripts and editions which is shortly to appear under the accomplished editorship of Mr. J. Rendel Harris.

We is a fragment containing John iv. 7-14, in three leaves, found by the Very Rev. G. W. Kitchin, Dean of Winchester, in Christ Church Library, when Tischendorf was at Oxford in 1865. It much resembles O at Moscow, and, like it, had a commentary annexed, to which there are numeral references set before each verse.

Wf is a palimpsest fragment of St. Matt. xxv. 31-36, and vi. 1-18 (containing the doxology in the Lord’s Prayer), of about the ninth century, underlying Wake 13 at Christ Church, Oxford (Acts 192, Paul. 246), discovered by the late Mr. A. A. Vansittart (Journal of Philology, vol. ii. no. 4, p. 241, note 1).

X. CODEX MONACENSIS, in the University Library at Munich (No. 1/26), is a valuable folio manuscript of the end of the ninth or early in the tenth century, containing the Four Gospels (in the order described above, with serious omissions)(190), and a commentary (chiefly from Chrysostom) surrounding and interspersed with the text of all but St. Mark, in early cursive letters, not unlike (in Tischendorf’s judgement) the celebrated Oxford Plato dated 895. The very elegant uncials of Cod. X “are small and upright; though some of them are compressed, they seem as if they were partial imitations of those used in very early copies” (Tregelles’ Horne, p. 195). Each page has two columns of about forty-five lines each. There are no divisions by κεφάλαια or sections, nor notes to serve for ecclesiastical use. From a memorandum we find that it came from Rome to Ingoldstadt, as a present from Gerard Vossius [1577-1649]; from Ingoldstadt it was taken to Landshut in 1803, thence to Munich in 1827. When it was at Ingoldstadt Griesbach obtained some extracts from it through Dobrowsky; Scholz first collated it, but in his usual unhappy way; Tischendorf in 1844, Tregelles in 1846. Dean Burgon examined it in 1872.

Y. CODEX BARBERINI 225 at Rome (in the Library founded by Cardinal Barberini in the seventeenth century) contains on six large leaves the 137 verses John xvi. 3-xix. 41, of about the eighth century. Tischendorf obtained access to it in 1843 for a few hours, after some difficulty with the Prince Barberini, and published it in his first instalment of “Monumenta sacra inedita,” 1846. Scholz had first noticed, and loosely collated it. A later hand has coarsely retraced the letters, but the ancient writing is plain and good. Accents and breathings are most often neglected or placed wrongly: κ θ τ [each with a small symbol after and below the character] are frequent at the end of lines. For punctuation one, two, three or even four points are employed, the power of the single point varying as in Codd. E Θa and B of the Apocalypse. The pseudo-Ammonian sections are without the Eusebian canons: and such forms as λήμψεται xvi. 14, λήμψεσθε ver. 24 occur. These few uncial leaves are prefixed to a cursive copy of the Gospels with Theophylact’s commentary (Evan. 392): the text is mixed, and lies about midway between that of Cod. A and Cod. B.

Z. CODEX DUBLINENSIS RESCRIPTUS, one of the chief palimpsests extant, contains 295 verses of St. Matthew’s Gospel in twenty-two fragments(191). It is of a small quarto size, originally 10-½ inches by 8, now reduced to 8-¼ inches by 6, once containing 120 leaves arranged in quaternions, of which the first that remains bears the signature 13 (ΙΓ): fourteen sheets or double leaves and four single leaves being all that survive. It was discovered in 1787 by Dr. John Barrett, Senior Fellow of Trinity College, Dublin, under some cursive writing of the tenth century or later, consisting of Chrysostom de Sacerdotio, extracts from Epiphanius, &c. In the same volume are portions of Isaiah (eight leaves) and of Gregory Nazianzen, in erased uncial letters, the latter not so ancient as the fragment of St. Matthew. All the thirty-two leaves of this Gospel that remain were engraved in copper-plate facsimile(192) at the expense of Trinity College, and published by Barrett in 1801, furnished with Prolegomena, and the contents of each facsimile plate in modern Greek characters, on the opposite page. The facsimiles are not very accurate, and the form of the letters is stated to be less free and symmetrical than in the original: yet from these plates (for the want of a better guide) our alphabet (No. 6) and specimen (No. 18) have been taken. The Greek type on the opposite page was not very well revised, and a comparison with the copper-plate will occasionally convict it of errors, which have been animadverted upon more severely than was quite necessary. The Prolegomena were encumbered with a discussion of our Lord’s genealogies quite foreign to the subject, and the tone of scholarship is not very high; but Barrett’s judgement on the manuscript is correct in the main, and his conclusion, that it is as old as the sixth century, has been generally received. Tregelles in 1853 was permitted to apply a chemical mixture to the vellum, which was already miserably discoloured, apparently from the purple dye: he was thus enabled to add a little (about 200 letters) to what Barrett had read long since(193), but he found that in most places which that editor had left blank, the vellum had been cut away or lost: it would no doubt have been better for Barrett to have stated, in each particular case, why he had been unable to give the text of the passage. A far better edition of the manuscript, including the fragment of Isaiah, and a newly-discovered leaf of the Latin Codex Palatinus (e), with Prolegomena and two plates of real facsimiles, was published in 1880 by T. K. Abbott, B.D., Professor of Biblical Greek in the University of Dublin. He has read 400 letters hitherto deemed illegible, and is inclined to assign the fifth century as the date of the Codex. Codex Z, like many others, and for the same orthographical reasons, has been referred to Alexandria as its native country. It is written with a single column on each page of twenty-one or twenty-three lines(194). The so-named Ammonian sections are given, but not the Eusebian canons: the τίτλοι are written at the top of the pages by a later hand according to Porter and Abbott, though this may be questioned (Gebhardt and Harnack’s “Texte,” &c., I. iv. p. xxiii ff., 1883), their numbers being set in the margin. The writing is continuous, the single point either rarely found or quite washed out: the abbreviations are very few, and there are no breathings or accents. Like Cod. B, this manuscript indicates citations by > in the margin, and it represents N by —, but only at the end of a word and line. A space, proportionate to the occasion, is usually left when there is a break in the sense, and capitals extend into the margin when a new section begins. The letters are in a plain, steady, beautiful hand: they yield in elegance to none, and are never compressed at the end of a line. The shape of alpha (which varies a good deal), and especially that of mu, is very peculiar: phi is inordinately large: delta has an upper curve which is not usual: the same curves appear also in zeta, lambda, and chi. The characters are less in size than in N, about equal to those in R, much greater than in AB. In regard to the text, it agrees much with Codd. אBD: with Cod. A it has only twenty-three verses in common: yet in them A and Z vary fourteen times. Mr. Abbott adds that while אBZ stand together ten times against other uncials, BZ are never alone, but אZ against B often. It is freer than either of them from transcriptural errors. Codd. אBCZ combine less often than אBDZ. On examining Cod. Z throughout twenty-six pages, he finds it alone thirteen times, differing from א thirty times, from B forty-four times, from Stephen’s text ninety-five times. Thus it approaches nearer to א than to B.

Γ. CODEX TISCHENDORFIAN. IV was brought by Tischendorf from an “eastern monastery” (he usually describes the locality of his manuscripts in such like general terms), and was bought of him for the Bodleian Library (Misc. Gr. 313) in 1855. It consists of 158 leaves, 12 inches x 9-¼, with one column (of twenty-four not very straight or regular lines) on a page, in uncials of the ninth century, leaning slightly back, but otherwise much resembling Cod. K in style (facsimile No. 35). St. Luke’s Gospel is complete; the last ten leaves are hurt by damp, though still legible. In St. Mark only 105 verses are wanting (iii. 35-vi. 20); about 531 verses of the other Gospels survive(195). Tischendorf, and Tregelles by his leave, have independently collated this copy, of which Tischendorf gives a facsimile in his “Anecdota sacra et profana,” 1855. Some of its peculiar readings are very notable, and few uncials of its date deserve that more careful study, which it has hardly yet received. In 1859 Tischendorf, on his return from his third Eastern journey, took to St. Petersburg ninety-nine additional leaves of this self-same manuscript, doubtless procured from the same place as he had obtained the Bodleian portion six years before (Notitia Cod. Sinait. p. 53). This copy of the Gospels, though unfortunately in two distant libraries, is now nearly perfect(196), and at the end of St. John’s Gospel, in the more recently discovered portion, we find an inscription which seems to fix the date: ετελειωθη ἡ δέλτος αὔτη μηνι νοεμβριω κζ, ινδ. η, ἡμερα ε, ωρα β. Tischendorf, by the aid of Ant. Pilgrami’s “Calendarium chronologum medii potissimum aevi monumentis accommodatum,” Vienn. 1781, pp. vii, 11, 105, states that the only year between A.D. 800 and 950, on which the Indiction was eight, and Nov. 27 fell on a Thursday, was 844(197). In the Oxford sheets we find tables of κεφάλαια before the Gospels of SS. Matthew and Luke; the τίτλοι at the heading of the pages; their numbers rubro neatly set in the margin; capitals in red at the commencement of these chapters; the ἀρχαὶ καὶ τέλη of lections; the sections and Eusebian canons in their usual places, and some liturgical directions. Over the original breathings and accents some late scrawler has in many places put others, in a very careless fashion.

Δ. CODEX SANGALLENSIS, was first inspected by Gerbert (1773), named by Scholz (N. T. 1830), and made fully known to us by the admirable edition in lithographed facsimile of every page, by H. Ch. M. Rettig [1799-1836], published at Zurich, 1836(198), with copious and satisfactory Prolegomena. It is preserved and was probably transcribed a thousand years since in the great monastery of St. Gall in the north-east of Switzerland (Stifts bibliothek, 48). It is rudely written on 197 leaves of coarse vellum quarto, 8-7/8 inches by 7-1/8 in size, with from twenty to twenty-six (usually twenty-one) lines on each page, in a very peculiar hand, with an interlinear Latin version, and contains the four Gospels complete except John xix. 17-35. Before St. Matthew’s Gospel are placed Prologues, Latin verses, the Eusebian canons in Roman letters, tables of the κεφάλαια both in Greek and Latin, &c. Rettig thinks he has traced several different scribes and inks employed on it, which might happen easily enough in the Scriptorium of a monastery; but, if so, their style of writing is very nearly the same, and they doubtless copied from the same archetype, about the same time. He has produced more convincing arguments to show that Cod. Δ is part of the same book as the Codex Boernerianus, G of St. Paul’s Epistles. Not only do they exactly resemble each other in their whole arrangement and appearance, but marginal notes by the first hand are found in each, of precisely the same character. Thus the predestinarian doctrines of the heretic Godeschalk [d. 866] are pointed out for refutation at the hard texts, Luke xiii. 24; John xii. 40 in Δ, and six times in G(199). St. Mark’s Gospel represents a text different from that of the other Evangelists, and the Latin version (which is clearly primâ manu) seems a mixture of the Vulgate with the older Italic, so altered and accommodated to the Greek as to be of little critical value. The penmen seem to have known but little Greek, and to have copied from a manuscript written continuously, for the divisions between the words are sometimes absurdly wrong. There are scarcely any breathings or accents, except about the opening of St. Mark, and once an aspirate to ἑπτα; what we do find are often falsely given; and a dot is set in most places regularly at the end of every Greek word. The letters have but little tendency to the oblong shape, but delta and theta are decidedly of the latest uncial type. Here, as in Paul. Cod. G, the mark >>> is much used to fill up vacant spaces. The text from which Δ was copied seems to have been arranged in στίχοι, for almost every line has at least one Greek capital letter, grotesquely ornamental in colours(200). We transcribe three lines, taken almost at random, from pp. 80-1 (Matt. xx. 13-15), in order to explain our meaning:

dixit uni eo_r_ amice non _ij_usto tibi _nn_e ειπεν; μοναδι; αυτων; Εταιρε; ουκ; αδικω; σε; Ουχι ex denario convenisti mecū tolle tuū et vade δηναριου συνεφωνησασ; μοι; Αρον; το; σον και υπαγε volo autē huic novissimo dare sicut et tibi antā non li Θελω δε τουτω τω εσχατω δουναι ωσ και; σοι; Η; ουκ εξ

It will be observed that, while in Cod. Δ a line begins at any place, even in the middle of a word; if the capital letters be assumed to commence the lines, the text divides itself into regular στίχοι. See above, pp. 52-54. Here are also the τίτλοι, the sections and canons. The letters Ν and ι, Ζ and Ξ, Τ and Θ, Ρ and the Latin R are perpetually confounded. Facsimiles of Luke i. 1-9 may be seen in Pal. Soc. xi. 179. As in the kindred Codd. Augiensis and Boernerianus the Latin f is much like r. Tregelles has noted ι ascript in Cod. Δ, but this is rare. There is no question that this document was written by Latin (most probably by Irish) monks, in the west of Europe, during the ninth century (or the tenth, Pal. Soc.). See below, Paul. Cod. G.

Θa. CODEX TISCHENDORFIAN. I was brought from the East by Tischendorf in 1845, published by him in his “Monumenta sacra inedita,” 1846, with a few supplements in vol. ii of his new collection (1857), and deposited in the University Library at Leipsic. It consists of but four leaves (all imperfect) quarto, of very thin vellum, almost too brittle to be touched, so that each leaf is kept separately in glass. It contains about forty-two verses; viz. Matt. xii. 17-19; 23-25; xiii. 46-55 (in mere shreds); xiv. 8-29; xv. 4-14, with the greater κεφάλαια in red; the sections and Eusebian canons stand in the inner margin. A few breathings are primâ manu, and many accents by two later correctors. The stops (which are rather numerous) resemble those of Cod. Y, only that four points are not found in Θa. Tischendorf places its date towards the end of the seventh century, assigning Mount Sinai or lower Egypt for its country. The uncials (especially ΕΘΟΣ) are somewhat oblong, leaning to the right (see p. 41 note), but the writing is elegant and uniform; delta keeps its ancient shape, and the diameter of theta does not extend beyond the curve. In regard to the text, it much resembles אB, and stands alone with them in ch. xiv. 12 (αὐτόν).

Seven other small fragments, of which four and part of another are from the manuscripts of Bishop Porphyry at St. Petersburg, were intended to be included in Tischendorf’s ninth volume of “Monumenta sacra inedita” (1870), but owing to Tischendorf’s death they never appeared. That active critic had brought two (Θb, d) and part of another (Θc) from the East, and deposited them in the Library at St. Petersburg. They are described by him as follows:

Θb, six leaves in large 8vo, of the sixth or seventh century, torn piecemeal for binding and hard to decipher, contains Matt. xxii. 16-xxiii. 13; Mark iv. 24-35; v. 14-23.

Θc, one folio leaf, of the sixth century, much like Cod. N, contains Matt. xxi. 19-24. Another leaf contains John xviii. 29-35.

Θd, half a leaf in two columns, of the seventh or eighth century, with accents by a later hand, contains Luke xi. 37-41; 42-45.

Θe, containing fragments of Matt. xxvi. 2-4; 7-9: Θf, of Matt. xxvi. 59-70; xxvii. 44-56; Mark i. 34-ii. 12 (not continuously throughout): Θg of John vi. 13, 14; 22-24; are all of about the sixth century.

Θh, consisting of three leaves, in Greek and Arabic of the ninth or tenth centuries, contains imperfect portions of Matt. xiv. 6-13; xxv. 9-16; 41-xxvi. 1.

Λ. CODEX TISCHENDORFIAN. III(201), whose history, so far as we know it, exactly resembles that of Cod. Γ, and like it is now in the Bodleian (Auct. T. Infra I. 1). It contains 157 leaves, written in two columns of twenty-three lines each, in small, oblong, clumsy, sloping uncials of the eighth or rather of the ninth century (see p. 41, note 1, and facsimile No. 30). It has the Gospels of St. Luke and St. John complete, with the subscription to St. Mark, each Gospel being preceded by tables of κεφάλαια, with the τίτλοι at the heads of the pages; the numbers of the κεφάλαια, of the sections, and of the Eusebian canons (these last rubro) being set in the margin. There are also scholia interspersed, of some critical value; a portion being in uncial characters. This copy also was described (with a facsimile) by Tischendorf, Anecdota sacra et profana, 1855, and collated by himself and Tregelles. Its text is said to vary greatly from that common in the later uncials, and to be very like Scholz’s 262 (Paris 53). For ι ascriptum see p. 44, note 2.

Here again the history of this manuscript curiously coincides with that of Cod. Γ. In his Notitia Cod. Sinaitici, p. 58, Tischendorf describes an early cursive copy of St. Matthew and St. Mark (the subscription to the latter being wanting), which he took to St. Petersburg in 1859, so exactly corresponding in general appearance with Cod. Λ (although that be written in uncial characters), as well as in the style and character of the marginal scholia, which are often in small uncials, that he pronounces them part of the same codex. Very possibly he might have added that he procured the two from the same source: at any rate the subscription to St. Matthew at St. Petersburg precisely resembles the other three subscriptions at Oxford, and those in Paris 53 (Scholz’s 262)(202), with which Tischendorf had previously compared Cod. Λ (N. T. Proleg. p. clxxvii, seventh edition). These cursive leaves are preceded by Eusebius’ Epistle to Carpianus, his table of canons, and a table of the κεφάλαια of St. Matthew. The τίτλοι in uncials head the pages, and their numbers stand in the margin.

From the marginal scholia Tischendorf cites the following notices of the Jewish Gospel, or that according to the Hebrews, which certainly have their value as helping to inform us respecting its nature: Matt. iv. 5 το ιουδαικον ουκ εχει εις την αγιαν πολιν αλλ εν ιλημ. xvi. 17 Βαριωνα; το ιουδαικον υιε ιωαννου. xviii. 22 το ιουδαικον εξης εχει μετα το ἑβδομηκοντακις ἑπτα; και γαρ εν τοις προφηταις μετα το χρισθηναι αυτους εν πνι ἁγιω εὑρισκετω (sic) εν αυτοις λογος ἁμαρτιας:—an addition which Jerome (contra Pelag. III) expressly cites from the Gospel of the Nazarenes. xxvi. 47 το ιουδαικον; και ηρνησατο και ωμοσεν και κατηρασατο. It is plain that this whole matter requires careful discussion, but at present it would seem that the first half of Cod. Λ was written in cursive, the second in uncial letters; if not by the same person, yet on the same plan and at the same place.

Ξ. CODEX ZACYNTHIUS is a palimpsest in the Library of the British and Foreign Bible Society in London, which, under a cursive Evangelistarium written on coarse vellum in or about the thirteenth century, contains large portions (342 verses) of St. Luke, down to ch. xi. 33(203), in full well-formed uncials, but surrounded by and often interwoven with large extracts from the Fathers, in a hand so cramped and, as regards the round letters (ΕΘΟΣ), so oblong, that it cannot be earlier than the eighth century, although some such compressed forms occur in Cod. P of the sixth (see p. 144). The general absence of accents and breathings also would favour an earlier date. As the arrangement of the matter makes it certain that the commentary is contemporaneous, Cod. Ξ must be regarded as the earliest known, indeed as the only uncial, copy furnished with a catena. This volume, which once belonged to “Il Principe Comuto, Zante,” and is marked as Μνημόσυνον σεβάσματος τοῦ Ἱππέος Ἀντωνίου Κόμητος 1820, was presented to the Bible Society in 1821 by General Macaulay, who brought it from Zante. Mr. Knolleke, one of the Secretaries, seems first to have noticed the older writing, and on the discovery being communicated to Tregelles in 1858 by Dr. Paul de Lagarde of Berlin, with characteristic eagerness that critic examined, deciphered, and published the Scripture text, together with the Moscow fragment O, in 1861: he doubted whether the small Patristic writing could all be read without chemical restoration. Besides the usual τίτλοι above the text and other notations of sections, and numbers running up from 1 to 100 which refer to the catena, this copy is remarkable for possessing also the division into chapters, hitherto as has been stated deemed unique in Cod. B. To this notation is commonly prefixed psi, formed like a cross, in the fashion of the eighth century. The ancient volume must have been a large folio (14 inches by 11), of which eighty-six leaves and three half-leaves survive: of course very hard to read. Of the ecclesiastical writers cited by name Chrysostom, Origen, and Cyril are the best known. In text it generally favours the B and א and their company. In the 564 places wherein Tischendorf cites it in his eighth edition, it supports Cod. L in full three cases out of four, and those the most characteristic. It stands alone only fourteen times, and with Cod. L or others against the five great uncials only thirty times. In regard to these five, Cod. Ξ sides plainly with Cod. B in preference to Cod. A, following B alone seven times, BL twenty-four times, but א thirteen times, A fifteen times, C (which is often defective) five times, D fourteen times, with none of these unsupported except with א once. Their combinations in agreement with Ξ are curious and complicated, but lead to the same result. This copy is with אB six times, with אBL fifty-five; with אBC twenty, but with אBD as many as fifty-four times, with אBCD thirty-eight times; with BCD thrice, with BC six times, with BD thirteen. It combines with אA ten times, with AC fifteen, with AD eleven, with אAC sixteen, with ACD twelve, with אAD six, with אACD twelve. Thus Cod. Ξ favours B against A 226 times, A against B ninety-seven. Combinations of its readings opposed to both A and B are אC six, אD eight, CD two, אCD three. In the other passages it favours ABC against אD eleven times, ABCD against א eight times, אABC against D eighteen times, אABD against C, or where C is defective, thirty-nine times, and is expressly cited twenty-seven times as standing with אABCD against later copies. The character of the variations of Cod. Ξ from the Received text may be judged of by the estimate made by some scholar, that forty-seven of them are transpositions in the order of the words, 201 are substitutions of one word for another, 118 are omissions, while the additions do not exceed twenty-four (Christian Remembrancer, January, 1862). The cursive Evangelistarium written over the uncial is noticed below, and bears the mark 200*.

Π. CODEX PETROPOLITANUS consists of 350 vellum leaves in small quarto, and contains the Gospels complete except Matt. iii. 12-iv. 18; xix. 12-xx. 3; John viii. 6-39; seventy-seven verses. A century since it belonged to Parodus, a noble Greek of Smyrna, and its last possessor was persuaded by Tischendorf, in 1859, to present it to the Emperor of Russia. Tischendorf states that it is of the age of the later uncials (meaning the ninth century), but of higher critical importance than most of them, and much like Cod. K in its rarer readings. There are many marginal and other corrections by a later hand, and John v. 4; viii. 3-6 are obelized. In the table of κεφάλαια before St. Mark, there is a gap after λϛ: Mark xvi. 18-20; John xxi. 22-25 are in a later hand. At the end of St. Mark, the last section inserted is σλδ by the side of ἀναστὰς δέ ver. 9, with η under it for the Eusebian canon. Tischendorf first used its readings for his Synopsis Evangelica 1864, then for the eighth edition of his Greek Testament 1865, &c. This manuscript in the great majority of instances sides with the later uncials (whether supported by Cod. A or not) against Codd. אBCD united.

Σ. COD. ROSSANENSIS, like Cod. N described above, is a manuscript written on thin vellum leaves stained purple, in silver letters, the first three lines of each Gospel being in gold. Like Cod. D it probably dates from the sixth century, if not a little sooner, and is the earliest known copy of Scripture which is adorned with miniatures in watercolours, seventeen in number, very interesting and in good preservation. The illustrated Dioscorides at Vienna bears about the same date. Attention was called to the book by Cesare Malpica in 1846, but it was not seen by any one who cared to use it before March, 1879, when Oscar von Gebhardt of Göttingen and Adolf Harnack of Giessen, in their search for codices of Hippolytus, of Dionysius of Alexandria, and of Cyril of Jerusalem, described by Cardinal Sirlet in 1582, found it in the Archbishop’s Library at Rossano, a small city in Calabria, and published an account of it in 1880 in a sumptuous form, far more satisfactory to the artist than to the Biblical critic. Their volume is illustrated by two facsimile leaves, of one of which a reduction may be seen in our Plate xiv, No. 43. A copy of the manuscripts was published at Leipsic in 1883 with an Introduction by Oscar von Gebhardt, the Text being edited by Adolf Harnack(204). The page we have exhibited gives the earliest MS. authority, except Φ, for the doxology in the Lord’s Prayer, Matt. vi. 13. The manuscript is in quarto, 13-½ inches high by 10-¼ broad, and now contains only the Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Mark on 188 leaves of two columns each, there being twenty lines in each column of very regular writing, and from nine to twelve letters in each line. It ends abruptly at Mark xvi. 14, and the last ten leaves have suffered from damp; otherwise the writing (especially on the inner or smooth side of the vellum) is in good preservation, and the colours of the paintings wonderfully fresh. The binding is of strong black leather, about 200 years old. As in Cod. B, the sheets are ranged in quinions, the signatures in silver by the original scribe standing at the lower border of each quire on the right, and the pages being marked in the upper border in modern black ink. In Cod. Σ there is no separation between the words, it has no breathings or accents. Capital letters stand outside the columns, being about twice the size of the rest, and the smaller letters at the end of lines are not compressed, as we find them even in Cod. P (see pp. 144, 163). The letters are round and square, and, as was abundantly seen above (pp. 33-40), belong to the older type of writing. The punctuation is very simple: the full stop occurs half up the letter. There are few erasures, but transcriptural errors are mostly corrected in silver letters by the original scribe. To St. Matthew’s Gospel is prefixed Eusebius’ Epistle to Carpianus and his Tables of Canons, both imperfect; also lists of the κεφάλαια majora and τίτλοι in the upper margins of the several leaves, with a subscription to the first Gospel (Ευαγγελιον κατα ματθαιον). This supplementary matter is written somewhat smaller, but (as the editors judge) by the same hand as the text, although the letters are somewhat more recent in general appearance, and ι ascriptum occurs, as it never does in the body of the manuscript: [symbol] also is only twice abridged in the text, but often in the smaller writing. In the margin of the Greek text the Ammonian sections stand in minute characters over the numbers of the Eusebian canons. The text agrees but slightly with א or B, and rather with the main body of uncials and cursives, which it favours in about a proportion of three to one. With the cognate purple manuscript Cod. N it accords so wonderfully, that although one of them cannot have been copied directly from the other, they must have been drawn directly or indirectly from the same source. Strong proofs of the affinity between N and Σ are Matt. xix. 7 ἡμῖν added to ἐνετείλατο: xxi. 8 ἐκ (for ἀπό): Mark vi. 53 ἐκεῖ added to προσω(ο in Σ)ρμισθησαν: vii. 1 οἱ prefixed to ἐλθόντες: ibid. 29 ὁ ἰ_σ_ added to εἶπεν αὐτῇ: viii. 3 ἐγλυθήσονται: ibid. 13 καταλιπών for ἀφείς: ibid. 18 οὔπω νοεῖτε for καὶ οὐ μνημονεύετε: ix. 3 λευκᾶναι οὕτως: x. 5 ἐπέτρεψεν for ἔγραψεν: xiv. 36 πλήν before ἀλλ᾽: xv. 21 omit παράγοντα: in all which places the two manuscripts are either virtually or entirely alone. Generally speaking, the Codex Rossanensis follows the Traditional Text, but not invariably. We find here the usual itacisms, as ει for ι, αι for ε, η for ει and ι, ου for ω, and vice versa; even ο for ω, which is rarer in very ancient copies. The so-called Alexandrian forms ἤλθατε, ἐλθάτω, ἴδαμεν, ἴδαν for verbs, τρίχαν and νύκταν for nouns, ἐκαθερίσθη, λήμψομαι, δεκατέσσερες, τεσσεράκοντα, it has in common with all copies approaching it in age.

Υ. CODEX BLENHEIMIUS. Brit. Mus. Additional 31919, formerly Blenheim 3. D. 13, purchased at Puttick’s from the Sunderland sale in April, 1882. Under a Menaeum (see our Evst. 282) for the twenty-eight days of February [A.D. 1431], 12-7/8 x 8-1/8, containing 108 leaves, Professors T. K. Abbott and J. P. Mahaffy of Trinity College, Dublin, discovered at Blenheim in May, 1881, palimpsest fragments of the Gospels of the eighth century, being seventeen passages scattered over thirty-three of the leaves: viz. Matt. i. 1-14; v. 3-19; xii. 27-41; xxiii. 5-xxv. 30; 43-xxvi. 26; 50-xxvii. 17. Mark i. 1-42; ii. 21-v. 1; 29-vi. 22; x. 50-xi. 13. Luke xvi. 21-xvii. 3; 19-37; xix. 15-31. John ii. 18-iii. 5; iv. 23-37; v. 35-vi. 2: in all 484 verses. In 1883, Dr. Gregory discovered two more leaves, making thirty-six in all, with a reduction of the passages to sixteen by filling up an hiatus, and giving a total of 497 verses. It is probable that writing lies under all the 108 leaves. It exhibits Am. (not Eus.) in gold, ἀρχαί and τέλη, but is very hard to read, and has not yet been collated. Of less account are palimpsest pieces of the eleventh century on some of the leaves, containing Matt. xi. 13, &c.; Luke i. 64, &c.; ii. 25-34, and a later cursive patch (fol. 23) containing Mark vi. 14-20.

Φ. CODEX BERATINUS. This symbol was taken by Herr Oscar von Gebhardt to denote the imaginary parent of Cursives 13, 69, 124, 346, of which the similarity has been traced by the late W. H. Ferrar and Dr. T. K. Abbott in “A Collection of Four Important MSS.” (1877). But it is now permanently affixed to an Uncial MS. seen by M. Pierre Batiffol on the instigation of Prof. Duchesne in 1875 at Berat or Belgrade in Albania. This manuscript had been previously described by Mgr. Anthymus Alexoudi, Orthodox Metropolitan of Belgrade, in an account of his diocese published in 1868 in Corfu. According to M. Batiffol, it is a purple manuscript, written in silver letters on vellum, an édition de grande luxe, and therefore open to the charge brought by St. Jerome in his Prolegomena to Job against the great adornment of manuscripts, as being far from constituting an index of accuracy. It contains 190 unpaged leaves in quaternions, firmly sewn together, having two columns in a page of seventeen lines each, and from eight to twelve words in a line. The leaves are in size about 12-¼ inches by 10-½, and the columns measure 8-¼ inches high by rather more than 4-¼ broad. The pages have the κεφάλαια marked at the top, and the sections and canons in writing of the eighth century at the side. The letters are in silver, very regular, and clearly written. None are in gold, except the title and the first line in St. Mark, and the words Πατήρ, Ἰησοῦς, and some others in the first six folios. There is no ornamentation, but the first letters of paragraphs are twice as large as the other letters. The letters have no decoration, except a cross in the middle of the initial O’s. The writing is continuous in full line without stichometry. Quotations from the Old Testament are marked with a kind of inverted comma. There are no breathings, or accents. Punctuation is made only with the single comma or double comma, consisting of a point slightly elongated much like a modern written comma, and placed at about mid-height, or else with a vacant space, or by passing to the next line. The apostrophe is not always used to mark elisions, but is generally put after Ρ final. Abbreviations are of the most ancient kind. The character of the letters may be seen in the specimen given above, No. 43. Altogether, the Codex Beratinus (Φ) may probably be placed at the end of the fifth century, a little before the Dioscorides (506 A.D.), and before the Codex Rossanensis.

As to the character of the text, it inclines to the large body of Uncials and Cursives, and is rarely found with Bא and Z of St. Matthew or Δ of St. Mark. A specimen examination of fifty passages at the beginning of St. Matthew gives forty-four instances in which it agrees with the larger body of Uncials and Cursives, six when it passes over to the other side, whilst in thirty-eight it agrees with Σ. In the same passages, Σ agrees thirty-eight times with the larger body, and twelve times with א or B. Like Σ it contains the doxology in Matt. vi. 13.

Codex Φ has gone through many vicissitudes. It has perhaps been at Patmos, where it may have been mutilated by some of the Crusaders, and at Antioch. It contains only St. Matthew and St. Mark; a note says that the disappearance of St. Luke and St. John is due to the Franks of Champagne. The first six folios are in a bad state, so that the text as we have it does not begin till St. Matt. vi. 3 η αριστερα σου κ.τ.λ. Hiatus occurs Matt. vii. 26-viii. 7, in xviii. 23-xix. 3, and in Mark xiv. 62-fin. So that Cod. Φ presents no direct evidence—only the testimony to the general character of its companions derived from its own character and general coincidence—upon the last twelve verses of St. Mark. Part of folio 112, at the end of St. Matthew, is blank, and folios 113, 114, contain the κεφάλαια of St. Mark.

It was handsomely bound in 1805 in wood covered with chased silver.

Ψ. In the Monastery of Laura at Mount Athos [viii or ix], 8-¼ x 6, ff. 261 (31), κεφ. t., Am., Eus., lect. Mark ix. 5-end; Luke, John, Acts, 1, 2 Peter, James, 1, 2, 3 John, Romans, Hebrews viii. 13; ix. 19-end. Inserts the supplement of L to St. Mark before the last twelve verses, and the lectionary τέλος after ἐφοβοῦντο γάρ. See Gregory, Prolegomena, p. 445.

Ω. In the Monastery of Dionysius at Athos [viii or ix], 8-¾ x 6-½, ff. 289 (22), two columns. Whole four Gospels. Gregory, p. 446.

ב. In the Monastery of St. Andrew at Athos [ix or x], 8 x 6-¼, ff. 152 (37). The four Gospels. Gregory, p. 446.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

VI. UNCIAL MANUSCRIPTS OF THE ACTS AND CATHOLIC EPISTLES, OF ST. PAUL’S EPISTLES, AND OF THE APOCALYPSE

I. Manuscripts of the Acts and Catholic Epistles.

א. COD. SINAITICUS. A. COD. ALEXANDRINUS. B. COD. VATICANUS. C. COD. EPHRAEMI. D. CODEX BEZAE.

E. CODEX LAUDIANUS 35 is one of the most precious treasures preserved in the Bodleian at Oxford. It is a Latin-Greek copy, with two columns on a page, the Latin version holding the post of honour on the left, and is written in very short στίχοι consisting of from one to three words each, the Latin words always standing opposite to the corresponding Greek. This peculiar arrangement points decisively to the West of Europe as its country, notwithstanding the abundance of Alexandrian forms has led some to refer it to Egypt. The very large, bold, thick, rude uncials, without break in the words and without accents, lead us up to the end of the sixth century as its date. The Latin is not of Jerome’s or the Vulgate version, but is made to correspond closely with the Greek, even in its interpolations and rarest various readings. The contrary supposition that the Greek portion of this codex Latinised, or had been altered to coincide with the Latin, is inconsistent with the facts of the case. This manuscript contains only the Acts of the Apostles (from ch. xxvi. 29 παυλος to ch. xxviii. 26 λέγον being lost), and exhibits a remarkable modification of the text, of which we shall speak in Chapter VII. That the book was once in Sardinia, appears from an edict of Flavius Pancratius, συν θεω απο επαρχων δουξ σαρδινιας, appended (as also is the Apostles’ Creed in Latin, and some other foreign matter) in a later hand: Imperial governors ruled in that island with the title of dux from the reign of Justinian, A.D. 534 to A.D. 749. It was probably among the Greek volumes brought into England by the fellow-countryman of St. Paul, Theodore of Tarsus(205), “the grand old man” as he has been called by one of kindred spirit to his own (Dean Hook, Lives of the Archbishops of Canterbury, vol. i. p. 150), who came to England as Primate at the age of sixty-six, A.D. 668, and died in 690. At all events, Mill (N. T. Proleg. §§ 1022-6)(206) has rendered it all but certain, that the Venerable Bede [d. 735] had this very codex before him when he wrote his “Expositio Retractata” of the Acts(207), and Woide (Notitia Cod. Alex., p. 156, &c.) has since alleged six additional instances of agreement between them. The manuscript, however, must have been complete when Bede used it, for he cites in the Latin ch. xxvii. 5; xxviii. 2. Tischendorf (Proleg. p. xv) adds ch. xxvii. 1, 7, 14, 15, 16, 17: but these last instances are somewhat uncertain. This manuscript, with many others, was presented to the University of Oxford in the year 1636, by its munificent Chancellor, Archbishop Laud. Thomas Hearne, the celebrated antiquary, published a full edition of it in 1715, which is now very scarce, and was long known to be far from accurate. Sabatier in 1751 gave the Latin of it taken from Hearne. Tischendorf has published a new edition, from two separate collations made by himself in 1854 and 1865, in the ninth volume by way of Appendix to his “Monumenta sacra inedita,” 1870. It is also found in vol. ii of Hansell’s edition of the Ancient Texts, published at the Clarendon Press in 1864. Cod. E has been stated to have capital letters at the commencement of each of the Euthalian sections, but as the capitals occur at other places where the sense is broken but slightly (e.g. ch. xvii. 20), this circumstance does not prove that those sections were known to the scribe. It is in size 10-¼ inches by 8-½, and consists of 227 leaves of twenty-three, twenty-four, twenty-five, or twenty-six lines each; about fifteen leaves are lost: the vellum is rather coarse in quality, and the ink in many places very faint. There seem to be no stops nor breathings, except an aspirate over initial upsilon ([symbol] or ὑ, sometimes υ or υ [with diaresis]) almost invariably. The shape of xi is more complicated than usual (see our facsimile, No. 25); the other letters (e.g. delta or psi) are such as were common in the sixth or early in the seventh century. There are also many changes by a later uncial hand. Mr. Hansell (Ancient Texts, Oxford, 1864), as well as Tischendorf, exhibits one whole page in zinco-photography.

Fa. COD. COISLIN. I.

G. Tischendorf, in his eighth edition of the N. T., assigns this letter (formerly appropriated to Cod. L) to one octavo leaf of the seventh century, now at St. Petersburg, written in thick uncials without accents, torn from the wooden cover of a Syriac book, and containing Acts ii. 45-iii. 8. It has a few rare and valuable readings. Dr. Hort (Supplement to Tregelles, p. 1021) cites it as Ga.

Gb. VATICANUS ROMANUS 9671 [iv?] fol., ff. 5 (22), palimpsest. See Gregory, Prolegomena, p. 414.

H. COD. MUTINENSIS [cxcvi], ii. G. 3, of the Acts, in the Grand Ducal Library at Modena, is an uncial copy of about the ninth century, defective in Acts i. 1-v. 28; ix. 39-x. 19; xiii. 36-xiv. 3, all supplied by a cursive hand [h], “in my judgement ... scarcely later” (Burgon), and in xxvii. 4-xxviii. 31 (written in uncials of about the eleventh century). The Epistles are in cursive letters of the twelfth century, indicated in the Catholic Epistles by h, in the Pauline by 179. Scholz first collated it loosely, as usual; then Tischendorf in 1843, Tregelles in 1846, afterwards comparing their collations for mutual correction.

I. COD. PETROPOLIT. or TISCHENDORFIAN. II.

K. COD. MOSQUENSIS, S. Synodi No. 98, is Matthaei’s g, and came from the monastery of St. Dionysius on Mount Athos. It contains the Catholic Epistles entire, but not the Acts; and the Pauline Epistles are defective only in Rom. x. 18-1 Cor. vi. 13; 1 Cor. viii. 7-11. Matthaei alone has collated this document, and judging from his facsimile (Cath. Epp. 1782) it seems to belong to the ninth century. This copy is Scholz’s Act. 102, Paul. 117. It is not so thoroughly known but that it is often necessary to cite its readings ex silentio.

L (formerly G). COD. BIBLIOTH. ANGELICAE A. 2. 15, belonging to the Augustinian monks at Rome, formerly “Cardinalis Passionei,” contains the Acts from ch. viii. 10, μισ του θεου to the end, the Catholic Epistles complete, and the Pauline down to Heb. xiii. 10, οὐκ ἔχουσιν, of a date not earlier than the middle of the ninth century. It was collated in part by Bianchini and Birch, in full by Scholz (1820, J. Paul) and by F. F. Fleck (1833). Tischendorf in 1843, Tregelles in 1845, collated it independently, and subsequently compared their papers, as they have done in several other instances.

M of Gregory (Gb), fol., ff. 5 (22), palimpsest, containing fragments of Acts xvi-xviii of the eighth or ninth century, was published by Cozza (Sacr. Bibl. Vetust. Frag. iii: Rome, 1877). It was transferred to the Vatican (No. 9671) from the Greek convent of Grotta Ferrata.

P. COD. PORPHYRIANUS is a palimpsest containing the Acts, all the Epistles, the Apocalypse, and a few fragments of 4 Maccabees, of the ninth century, found by Tischendorf in 1862 at St. Petersburg in the possession of the Archimandrite (now Bishop) Porphyry, who allowed him to take it to Leipsic to decipher. He has published it at length in his “Monumenta sacra inedita,” vol. v, vi, whence Tregelles derived its readings for the Pauline Epistles and the Apocalypse. In the latter book it is especially useful, and generally confirms Codd. AC, though it is often with Cod. א, sometimes against all the rest. It has the αρ [with χ over them] and τε [with circumflex over them] of Church lessons in the margin, and is defective (besides a few words or letters lost here and there) in Acts i. 1-ii. 15; 1 John iii. 20-v. 1; Jude 4-15; Rom. ii. 16-iii. 5; viii. 33-ix. 11; xi. 22-xii. 1; 1 Cor. vii. 16, 17; xii. 23-xiii. 5; xiv. 23-39; 2 Cor. ii. 14, 15; Col. iii. 16-iv. 8; 1 Thess. iii. 5-iv. 17; Apoc. xvi. 13-xvii. 1; xx. 1-9; xxii. 6-21. Moreover James ii. 12-21; 2 Pet. i. 20-ii. 5 are barely legible. Mr. Hammond (Outlines of Textual Criticism) has taken from Tischendorf’s fifth volume a neat facsimile of it in Acts iv. 10-15, comprising uncials of the latest form, leaning to the right, lying under cursive writing (Heb. vii. 17-25), some four centuries more recent. Dr. Hort (Supplement to Tregelles, p. xxx) states that in the Acts the text of Cod. P is almost exclusively of a very late type, but that it contains a much larger though varying proportion of various readings elsewhere, except in 1 Peter. The upper or later writing in this manuscript is, for once, available for critical purposes, since it consists of fragments of the labours of Euthalius (see p. 64), and is cited by Tischendorf under the notation of Euthal.cod.

S. From the monastery of Laura at Mount Athos [viii or ix], 11 x 8-½, ff. 120 (30), Acts, Cath. Rom. 1 Cor. i. 1-v. 8; xiii. 8-xvi. 24; 2 Cor. i 1-xi. 23; Eph. iv. 20-vi. 20. See Gregory, p. 447.

ב. Rom. Vat. Gr. 2061, formerly Basil 100, before Patiriensis 27 [v], palimpsest, ff. 21 out of 316. Fragments of Acts, Cath., and Paul. Came from the monastery of St. Mary of Patirium, a suburb of Rossana in Calabria. Discovered by M. Pierre Batiffol, the investigator of Cod. Φ. See Gregory, p. 447.

II. Manuscripts of the Pauline Epistles.

א. COD. SINAITICUS A. COD. ALEXANDRINUS. B. COD. VATICANUS. C. COD. EPHRAEMI.

D. COD. CLAROMONTANUS, No. 107 of the Royal Library at Paris, is a Greek-Latin copy of St. Paul’s Epistles, one of the most ancient and important in existence. Like the Cod. Ephraemi in the same Library it has been fortunate in such an editor as Tischendorf, who published it in 1852 with complete Prolegomena, and a facsimile traced by Tregelles. This noble volume is in small quarto, written on 533 leaves of the thinnest and finest vellum: indeed its extraordinary delicacy has caused the writing at the back of every page to be rather too visible on the other side. The words, both Greek and Latin, are written continuously (except the Latin titles and subscriptions), but in a stichometrical form (see p. 52): the Greek, as in Cod. Bezae, stands on the left or first page of the opened book, not on the right, as in the Cod. Laudianus. Each page has but one column of about twenty-one lines, so that in this copy, as in the Codex Bezae, the Greek and Latin are in parallel lines, but on separate pages. The ink is dark and clear, and otherwise the book is in good condition. It contains all St. Paul’s Epistles (the Hebrews after Philemon), except Rom. i. 1-7; 27-30, both Greek and Latin: Rom. i. 24-27 in the Latin is supplied in a later but very old hand, as also are Rom. i. 27-30 and 1 Cor. xiv. 13-22 in the Greek: the Latin of 1 Cor. xiv. 8-18; Heb. xiii. 21-23 is lost. The Epistle to the Hebrews has been erroneously imputed by some to a later scribe, inasmuch as it is not included in the list of the sacred books and in the number of their στίχοι or versus, which stand immediately before the Hebrews in this codex(208): but the same list overlooks the Epistle to the Philippians, which has never been doubted to be St. Paul’s: in this manuscript, however, the Epistle to the Colossians precedes that to the Philippians. Our earliest notice of it is derived from the Preface to Beza’s third edition of the N. T. (Feb. 20, 1582): he there describes it as of equal antiquity with his copy of the Gospels (D), and states that it had been found “in Claromontano apud Bellovacos coenobio,” at Clermont near Beauvais. Although Beza sometimes through inadvertence calls his codex of the Gospels Claromontanus, there seems no reason for disputing with Wetstein the correctness of his account (see p. 125, note 2), though it throws no light on the manuscript’s early history. From Beza it passed into the possession of Claude Dupuy, Councillor of Paris, probably on Beza’s death [1605]: thence to his sons Jacques and Pierre Dupuy: before the death of Jacques (who was the King’s Librarian) in 1656, it had been bought by Louis XIV for the Royal Library at Paris. In 1707, John Aymont, an apostate priest, stole thirty-five leaves; one, which he disposed of in Holland, was restored in 1720 by its possessor Stosch; the rest were sold to that great collector, Harley, Earl of Oxford, but sent back in 1729 by his son, who had learnt their shameful story. Beza made some, but not a considerable, use of this document; it was amongst the authorities consulted for Walton’s Polyglott; Wetstein collated it twice in early life (1715-16); Tregelles examined it in 1849, and compared his results with the then unpublished transcript of Tischendorf, which proved on its appearance (1852) the most difficult, as well as one of the most important, of his critical works; so hard it had been found at times to determine satisfactorily the original readings of a manuscript which had been corrected by nine different hands, ancient and modern. The date of the codex is doubtless the sixth century, in the middle or towards the end of it. The Latin letters, especially d, are the latest in form (facsimile No. 41, 1 Cor. xiii. 5-8), and are much like those in the Cod. Bezae (No. 42), which in many points Cod. Claromontanus strongly resembles. Leaves 162, 163 are palimpsest, and contain part of the Phaethon, a lost play of Euripides. We have already noticed many of its peculiarities (pp. 33-40), and need not here repeat them. Delta and pi look more ancient even than in Cod. A: the uncials are simple, square, regular and beautiful, of about the size of those in Codd. CD, and larger than in Cod. B. The stichometry forbids our assigning it to a period earlier than the end of the fifth century while other circumstances connected with the Latin version tend to put it a little lower still. The apostrophus is frequent, but there are few stops or abridgements; no breathings or accents are primâ manu. Initial letters, placed at the beginning of books or sections, are plain, and not much larger than the rest. The comparative correctness of the Greek text, and its Alexandrian forms, have caused certain critics to refer us as usual to Egypt for its country: the Latin text is more faulty, and shows comparative ignorance of the language: yet of what use a Latin version could be except in Africa or western Europe it were hard to imagine. This Latin is more independent of the Greek, and less altered from it than in Codd. Bezae or Laudian., wherein it has little critical value: that of Cod. Claromont. better represents the African type of the Old Latin. Of the corrections, a few were made by the original scribe when revising; a hand of the seventh century went through the whole (D**); two others follow; then in sharp black uncials of the ninth or tenth century another made more than two thousand critical changes in the text, and added stops and all the breathings and accents (D***); another D**** (among other changes) added to the Latin subscriptions. Db supplied Rom. i. 27-30 very early; Dc, a later hand, 1 Cor. xiv. 13-22. Tischendorf distinguishes several others besides these.

E. COD. SANGERMANENSIS is another Greek-Latin manuscript and takes its name from the Abbey of St. Germain des Prez near Paris. Towards the end of the last century the Abbey (which at the Revolution had been turned into a saltpetre manufactory) was burnt down, and many of its books were lost. In 1805 Matthaei found this copy, as might almost have been anticipated, at St. Petersburg, where it is now deposited. The volume is a large quarto, the Latin and Greek in parallel columns on the same page, the Greek standing on the left; its uncials are coarse, large, and thick, not unlike those in Cod. E of the Acts, but of later shape, with breathings and accents primâ manu, of about the tenth, or late in the ninth, century(209). It was used for the Oxford New Testament of 1675: Mill obtained some extracts from it, and noted its obvious connexion with Cod. Claromontanus: Wetstein thoroughly collated it; and not only he but Sabatier and Griesbach perceived that it was, at least in the Greek, nothing better than a mere transcript of Cod. Claromontanus, made by some ignorant person later than the corrector indicated by D****. Muralt’s endeavours to shake this conclusion have not satisfied better judges; indeed the facts are too numerous and too plain to be resisted. Thus, while in Rom. iv. 25 Cod. D reads δικαιωσιν (accentuated δικαίωσιν by D***), in which D*** changes ν into νην, the writer of Cod. E adopts δικαίωσινην with its monstrous accent: in 1 Cor. xv. 5 Cod. D reads μετα ταυτα τοις ενδεκα, D*** εἶτα τοῖς δώδεκα (again observe the accents), out of which Cod. E makes up μετα ταυεἶτα τοῖς δώενδεκα. In Gal. iv. 31 Cod. D has διο, which is changed by D*** into ἆρα: Cod. E mixes up the two into διἆραο. Compare Tischendorf’s notes on Eph. ii. 19; Heb. x. 17, 33, and Dr. Hort’s longer specimen, Rom. xv. 31-3 (Introd. p. 254). The Latin version also is borrowed from Cod. D, but is more mixed, and may be of some critical use: the Greek is manifestly worthless, and should long since have been removed from the list of authorities. This copy is defective, Rom. viii. 21-33; ix. 15-25; 1 Tim. i. 1-vi. 15; Heb. xii. 8-xiii. 25.

Fa COD. COISLIN. I.

F. COD. AUGIENSIS in the Library of Trinity College, Cambridge (B. xvii. 1), is another Greek-Latin manuscript on 136 leaves of good vellum 4to (the signatures proving that seven more are lost, see p. 28), 9 inches by 7-¼, with the two languages in parallel columns of twenty-eight lines on each page, the Greek being always inside, the Latin next the edge of the book. It is called from the monastery of Augia Dives or Major (Reichenau, or rich meadow), on a fertile island in the lower part of Lake Constance, to which it long appertained, and where it may even have been written, a thousand years since. By notices at the beginning and end we can trace it through the hands of G. M. Wepfer of Schaffhausen and of L. Ch. Mieg, who covered many of its pages with Latin notes wretchedly scrawled, but allowed Wetstein to examine it. In 1718 Bentley was induced by Wetstein to buy it at Heidelberg for 250 Dutch florins, and both he and Wetstein collated the Greek portion, the latter carelessly, but Bentley somewhat more fully in the margin of a Greek Testament (Oxon. 1675) still preserved in Trinity College (B. xvii. 8). Tischendorf in 1842, Tregelles in 1845, re-examined the book (which had been placed where it now is on the death of Bentley’s nephew in 1787), and drew attention to the Latin version: in 1859 Scrivener published an edition of the Codex in common type, with Prolegomena and a photograph of one page (1 Tim. iii. 14-iv. 5)(210). The Epistles of St. Paul are defective in Rom. i. 1-iii. 19; and the Greek only in 1 Cor. iii. 8-16; vi. 7-14; Col. ii. 1-8; Philem. 21-25; in which four places the Latin stands in its own column with no Greek over against it. In the Epistle to the Hebrews, the Greek being quite lost, the Latin occupies both columns: this Epistle alone has an Argument, almost verbatim the same as we read in the great Cod. Amiatinus of the Vulgate. At the end of the Epistle, and on the same page (fol. 139, verso), commences a kind of Postscript (having little connexion with the sacred text), the larger portion of which is met with under the title of Dicta Abbatis Pinophi, in the works of Rabanus Maurus, Archbishop of Mayence, who died in A.D. 856; from which circumstance the Cod. Augiensis has been referred to the ninth century. Palaeographical arguments also would lead us to the same conclusion. The Latin version (a modification of the Vulgate in its purest form, though somewhat tampered with in parts to make it suit the Greek text(211)) is written in the cursive minuscule character common in the age of Charlemagne. The Greek must have been taken from an archetype with the words continuously written; for not only are they miserably ill divided by the unlearned German(212) scribe, but his design (not always acted upon) was to put a single middle point at the end of each word. The Latin is exquisitely written, the Greek uncials are neat, but evidently the work of an unpractised hand, which soon changes from weariness. The shapes of eta, theta, pi, and other testing letters are such as we might have expected from the date; some others have an older look. Contrary to the more ancient custom, capitals, small but numerous, occur in the middle of the lines in both languages. Of the ordinary breathings(213) and accents there are no traces. Here and there we meet with a straight line, inclined between the horizontal and the acute accent, placed over an initial vowel, usually when it should be aspirated, but not always (e.g. ίδιον 1 Cor. vi. 18). Over ι and υ double or single points, or a comma, are frequently placed, especially if they begin a syllable; and occasionally a large comma or kind of circumflex over ι, ει, and some other vowels and diphthongs. The arrangement of the Greek forbids punctuation there; in the Latin we find the single middle point as a colon or after an abridgement, the semicolon (;) sometimes, the note of interrogation (?) when needed. Besides the universal forms of abridgement (see p. 49), [symbol] and [symbol] are frequent in the Greek, but no others: in the Latin the abbreviations are numerous, and some of them unusual: Scrivener (Cod. Augiensis Proleg. pp. xxxi-ii) has drawn up a list of them. This copy abounds as much as any with real variations from the common text, and with numberless errors of the pen, itacisms of vowels, and permutations of consonants. It exhibits many corrections, a few primâ manu, some unfortunately very recent, but by far the greater number in a hand almost contemporary with the manuscript, which has also inserted over the Greek, in 106 places, Latin renderings differing from those in the parallel column, but which in eighty-six of these 106 instances agree with the Latin of the sister manuscript.

G. COD. BOERNERIANUS, so called from a former possessor, but now in the Royal Library at Dresden. In the sixteenth century it belonged to Paul Junius of Leyden: it was bought dear at the book-sale of Peter Francius, Professor at Amsterdam, in 1705, by C. F. Boerner, a Professor at Leipsic, who lent it to Kuster to enrich his edition of Mill (1710), and subsequently to Bentley. The latter so earnestly wished to purchase it as a companion to Cod. F, that though he received it in 1719, it could not be recovered from him for five years, during which he was constantly offering high sums for it(214): a copy, but not in Bentley’s hand, had been already made (Trin. Coll. B. xvii. 2). Cod. G was published in full by Matthaei in 1791, in common type, with two facsimile pages (1 Cor. ii. 9-iii. 3; 1 Tim. i. 1-10), and his edition is believed to be very accurate; Anger, Tischendorf, Tregelles, Böttiger and others who have examined it have only expressly indicated three errors(215). Rettig has abundantly proved that, as it is exactly of the same size, so it once formed part of the same volume with Cod. Δ (see p. 157 and note): they must date towards the end of the ninth century, and may very possibly have been written in the monastery of St. Gall (where Δ still remains) by some of the Irish monks who flocked to those parts. That Cod. G has been in such hands appears from some very curious Irish lines at the foot of one of Matthaei’s plates (fol. 23), which, after having long perplexed learned men, have at length been translated for Dr. Reeves, the eminent Celtic scholar(216). All that we have said respecting the form of Cod. Δ applies to this portion of it: the Latin version (a specimen of the Old Latin, but as in Codd. Bezae and Laudianus much changed to suit the Greek) is cursive and interlinear; the Greek uncials coarse and peculiar; the punctuation chiefly a stop at the end of the words, which have no breathings nor accents. Its affinity to the Cod. Augiensis has no parallel in this branch of literature. Scrivener has noted all the differences between them at the foot of each page in his edition of Cod. F: they amount to but 1,982 places, whereof 578 are mere blunders of the scribe, 967 changes of vowels or itacisms, 166 interchanges of consonants, seventy-one grammatical or orthographical forms; the remaining 200 are real various readings, thirty-two of them relating to the article. While in Cod. F (whose first seven leaves are lost) the text commences at Rom. iii. 19, μω; λεγει, this portion is found complete in Cod. G, except Rom. i. 1-5; ii. 16-25. All the other lacunae of Cod. F occur also in Cod. G, which ends at Philem. 20 ἐν χρω: there is no Latin version to supply these gaps in Cod. G, but a blank space is always left, sufficient to contain what is missing. At the end of Philemon G writes (ad) Προς (laudicenses) λαουδακησασ(217) (incipit) αρχεται (epistola) επιστολη, but neither that writing nor the Epistle to the Hebrews follows. It seems tolerably plain that one of these manuscripts was not copied immediately from the other, for while they often accord even in the strangest errors of the pen that men unskilled in Greek could fall into, their division of the Greek words, though equally false and absurd, is often quite different: it results therefore that they are independent transcripts of the same venerable archetype (probably stichometrical and some centuries older than themselves) which was written without any division between the words(218). From the form of the letters and other circumstances Cod. F may be deemed somewhat but not much the older; its corrector secundâ manu evidently had both the Greek and the Latin of Cod. G before him, and Rabanus, in whose works the Dicta Pinophi are preserved (p. 178), was the great antagonist of Godeschalk, on whom the annotator of Codd. ΔG bears so hard. Cod. G is in 4to, of ninety-nine leaves, with twenty-one lines in each. The line indicating breathing (if such be its use, see p. 178) and the mark > employed to fill up spaces (p. 51), more frequent in it than in F.

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Since Dr. Scrivener wrote the above, a very valuable little treatise—a “specimen primum”—has been given to the learned world by Herr P. Corssen(219), and a most clear and carefully argued paper has been sent to the editor by the Rev. Nicholas Pocock of Clifton. Both Herr Corssen and Mr. Pocock agree in showing that F was not derived from G, nor G from F, but that they come from the same original. Both agree, again, that the Greek version is derived, at least in large measure, from the Latin, as in such instances as the following, which are supplied by Mr. Pocock, who holds, and appears to prove, that F and G were copied from an interlinear manuscript: ut sciatis, ινα οιδαται (F, G), 1 Thess. iii. 3; sicut cancer ut serpat, ως γαγγρα, ινα νομηνεξει (G), 2 Tim. ii. 17, F having the same reading, only dividing the last word; Gal. iv. 3 eramus autem servientes, ημεθα δε δουλωμενοι (F, G). Herr Corssen considers that a Latin was the scribe of the original, that it was written in Italy, and that it was better than the Claromontanus (D), to which it had affinities, this last having an amended text with corrections from the Greek. The original of all three he supposes to date from not before the fifth century. But in some of these last suppositions we are getting upon the ocean of conjecture.

H. COD. COISLIN. 202 is a very precious fragment, of which twelve leaves are in the Imperial Library at Paris; nine are in the monastery or laura of St. Athanasius at Mount Athos, and have been edited by M. Duchesne in the “Archives des missions scientifiques et littéraires” (1876); two more are at Moscow, and have been described by Matthaei (D. Pauli Epp. ad Hebr. et Col. Riga, 1784, p. 58); some others are in the Antonian Library of St. Petersburg (three); some more in the Imperial Library as described by Muralt (two), or in that of Bishop Porphyry (one), or at Turin (two). The leaves at Paris contain 1 Cor. x. 22-29; xi. 9-16; 1 Tim. iii. 7-13; Tit. i. 1-3; 15-ii. 5; iii. 13-15; Heb. ii. 11-16; iii. 13-18; iv. 12-15. At Mount Athos are 2 Cor. x. 18-xi. 6; xi. 12-xii. 2; Gal. i. 1-4; ii. 4-17; iv. 30-v. 5. At Moscow, Heb. x. 1-7; 32-38. At St. Petersburg, 2 Cor. iv. 2-7; 1 Thess. ii. 9-13; iv. 5-11 (Antonian); Gal. i. 4-10; ii. 9-14 (Imperial). In the Library of Bishop Porphyry, Col. iii. 4-11; and at Turin, 1 Tim. vi. 9-13; 2 Tim. ii. 1-9. They are in quarto, with large square uncials of about sixteen lines on a page, and date from the sixth century. Breathings and accents are added by a later hand, which retouched this copy (see Silvestre, Paléographie Universelle, Nos. 63, 64). These leaves, which comprise one of our best authorities for stichometrical writing, were used in A.D. 1218 to bind some other manuscripts on Mount Athos, and thence came into the library of Coislin, Bishop of Metz. Montfaucon has published Cod. H in his “Bibliotheca Coisliniana,” but Tischendorf, who transcribed it, projected a fuller and more accurate edition. He observed at Paris in 1865 an additional passage, 2 Cor. iv. 4-6 (Monum. sacr. ined. vol. ix. p. xiv, note), and cites Cod. H in his eighth edition on 1 Tim. vi. 19; Heb. x. 1-6; 34-38. The subscriptions, which appear due to Euthalius of Sulci(220), written in vermilion, are not retouched, and consequently have neither breathings nor accents. Besides arguments to the Epistles, we copy the following final subscription from Tischendorf (N. T. 1859, p. clxxxix): ἔγραψα καὶ ἐξεθέμην κατὰ δύναμιν στειχηρὸν; τόδε τὸ τεύχος παύλου τοῦ ἀποστόλου πρὸς ἐγγραμμὸν καὶ εὐκατάλημπτον ἀνάγνωσιν. τῶν καθ᾽ ἡμας ἀδελφῶν; παρῶν ἀπάντων τολμης συγγνωμην ἀιτῶ. εὐχὴ τῆ ὑπὲρ ἐμῶν; τὴν συνπεριφορὰν κομιζόμενος; ἀντεβλῆθη δὲ ἡ βιβλος; πρὸς τὸ ἐν καισαρία ἀντίγραφον τῆς βιβλιοθήκης τοῦ ἁγίου παμφίλου χειρὶ γεγραμένον αὐτοῦ (see p. 55, note 1). From this subscription we may conclude with Dr. Field (Proleg. in Hexapla Origenis, p. xcix) that the noble Library at Caesarea was still safe in the sixth century, though it may have perished A.D. 638, when that city was taken by the Saracens.

I. COD. TISCHENDORFIAN. II, at St. Petersburg. Add also two large leaves of the sixth century, elegantly written, without breathings or accents, containing 2 Cor. i. 20-ii. 12. Described by Tischendorf, Notitia Cod. Sin. Append, p. 50, cited as O in his eighth edition of the N. T.

K. COD. MOSQUENSIS.

L. COD. ANGELICUS at Rome.

M. CODEX RUBER is peculiar for the beautifully bright red colour of the ink(221), the elegance of the small uncial characters, and the excellency and critical value of the text. Two folio leaves, containing Heb. i. 1-iv. 3; xii. 20-xiii. 25, once belonged to Uffenbach, then to J. C. Wolff, who bequeathed them to the Public Library (Johanneum) of Hamburg (see Cod. H of the Gospels). To the same manuscript pertain fragments of two leaves used in binding Cod. Harleian. 5613 in the British Museum, and seen at once by Griesbach, who first collated them (Symbol. Crit. vol. ii. p. 164, &c.), to be portions of the Hamburg fragment(222). Each page in both contains two columns, of forty-five lines in the Hamburg, of thirty-eight in the London leaves. The latter comprise 1 Cor. xv. 52-2 Cor. i. 15; x. 13-xii. 5; reckoning both fragments, 196 verses in all. Tischendorf has since found one leaf more. Henke in 1800 edited the Hamburg portion, Tregelles collated it twice, and Tischendorf in 1855 published the text of both in full in his “Anecdota Sacra et Profana,” but corrected in the second edition, 1861 (Praef. xvi), five mistakes in his printed text. The letters are a little unusual in form, perhaps about the tenth century in date; but though sometimes joined in the same word, can hardly be called semicursive. Our facsimile (Plate xii, No. 34) is from the London fragment: the graceful, though peculiar, shapes both of alpha and mu (see p. 37, ter) closely resemble those in some writing of about the same age, added to the venerable Leyden Octateuch, on a page published in facsimile by Tischendorf (Monum. sacr. ined. vol. iii). Accents and breathings are given pretty correctly and constantly: iota ascript occurs three times (2 Cor. i. 1; 4; Heb. xiii. 21)(223); only ten itacisms occur, and ν ἐφελκυστικόν (as it is called) is rare. The usual stop is the single point in its three positions, with a change in power, as in Cod. E of the Gospels. The interrogative (;) occurs once (Heb. iii. 17), and > is often repeated to fill up space, or, in a smaller size, to mark quotations. After the name of each of the Epistles (2 Cor. and Heb.) in their titles we read εκτεθεισα ὡς εν πινακι, which Tischendorf thus explains; that whereas it was customary to prefix an argument to each Epistle, these words, originally employed to introduce the argument, were retained even when the argument was omitted. Henke’s account of the expression looks a little less forced, that this manuscript was set forth ὡς εν πινακι, that is, in vermilion, after the pattern of Imperial letters patent.

N. (Od Hort.) Two leaves of the ninth century at St. Petersburg, containing Gal. v. 14-vi. 2; Heb. v. 8-vi. 10.

O. (Nc Tisch.) FRAGMENTA MOSQUENSIA used as early as A.D. 975 in binding a volume of Gregory Nazianzen now at Moscow (S. Synodi 61). Matthaei describes them on Heb. x. 1: they contain only the twelve verses Heb. x. 1-3; 3-7; 32-34; 35-38. These very ancient leaves may possibly be as old as the sixth century, for their letters resemble in shape those in Cod. H which the later hand has so coarsely renewed; but they are more probably a little later.

Oa. One unpublished double leaf brought by Tischendorf to St. Petersburg from the East, of the sixth century, containing 2 Cor. i. 20-ii. 12.

Ob of the same date, at Moscow, contains Eph. iv. 1-18.

P. COD. PORPHYRIANUS.

Q. Tischendorf also discovered in 1862 at St. Petersburg five or six leaves of St. Paul, written on papyrus of the fifth century. From the extreme brittleness of the leaves only portions can be read. He cites them at 1 Cor. vi. 13, 14; vii. 3, 13, 14. These also Porphyry brought from the East. It contains 1 Cor. i. 17-20; vi. 13-15; 16-18; vii. 3, 4, 10, 11, 12-14, with defects. This is the only papyrus manuscript of the New Testament written with uncials.

R. Cod. Cryptoferratensis Z. β. 1. is a palimpsest fragment of the end of the seventh or the eighth century, cited by Caspar René Gregory as first used by Tischendorf. It is one leaf, containing 2 Cor. xi. 9-19. Edited by Cozza, and published amongst other old fragments at Rome in 1867 with facsimile (Greg., p. 435).

S. From Laura of Athos.

T. Paris, Louvre, Egyptian Museum, 7332 [iv-vi], 5-¾ x 4, two small fragments, 1 Tim. vi. 3; iii. 15, 16. See Gregory, p. 441, who, however, unconsciously classes it as an Evan.

ב. Rom. Vat. Gr. 2061.

III. Manuscripts of the Apocalypse.

א. COD. SINAITICUS.

A. COD. ALEXANDRINUS.

B. COD. VATICANUS 2066 (formerly 105 in the Library of the Basilian monks in the city) was judiciously substituted by Wetstein for the modern portion of the great Vatican MS., collated by Mico, and published in 1796 by Ford in his “Appendix” to Codex Alexandrinus, as also in 1868 by Vercellone and Cozza(224). It is an uncial copy of about the end of the eighth century, and the volume also contains in the same hand Homilies of Basil the Great and of Gregory of Nyssa, &c. It was first known from a notice (by Vitali) and facsimile in Bianchini’s Evangeliarium Quadruplex (1749), part i. vol. ii. p. 524 (facs. p. 505, tab. iv): Wetstein was promised a collation of it by Cardinal Quirini, who seems to have met with unexpected hindrances, as the papers only arrived after the text of the New Testament was printed, and then proved very loose and defective. When Tischendorf was at Rome in 1843, though forbidden to collate it afresh (in consequence, as we now know, of its having been already printed in Mai’s then unpublished volumes of the Codex Vaticanus), he was permitted to make a facsimile of a few verses, and while thus employed he so far contrived to elude the watchful custodian, as to compare the whole manuscript with a modern Greek Testament. The result was given in his Monumenta sacra inedita (1846), pp. 407-432, with a good facsimile; but (as was natural under the unpromising circumstances—“arrepta potius quam lecta” is his own confession) Tregelles in 1845 was able to observe several points which he had overlooked, and more have come to light since Mai’s edition has appeared. In 1866, however, Tischendorf was allowed to transcribe this document at leisure, and re-published it in full in his Appendix N. T. Vaticani, 1869, pp. 1-20.

This Codex is now known to contain the whole of the Apocalypse, a fact which the poor collation that Wetstein managed to procure had rendered doubtful. It is rather an octavo than a folio or quarto; the uncials being of a peculiar kind, simple and unornamented, leaning a little to the right (see p. 41, note): they hold a sort of middle place between square and oblong characters. The shape of beta is peculiar, the two loops to the right nowhere touching each other, and psi has degenerated into the form of a cross (see Plate iii, No. 7): delta, theta, xi are also of the latest uncial fashion. The breathings and accents are primâ manu, and pretty correct; the rule of the grammarians respecting the change of power of the single point in punctuation according to its change of position is now regularly observed. The scarcity of old copies of the Apocalypse renders this uncial of some importance, and it often confirms the readings of the older codices אAC, though on the whole it resembles them considerably less than does Cod. P, and agrees in preference with the later or more ordinary cursives.

C. CODEX EPHRAEMI.

P. CODEX PORPHYRIANUS.

Note. Of the three large uncials which contain the Apocalypse, אA are complete, but C has lost 171 verses out of 405. In the 286 places wherein the three are available, and Lachmann, Tregelles, and Tischendorf, one or all, depart from the Received text, אAC agree fifty-two times, אA seventeen, אC twenty-six, AC eighty-two, and this last combination supplies the best readings: א stands alone twenty-three times, A fifty-nine, C twenty-seven. When C has failed us אA agree fifty-two times and differ eighty-eight.

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IV. THE LARGER UNCIAL MANUSCRIPTS OF THE GREEK TESTAMENT…

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