Frederick Henry Ambrose Scrivener

In templo Dei offert unusquisque quod potest: alii aurum, argentum, et lapides pretiosos: alii byssum et purpuram et coccum offerunt et hyacinthum. Nobiscum bene agitur, si obtulerimus pelles et caprarum pilos. Et tamen Apostolus contemtibiliora nostra magis necessaria judicat.

Hieronymi Prologus Galeatus.

Dedication

[In The Third Edition]

To His Grace

Edward, Lord Archbishop of Canterbury.

My Lord Archbishop,

Nearly forty years ago, under encouragement from your venerated predecessor Archbishop Howley, and with the friendly help of his Librarian Dr. Maitland, I entered upon the work of collating manuscripts of the Greek New Testament by examining the copies brought from the East by Professor Carlyle, and purchased for the Lambeth Library in 1805. I was soon called away from this employment—ἑκὼν ἀέκοντί γε θυμῷ—to less congenial duties in that remote county, wherein long after it was your Grace's happy privilege to refresh the spirits of Churchmen and Churchwomen, by giving them pious work to do, and an example in the doing of it. What I have since been able to accomplish in the pursuits of sacred criticism, although very much less than I once anticipated, has proved, I would fain hope, not without its use to those who love Holy Scripture, and the studies which help to the understanding of the same.

Among the scholars whose sympathy cheered and aided my Biblical labours from time to time, I have had the honour of including your Grace; yet it would be at once unseemly and fallacious to assume from that circumstance, that the principles of textual criticism which I have consistently advocated have [pg vi] approved themselves to your judgement. All that I can look for or desire in this respect is that I may seem to you to have stated my case fairly and temperately, in earnest controversy with opponents far my superiors in learning and dialectic power, and for whom, in spite of literary differences, I entertain deep respect and true regard.

My Lord, you have been called by Divine Providence to the first place in our Communion, and have entered upon your great office attended by the applauses, the hopeful wishes, and the hearty prayers of the whole Church. May it please God to endow you richly with the Christian gifts as well of wisdom as of courage: for indeed the highest minister of the Church of England, no less than the humblest, will need courage in the coming time, now that faith is waxing cold and adversaries are many.

I am, my Lord Archbishop,

Your obliged and faithful servant,

F. H. A. Scrivener.

Hendon Vicarage,

Whitsuntide, 1883.

Preface To Fourth Edition.

At the time of the lamented death of Dr. Scrivener a new edition of his standard work was called for, and it was supposed that the great Master of Textual Criticism had himself made sufficient corrections and additions for the purpose in the margin of his copy. When the publishers committed to me the task of preparation, I was fully aware of the absolute necessity of going far beyond the materials placed at my disposal, if the book were to be really useful as being abreast of the very great progress accomplished in the last ten years. But it was not till I had laboured with absolute loyalty for some months that I discovered from my own observation, and from the advice of some of the first textual critics, how much alteration must at once be made.

Dr. Scrivener evidently prepared the Third Edition under great disadvantage. He had a parish of more than 5,500 inhabitants upon his hands, with the necessity of making provision for increase in the population. The result was that after adding 125 pages to his book he had an attack of paralysis, and so it is not surprising that his work was not wholly conducted upon the high level of his previous publications. The book has also laboured under another and greater disadvantage of too rapid, though unavoidable, growth. The 506 pages of the First Edition have been successively expanded into 626 pages in the Second, 751 in the Third, and 874 in the Fourth; while the framework originally adopted, consisting only of nine chapters, was manifestly inadequate to the mass of material ultimately gathered. It has therefore been found necessary, as [pg viii] the work proceeded, to do violence, amidst much delicate embarrassment, to feelings of loyalty to the author forbidding alteration. The chief changes that have been made are as follows:—

The first intention of keeping the materials within the compass of one volume has been abandoned, and it has been divided into two volumes, with an increase of chapters in each.

Instead of 2,094 manuscripts, as reckoned in the third edition under the six classes, no less than 3,791 have been recorded in this edition, being an increase of 236 beyond the 3,555 of Dr. Gregory, without counting the numerous vacant places which have been filled up.

Most of the accounts of ancient versions have been rewritten by distinguished scholars, who are leaders in their several departments.

The early part of Volume I has been enriched from the admirable book on “Greek and Latin Palaeography,” by Mr. E. Maunde Thompson, who with great kindness placed the proof-sheets at my disposal before publication.

Changes have been made in the headlines, the indexes, and in the printing, and sometimes in the arrangement, which will, I trust, enable the reader to find his way more easily about the treatise.

And many corrections suggested by eminent scholars have been introduced in different places all through the work.

A most pleasing duty now is to tender my best thanks to the Right Reverend the Lord Bishop of Salisbury and the Rev. H. J. White, M.A., for the rewriting of the chapter on Latin Versions by the latter under Dr. John Wordsworth's supervision, with help from M. Samuel Berger; to the Rev. G. H. Gwilliam, B.D., Fellow of Hertford College, now editing the Peshitto for the University of Oxford, for the improvement of the passages upon the Peshitto and the Curetonian; the Rev. H. Deane, B.D., for additions to the treatment of the Harkleian; and the Rev. Dr. Walker, Principal of St. John's Hall, Highbury, for the results of a collation of the Peshitto and Curetonian; to the Rev. A. C. Headlam, M.A., Fellow of All Souls College, for a revision of the [pg ix] long chapter upon Egyptian Versions; to F. C. Conybeare, Esq., M.A., late Fellow of University College, for rewriting the sections on the Armenian and Georgian Versions; to Professor Margoliouth, M.A., Fellow of New College, for rewriting the sections on the Arabic and Ethiopic Versions; to the Rev. Ll. J. M. Bebb, M.A., Fellow of Brasenose College, for rewriting the section upon the Slavonic Version; to Dr. James W. Bright, Assistant-Professor in the Johns Hopkins University, for rewriting the section on the Anglo-Saxon Version, through Mr. White's kind offices; to E. Maunde Thompson, Esq., D.C.L., LL.D., F.S.A., &c., for kindness already mentioned, and other help, and to G. F. Warner, Esq., M.A., of the Manuscript Department of the British Museum, for correction of some of the notices of cursive MSS. belonging to the Museum, and for other assistance; to J. Rendel Harris, Esq., M.A., Fellow of Clare College and Reader in Palaeology in the University of Cambridge, for much help of a varied nature; to Professor Isaac H. Hall, Ph.D., of New York City, for sending and placing at my disposal many of his publications; to the lamented Professor Bensly, for writing me a letter upon the Syriac Versions; to the Rev. Nicholas Pocock, M.A., of Clifton, for some results of a collation of F and G of St. Paul; to Professor Bernard, D.D., Trinity College, Dublin, for a paper of suggestions; to the Rev. Walter Slater, M.A., for preparing Index II in Vol. I; and to several other kind friends, for assistance of various kinds freely given. The generosity of scholars in communicating out of their stores of learning is a most pleasing feature in the study of the present day. Whatever may be my own shortcomings—and I fear that they have been enhanced by limitations of time and space, and through the effects of ill-health and sorrow—the contributions enumerated cannot but render the present edition of Dr. Scrivener's great work eminently useful to students.

Edward Miller.

9, Bradmore Road, Oxford,

January 17, 1894.

[Transcriber's Note: This book contains much Greek text, which will not be well-rendered in plain text versions of this E-book. Also, there is much use of Greek characters with a vertical bar across the tops of the letters to indicate abbreviations; because the coding system used in this e-book does not have such an “overline”, they are rendered here with underlines.]

Description Of The Contents Of The Lithographed Plates1.

[Transcriber's Note: The plates have been all placed in this section so that the extended comments for each can be with the plates themselves.]

Plate I

Plate I.

Plate II

Plate II.

Plate III

Plate II.

Plate IV

Plate IV.

Plate V

Plate V.

Plate VI

Plate VI.

Plate VII

Plate VII.

Plate VIII

Plate VIII.

Plate IX

Plate IX.

Plate X

Plate X.

Plate XI

Plate XI.

Plate XII

Plate XII.

Plate XIII

Plate XIII.

Plate XIV. Contains specimens of open leaves of the two chief bilingual manuscripts

Plate XIV.

Plate XV

Plate XV.

Addenda Et Corrigenda.

Pages 1-224, passim, for reasons given in Vol. II. 96 note, for Memphitic read Bohairic; for Thebaic read Sahidic.

P. 7, l. 25, for Chapter XI read Chapter XII.

P. 14, l. 20, for Chapter X read Chapter XI.

P. 87, l. 19, for Synaxaria read Menologies.

P. 119, ll. 11 and 12 from bottom, for 93 read 94; for Memoranda in our Addenda read ingenious argument in n. 1.

P. 149, Tf Horner, add now in the Bodleian at Oxford.

P. 214, l. 3 from bottom, for 464 read iv. 64.

P. 224, Evan. 250, l. 3, for p. 144 read p. 150.

P. 226, Evan. 274, l. 2 from end, for Chapter IX read Chapter XII.

P. 255, l. 6 from bottom, for Bibl. Gr. L. read Bibl. Gr. d.

P. 335, l. 1, for 41 read 4.

P. 343, l. 12, for Ev. 1 (2) read Ev. 1 (1).

Chapter I. Preliminary Considerations.

1. When God was pleased to make known to man His purpose of redeeming us through the death of His Son, He employed for this end the general laws, and worked according to the ordinary course of His Providential government, so far as they were available for the furtherance of His merciful design. A revelation from heaven, in its very notion, implies supernatural interposition; yet neither in the first promulgation nor in the subsequent propagation of Christ's religion, can we mark any waste of miracles. So far as they were needed for the assurance of honest seekers after truth, they were freely resorted to: whensoever the principles which move mankind in the affairs of common life were adequate to the exigences of the case, more unusual and (as we might have thought) more powerful means of producing conviction were withheld, as at once superfluous and ineffectual. Those who heard not Moses and the prophets would scarcely be persuaded, though one rose from the dead.

2. As it was with respect to the evidences of our faith, so also with regard to the volume of Scripture. God willed that His Church should enjoy the benefit of His written word, at once as a rule of doctrine and as a guide unto holy living. For [pg 002] this cause He so enlightened the minds of the Apostles and Evangelists by His Spirit, that they recorded what He had imprinted on their hearts or brought to their remembrance, without the risk of error in anything essential to the verity of the Gospel. But this main point once secured, the rest was left, in a great measure, to themselves. The style, the tone, the language, perhaps the special occasion of writing, seem to have depended much on the taste and judgement of the several penmen. Thus in St. Paul's Epistles we note the profound thinker, the great scholar, the consummate orator: St. John pours forth the simple utterings of his gentle, untutored, affectionate soul: in St. Peter's speeches and letters may be traced the impetuous earnestness of his noble yet not faultless character. Their individual tempers and faculties and intellectual habits are clearly discernible, even while they are speaking to us in the power and by the inspiration of the Holy Ghost.

3. Now this self-same parsimony in the employment of miracles which we observe with reference to Christian evidences and to the inspiration of Scripture, we might look for beforehand, from the analogy of divine things, when we proceed to consider the methods by which Scripture has been preserved and handed down to us. God might, if He would, have stamped His revealed will visibly on the heavens, that all should read it there: He might have so completely filled the minds of His servants the Prophets and Evangelists, that they should have become mere passive instruments in the promulgation of His counsel, and the writings they have delivered to us have borne no traces whatever of their individual characters: but for certain causes which we can perceive, and doubtless for others beyond the reach of our capacities, He has chosen to do neither the one nor the other. And so again with the subject we propose to discuss in the present work, namely, the relation our existing text of the New Testament bears to that which originally came from the hands of the sacred penmen. Their autographs might have been preserved in the Church as the perfect standards by which all accidental variations of the numberless copies scattered throughout the world should be corrected to the end of time: but we know that these autographs perished utterly in the very infancy of Christian history. Or if it be too much to expect that the autographs of the inspired writers should escape the fate which has overtaken [pg 003] that of every other known relique of ancient literature, God might have so guided the hand or fixed the devout attention both of copyists during the long space of fourteen hundred years before the invention of printing, and of compositors and printers of the Bible for the last four centuries, that no jot or tittle should have been changed of all that was written therein. Such a course of Providential arrangement we must confess to be quite possible, but it could have been brought about and maintained by nothing short of a continuous, unceasing miracle;—by making fallible men (nay, many such in every generation) for one purpose absolutely infallible. If the complete identity of all copies of Holy Scripture prove to be a fact, we must of course receive it as such, and refer it to its sole Author: yet we may confidently pronounce beforehand, that such a fact could not have been reasonably anticipated, and is not at all agreeable to the general tenour of God's dealings with us.

4. No one who has taken the trouble to examine any two editions of the Greek New Testament needs be told that this supposed complete resemblance in various copies of the holy books is not founded on fact. Even several impressions derived from the same standard edition, and professing to exhibit a text positively the same, differ from their archetype and from each other, in errors of the press which no amount of care or diligence has yet been able to get rid of. If we extend our researches to the manuscript copies of Scripture or of its versions which abound in every great library in Christendom, we see in the very best of them variations which we must at once impute to the fault of the scribe, together with many others of a graver and more perplexing nature, regarding which we can form no probable judgement, without calling to our aid the resources of critical learning. The more numerous and venerable the documents within our reach, the more extensive is the view we obtain of the variations (or various readings as they are called) that prevail in manuscripts. If the number of these variations was rightly computed at thirty thousand in Mill's time, a century and a half ago, they must at present amount to at least fourfold that quantity.

5. As the New Testament far surpasses all other remains of antiquity in value and interest, so are the copies of it yet existing in manuscript and dating from the fourth century of our [pg 004] era downwards, far more numerous than those of the most celebrated writers of Greece or Rome. Such as have been already discovered and set down in catalogues are hardly fewer than three thousand six hundred, and more must still linger unknown in the monastic libraries of the East. On the other hand, manuscripts of the most illustrious classic poets and philosophers are far rarer and comparatively modern. We have no complete copy of Homer himself prior to the thirteenth century, though some considerable fragments have been recently brought to light which may plausibly be assigned to the fifth century; while more than one work of high and deserved repute has been preserved to our times only in a single copy. Now the experience we gain from a critical examination of the few classical manuscripts that survive should make us thankful for the quality and abundance of those of the New Testament. These last present us with a vast and almost inexhaustible supply of materials for tracing the history, and upholding (at least within certain limits) the purity of the sacred text: every copy, if used diligently and with judgement, will contribute somewhat to these ends. So far is the copiousness of our stores from causing doubt or perplexity to the genuine student of Holy Scripture, that it leads him to recognize the more fully its general integrity in the midst of partial variation. What would the thoughtful reader of Aeschylus give for the like guidance through the obscurities which vex his patience, and mar his enjoyment of that sublime poet?

6. In regard to modern works, it is fortunate that the art of printing has wellnigh superseded the use of verbal or (as it has been termed) Textual criticism. When a book once issues from the press, its author's words are for the most part fixed, beyond all danger of change; graven as with an iron pen upon the rock for ever. Yet even in modern times, as in the case of Barrow's posthumous works and Pepys's Diary and Lord Clarendon's History of the Rebellion, it has been occasionally found necessary to correct or enlarge the early editions, from the original autographs, where they have been preserved. The text of some of our older English writers (Beaumont and Fletcher's plays are a notable instance) would doubtless have been much improved by the same process, had it been possible; but the criticism of Shakespeare's dramas is perhaps the most delicate and difficult problem in the whole history of literature [pg 005] since that great genius was so strangely contemptuous of the praise of posterity, that even of the few plays that were published in his lifetime the text seems but a gathering from the scraps of their respective parts which had been negligently copied out for the use of the actors.

7. The design of the science of Textual criticism, as applied to the Greek New Testament, will now be readily understood. By collecting and comparing and weighing the variations of the text to which we have access, it aims at bringing back that text, so far as may be, to the condition in which it stood in the sacred autographs; at removing all spurious additions, if such be found in our present printed copies; at restoring whatsoever may have been lost or corrupted or accidentally changed in the lapse of eighteen hundred years. We need spend no time in proving the value of such a science, if it affords us a fair prospect of appreciable results, resting on grounds of satisfactory evidence. Those who believe the study of the Scriptures to be alike their duty and privilege, will surely grudge no pains when called upon to separate the pure gold of God's word from the dross which has mingled with it through the accretions of so many centuries. Though the criticism of the sacred volume is inferior to its right interpretation in point of dignity and practical results, yet it must take precedence in order of time: for how can we reasonably proceed to investigate the sense of holy writ, till we have done our utmost to ascertain its precise language?

8. The importance of the study of Textual criticism is sometimes freely admitted by those who deem its successful cultivation difficult, or its conclusions precarious; the rather as Biblical scholars of deserved repute are constantly putting forth their several recensions of the text, differing not a little from each other. Now on this point it is right to speak clearly and decidedly. There is certainly nothing in the nature of critical science which ought to be thought hard or abstruse, or even remarkably dry and repulsive. It is conversant with varied, curious, and interesting researches, which have given a certain serious pleasure to many intelligent minds; it patiently gathers and arranges those facts of external evidence on which alone it ventures to construct a revised text, and applies them according to rules or canons of internal evidence, whether suggested by [pg 006] experience, or resting for their proof on the plain dictates of common sense. The more industry is brought to these studies, the greater the store of materials accumulated, so much the more fruitful and trustworthy the results have usually proved; although beyond question the true application even of the simplest principles calls for discretion, keenness of intellect, innate tact ripened by constant use, a sound and impartial judgement. No man ever attained eminence in this, or in any other worthy accomplishment, without much labour and some natural aptitude for the pursuit; but the criticism of the Greek Testament is a field in whose culture the humblest student may contribute a little that shall be really serviceable; few branches of theology are able to promise, even to those who seek but a moderate acquaintance with it, so early and abundant reward for their pains.

9. Nor can Textual criticism be reasonably disparaged as tending to precarious conclusions, or helping to unsettle the text of Scripture. Even putting the matter on the lowest ground, critics have not created the variations they have discovered in manuscripts or versions. They have only taught us how to look ascertained phenomena in the face, and try to account for them; they would fain lead us to estimate the relative value of various readings, to decide upon their respective worth, and thus at length to eliminate them. While we confess that much remains to be done in this department of Biblical learning, we are yet bound to say that, chiefly by the exertions of scholars of the last and present generations, the debateable ground is gradually becoming narrower, not a few strong controversies have been decided beyond the possibility of reversal, and while new facts are daily coming to light, critics of very opposite sympathies are learning to agree better as to the right mode of classifying and applying them. But even were the progress of the science less hopeful than we believe it to be, one great truth is admitted on all hands;—the almost complete freedom of Holy Scripture from the bare suspicion of wilful corruption; the absolute identity of the testimony of every known copy in respect to doctrine, and spirit, and the main drift of every argument and every narrative through the entire volume of Inspiration. On a point of such vital moment I am glad to cite the well-known and powerful statement of the great [pg 007] Bentley, at once the profoundest and the most daring of English critics: “The real text of the sacred writers does not now (since the originals have been so long lost) lie in any MS. or edition, but is dispersed in them all. 'Tis competently exact indeed in the worst MS. now extant; nor is one article of faith or moral precept either perverted or lost in them; choose as awkwardly as you will, choose the worst by design, out of the whole lump of readings.” And again: “Make your 30,000 [variations] as many more, if numbers of copies can ever reach that sum: all the better to a knowing and a serious reader, who is thereby more richly furnished to select what he sees genuine. But even put them into the hands of a knave or a fool, and yet with the most sinistrous and absurd choice, he shall not extinguish the light of any one chapter, nor so disguise Christianity, but that every feature of it will still be the same4.” Thus hath God's Providence kept from harm the treasure of His written word, so far as is needful for the quiet assurance of His church and people.

10. It is now time for us to afford to the uninitiated reader some general notion of the nature and extent of the various readings met with in manuscripts and versions of the Greek Testament. We shall try to reduce them under a few distinct heads, reserving all formal discussion of their respective characters and of the authenticity of the texts we cite for the next volume (Chapter XI).

(1) To begin with variations of the gravest kind. In two, though happily in only two instances, the genuineness of whole passages of considerable extent, which are read in our printed copies of the New Testament, has been brought into question. These are the weighty and characteristic paragraphs Mark xvi. 9-20 and John vii. 53-viii. 11. We shall hereafter defend these passages, the first without the slightest misgiving, the second with certain reservations, as entitled to be regarded authentic portions of the Gospels in which they stand.

(2) Akin to these omissions are several considerable interpolations, which, though they have never obtained a place in the printed text, nor been approved by any critical editor, are [pg 008] supported by authority too respectable to be set aside without some inquiry. One of the longest and best attested of these paragraphs has been appended to Matt. xx. 28, and has been largely borrowed from other passages in the Gospels (see below, class 9). It appears in several forms, slightly varying from each other, and is represented as follows in a document as old as the fifth century:

We subjoin another paragraph, inserted after Luke vi. 4 in only a single copy, the celebrated Codex Bezae, now at Cambridge: “On the same day he beheld a certain man working on the sabbath, and said unto him, Man, blessed art thou if thou knowest what thou doest; but if thou knowest not, thou art cursed and a transgressor of the law.'”

(3) A shorter passage or mere clause, whether inserted or not in our printed books, may have appeared originally in the form of a marginal note, and from the margin have crept into the text, through the wrong judgement or mere oversight of the scribe. Such we have reason to think is the history of 1 John v. 7, the verse relating to the Three Heavenly Witnesses, once so earnestly maintained, but now generally given up as spurious. Thus too Acts viii. 37 may have been derived from some Church Ordinal: the last clause of Rom. viii. 1 (μὴ κατὰ σάρκα περιπατοῦσιν, ἀλλὰ κατὰ πνεῦμα) is perhaps like a gloss on τοῖς ἐν Χριστῷ Ἰησοῦ: εἰκῆ in Matt. v. 226 and ἀναξίως in 1 Cor. xi. 29 might have been inserted to modify statements that seemed too strong: τῇ ἀληθείᾳ [pg 009] μὴ πείθεσθαι Gal. iii. 1 is precisely such an addition as would help to round an abrupt sentence (compare Gal. v. 7). Some critics would account in this way for the adoption of the doxology Matt. vi. 13; of the section relating to the bloody sweat Luke xxii. 43, 44; and of that remarkable verse, John v. 4: but we may well hesitate before we assent to their views.

(4) Or a genuine clause is lost by means of what is technically called Homoeoteleuton (ὁμοιοτέλευτον), when the clause ends in the same word as closed the preceding sentence, and the transcriber's eye has wandered from the one to the other, to the entire omission of the whole passage lying between them. This source of error (though too freely appealed to by Meyer and some other commentators hardly less eminent than he) is familiar to all who are engaged in copying writing, and is far more serious than might be supposed prior to experience. In 1 John ii. 23 ὁ ὁμολογῶν τὸν υἱὸν καὶ τὸν πατέρα ἔχει is omitted in many manuscripts, because τὸν πατέρα ἔχει had ended the preceding clause: it is not found in our commonly received Greek text, and even in the Authorized English version is printed in italics. The whole verse Luke xvii. 36, were it less slenderly supported, might possibly have been early lost through the same cause, since vv. 34, 35, 36 all end in ἀφεθήσεται. A safer example is Luke xviii. 39, which a few copies omit for this reason only. Thus perhaps we might defend in Matt. x. 23 the addition after φεύγετε εἰς τὴν ἄλλην of κἂν ἐν τῇ ἑτέρᾳ διώκωσιν ὑμᾶς, φεύγετε εἰς τὴν ἄλλην (ἑτέραν being substituted for the first ἄλλην), the eye having passed from the first φεύγετε εἰς τήν to the second. The same effect is produced, though less frequently, when two or more sentences begin with the same words, as in Matt. xxiii. 14, 15, 16 (each of which commences with οὐαὶ ὑμῖν), one of the verses being left out in some manuscripts.

(5) Numerous variations occur in the order of words, the sense being slightly or not at all affected; on which account this species of various readings was at first much neglected by collators. Examples abound everywhere: e.g. τὶ μέρος or μέρος τι Luke xi. 36; ὀνόματι Ἀνανίαν or Ἀνανίαν ὀνόματι Acts ix. 12; ψυχρὸς οὔτε ζεστός or ζεστὸς οὔτε ψυχρός Apoc. iii. 16. The order of the sacred names Ἰησοῦς Χριστός is perpetually changed, especially in St. Paul's Epistles.

(6) Sometimes the scribe has mistaken one word for another, which differs from it only in one or two letters. This happens chiefly in cases when the uncial or capital letters in which the oldest manuscripts are written resemble each other, except in some fine stroke which may have decayed through age. Hence in Mark v. 14 we find ΑΝΗΓΓΕΙΛΑΝ or ΑΠΗΓΓΕΙΛΑΝ; in Luke xvi. 20 ΗΛΚΩΜΕΝΟΣ or ΕΙΛΚΩΜΕΝΟΣ; so we read Δαυίδ or Δαβίδ indifferently, as, in the later or cursive character, β and υ have nearly the same shape. Akin to these errors of the eye are such transpositions as ΕΛΑΒΟΝ for ΕΒΑΛΟΝ or ΕΒΑΛΛΟΝ, Mark xiv. 65: omissions or insertions of the same or similar letters, as ΕΜΑΣΣΩΝΤΟ or ΕΜΑΣΩΝΤΟ Apoc. xvi. 10: ΑΓΑΛΛΙΑΣΘΗΝΑΙ or ΑΓΑΛΛΙΑΘΗΝΑΙ John v. 35: and the dropping or repetition of the same or a similar syllable, as ΕΚΒΑΛΛΟΝΤΑΔΑΙΜΟΝΙΑ or ΕΚΒΑΛΛΟΝΤΑΤΑΔΑΙΜΟΝΙΑ Luke ix. 49; ΟΥΔΕΔΕΔΟΞΑΣΤΑΙ or ΟΥΔΕΔΟΞΑΣΤΑΙ 2 Cor. iii. 10; ΑΠΑΞΕΞΕΔΕΧΕΤΟ or ΑΠΕΞΕΔΕΧΕΤΟ 1 Pet. iii. 20. It is easy to see how the ancient practice of writing uncial letters without leaving a space between the words must have increased the risk of such variations as the foregoing.

(7) Another source of error is described by some critics as proceeding ex ore dictantis, in consequence of the scribe writing from dictation, without having a copy before him. One is not, however, very willing to believe that manuscripts of the better class were executed on so slovenly and careless a plan. It seems more simple to account for the itacisms7 or confusion of certain vowels and diphthongs having nearly the same sound, which exist more or less in manuscripts of every age, by assuming that a vicious pronunciation gradually led to a loose mode of orthography adapted to it. Certain it is that itacisms are much more plentiful in the original subscriptions and marginal notes of the writers of mediaeval books, than in the text which they copied from older documents. Itacisms prevailed the most extensively from the eighth to the twelfth century, but not by any means during that period exclusively:—indeed, they are found frequently in the oldest existing manuscripts. In the most ancient manuscripts the principal changes are between ι and ει, αι and ε, [pg 011] though others occur: in later times η ι and ει, η οι and υ, even ο and ω, η and ε, are used almost promiscuously. Hence it arises that a very large portion of the various readings brought together by collators are of this description, and although in the vast majority of instances they serve but to illustrate the character of the manuscripts which exhibit them, or the fashion of the age in which they were written, they sometimes affect the grammatical form (e.g. ἔγειρε or ἔγειραι Mark iii. 3; Acts iii. 6; passim: ἴδετε or εἴδετε Phil. i. 30), or the construction (e.g. ἰάσωμαι or ἰάσομαι Matt. xiii. 15: οὐ μὴ τιμήσῃ or οὐ μὴ τιμήσει Matt. xv. 5: ἵνα καυθήσωμαι or ἵνα καυθήσομαι 1 Cor. xiii. 3, compare 1 Pet. iii. 1), or even the sense (e.g. ἑταίροις or ἑτέροις Matt. xi. 16: μετὰ διωγμῶν or, as in a few copies, μετὰ διωγμόν Mark x. 30: καυχᾶσθαι δὴ οὐ συμφέρει or καυχᾶσθαι δεῖ; οὐ συμφέρει 2 Cor. xii. 1: ὅτι χρηστὸς ὁ Κύριος or ὅτι χριστὸς ὁ Κύριος 1 Pet. ii. 3). To this cause we may refer the perpetual interchange of ἡμεῖς and ὑμεῖς, with their oblique cases, throughout the whole Greek Testament: e.g. in the single epistle of 1 Peter, ch. i. 3; 12; ii. 21 bis; iii. 18; 21; v. 10. Hence we must pay the less regard to the reading ἡμέτερον Luke xvi. 12, though found in two or three of our chief authorities: in Acts xvii. 28 τῶν καθ᾽ ἡμᾶς, the reading of the great Codex Vaticanus and a few late copies, is plainly absurd. On the other hand, a few cases occur wherein that which at first sight seems a mere itacism, when once understood, affords an excellent sense, e.g. καθαρίζων Mark iii. 19, and may be really the true form.

(8) Introductory clauses or Proper Names are frequently interpolated at the commencement of Church-lessons (περικοπαί), whether from the margin of ordinary manuscripts of the Greek Testament (where they are usually placed for the convenience of the reader), or from the Lectionaries or proper Service Books, especially those of the Gospels (Evangelistaria). Thus in our English Book of Common Prayer the name of Jesus is introduced into the Gospels for the 14th, 16th, 17th, and 18th Sundays after Trinity; and whole clauses into those for the 3rd and 4th Sundays after Easter, and the 6th and 24th after Trinity8. To this cause may be due the prefix εἶπε δὲ ὁ Κύριος Luke [pg 012] vii. 31; καὶ στραφεὶς πρὸς τοὺς μαθητὰς εἶπε Luke x. 22; and such appellations as ἀδελφοί or τέκνον Τιμόθεε (after σὺ δέ in 2 Tim. iv. 5) in some copies of the Epistles. The inserted prefix in Greek Lectionaries is sometimes rather long, as in the lesson for the Liturgy on Sept. 14 (John xix. 6-35). Hence the frequent interpolation (e.g. Matt. iv. 18; viii. 5; xiv. 22) or changed position (John i. 44) of Ἰησοῦς. A peculiarity of style in 1, 2 Thess. is kept out of sight by the addition of Χριστός in the common text of 1 Thess. ii. 19; iii. 13: 2 Thess. i. 8, 12.

(9) A more extensive and perplexing species of various readings arises from bringing into the text of one of the three earlier Evangelists expressions or whole sentences which of right belong not to him, but to one or both the others9. This natural tendency to assimilate the several Gospels must have been aggravated by the laudable efforts of Biblical scholars (beginning with Tatian's Διὰ τεσσάρων in the second century) to construct a satisfactory Harmony of them all. Some of these variations also may possibly have been mere marginal notes in the first instance. As examples of this class we will name εἰς μετάνοιαν interpolated from Luke v. 32 into Mark ii. 17: the prophetic citation Matt. xxvii. 35 ἵνα πληρωθῇ κ.τ.λ. to the end of the verse, unquestionably borrowed from John xix. 24, although the fourth Gospel seldom lends itself to corruptions of this kind. Mark xiii. 14 τὸ ῥηθὲν ὑπὸ Δανιὴλ τοῦ προφήτου, is probably taken from Matt. xxiv. 15: Luke v. 38 καὶ ἀμφότεροι συντηροῦνται from Matt. ix. 17 (where ἀμφότεροι is the true reading): the whole verse Mark xv. 28 seems spurious, being received from Luke xxii. 37. Even in the same book we observe an anxiety to harmonize two separate narratives of the same event, as in Acts ix. 5, 6 compared with xxvi. 14, 15.

(10) In like manner transcribers sometimes quote passages from the Old Testament more fully than the writers of the New Testament had judged necessary for their purpose. Thus ἐγγίζει [pg 013] μοι ... τῷ στόματι αὐτῶν καί Matt. xv. 8: ἰάσασθαι τοὺς συντετριμμένους τὴν καρδίαν Luke iv. 18: αὐτοῦ ἀκούσεσθε Acts vii. 37: οὐ ψευδομαρτυρήσεις Rom. xiii. 9; ἤ βολίδι κατατοξευθήσεται Heb. xii. 20, and (less certainly) καὶ κατέστησας αὐτὸν ἐπὶ τὰ ἔργα τῶν χειρῶν σου Heb. ii. 7, are all open to suspicion as being genuine portions of the Old Testament text, but not also of the New. In Acts xiii. 33, the Codex Bezae at Cambridge stands almost alone in adding Ps. ii. 8 to that portion of the previous verse which was unquestionably cited by St. Paul.

(11) Synonymous words are often interchanged, and so form various readings, the sense undergoing some slight and refined modification, or else being quite unaltered. Thus ἔφη should be preferred to εἶπεν Matt. xxii. 37, where εἶπεν of the common text is supported only by two known manuscripts, that at Leicester, and one used by Erasmus. So also ὀμμάτων is put for ὀφθαλμῶν Matt. ix. 29 by the Codex Bezae. In Matt. xxv. 16 the evidence is almost evenly balanced between ἐποίησεν and ἐκέρδησεν (cf. ver. 17). Where simple verbs are interchanged with their compounds (e.g. μετρηθήσεται with ἀντιμετρηθήσεται Matt. vii. 2; ἐτέλεσεν with συνετέλεσεν ibid. ver. 28; καίεται with κατακαίεται xiii. 40), or different tenses of the same verb (e.g. εἰληφώς with λαβών Acts xiv. 24; ἀνθέστηκε with ἀντέστη 2 Tim. iv. 15), there is usually some internal reason why one should be chosen rather than the other, if the external evidence on the other side does not greatly preponderate. When one of two terms is employed in a sense peculiar to the New Testament dialect, the easier synonym may be suspected of having originated in a gloss or marginal interpretation. Hence caeteris paribus we should adopt δικαιοσύνην rather than ἐλεημοσύνην in Matt. vi. 1; ἐσκυλμένοι rather than ἐκλελυμένοι ix. 36; ἀθῶον rather than δίκαιον xxvii. 4.

(12) An irregular, obscure, or incomplete construction will often be explained or supplied in the margin by words that are subsequently brought into the text. Of this character is ἐμέμψαντο Mark vii. 2; δέξασθαι ἡμᾶς 2 Cor. viii. 4; γράφω xiii. 2; προσλαβοῦ Philem. 12 (compare ver. 17), and perhaps δῆλον 1 Tim. vi. 7. More considerable is the change in Acts viii. 7, where the true reading πολλοὶ ... φωνῇ μεγάλῃ ἐξήρχοντο, if translated with grammatical rigour, affords an almost impossible sense. Or an elegant Greek idiom may be transformed into simpler language, [pg 014] as in Acts xvi. 3 ᾔδεισαν γὰρ πάντες ὅτι Ἕλλην ὁ πατὴρ αὐτοῦ ὑπῆρχεν for ᾔδεισαν γὰρ ἅπαντες τὸν πατέρα αὐτοῦ ὅτι Ἕλλην ὑπῆρχεν: similarly, τυγχάνοντα is omitted by many in Luke x. 30; compare also Acts xviii. 26 fin.; xix. 8, 34 init. The classical μέν has often been inserted against the best evidence: e.g. Acts v. 23: xix. 4, 15; 1 Cor. xii. 20; 2 Cor. iv. 12; Heb. vi. 16. On the other hand a Hebraism may be softened by transcribers, as in Matt. xxi. 23, where for ἐλθόντι αὐτῷ many copies prefer the easier ἐλθόντος αὐτοῦ before προσῆλθεν αὐτῷ διδάσκοντι, and in Matt. xv. 5; Mark vii. 12 (to which perhaps we may add Luke v. 35), where καί is dropped in some copies to facilitate the sense. Hence καὶ οἱ ἄνθρωποι may be upheld before οἱ ποιμένες in Luke ii. 15. This perpetual correction of harsh, ungrammatical, or Oriental constructions characterizes the printed text of the Apocalypse and the recent manuscripts on which it is founded (e.g. τὴν γυναῖκα Ἰεζαβὴλ τὴν λέγουσαν ii. 20, for ἡ λέγουσα).

(13) Hence too arises the habit of changing ancient dialectic forms into those in vogue in the transcriber's age. The whole subject will be more fitly discussed at length hereafter (vol. ii. c. x.); we will here merely note a few peculiarities of this kind adopted by some recent critics from the oldest manuscripts, but which have gradually though not entirely disappeared in copies of lower date. Thus in recent critical editions Καθαρναούμ, Μαθθαῖος, τέσσερες, ἔνατος are substituted for Καπερναούμ, Ματθαῖος, τέσσαρες, ἔννατος of the common text; οὕτως (not οὕτω) is used even before a consonant; ἤλθαμεν, ἤλθατε, ἦλθαν, γενάμενος are preferred to ἤλθομεν, ἤλθετε, ἦλθον, γενόμενος: ἐκαθερίσθη, συνζητεῖν, λήμψομαι to ἐκαθαρίσθη, συζητεῖν, λήψομαι: and ν ἐφελκυστικόν (as it is called) is appended to the usual third persons of verbs, even though a consonant follow. On the other hand the more Attic περιπεπατήκει ought not to be converted into περιεπεπατήκει in Acts xiv. 8.

(14) Trifling variations in spelling, though very proper to be noted by a faithful collator, are obviously of little consequence. Such is the choice between καὶ ἐγώ and κἀγώ, ἐάν and ἄν, εὐθέως and εὐθύς, Μωυσῆς and Μωσῆς, or even between πράττουσι and πράσσουσι, between εὐδόκησα, εὐκαίρουν and ηὐδόκησα, ηὐκαίρουν. To this head may be referred the question whether ἀλλά10, γε, δέ, [pg 015] τε, μετά, παρά &c. should have their final vowel elided or not when the next word begins with a vowel.

(15) A large portion of our various readings arises from the omission or insertion of such words as cause little appreciable difference in the sense. To this class belong the pronouns αὐτοῦ, αὐτῷ, αὐτῶν, αὐτοῖς, the particles οὖν, δέ, τε, and the interchange of οὐδέ and οὔτε, as also of καί and δέ at the opening of a sentence.

(16) Manuscripts greatly fluctuate in adding and rejecting the Greek article, and the sense is often seriously influenced by these variations, though they seem so minute. In Mark ii. 26 ἐπὶ Ἀβιάθαρ ἀρχιερέως “in the time that Abiathar was high priest” would be historically incorrect, while ἐπὶ Ἀβιάθαρ τοῦ ἀρχιερέως “in the days of Abiathar the high priest” is suitable enough. The article will often impart vividness and reality to an expression, where its presence is not indispensable: e.g. Luke xii. 54 τὴν νεφέλην (if τήν be authentic, as looks probable) is the peculiar cloud spoken of in 1 Kings xviii. 44 as portending rain. Bishop Middleton's monograph (“Doctrine of the Greek Article applied to the Criticism and Illustration of the New Testament”), though apparently little known to certain of our most highly esteemed Biblical scholars, even if its philological groundwork be thought a little precarious, must always be regarded as the text-book on this interesting subject, and is a lasting monument of intellectual acuteness and exact learning.

(17) Not a few various readings may be imputed to the peculiarities of the style of writing adopted in the oldest manuscripts. Thus ΠΡΟΣΤΕΤΑΓΜΕΝΟΥΣΚΑΙΡΟΥΣ Acts xvii. 26 may be divided into two words or three; ΚΑΙΤΑΠΑΝΤΑ ibid. ver. 25, by a slight change, has degenerated into κατὰ πάντα. The habitual abridgement of such words as Θεός or Κύριος sometimes leads to a corruption of the text. Hence possibly comes the grave variation ΟΣ for ΘΣ 1 Tim. iii. 16, and the singular reading τῷ καιρῷ δουλεύοντες Rom. xii. 11, where the true word Κυρίῳ was first shortened into ΚΡΩ11, and then read as ΚΡΩ, [pg 016] Κ being employed to indicate ΚΑΙ in very early times12. Or a large initial letter, which the scribe usually reserved for a subsequent review, may have been altogether neglected: whence we have τι for Οτι before στενή Matt. vii. 14. Or overscores, placed over a letter (especially at the end of a line and word) to denote ν, may have been lost sight of; e.g. λίθον μέγα Matt. xxvii. 60 in several copies, for ΜΕΓΑ [with a line over the final Α]. The use of the symbol [symbol composed of Pi and Rho together], which in the Herculanean rolls and now and then in Codex Sinaiticus stands for προ and προς indifferently, may have produced that remarkable confusion of the two prepositions when compounded with verbs which we notice in Matt. xxvi. 39; Mark xiv. 35; Acts xii. 6; xvii. 5, 26; xx. 5, 13; xxii. 25. It will be seen hereafter that as the earliest manuscripts have few marks of punctuation, breathing or accent, these points (often far from indifferent) must be left in a great measure to an editor's taste and judgement.

(18) Slips of the pen, whereby words are manifestly lost or repeated, mis-spelt or half-finished, though of no interest to the critic, must yet be noted by a faithful collator, as they will occasionally throw light on the history of some particular copy in connexion with others, and always indicate the degree of care or skill employed by the scribe, and consequently the weight due to his general testimony.

The great mass of various readings we have hitherto attempted to classify (to our first and second heads we will recur presently) are manifestly due to mere inadvertence or human frailty, and certainly cannot be imputed to any deliberate intention of transcribers to tamper with the text of Scripture. We must give a different account of a few passages (we are glad they are only a few) which yet remain to be noticed.

(19) The copyist may be tempted to forsake his proper [pg 017] function for that of a reviser, or critical corrector. He may simply omit what he does not understand (e.g. δευτεροπρώτῳ Luke vi. 1; τὸ μαρτύριον 1 Tim. ii. 6), or may attempt to get over a difficulty by inversions and other changes. Thus the μυστήριον spoken of by St. Paul 1 Cor. xv. 51, which rightly stands in the received text πάντες μὲν οὐ κοιμηθησόμεθα, πάντες δὲ ἀλλαγησόμεθα, was easily varied into πάντες κοιμηθησόμεθα, οὐ π. δὲ ἀλ., as if in mere perplexity. From this source must arise the omission in a few manuscripts of υἱοῦ Βαραχίου in Matt. xxiii. 35; of Ἱερεμίου in Matt. xxvii. 9; the insertion of ἄλλου ἐκ before θυσιαστηρίου in Apoc. xvi. 7; perhaps the substitution of τοῖς προφήταις for Ἡσαΐᾳ τῷ προφήτῃ in Mark i. 2, of οὔπω ἀναβαίνω for οὐκ ἀναβαίνω in John vii. 8, and certainly of τρίτη for ἕκτε in John xix. 14. The variations between Γεργεσηνῶν and Γαδαρηνῶν Matt. viii. 28, and between Βηθαβαρᾶ and Βηθανίᾳ John i. 28, have been attributed, we hope and believe unjustly, to the misplaced conjectures of Origen.

Some would impute such readings as ἔχωμεν for ἔχομεν Rom. v. 1; φορέσμεν for φορέσομεν 1 Cor. xv. 49, to a desire on the part of copyists to improve an assertion into an ethical exhortation, especially in the Apostolical Epistles; but it is at once safer and more simple to regard them with Bishop Chr. Wordsworth (N. T. 1 Cor. xv. 49) as instances of itacism: see class (7) above.

(20) Finally, whatever conclusion we arrive at respecting the true reading in the following passages, the discrepancy could hardly have arisen except from doctrinal preconceptions. Matt. xix. 17 Τί με λέγεις ἀγαθόν? οὐδεὶς ἀγαθὸς εἰ μὴ εἶς, ὁ Θεός; or Τί με ἐρωτᾷς περὶ τοῦ ἀγαθοῦ? εἶς ἐστὶν ὁ ἀγαθός: John i. 18 ὁ μονογενὴς υἱός or μονογενὴς Θεός: Acts xvi. 7 τὸ πνεῦμα with or without the addition of Ἰησοῦ: Acts xx. 28 τὴν ἐκκλησίαν τοῦ Θεοῦ or τὴν ἐκκλησίαν τοῦ Κυρίου: perhaps also Jude ver. 4 δεσπότην with or without Θεόν. I do not mention Mark xiii. 32 οὐδὲ ὁ υἱός, as there is hardly any authority for its rejection now extant; nor Luke ii. 22, where τοῦ καθαρισμοῦ αὐτῆς of the Complutensian Polyglott and most of our common editions is supported by almost no evidence whatever.

11. It is very possible that some scattered readings cannot be reduced to any of the above-named classes, but enough has [pg 018] been said to afford the student a general notion of the nature and extent of the subject13. It may be reasonably thought that a portion of these variations, and those among the most considerable, had their origin in a cause which must have operated at least as much in ancient as in modern times, the changes gradually introduced after publication by the authors themselves into the various copies yet within their reach. Such revised copies would circulate independently of those issued previously, and now beyond the writer's control; and thus becoming the parents of a new family of copies, would originate and keep up diversities from the first edition, without any fault on the part of transcribers14. It is thus perhaps we may best account for the omission or insertion of whole paragraphs or verses in manuscripts of a certain class [see above (1), (2), (3)]; or, in cases where the work was in much request, for those minute touches and trifling improvements in words, in construction, in tone, or in the mere colouring of the style [(5), (11), (12)], which few authors can help attempting, when engaged on revising their favourite compositions. Even in the Old Testament, [pg 019] the song of David in 2 Sam. xxii is evidently an early draft of the more finished composition, Ps. xviii. Traces of the writer's curae secundae may possibly be found in John v. 3, 4; vii. 53-viii. 11; xiii. 26; Acts xx. 4, 15; xxiv. 6-8. To this list some critics feel disposed to add portions of Luke xxi-xxiv.

12. The fullest critical edition of the Greek Testament hitherto published contains but a comparatively small portion of the whole mass of variations already known; as a rule, the editors neglect, and rightly neglect, mere errors of transcription. Such things must be recorded for several reasons, but neither they, nor real various readings that are slenderly supported, can produce any effect in the task of amending or restoring the sacred text. Those who wish to see for themselves how far the common printed editions of what is called the “textus receptus” differ from the judgement of the most recent critics, may refer if they please to the small Greek Testament published in the series of “Cambridge Greek and Latin Texts15,” which exhibits in a thicker type all words and clauses wherein Robert Stephen's edition of 1550 (which is taken as a convenient standard) differs from the other chief modifications of the textus receptus (viz. Beza's 1565 and Elzevir's 1624), as also from the revised texts of Lachmann 1842-50, of Tischendorf 1865-72, of Tregelles 1857-72, of the Revisers of the English New Testament (1881), and of Westcott and Hort (1881). The student will thus be enabled to estimate for himself the limits within which the text of the Greek Testament may be regarded as still open to discussion, and to take a general survey of the questions on which the theologian is bound to form an intelligent opinion.

13. The work that lies before us naturally divides itself into three distinct parts.

I. A description of the sources from which various readings are derived (or of their external evidence), comprising:

(a) Manuscripts of the Greek New Testament or of portions thereof.

(b) Ancient versions of the New Testament in various languages.

(c) Citations from the Greek Testament or its versions made by early ecclesiastical writers, especially by the Fathers of the Christian Church.

(d) Early printed or later critical editions of the Greek Testament.

II. A discussion of the principles on which external evidence should be applied to the recension of the sacred volume, embracing

(a) The laws of internal evidence, and the limits of their legitimate use.

(b) The history of the text and of the principal schemes which have been proposed for restoring it to its primitive state, including recent views of Comparative Criticism.

(c) Considerations derived from the peculiar character and grammatical form of the dialect of the Greek Testament.

III. The application of the foregoing materials and principles to the investigation of the true reading in the chief passages of the New Testament, on which authorities are at variance.

In this edition, as has already been explained in the preface, it has been found necessary to divide the treatise into two volumes, which will contain respectively—

I. First Volume:—Ancient Manuscripts.

II. Second Volume:—Versions, Citations, Editions, Principles, and Selected Passages.

It will be found desirable to read the following pages in the order wherein they stand, although the chief part of Chapters VII-XIV of the first volume and some portions elsewhere (indicated by being printed like them in smaller type) are obviously intended chiefly for reference, or for less searching examination.

Chapter II. General Character Of The Greek Manuscripts Of The New Testament.

As the extant Greek manuscripts of the New Testament supply both the most copious and the purest sources of Textual Criticism, we propose to present to the reader some account of their peculiarities in regard to material, form, style of writing, date and contents, before we enter into details respecting individual copies, under the several subdivisions to which it is usual to refer them.

1. The subject of the present section has been systematically discussed in the “Palaeographia Graeca” (Paris, 1708, folio) of Bernard de Montfaucon [1655-174116], the most illustrious member of the learned Society of the Benedictines of St. Maur. This truly great work, although its materials are rather too exclusively drawn from manuscripts deposited in French libraries, and its many illustrative facsimiles are somewhat rudely engraved, still maintains a high authority on all points relating to Greek manuscripts, even after more recent discoveries, especially among the papyri of Egypt and Herculaneum, have necessarily modified not a few of its statements. The four splendid volumes of M. J. B. Silvestre's “Paléographie Universelle” (Paris, 1839-41, &c. folio) afford us no less than 300 plates of the Greek writing of various ages, sumptuously executed; though the accompanying letter-press descriptions, by F. and A. Champollion Fils, seem in this branch of the subject a little disappointing; nor are the valuable notes appended to his translation of their work by Sir Frederick Madden (London, 2 vols. 1850, 8vo) sufficiently numerous or elaborate to supply the Champollions' defects. Much, however, may also be learnt from the “Herculanensium [pg 022] voluminum quae supersunt” (Naples, 10 tom. 1793-1850, fol.); from Mr. Babington's three volumes of papyrus fragments of Hyperides, respectively published in 1850, 1853 and 1858; and especially from the Prolegomena to Tischendorf's editions of the Codices Ephraemi (1843), Friderico-Augustanus (1846), Claromontanus (1852), Sinaiticus (1862), Vaticanus (1867), and those other like publications (e.g. Monumenta sacra inedita 1846-1870, and Anecdota sacra et profana 1855) which have rendered his name perhaps the very highest among scholars in this department of sacred literature. What I have been able to add from my own observation, has been gathered from the study of Biblical manuscripts now in England. To these sources of information may now be added Professor Wattenbach's “Anleitung zur griechischen Palaeographie” second edition, Leipsic, 1877, Gardthausen's “Griechische Palaeographie,” Leipsic, 1879; Dr. C. R. Gregory's “Prolegomena” to the eighth edition of Tischendorf, and especially the publication of “The Palaeographical Society Greek Testament,” Parts I and II, Leipsic, 1884, 1891, “Facsimiles of Manuscripts and Inscriptions” edited by E. A. Bond and E. M. Thompson, Parts I-XII, London, 1873-82, and a Manual on “Greek and Latin Palaeography” from the hands of Mr. E. Maunde Thompson, of which the proof-sheets have been most kindly placed by the accomplished author at the disposal of the editor of this work, and have furnished to this chapter many elements of enrichment. It may be added, that since manuscripts have been photographed, all other facsimiles have been put in the shade: and in this edition references as a rule will be given only to photographed copies.

2. The materials on which writing has been impressed at different periods and stages of civilization are the following:—Leaves, bark, especially of the lime (liber), linen, clay and pottery, wall-spaces, metals, lead, bronze, wood, waxen and other tablets, papyrus, skins, parchment and vellum, and from an early date amongst the Chinese, and in the West after the capture of Samarcand by the Arabs in a.d. 704, paper manufactured from fibrous substances17. The most ancient manuscripts of the New Testament now existing are composed of vellum or parchment (membrana), the term vellum being [pg 023] strictly applied to the delicate skins of very young calves, and parchment to the integuments of sheep and goats, though the terms are as a rule employed convertibly. The word parchment seems to be a corruption of charta pergamena, a name first given to skins prepared by some improved process for Eumenes, king of Pergamum, about b.c. 150. In judging of the date of a manuscript on skins, attention must be paid to the quality of the material, the oldest being almost invariably written on the thinnest and whitest vellum that could be procured; while manuscripts of later ages, being usually composed of parchment, are thick, discoloured, and coarsely grained. Thus the Codex Sinaiticus of the fourth century is made of the finest skins of antelopes, the leaves being so large, that a single animal would furnish only two (Tischendorf, Cod. Frid.-August. Prolegomena, §. 1). Its contemporary, the far-famed Codex Vaticanus, challenges universal admiration for the beauty of its vellum: every visitor at the British Museum can observe the excellence of that of the Codex Alexandrinus of the fifth century: that of the Codex Claromontanus of the sixth century is even more remarkable: the material of those purple-dyed fragments of the Gospels which Tischendorf denominates N, also of the sixth century, is so subtle and delicate, that some persons have mistaken the leaves preserved in England (Brit. Mus. Cotton, Titus C xv) for Egyptian papyrus. Paper made of cotton18 (charta bombycina, called also charta Damascena from its place of manufacture) may have been fabricated in the ninth19 or tenth century, and linen paper (charta proper) as early as 1242 a.d.; but they were seldom used for Biblical manuscripts sooner than the thirteenth, and had not entirely displaced parchment at the era of the invention of printing, about a.d. 1450. Lost portions of parchment or vellum manuscripts are often supplied in paper by some later hand; [pg 024] but the Codex Leicestrensis of the fourteenth century is composed of a mixture of inferior vellum and worse paper, regularly arranged in the proportion of two parchment to three paper leaves, recurring alternately throughout the whole volume. Like it, in the mixture of parchment and paper, are codd. 233 and Brit. Mus. Harl. 3,161—the latter however not being a New Testament MS.

3. Although parchment was in occasional, if not familiar, use at the period when the New Testament was written (τὰ βιβλία, μάλιστα τὰς μεμβράνας 2 Tim. iv. 13), yet the more perishable papyrus of Egypt was chiefly employed for ordinary purposes. This vegetable production had been used for literary purposes from the earliest times. “Papyrus rolls are represented on the sculptured walls of Egyptian temples.” The oldest roll now extant is the papyrus Prisse at Paris, which dates from 2500 b.c., or even earlier, unless those which have been lately discovered by Mr. Flinders Petrie reach as far, or even farther, back20. The ordinary name applied in Greek to this material was χάρτης (2 John 12), though Herodotus terms it βύβλος (ii. 100, v. 58), and in Latin charta (2 Esdr. xv. 2; Tobit vii. 14—Old Latin Version). Papyrus was in those days esteemed more highly than skins: for Herodotus expressly states that the Ionians had been compelled to have recourse to goats and sheep for lack of byblus or papyrus; and Eumenes was driven to prepare parchment because the Alexandrians were too jealous to supply him with the material which he coveted21. Indeed, papyrus was used far beyond the borders of Egypt, and was plentiful in Rome under the Empire, being in fact the common material among the Romans during that period: and as many of the manuscripts of the New Testament must have been written upon so perishable a substance in the earliest centuries since the Christian era, this probably is one of the reasons why we possess no considerable copies from before the second quarter of the fourth century. Only a few fragments of the New Testament on papyrus remain. We find a minute, if not a very clear description of the mode of preparing the papyrus for the scribe in the works of the elder Pliny (Hist. Nat. xiii. 11, 12). The plant grew in Egypt, also [pg 025] in Syria, and on the Niger and the Euphrates. Mainly under Christian influence it was supplanted by parchment and vellum, which had superior claims to durability, and its manufacture ceased altogether on the conquest of Egypt by the Mohammedans (a.d. 638).

4. Parchment is said to have been introduced at Rome not long after its employment by Attalus. Nevertheless, if it had been in constant and ordinary use under the first Emperors, we can hardly suppose that specimens of secular writing would have failed to come down to us. Its increased growth and prevalence about synchronize with the rise of Constantinopolitan influence. It may readily be imagined that vellum (especially that fine sort by praiseworthy custom required for copies of Holy Scripture) could never have been otherwise than scarce and dear. Hence arose, at a very early period of the Christian era, the practice and almost the necessity of erasing ancient writing from skins, in order to make room for works in which the living generation felt more interest, especially when clean vellum failed the scribe towards the end of his task. This process of destruction, however, was seldom so fully carried out, but that the strokes of the elder hand might still be traced, more or less completely, under the more modern writing. Such manuscripts are called codices rescripti or palimpsests (παλίμψηστα22), and several of the most precious monuments of sacred learning are of this description. The Codex Ephraemi at Paris contains large fragments both of the Old and New Testament under the later Greek works of St. Ephraem the Syrian: and the Codex Nitriensis, more recently disinterred from a monastery in the Egyptian desert and brought to the British Museum, comprises a portion of St. Luke's Gospel, nearly obliterated, and covered over by a Syriac treatise of Severus of Antioch against Grammaticus, comparatively of no value whatever. It will be easily believed that the collating or transcribing of palimpsests has cost much toil and patience to those whose loving zeal has led them to the attempt: and after all the true readings will be sometimes (not often) rather uncertain, [pg 026] even though chemical mixtures (of which “the most harmless is probably hydrosulphuret of ammonia”) have recently been applied with much success to restore the faded lines and letters of these venerable records.

5. We need say but little of a practice which St. Jerome23 and others speak of as prevalent towards the end of the fourth century, that of dyeing the vellum purple, and of stamping rather than writing the letters in silver and gold. The Cotton fragment of the Gospels, mentioned above (p. 23), is one of the few remaining copies of this kind, as are the newly discovered Codex Rossanensis and the Codex Beratinus, and it is not unlikely that the great Dublin palimpsest of St. Matthew owes its present wretched discoloration to some such dye. But, as Davidson sensibly observes, “the value of a manuscript does not depend on such things” (Biblical Criticism, vol. ii. p. 264). We care for them only as they serve to indicate the reverence paid to the Scriptures by men of old. The style, however, of the pictures, illustrations, arabesques and initial ornaments that prevail in later copies from the eighth century downwards, whose colours and gilding are sometimes as fresh and bright as if laid on but yesterday24, will not only interest the student by tending to throw light on mediaeval art and habits and modes of thought, but will often fix the date of the books which contain them with a precision otherwise quite beyond our reach.

6. The ink found upon ancient manuscripts is of various colours25. Black ink, the ordinary writing fluid of centuries (μέλαν, atramentum, &c.) differs in tint at various periods and in different countries. In early MSS. it is either pure black or slightly brown; in the Middle Ages it varies a good deal according to age and locality. In Italy and Southern Europe it is generally blacker than in the North, in France and Flanders [pg 027] it is generally darker than in England; a Spanish MS. of the fourteenth or fifteenth century may usually be recognized by the peculiar blackness of the ink. Deterioration is observable in the course of time. The ink of the fifteenth century particularly is often of a faded grey colour. Inks of green, yellow, and other colours, are also found, but generally only for ornamental purposes. Red, either in the form of a pigment or fluid ink, is of very ancient and common use, being seen even in early Egyptian papyri. Gold was also used as a writing fluid at a very early period. Purple-stained vellum MSS. were usually written upon in gold or silver letters, and ordinary white vellum MSS. were also written in gold, particularly in the ninth and tenth centuries, in the reigns of the Carlovingian kings. Gold writing as a practice died out in the thirteenth century: and writing in silver appears to have ceased contemporaneously with the disuse of stained vellum. The ancients used the liquid of cuttle-fish. Pliny mentions soot and gum as the ingredients of writing-ink. Other later authors add gall-apples: metallic infusions at an early period, and vitriol in the Middle Ages were also employed.

7. While papyrus remained in common use, the chief instrument employed was a reed (κάλαμος 3 John ver. 13, canna), such as are common in the East at present: a few existing manuscripts (e.g. the Codd. Leicestrensis and Lambeth 1350) appear to have been thus written. Yet the firmness and regularity of the strokes, which often remain impressed on the vellum or paper after the ink has utterly gone, seem to prove that in the great majority of cases the stilus made of iron, bronze, or other metal, or ivory or bone, sharp at one end to scratch the letters, and furnished with a knob or flat head at the other for purposes of erasure, had not gone wholly out of use. We must add to our list of Writing materials a bodkin or needle (acus), by means of which and a ruler the blank leaf was carefully divided, generally on the outer side of the skin, into columns and lines, whose regularity much enhances the beauty of our best copies. The vestiges of such points and marks may yet be seen deeply indented on the surface of nearly all manuscripts, those on one side of each leaf being usually sufficiently visible to guide the scribe when he came to write on the reverse. The quill pen [pg 028] probably came into use with vellum, for which it is obviously suited. The first notices of it occur in a story respecting Theodoric the Ostrogoth, and in a passage of Isidore's “Origines”26 (vi. 13).

8. Little need be said respecting the form of manuscripts, which in this particular (codices) much resemble printed books. A few are in large folio; the greater part in small folio or quarto, the prevailing shape being a quarto (quaternio or quire) whose height but little exceeds its breadth; some are in octavo, a not inconsiderable number smaller still: and quires of three sheets or six leaves, and five sheets or ten leaves (Cod. Vaticanus), are to be met with. In some copies the sheets have marks in the lower margin of their first or last pages, like the signatures of a modern volume, the folio at intervals of two, the quarto at intervals of four leaves, as in the Codex Bezae of the Gospels and Acts (D), and the Codex Augiensis of St. Paul's Epistles (F). Not to speak at present of those manuscripts which have a Latin translation in a column parallel to the Greek, as the Codex Bezae, the Codex Laudianus of the Acts, and the Codices Claromontanus and Augiensis of St. Paul, many copies of every age have two Greek columns on each page; of these the Codex Alexandrinus is the oldest: the Codex Vaticanus has three columns on a page, the Codex Sinaiticus four. The unique arrangement27 of these last two has been urged as an argument [pg 029] for their higher antiquity, as if they were designed to imitate rolled books, whose several skins or leaves were fastened together lengthwise, so that their contents always appeared in parallel columns; they were kept in scrolls which were unrolled at one end for reading, and when read rolled up at the other. This fashion prevails in the papyrus fragments yet remaining, and in the most venerated copies of the Old Testament preserved in Jewish synagogues.

9. We now approach a more important question, the style of writing adopted in manuscripts, and the shapes of the several letters. These varied widely in different ages, and form the simplest and surest criteria for approximating to the date of the documents themselves. Greek characters are properly divided into “majuscules” and “minuscules,” or by a subdivision of the former, into Capitals, which are generally of a square kind, fitted for inscriptions on stones like Ε; Uncials, or large letters28, and a modification of Capitals, with a free introduction of curves, and better suited for writing, like Ε; and Cursives, or small letters, adapted for the running hand. Uncial manuscripts were written in what have frequently been regarded as capital letters, formed separately, having no connexion with each other, and (in the earlier specimens) without any space between the words, the marks of punctuation being few: the cursive or running hand comprising letters more easily and rapidly made, those in the same word being usually joined together, with a complete system of punctuation not widely removed from that of printed books. Speaking generally, and limiting our statement to Greek manuscripts of the New Testament, Uncial letters or the Literary or Book-hand prevailed from the fourth to the tenth, or (in the case of liturgical books) as late as the eleventh century; Cursive letters were employed as early as the ninth or tenth century, and continued in use until the invention of [pg 030] printing superseded the humble labours of the scribe. But cursive writing existed before the Christian era: and it seems impossible to suppose that so very convenient a form of penmanship could have fallen into abeyance in ordinary life, although few documents have come down to us to demonstrate the truth of this supposition.

Besides the broad and palpable distinction between uncial and cursive letters, persons who have had much experience in the study of manuscripts are able to distinguish those of either class from one another in respect of style and character; so that the period at which each was written can be determined within certain inconsiderable limits. After the tenth century many manuscripts bear dates, and such become standards to which we can refer others resembling them which are undated. But since the earliest dated Biblical manuscript yet discovered (Cursive Evan. 481, see below Chap. VII) bears the date May 7, a.d. 835, we must resort to other means for estimating the age of more venerable, and therefore more important, copies. By studying the style and shape of the letters on Greek inscriptions, Montfaucon was led to conclude that the more simple, upright, and regular the form of uncial letters; the less flourish or ornament they exhibit; the nearer their breadth is equal to their height; so much the more ancient they ought to be considered. These results have been signally confirmed by the subsequent discovery of Greek papyri in Egyptian tombs especially in the third century before the Christian era; and yet further from numerous fragments of Philodemus, of Epicurus, and other philosophers, which were buried in the ruins of Herculaneum in a.d. 79 (“Fragmenta Herculanensia,” Walter Scott). The evidence of these papyri, indeed, is even more weighty than that of inscriptions, inasmuch as workers in stone, as has been remarked, were often compelled to prefer straight lines, as better adapted to the hardness of their material, where writings on papyrus or vellum would naturally flow into curves.

10. While we freely grant that a certain tact, the fruit of study and minute observation, can alone make us capable of forming a trustworthy opinion on the age of manuscripts; it is worth while to point out the principles on which a true [pg 031] judgement must be grounded, and to submit to the reader a few leading facts, which his own research may hereafter enable him to apply and to extend.

The first three plates at the beginning of this volume represent the Greek alphabet, as found in the seven following monuments:

(1) The celebrated Rosetta stone, discovered near that place during the French occupation of Egypt in 1799, and now in the British Museum. This most important inscription, which in the hands of Young and Champollion has proved the key to the mysteries of Egyptian hieroglyphics, records events of no intrinsic consequence that occurred b.c. 196, in the reign of Ptolemy V Epiphanes. It is written in the three several forms of hieroglyphics, of the demotic or common characters of the country, and of Greek Capitals, which last may represent the lapidary style of the second century before our era. The words are undivided, without breathings, accents, or marks of punctuation, and the uncial letters (excepting [symbol like capital Roman I] for zeta) approach very nearly to our modern capital type. In shape they are simple, perhaps a little rude; rather square than oblong: and as the carver on this hard black stone was obliged to avoid curve lines whenever he could, the forms of Ε, Ξ and Σ differ considerably from the specimens we shall produce from documents described on soft materials. Plate I. No. (1).

(2) The Codex Friderico-Augustanus of the fourth century, published in lithographed facsimile in 1846, contains on forty-three leaves fragments of the Septuagint version, chiefly from 1 Chronicles and Jeremiah, with Nehemiah and Esther complete, in oblong folio, with four columns on each page. The plates are so carefully executed that the very form of the ancient letters and the colour of the ink are represented to us by Tischendorf, who discovered it in the East. In 1859 the same indefatigable scholar brought to Europe the remainder of this manuscript, which seems as old as the fourth century, anterior (as he thinks) to the Codex Vaticanus itself, and published it in 1862, in facsimile type cast for the purpose, 4 tom., with twenty pages lithographed or photographed, at the expense of the Emperor Alexander II of Russia, to whom the original had been presented. This book, which Tischendorf calls Codex Sinaiticus, contains, besides much more of the Septuagint, the whole New Testament [pg 032] with Barnabas' Epistle and a part of Hermas' Shepherd annexed. As a kind of avant-courier to his great work he had previously put forth a tract entitled “Notitia Editionis Codicis Bibliorum Sinaitici Auspiciis Imperatoris Alexandri II susceptae” (Leipsic, 1860). Of this most valuable manuscript a complete account will be given in the opening of the fourth chapter, under the appellation of Aleph (א), assigned to it by Tischendorf, in the exercise of his right as its discoverer. Plate I. No. 2.

(3) Codex Alexandrinus of the fifth century (A). Plate I.

(4) Codex Purpureus Cotton.: N of the Gospels, of the sixth century. Plate II.

(5) Codex Nitriensis Rescriptus, R of the Gospels, of the sixth century. Plate II.

(6) Codex Dublinensis Rescriptus, Z of the Gospels, of the sixth century. Plate III.

(7) Evangelistarium Harleian. 5598, dated a.d. 995. Plate III.

The leading features of these manuscripts will be described in the fourth and fifth chapters. At present we wish to compare them with each other for the purpose of tracing, as closely as we may, the different styles and fashions of uncial letters which prevailed from the fourth to the tenth or eleventh century of the Christian era. The varying appearance of cursive manuscripts cannot so well be seen by exhibiting their alphabets, for since each letter is for the most part joined to the others in the same word, connected passages alone will afford us a correct notion of their character and general features. For the moment we are considering the uncials only.

If the Rosetta stone, by its necessary avoiding of curve lines, gives only a notion of the manner adopted on stone and not in common writing, it resembles our earliest uncials at least in one respect, that the letters, being as broad as they are high, are all capable of being included within circumscribed squares. Indeed, yet earlier inscriptions are found almost totally destitute of curves, even Ο and Θ being represented by simple squares, with or without a bisecting horizontal line (see theta, p. 35)29. [pg 033] The Herculanean papyri, however (a specimen of which we have given in Plate iv. No. 10), are much better suited than inscriptions can be for comparison with our earliest copies of Scripture30. Nothing can well be conceived more elegant than these simply-formed graceful little letters (somewhat diminished in size perhaps by the effects of heat) running across the volume, thirty-nine lines in a column, without capitals or breaks between the words. There are scarcely any stops, no breathings, accents, or marks of any kind; only that >, < or [right-pointing triangle] are now and then found at the end of a line, to fill up the space, or to join a word or syllable with what follows. A very few abbreviations occur, such as [symbol like Pi with Rho] in the first line of our specimen, taken from Philodemus περὶ κακιῶν (Hercul. Volum. Tom. iii. Col. xx. ll. 6-15), the very manuscript to which Tischendorf compared his Cod. Friderico-Augustanus (Proleg. § 11). The papyri, buried for so many ages from a.d. 79 downwards, may probably be a century older still, since Philodemus the Epicurean was the contemporary and almost the friend of Cicero31. Hence from three to four hundred years must have elapsed betwixt the date of the Herculanean rolls and that of our earliest Biblical manuscripts. Yet the fashion of writing changed but little during the interval, far less in every respect than in the four centuries which next followed, wherein the plain, firm, upright and square uncials were giving place to the compressed, oblong, ornamented, or even sloping forms which predominate from the seventh or eighth century downwards. While advising the reader to exercise his skill on facsimiles of entire passages, especially in contrasting the lines from Philodemus (No. 10) with those from the oldest uncials of the New Testament (Nos. 11-14; 17; 18; 20; 24); we purpose to examine the several alphabets (Nos. 1-7) letter by letter, pointing out to the student those variations in shape which palaeographers have judged the safest criteria of their relative ages. Alpha, delta, theta, xi, pi, omega, are among the best tests for this purpose.

These details might be indefinitely added to by references to other codices and monuments of antiquity, but we have employed most of the principal copies of the Greek Testament, and have indicated to the student the chief points to which his attention should be drawn. Three leading principles have perhaps been sufficiently established by the foregoing examples:

First, that the uncials used in writing differ from the capitals cut in stone by the curved shapes which the writing hand naturally adopts34.

Secondly, that the upright uncials of square dimensions [pg 041] are more ancient than those which are narrow, oblong, or leaning35.

Thirdly, that the simpler and less elaborate the style of writing, the more remote is its probable date.

Copies of a later age occasionally aim at imitating the fashion of an earlier period, or possibly the style of the older book from which their text is drawn. But this anachronism of fashion may be detected, as well by other circumstances we are soon to mention, as from the air of constraint which pervades the whole manuscript: the rather as the scribe will now and then fall into the more familiar manner of his contemporaries; especially when writing those small letters which our Biblical manuscripts of all dates (even the most venerable) perpetually crowd into the ends of lines, in order to save space.

11. We do not intend to dwell much on the cursive handwriting. No books of the Greek Scriptures earlier than the ninth century in this style are now extant36, though it was prevalent long before in the intercourse of business or common life. The papyri of Hyperides (e.g. No. 9) and the Herculanean rolls, in a few places, show that the process had then commenced, for the letters of each word are often joined, and their shapes prove that swiftness of execution was more aimed at than distinctness. This is seen even more clearly in a petition to Ptolemy Philometor (b.c. 164) represented in the “Paléographie Universelle” (No. 56). The same great work contains (No. 66) two really cursive charters of the Emperors [pg 042] Maurice (a.d. 600) and Heraclius (a.d. 616). Other instances of early cursive writing may be found in two Deeds of Sale, a.d. 616, and 599, a Manumission in 355, an Official Deed in 233, a Deed of Sale in 154, in Aristotle on the Constitution of Athens, about 100, in a Farm Account in 78-79, in a Receipt in a.d. 20, in the Casati contract in b.c. 114, in a Letter on Egyptian Contracts in 146, a Treasury Circular in 170, in a Steward's letter of the third century b.c., in various documents of the same century lying in the British Museum, at Paris, Berlin, Leyden, and elsewhere, of which the oldest, being amongst the papyri discovered by Dr. Flinders Petrie at Gurob is referred to b.c. 268, and the Leyden papyrus to 26037. Yet the earliest books of a later age known to be written in cursive letters are Cod. 481 (Scholz 461, dated a.d. 835) the Bodleian Euclid (dated a.d. 888) and the twenty-four dialogues of Plato in the same Library (dated a.d. 895)38. There is reason to believe, from the comparatively unformed character of the writing in them all, that Burney 19 in the British Museum (from which we have extracted the alphabet No. 8, Plate iii), and the minute, beautiful and important Codex l of the Gospels at Basle (of which see a facsimile No. 23), are but little later than the Oxford books, and may be referred to the tenth century. Books copied after the cursive hand had become regularly formed, in the eleventh, [pg 043] twelfth and thirteenth centuries, are hard to be distinguished by the mere handwriting, though they are often dated, or their age fixed by the material (see p. 23), or the style of their illuminations. Colbert. 2844, or 33 of the Gospels (facsim. No. 39), is attributed to the eleventh century, and Burney 21 (No. 15)39, is dated a.d. 1292, and afford good examples of their respective dates. Beta (l. 1 letter 4), when joined to other letters, is barely distinguishable from upsilon40; nu is even nearer to mu; the tall forms of eta and epsilon are very graceful, the whole style elegant and, after a little practice, easily read. Burney 22 (facsimile No. 37) is dated about the same time, a.d. 1319, and the four Biblical lines much resemble Burney 2141. In the fourteenth century a careless style came into fashion, of which Cod. Leicestrensis (No. 40) is an exaggerated instance, and during this century and the next our manuscripts, though not devoid of a certain beauty of appearance, are too full of arbitrary and elaborate contractions to be conveniently read. The formidable list of abbreviations and ligatures represented in Donaldson's Greek Grammar (p. 20, third edition)42 originated at this period in the perverse ingenuity of the Greek emigrants in the West of Europe, who subsisted by their skill as copyists; [pg 044] and these pretty puzzles (for such they now are to many a fair classical scholar), by being introduced into early printed books43, have largely helped to withdraw them from use in modern times.

12. We have now to describe the practice of Biblical manuscripts as regards the insertion of ι forming a diphthong with the long vowels eta and omega, also with alpha long, whether by being ascript, i.e. written by their side, or subscript, i.e. written under them. In the earliest inscriptions and in the papyri of Thebes ι ascript (the iota not smaller than other letters) is invariably found. In the petition to Ptolemy Philometor (above, p. 41) it occurs four times in the first line, three times in the third: in the fragments of Hyperides it is perpetually though not always read, even where (especially with verbs) it has no rightful place, e.g. ετωι και αντιβολωι (facsimile No. 9, ll. 3, 4) for αἰτῶ καὶ ἀντιβολῶ. A little before the Christian era it began to grow obsolete, probably from its being lost in pronunciation. In the Herculanean Philodemus (the possible limits of whose date are from b.c. 50 to a.d. 79) as in Evann. 556, 604 (Matt. ii. 12, 13), it is often dropped, though more usually written. In Codd. Vaticanus and Sinaiticus it is probably not found, and from this period it almost disappears from Biblical uncials44; in Cureton's Homer, of the fifth or perhaps of the sixth century, ι ascript is sometimes neglected, but usually inserted; sometimes also ι is placed above Η or Ω, an arrangement neither neat nor convenient. With the cursive character ι ascript came in again, as may be seen from the subscriptions in the Bodleian Euclid and Plato (p. 42, note 1). The semicursive fragment of St. Paul's Epistles in red letters (M of St. Paul, Plate xii No. 34), used for the binding of Harleian 5613, contains ι ascript twice, but I have tried in vain to verify Griesbach's statement (Symbol. Crit. ii. p. 166) that it has ι subscript “bis tantum aut ter.” I can find no such instance in [pg 045] these leaves. The cursive manuscripts, speaking generally, either entirely omit both forms, or, if they give either, far more often neglect than insert them. Cod. 1 of the Gospels exhibits the ascript ι. Of forty-three codices now in England which have been examined with a view to this matter, twelve have no vestige of either fashion, fifteen represent the ascript use, nine the subscript exclusively, while the few that remain exhibit both indifferently45. The earliest cursive copy ascertained to exhibit ι subscript is Matthaei's r (Apoc. 502 [x]), and after that the Cod. Ephesius (Evan. 71), dated a.d. 1160. The subscript ι came much into vogue during the fifteenth century, and thus was adopted in printed books.

13. Breathings (spiritus) and accents46 were not applied systematically to Greek Texts before the seventh century. But a practice prevailed in that and the succeeding century of inserting them in older manuscripts, where they were absent primâ manu. That such was done in many instances (e.g. in Codd. Vatican. and Coislin. 202 or H of St. Paul) appears clearly from the fact that the passages which the scribe who retouched the old letters for any cause left unaltered, are destitute of these marks, though they appear in all other places. Cod. א exhibits breathings, apparently by the original scribe, in Tobit vi. 9; Gal. v. 21 only. The case of Cod. Alexandrinus is less easy. Though the rest of the book has neither breathings (except a few here and there) nor accents, the first four lines of each column of the book of Genesis (see facsimile No. 12), which are written in red, are fully furnished with them. These marks Baber, who edited the Old Testament portion of Cod. A, pronounced to be by a second hand (Notae, p. 1); Sir Frederick Madden, a more competent judge, declares them the work of the original scribe (Madden's Silvestre, Vol. i. p. 194, note), and after repeated examination we know not how to dissent from his view47. So too in the Sarravian Pentateuch of the fifth century [pg 046] we read ΤΟΝΥΝ [with several symbols written over the Υ] (Lev. xi. 7) by the first hand. The Cureton palimpsest of Homer also has them, though they are occasionally obliterated, and some few are evidently inserted by a corrector; the case is nearly so with the Milan Homer edited by Mai; and the same must be stated of the Vienna Dioscorides (Silvestre, No. 62), whose date is fixed by internal evidence to about a.d. 500. In the papyrus fragment of the Psalms, now in the British Museum, the accents are very accurate, and the work of the original scribe. These facts, and others like these, may make us hesitate to adopt the notion generally received among scholars on the authority of Montfaucon (Palaeogr. Graec. p. 33), that breathings and accents were not introduced primâ manu before the seventh or eighth century; although up to that period, no doubt, they were placed very incorrectly, and often omitted altogether. The breathings are much the more ancient and important of the two. The spiritus lenis indeed may be a mere invention of the Alexandrian grammarians of the second or third century before Christ, but the spiritus asper is in fact the substitute for a real letter (H) which appears on the oldest inscriptions; its original shape being the first half of the H ([symbol like the left half of a Roman capital letter H]), of which the second half was subsequently adopted for the lenis ([symbol like the right half of a Roman capital H]). This form is sometimes found in manuscripts of about the eleventh century (e.g. Lebanon, B.M. Addit. 11300 or kscr, and usually in Lambeth 1178 or dscr) ed. of 1550, but even in the Cod. Alexandrinus the comma and inverted comma are several times substituted to represent the lenis and asper respectively (facsimile No. 12): and at a later period this last was the ordinary, though not quite the invariable, mode of expressing the breathings. Aristophanes of Byzantium (keeper of the famous Library at Alexandria under Ptolemy Euergetes, about b.c. 240), though probably not the inventor of the Greek accents, was the first to arrange them in a system. Accentuation must have been a welcome aid to those who employed Greek as a learned, though not as their vernacular tongue, and is so convenient and suggestive that no modern scholar can afford to dispense with its familiar use: yet not being, like the rough breathing, an essential portion of the language, it was but slowly brought into general vogue. It would seem that in Augustine's age [354-430] the distinction between the smooth and rough breathing in the manuscripts was just such a point as a careful reader would [pg 047] mark, a hasty one overlook48. Hence it is not surprising that though these marks are entirely absent both from the Theban and Herculanean papyri, a few breathings are apparently by the first hand in Cod. Borgianus or T (Tischendorf, N. T. 1859, Proleg. p. cxxxi). One rough breathing is just visible in that early palimpsest of St. John's Gospel, Ib or Nb. Such as appear, together with some accents, in the Coislin Octateuch of the sixth or seventh century, may not the less be primâ manu because many pages are destitute of them; those of Cod. Claromontanus, which were once deemed original, are now pronounced by its editor Tischendorf to be a later addition. Cod. N, the purple fragment so often spoken of already, exhibits primâ manu over certain vowels a kind of smooth breathing or slight acute accent, sometimes little larger than a point, but inserted on no intelligible principle, so far as we can see, and far oftener omitted entirely. All copies of Scripture which have not been specified, down to the end of the seventh century, are quite destitute of breathings and accents. An important manuscript of the eighth or ninth century, Cod. L or Paris 62 of the Gospels, has them for the most part, but not always; though often in the wrong place, and at times in utter defiance of all grammatical rules. Cod. B of the Apocalypse, however, though of the same age, has breathings and accents as constantly and correctly as most. Codices of the ninth century, with the exception of three written in the West of Europe (Codd. Augiensis or Paul F, Sangallensis or Δ of the Gospels, and Boernerianus or Paul G, which will be particularly described afterwards), are all accompanied with these marks in full, though often set down without any precise rule, so far as our experience has enabled us to observe. The uncial Evangelistaria (e.g. Arundel 547; Parham 18; Harleian 5598), especially, are much addicted to prefixing the spiritus asper improperly; chiefly, perhaps, to words beginning with H, so that documents of that age are but slender authorities on such points. Of the cursives the general tendency is to be more and more accurate as regards the accentuation, [pg 048] the later the date: but this is only a general rule, as some that are early are as careful, and certain of the latest as negligent, as can well be imagined. All of them are partial to placing accents or breathings over both parts of a word compounded with a preposition (e.g. ἐπὶσυνάξαι), and on the other hand often drop them between a preposition and its case (e.g. ἐπάροτρον).

14. The punctuation in early times was very simple. In the papyri of Hyperides there are no stops at all, in the Herculanean rolls exceeding few: Codd. Sinaiticus and Vaticanus (the latter very rarely by the first hand) have a single point here and there on a level with the top of the letters, and occasionally a very small break in the continuous uncials, with or (as always in Cod. Ib of the sixth century) without the point, to denote a pause in the sense. Codd. A N have the same point a little oftener; in Codd. C Wa (Paris 314) Z and the Cotton Genesis the single point stands indiscriminately at the head, middle, or foot of the letters, while in E (Basil. A. N. iii. 12) of the Gospels and B of the Apocalypse, as in Cod. Marchalianus of the Prophets (sixth or seventh century), this change in the position of the point indicates a full-stop, half stop, or comma respectively. In Cod. L, of the same date as Codd. E and B (Apoc.), besides the full point we have the comma (::.) and semicolon (::), with a cross also for a stop. In Codd. Y Θa (of about the eighth century) the single point has its various powers as in Cod. E, &c., but besides this are double, treble, and in Cod. Y quadruple, points with different powers. In late uncials, especially Evangelistaria, the chief stop is a cross, often in red (e.g. Arund. 547); while in Harleian 5598 [symbol like three ovals] seems to be the note of interrogation49. When the continuous writing came to be broken up into separate words (of which Cod. Augiensis in the ninth century affords one of the earliest examples) the single point was intended to be placed after the last letter of each word, on a level with the middle of the letters. But even in this copy it is often omitted in parts, and in Codd. ΔG, written on the same plan, more frequently still. Our statements refer only to the Greek portions of these [pg 049] copies; the Latin semicolon (;) and the note of interrogation (?) occur in their Latin versions. The Greek interrogation (;) first occurs about the ninth century, and (,) used as a stop a little later. The Bodleian Genesis of this date, or a little earlier, uses (,) also as an interrogative: so in later times B-C. iii. 5 [xii], and Evan. 556 [xii]. In the earliest cursives the system of punctuation is much the same as that of printed books: the English colon (:) not being much used, but the upper single point in its stead50. In a few cursives (e.g. Gonville or 59 of the Gospels), this upper point, set in a larger space, stands also for a full stop: indeed (·) is the only stop found in Tischendorf's loti or 61 of the Acts (Brit. Mus. Add. 20,003): while (;) and (·) are often confused in 440 of the Gospels (Cantab. Mm. 6. 9). The English comma, placed above a letter, is used for the apostrophus, which occurs in the very oldest uncials, especially at the end of proper names, or to separate compounds (e.g. απ᾽ ορφανισθεντες in Cod. Clarom.), or when the word ends in ξ or ρ (e.g. σαρξ᾽ in Cod. B, θυγατηρ᾽ in Codd. Sinait. and A, χειρ᾽ in Cod. A, ὡσπερ᾽ in the Dioscorides, a.d. 500), or even to divide syllables (e.g. συριγ᾿γας in Cod. Frid.-August., πολ᾿λα, κατεστραμ᾿μενη, αναγ᾿γελι in Cod. Sinaiticus). In Cod. Z it is found only after αλλ and μεθ, but in Z's Isaiah it indicates other elisions (e.g. επ). This mark is more rare in Cod. Ephraemi than in some others, but is used more or less by all, and is found after εξ, or ουχ, and a few like words, even in the most recent cursives. In Cod. Bezae and others it assumes the shape of > rather than that of a comma.

15. Abbreviated words are perhaps least met with in Cod. Vatican., but even it has θσ, κσ, ισ, χσ, πνα for θεός, κύριος, ἰησοῦς, χριστός, πνεῦμα, &c. and their cases. [Transcriber's Note: In this e-book, underlines are used to represent the overlines used in the paper book.] The Cotton Genesis has θου ch. i. 27 by a later hand, but θεου ch. xli. 38. Besides these Codd. Sinaiticus, Alex., Ephraemi and the rest supply ανοσ, ουνοσ, πηρ (πρ Cod. Sarrav. Num. xii. 14, &c., πτηρ Cod. [pg 050] Rossanensis), μηρ, ιλημ or ιηλμ or ιλμ or ιηό (ιελμ Cod. Sarrav.), ιηϊ or ισλ or ισηλ, δαδ, and some of them σηρ for σωτήρ, υσ for υἱός, παρνξς [with a theta above the line] for παρθένος (Bodleian Genesis), σρσ for σταυρός: Cod. L has πνευ, and Cod. Vatican. in the Old Testament ανοσ and πρσ occasionally, ἐθν and ιλημ or ιλμ often51; Evan. 604 has σηρ for σωτήρ, and ἐθν for ἐθνῶν52. Cod. Bezae always writes at length ανθρωπος, μητηρ, υἱος, σωτηρ, οὐρανος, δαυειδ, ἰσραηλ, ἱερουσαλημ; but abridges the sacred names into χρσ, ιησ53 &c. and their cases, as very frequently, but by no means invariably, do the kindred Codd. Augiens., Sangall., and Boerner. Cod. Z seldom abridges, and all copies often set υἱος in full. A few dots sometimes supply the place of the line denoting abbreviation (e.g. θσ [with dots over the letters] Cotton Genesis, ανοσ [with dots over the letters] Colbert. Pentateuch). A straight line over the last letter of a line, sometimes over any vowel, indicates N (or also M in the Latin of Codd. Bezae and Claromont.) in all the Biblical uncials, but is placed only over numerals in the Herculanean rolls: κ [with tilde below and to the right], τ [with tilde below and to the right], and less often θ [with tilde below and to the right] for καί (see p. 16, note 1), -ται, -θαι are met with in Cod. Sinaiticus and all later except Cod. Z: [symbol somewhat like Arabic number 8] for ου chiefly in Codd. L, Augiensis, B of the Apocalypse, and the more recent uncials. Such compendia scribendi as [symbol like Pi with Rho] in the Herculanean rolls (above p. 33) occur mostly at the end of lines: that form, with ΜΥ [with small circle between the letters] (No. 11 a, l. 4), and a few more even in the Cod. Sinaiticus; in Cod. Sarrav. Μ [with small circle over the letter] stands for both μου and μοι; in Cureton's Homer we have Πς for πους, Σς for -σας and such like. In later books they are more numerous and complicated, particularly in cursive writing. The terminations [small raised circle] for ος, [horizontal line] for ν, [symbol like left single quotation mark] or [symbol like two left quotation marks] for ον, [symbol like right double quotation mark] for αις, [symbol like tilde] for ων or ω or ως, [symbol like raised small sigma] for ης, [symbol like raised small upsilon] for ου are familiar; besides others, peculiar to one or a few copies, e.g. τγ for ττ in Burney 19, and Burdett-Coutts i. 4, h for αυ, b for ερ, — for α, [symbol like horizontal line with circle at right edge] for αρ in the Emmanuel College copy of the Epistles (Paul 30, No. 33), and [symbol like colon] for α, [symbol like small raised capital sigma] or [symbol like raised small sigma] for αν, [symbol like square root symbol] for ας in Parham 17 of the Apocalypse. Other more rare abridgements are [symbol like two raised small sigmas] for εις in Wake 12, [square root sign] (Burdett-Coutts I. 4) or < or [raised small alpha] for εν, [symbol like two dots] for ι and [symbol like Hebrew letter Tet with two dots over it] for εσ (B-C. iii. 37), [symbol like two dots with comma below them] for εσ and ε for σε and [symbol like tilde over Rho over Tau] for τησ (B-C. [pg 051] ii. 26), [symbol] for ται and [symbol] for ωσ (B-C. iii. 42), [symbol] for ην (B-C. iii. 10), [symbol] for ισ and ὀ or [symbol] for ουν (B-C. iii. 41), [symbol] for ιν or ἐστι, [symbol] for αν, [symbol] or [symbol] for οις, [symbol] for ας, [symbol] or [symbol] for οις, [symbol] for τε or -τες or τθν or τον, [symbol] for ειν, [symbol] for ους or ως (Gale O. iv. 22). The mark > is not only met with in the Herculanean rolls, but in the Hyperides (facsimile 9, l. 6), in Codd. Vaticanus and Sinaiticus, the two Pentateuchs, Codd. Augiensis, Sangall. and Boernerianus, and seems merely designed to fill up vacant space, like the flourishes in a legal instrument54.

16. Capital letters of a larger size than the rest at the beginning of clauses, &c. are freely met with in all documents excepting in the oldest papyri, the Herculanean rolls, Codd. Vaticanus, Sinaiticus, the Colbert Pentateuch, Isaiah in Cod. Z, and one or two fragments besides55. Their absence is a proof of high antiquity. Yet even in Codd. Vaticanus, Sinaiticus, and Sarravianus, which is the other part of the Colbert Pentateuch (in the first most frequently in the earlier portions of the Old Testament), the initial letter stands a little outside the line of writing after a break in the sense, whether the preceding line had been quite filled up or not. Such breaks occur more regularly in Codex Bezae, as will appear when we come to describe it56. Smaller capitals occur in the middle of lines in Codd. Bezae and Marchalianus, of the sixth and seventh centuries respectively. Moreover, all copies of whatever date are apt to crowd small [pg 052] letters into the end of a line to save room, and if these small letters preserve the form of the larger, it is reasonable to conclude that the scribe is writing in a natural hand, not an assumed one, and the argument for the antiquity of such a document, derived from the shape of its letters, thus becomes all the stronger. The continuous form of writing separate words must have prevailed in manuscripts long after it was obsolete in common life: Cod. Claromont., whose text is continuous even in its Latin version, divides the words in the inscriptions and subscriptions to the several books.

17. The stichometry of the sacred books has next to be considered. The Greeks and Romans measured the contents of their MSS. by lines, not only in poetry, but also artificially in prose for a standard line of fifteen or sixteen syllables, called by the earliest writers ἔπος, afterwards στίχος57. Not only do Athanasius [d. 373], Gregory Nyssen [d. 396], Epiphanius [d. 403], and Chrysostom [d. 407] inform us that in their time the Book of Psalms was already divided into στίχοι, while Jerome [d. 420?] testifies the same for the prophecies of Isaiah; but Origen also [d. 254] speaks of the second and third Epistles of St. John as both of them not exceeding one hundred στίχοι, of St. Paul's Epistles as consisting of few, St. John's first Epistle as of very few (Euseb. Hist. Eccles. vi. 25, cited by Tischendorf, Cod. Sinait., Proleg. p. xxi, note 2, 1863). Even the apocryphal letter of our Lord to Abgarus is described as ὀλιγοστίχου μέν, πολυδυνάμου δὲ ἐπιστολῆς (Euseb. H. E. i. 13): while Eustathius of Antioch in the fourth century reckoned 135 στίχοι between John viii. 59 and x. 41. More general is the use of the word in Ephraem the Syrian [d. 378], Ὅταν δὲ ἀναγινώσκῃς, ἐπιμελῶς καὶ ἐμπόνως ἀναγίνωσκε, ἐν πολλῇ καταστάσει διερχόμενος τὸν στίχον (tom. iii. 101). As regards the [pg 053] Psalms, we may see their arrangement for ourselves in Codd. Vaticanus and Sinaiticus, wherein, according to the true principles of Hebrew poetry, the verses do not correspond in metre or quantity of syllables, but in the parallelism or relationship subsisting between the several members of the same sentence or stanza58. Such στίχοι were therefore not “space-lines,” but “sense-lines.” It seems to have occurred to Euthalius, a deacon of Alexandria, as it did long afterwards to Bishop Jebb when he wrote his “Sacred Literature,” that a large portion of the New Testament might be divided into στίχοι on the same principles: and that even where that distribution should prove but artificial, it would guide the public reader in the management of his voice, and remove the necessity for an elaborate system of punctuation. Such, therefore, we conceive to be the use and design of stichometry, as applied to the Greek Testament by Euthalius59, whose edition of the Acts and Epistles was published a.d. 490. Who distributed the στίχοι of the Gospels (which are in truth better suited for such a process than the Epistles) does not appear. Although but few manuscripts now exist that are written στοιχηδόν or στιχηρῶς (a plan which consumed too much vellum to become general), we read in many copies, added usually to the subscription at the foot of each of the books of the New Testament, a calculation of the number of στίχοι it contained, the numbers being sufficiently unlike to show that the arrangement was not the same in all codices, yet near enough to prove that they were divided on the same principle60. In the few documents written στιχηρῶς that survive, the length of the clauses is very unequal; some (e.g. Cod. Bezae, see the description below [pg 054] and the facsimile, No. 42) containing as much in a line as might be conveniently read aloud in a breath, others (e.g. Cod. Laud. of the Acts, Plate x. No. 25) having only one or two words in a line. The Cod. Claromontanus (facsim. No. 41) in this respect lies between those extremes, and the fourth great example of this class (Cod. Coislin. 202, H of St. Paul), of the sixth century, has one of its few surviving pages (of sixteen lines each) arranged literatim as follows (1 Cor. x. 22, &c.): εσμεν | παντα μοι εξεστι | αλλ ου παντα συμφερει | παντα μοι εξεστιν | αλλ ου παντα οικοδομει | μηδεισ το εαυτου ζη | (ob necessitatem spatii) τειτω | αλλα το του ετερου | παν το εν μακελλω πω | (ob necessitatem) λουμενον | εσθιετε μηδεν ανα | κρινωντες δια την | συνειδησιν | του γαρ κυ η γη και το πλη | ρωμα αυτης. Other manuscripts written στιχηρῶς are Matthaei's V of the eighth century (though with verses like ours more than with ordinary στίχοι), Bengel's Uffenbach 3 of St. John (Evan. 101), Alter's Forlos. 29 (36 of the Apocalypse), and, as it would seem, the Cod. Sangallensis Δ. In Cod. Claromontanus there are scarcely any stops (the middle point being chiefly reserved to follow abridgements or numerals), the stichometry being of itself an elaborate scheme of punctuation; but the longer στίχοι of Cod. Bezae are often divided by a single point.

18. In using manuscripts of the Greek Testament, we must carefully note whether a reading is primâ manu (*) or by some subsequent corrector (**). It will often happen that these last are utterly valueless, having been inserted even from printed copies by a modern owner (like some marginal variations of the Cod. Leicestrensis)61, and such as these really ought not to have been extracted by collators at all; while others by the second hand are almost as weighty, for age and goodness, as the text itself. All these points are explained by critical editors for each document separately; in fact to discriminate the different corrections in regard to their antiquity and importance is often the most difficult portion of such editor's task (e.g. in Codd. Bezae and Claromontanus), and one on which he often feels it hard to satisfy his own judgement. Corrections by the original scribe, or [pg 055] by a contemporary reviser, where they can be satisfactorily distinguished, must be regarded as a portion of the testimony of the manuscript itself, inasmuch as every carefully prepared copy was reviewed and compared (ἀντεβλήθη), if not by the writer himself, by a skilful person appointed for the task (ὁ διορθῶν, ὁ διορθωτής), whose duty it was to amend manifest errors, sometimes also to insert ornamental capitals in places which had been reserved for them; in later times (and as some believe at a very early period) to set in stops, breathings and accents; in copies destined for ecclesiastical use to arrange the musical notes that were to guide the intonation of the reader. Notices of this kind of revision are sometimes met with at the end of the best manuscripts. Such is the note in Cod. H of St. Paul: εγραψα και εξεθεμην προσ το εν Καισαρια αντιγραφον τησ διδλιοθηκησ του αγιου Παμφιλου, the same library of the Martyr Pamphilus to which the scribe of the Cod. Frid.-August. resorted for his model62; and that in Birch's most valuable Urbino-Vatican. 2 (157 of the Gospels), written for the Emperor John II (1118-1143), wherein at the end of the first Gospel we read κατὰ Ματθαῖον ἐγράφη καὶ ἀντεβλήθη ἐκ τῶν ἐν ἱεροσολύμοις παλαιῶν ἀντιγράφων τῶν ἐν ἁγίω ὄρει [Athos] ἀποκειμένων: similar subscriptions are appended to the other Gospels. See also Evan. Λ. 20, 164, 262, 300, 376; Act. 15, 83, in the list of manuscripts below.

Chapter III. Divisions Of The Text, And Other Particulars.

We have next to give some account of ancient divisions of the text, as found in manuscripts of the New Testament; and these must be carefully noted by the student, since few copies are without one or more of them.

1. So far as we know at present, the oldest sections still extant are those of the Codex Vaticanus. These seem to have been formed for the purpose of reference, and a new one always commences where there is some break in the sense. Many, however, at least in the Gospels, consist of but one of our modern verses, and they are so unequal in length as to be rather inconvenient for actual use. In the four Gospels only the marginal numerals are in red, St. Matthew containing 170 of these divisions, St. Mark 62, St. Luke 152, St. John 80. In the Acts of the Apostles are two sets of sections, thirty-six longer and in an older hand, sixty-nine smaller and more recent63. Each of these also begins after a break in the sense, but they are quite independent of each other, as a larger section will sometimes commence in the middle of a smaller, the latter being in no wise a subdivision of the former. Thus the greater Γ opens Acts ii. 1, in the middle of the lesser β, which extends from Acts i. 15 to ii. 4. The first forty-two of the lesser chapters, down to Acts xv. 40, are found also with slight variations in the margin of Codex Sinaiticus, written by a very old hand. As in most manuscripts, so in Codex Vaticanus, the Catholic Epistles follow the Acts, and in them also and in St. Paul's Epistles there are two sets of sections, only that in the Epistles the older sections are the more numerous. The Pauline Epistles are reckoned throughout as one book in the [pg 057] elder notation, with however this remarkable peculiarity, that though in the Cod. Vatican. itself the Epistle to the Hebrews stands next after the second to the Thessalonians, and on the same leaf with it, the sections are arranged as if it stood between the Epistles to the Galatians and Ephesians. For whereas that to the Galatians ends with § 58, that to the Ephesians begins with § 70, and the numbers proceed regularly down to § 93, with which the second to the Thessalonians ends. The Epistle to the Hebrews which then follows opens with § 59; the last section extant (§ 64) begins at Heb. ix. 11, and the manuscript ends abruptly at καθα ver. 14. It plainly appears, then, that the sections of the Codex Vaticanus must have been copied from some yet older document, in which the Epistle to the Hebrews preceded that to the Ephesians. It will be found hereafter (vol. ii) that in the Thebaic version the Epistle to the Hebrews preceded that to the Galatians, instead of following it, as here. For a list of the more modern divisions in the Epistles, see the Table given below. The Vatican sections of the Gospels have also been discovered by Tregelles in one other copy, the palimpsest Codex Zacynthius of St. Luke (Ξ), which he published in 1861.

2. Hardly less ancient, and indeed ascribed by some to Tatian the Harmonist, the disciple of Justin Martyr, is the division of the Gospels into larger chapters or κεφάλαια majora64. It may be noticed that in none of the four Gospels does the first chapter stand at its commencement. In St. Matthew chapter A begins at chap. ii. verse 1, and has for its title περὶ τῶν μάγων: in St. Mark at chap. i. ver. 23 περὶ τοῧ δαιμονιζομένου: in St. Luke at chap. ii. ver. 1 περὶ τῆς ἀπογραφῆς: in St. John at chap. ii. ver. 1 περὶ τοῦ ἐν Κανᾶ γάμου. Mill accounts for this circumstance by supposing that in the first copies the titles at the head of each Gospel were reserved till last for more splendid illumination, and were thus eventually forgotten (Proleg. N. T. § 355); Griesbach holds, that the general inscriptions of each Gospel, Κατὰ Ματθαῖον, Κατὰ Μάρκον, &c., were regarded as the special titles of the first chapters also. On either supposition, however, it would [pg 058] be hard to explain how what was really the second chapter came to be numbered as the first; and it is worth notice that the same arrangement takes place in the κεφάλαια (though these are of a later date) of all the other books of the New Testament except the Acts, 2 Corinth., Ephes., 1 Thess., Hebrews, James, 1 and 2 Peter, 1 John, and the Apocalypse: e.g. the first chapter of the Epistle to the Romans opens ch. i. ver. 18 Πρῶτον μετὰ τὸ προοίμιον, περὶ κρίσεως τῆς κατὰ ἐθνῶν τῶν οὐ φυλασσόντων τὰ φυσικά. But the fact is that this arrangement, strange as it may seem, is conformable to the practice of the times when these divisions were finally settled. Both in the Institutes and in the Digest of Justinian the first paragraph is always cited as pr. (i.e. principium, προοίμιον, Preface), and what we should regard as the second paragraph is numbered as the first, and so on throughout the whole work65.

The τίτλοι in St. Matthew amount to sixty-eight, in St. Mark to forty-eight, in St. Luke to eighty-three, in St. John to eighteen. This mode of division, although not met with in the Vatican and Sinaitic manuscripts, is found in the Codices Alexandrinus and Ephraemi of the fifth century, and in the Codex Nitriensis of the sixth, each of which has tables of the τίτλοι prefixed to the several Gospels: but the Codices Alexandrinus, Rossanensis, and Dublinensis of St. Matthew, and that portion of the purple Cotton fragment which is in the Vatican, exhibit them in their usual position, at the top and bottom of the pages. Thus it appears that they were too generally diffused in the fifth century not to have originated at an earlier period; although we must concede that the κεφάλαιον spoken of by Clement of Alexandria (Stromat. i) when quoting Dan. xii. 12, or by Athanasius (contra Arium) on Act. ii, and the Capitulum mentioned by Tertullian (ad Uxorem ii. 2) in reference to 1 Cor. vii. 12, contain no certain allusions to any specific divisions of the sacred text, but only to the particular paragraphs or passages in which their citations stand. Except that the contrary habit has grown inveterate66, it were much to be desired that the term τίτλοι should be applied to these longer [pg 059] divisions, at least in the Gospels; but since usage has affixed the term κεφάλαια to the larger chapters and sections to the smaller, and τίτλοι only to the subjects or headings of the former, it would be useless to follow any other system of names.

3. The Ammonian Sections were not constructed, like the Vatican divisions and the τίτλοι, for the purpose of easy reference, or distributed like them according to the breaks in the sense, but for a wholly different purpose. So far as we can ascertain, the design of Tatian's Harmony was simply to present to Christian readers a single connected history of our Lord, by taking from the four Evangelists indifferently whatsoever best suited his purpose67. As this plan could scarcely be executed without omitting some portions of the sacred text, it is not surprising that Tatian, possibly without any evil intention, should have incurred the grave charge of mutilating Holy Scripture68. A more scholar-like and useful attempt was subsequently made by Ammonius of Alexandria, early in the third century [a.d. 220], who, by the side of St. Matthew's Gospel, which he selected as his standard, arranged in parallel columns, as it would seem, the corresponding passages of the other three Evangelists, so as to exhibit them all at once to the reader's eye; St. Matthew in his proper order, the rest as the necessity of abiding by St. Matthew's order prescribed. This is the account given by the celebrated Eusebius, Bishop of Caesarea, the Church [pg 060] historian, who in the fourth century, in his letter to Carpianus, described his own most ingenious system of Harmony, as founded on, or at least as suggested by, the labours of Ammonius69. It has been generally thought that the κεφάλαια, of which St. Matthew contains 355, St. Mark 23670, St. Luke 342, St. John 232, in all 1165, were made by Ammonius for the purpose of his work, and they have commonly received the name of the Ammonian sections: but this opinion was called in question by Bp. Lloyd (Nov. Test. Oxon. 1827, Monitum, pp. viii-xi), who strongly urges that, in his Epistle to Carpianus, Eusebius not only refrains from ascribing these numerical divisions to Ammonius (whose labours in this particular, as once seemed the case with Tatian's, must in that case be deemed to have perished utterly), but he almost implies that they had their origin at the same time with his own ten canons, with which they are so intimately connected71. That they were essential to Eusebius' scheme is plain enough; their place in Ammonius' parallel Harmony is not easily understood, unless indeed (what is nowhere stated, but rather the contrary) he did not set the passages from the other Gospels at full length by the side of St. Matthew's, but only these numerical references to them72.

There is, however, one ground for hesitation before we ascribe the sections, as well as the canons, to Eusebius; namely, that not a few ancient manuscripts (e.g. Codd. FHY) contain the former, while they omit the latter. Of palimpsests indeed it might be said with reason, that the rough process which so nearly obliterated the ink of the older writing, would completely remove the coloured paint (κιννάβαρις, vermilion, prescribed by Eusebius, though blue or green is occasionally found) in which the canons were invariably noted; hence we need not wonder at their absence from the Codices Ephraemi, Nitriensis (R), Dublinensis (Z), Codd. IWb of Tischendorf, and the Wolfenbüttel fragments (PQ), in all which the sections are yet legible in ink. The Codex Sinaiticus contains both; but Tischendorf decidedly pronounces them to be in a later hand. In the Codex Bezae too, as well as the Codex Cyprius (K), even the Ammonian sections, without the canons, are by later hands, though the latter has prefixed the list or table of the canons. Of the oldest copies the Cod. Alex. (A), Tischendorf's Codd. WaΘ, the Cotton frag. (N), and Codd. Beratinus and Rossanensis alone contain both the sections and the canons. Even in more modern cursive books the latter are often deficient, though the former are present. This peculiarity we have observed in Burney 23, in the British Museum, of the twelfth century, although the Epistle to Carpianus stands at the beginning; in a rather remarkable copy of about the twelfth century, in the Cambridge University Library (Mm. 6. 9, Scholz Evan. 440), in which, however, the table of canons but not the Epistle to Carpianus precedes; in the Gonville and Caius Gospels of the twelfth century (Evan. 59), and in a manuscript of about the thirteenth century at Trinity [pg 062] College, Cambridge (B. x. 17)73. These facts certainly seem to indicate that in the judgement of critics and transcribers, whatever that judgement may be deemed worth, the Ammonian sections had a previous existence to the Eusebian canons, as well as served for an independent purpose74.

In his letter to Carpianus, their inventor clearly yet briefly describes the purpose of his canons, ten in number. The first contains a list of seventy-one places in which all the four Evangelists have a narrative, discourse, or saying in common: the second of 111 places in which the three Matthew, Mark, Luke agree: the third of twenty-two places common to Matthew, Luke, John: the fourth of twenty-six passages common to Matthew, Mark, John: the fifth of eighty-two places in which the two Matthew, Luke coincide: the sixth of forty-seven places wherein Matthew, Mark agree: the seventh of seven places common to Matthew and John: the eighth of fourteen places common to Luke and Mark: the ninth of twenty-one places in which Luke and John agree: the tenth of sixty-two passages of Matthew, twenty-one of Mark, seventy-one of Luke, and ninety-seven of John which have no parallels, but are peculiar to a single Evangelist. Under each of the 1165 so-named Ammonian sections, in its proper place in the margin of a manuscript, is put in coloured ink the number of that Eusebian canon to which it refers. On looking for that section in the proper table or canon, there will also be found the parallel place or places in the other Gospels, each indicated by its proper numeral, and so [pg 063] readily searched out. A single example will serve to explain our meaning. In the facsimile of the Cotton fragment (Plate v. No. 14), in the margin of the passage (John xv. 20) we see ΡΛΘ over Γ, where ΡΑΘ (139) is the proper section of St. John, Γ (3) the number of the canon. On searching the third Eusebian table we read MT. [symbol], Λ. νη, ΙΩ. ρλθ and thus we learn that the first clause of John xv. 20 is parallel in sense to the ninetieth ([symbol]) section of St. Matthew (x. 24), and to the fifty-eighth (νη) of St. Luke (vi. 40). The advantage of such a system of parallels to the exact study of the Gospels is too evident to need insisting on.

4. The Acts of the Apostles and the Epistles are also divided into chapters (κεφάλαια), in design precisely the same as the κεφάλαια or τίτλοι of the Gospels, and nearly like them in length. Since there is no trace of these chapters in the two great Codices Alexandrinus and Ephraemi, of the fifth century (which yet exhibit the τίτλοι, the sections, and one of them the canons), it seems reasonable to assume that they are of later date. They are sometimes connected with the name of Euthalius, deacon of Alexandria, afterwards Bishop of Sulci75, whom we have already spoken of as the reputed author of Scriptural stichometry (above, p. 53). We learn, however, from Euthalius' own Prologue to his edition of St. Paul's Epistles (a.d. 458,) that the “summary of the chapters” (and consequently the numbers of the chapters themselves) was taken from the work of “one of our wisest and pious fathers76,” i.e. some Bishop that he does not wish to particularize, whom Mill (Proleg. N. T. § 907) conjectures to be Theodore of Mopsuestia, who lay under the censure of the Church. Soon after77 the publication of St. Paul's Epistles, on [pg 064] the suggestion of one Athanasius, then a priest and afterwards Patriarch of Alexandria, Euthalius put forth a similar edition of the Acts and Catholic Epistles78, also divided into chapters, with a summary of contents at the head of each chapter. Even these he is thought to have derived (at least in the Acts) from the manuscript of Pamphilus the Martyr [d. 308], to whom the same order of chapters is ascribed in a document published by Montfaucon (Bibliotheca Coislin. p. 78); the rather as Euthalius fairly professes to have compared his book in the Acts and Catholic Epistles “with the copies in the library at Caesarea” which once belonged to “Eusebius the friend of Pamphilus79.” The Apocalypse still remains. It was divided, about the end of the fifth century, by Andreas, Archbishop of the Cappadocian Caesarea, into twenty-four paragraphs (λόγοι), corresponding to the number of the elders about the throne (Apoc. iv. 4); each paragraph being subdivided into three chapters (κεφάλαια)80. The summaries which Andreas wrote of his seventy-two chapters are still reprinted in Mill's and other large editions of the Greek Testament.

5. To Euthalius has been also referred a division of the Acts into sixteen lessons (ἀναγνώσεις) and of the Pauline Epistles into thirty-one (see table on p. 67); but these lessons are quite different from the much shorter ones adopted by the Greek Church. He is also said to have numbered in each Epistle of St. Paul the quotations from the Old Testament81, which are [pg 065] still noted in many of our manuscripts, and is the first known to have used that reckoning of the στίχοι which was formerly annexed we know not when to the Gospels and Epistles, as well as to the Acts. Besides the division of the text into στίχοι or lines (above, p. 52) we find in the Gospels alone another division into ῥήματα or ῥήσεις “sentences,” differing but little from the στίχοι in number. Of these last the precise numbers vary in different copies, though not considerably: whether that variation arose from the circumstance that ancient numbers were represented by letters and so easily became corrupted, or from a different mode of arranging the στίχοι and ῥήματα adopted by the various scribes.

6. It is proper to state that the subscriptions (ὑπογραφαί) appended to St. Paul's Epistles in many manuscripts, and retained even in the Authorized English version of the New Testament, are also said to be the composition of Euthalius. In the best copies they are somewhat shorter in form, but in any shape they do no credit to the care or skill of their author, whoever he may be. “Six of these subscriptions,” writes Paley in that masterpiece of acute reasoning, the Horae Paulinae, “are false or improbable;” that is, they are either absolutely contradicted by the contents of the epistle [1 Cor., Galat., 1 Tim.], or are difficult to be reconciled with them [1, 2 Thess., Tit.].

The subscriptions to the Gospels have not, we believe, been assigned to any particular author, and being seldom found in printed copies of the Greek Testament or in modern versions, are little known to the general reader. In the earliest manuscripts the subscriptions, as well as the titles of the books, were of the simplest character. Κατὰ Μαθθαῖον, κατὰ Μάρκον, &c. is all that the Codd. Vaticanus and Sinaiticus have, whether at the beginning or the end. Εὐαγγέλιον κατὰ Ματθαῖον is the subscription to the first Gospel in the Codex Alexandrinus; εὐαγγέλιον κατὰ Μάρκον is placed at the beginning of the second Gospel in the same manuscript, and the self-same words at the end of it by Codices Alex. and Ephraemi: in the Codex Bezae (in which St. John stands second in order) we merely read εὐαγγέλιον κατὰ Μαθθαῖον ἐτελέσθη, ἄρχεται εὐαγγέλιον κατὰ Ἰωάννην. The same is the case throughout the New Testament. After a while the titles become more elaborate, and the subscriptions afford more [pg 066] information, the truth of which it would hardly be safe to vouch for. The earliest worth notice are found in the Codex Cyprius (K) of the eighth or ninth century, which, together with those of several other copies, are given in Scholz's Prolegomena N. T. vol. i. pp. xxix, xxx. ad fin. Matthaei: Τὸ κατὰ Ματθαῖον εὐαγγέλιον ἐξεδόθη ὑπ᾽ αὐτοῦ ἐν ἱεροσολύμοις μετὰ χρόνους ἡ [ὀκτὼ] τῆς τοῦ Χριστοῦ ἀναλήψεως. Ad fin. Marci: Τὸ κατὰ Μάρκον εὐαγγέλιον ἐξεδόθη μετὰ χρόνους δέκα τῆς τοῦ Χριστοῦ ἀναλήψεως. Those to the other two Gospels exactly resemble St. Mark's, that of St. Luke however being dated fifteen, that of St. John thirty-two years after our Lord's Ascension, periods in all probability far too early to be correct.

7. The foreign matter so often inserted in later manuscripts has more value for the antiquarian than for the critic. That splendid copy of the Gospels Lambeth 1178, of the tenth or eleventh century, contains more such than is often found, set off by fine illuminations. At the end of each of the first three Gospels (but not of the fourth) are several pages relating to them extracted from Cosmas Indicopleustes, who made the voyage which procured him his cognomen about a.d. 522; also some iambic verses of no great excellence, as may well be supposed. In golden letters we read: ad fin. Matth. ἰστέον ὅτι τὸ κατὰ Ματθαῖον εὐαγγέλιον ἑβραΐδι διαλέκτωι γραφὲν ὑπ᾽ αὐτοῦ; ἐν ἱερουσαλὴμ ἐξεδόθη; ἑρμηνεύθη δὲ ὑπὸ ἱωάννου; ἐξηγεῖται δὲ τὴν κατὰ ἄνθρωπον τοῦ χυ γένεσιν, καί ἐστιν ἀνθρωπόμορφον τοῦτο τὸ εὐαγγέλιον. The last clause alludes to Apoc. iv. 7, wherein the four living creatures were currently believed to be typical of the four Gospels82. Ad fin. Marc. ἰστέον ὅτι τὸ κατὰ Μάρκον εὐαγγέλιον ὑπηγορεύθη ὑπὸ Πέτρου ἐν ῥώμηι; ἐποιήσατο δὲ τὴν ἀρχὴν ἀπὸ τοῦ προφητικοῦ λόγου τοῦ ἐξ ὕψους ἐπιόντος τοῦ Ἡσαΐου; τὴν πτερωτικὴν εἰκόνα τοῦ εὐαγγελίου δεικνύς. Ad fin. Luc. ἰστέον ὅτι τὸ κατὰ Λουκᾶν εὐαγγέλιον ὑπηγορεύθη ὑπὸ Παύλου ἐν ῥώμηι; ἅτε δὲ ἱερατικοῦ χαρακτῆρος ὑπάρχοντος [pg 067] ἀπὸ Ζαχαρίου τοῦ ἱερέως θυμιῶντος ἤρξατο. The reader will desire no more of this.

8. The oldest manuscript known to be accompanied by a catena (or continuous commentary by different authors) is the palimpsest Codex Zacynthius (Ξ of Tregelles), an uncial of the eighth century. Such books are not common, but there is a very full commentary in minute letters, surrounding the large text in a noble copy of the Gospels, of the twelfth century, which belonged to the late Sir Thomas Phillipps (Middle Hill 13975, since removed to Cheltenham), yet uncollated; another of St. Paul's Epistles (No. 27) belongs to the University Library at Cambridge (Ff. 1. 30). The Apocalypse is often attended with the exposition of Andreas (p. 64), or of Arethas, also Archbishop of the Cappadocian Caesarea in the tenth century, or (what is more usual) with a sort of epitome of the two (e.g. Parham No. 17), above, below, and in the margin beside the text, in much smaller characters. In cursive manuscripts only the subject (ὑπόθεσις), especially that written by Oecumenius in the tenth century, sometimes stands as a Prologue before each book, but not so often before the Gospels or Apocalypse as the Acts and Epistles. Before the Acts we occasionally meet with Euthalius' Chronology of St. Paul's Travels, or another Ἀποδημία Παύλου. The Leicester manuscript contains between the Pauline Epistles and the Acts (1) An Exposition of the Creed and statement of the errors condemned by the seven general Councils, ending with the second at Nice. (2) Lives of the Apostles, followed by an exact description of the limits of the five Patriarchates. The Christ Church copy Wake 12 also has after the Apocalypse some seven or eight pages of a Treatise Περὶ τῶν ἁγίων καὶ οἰκουμενικῶν ζ συνόδων, including some notice περὶ τοπικῶν συνόδων. Similar treatises may be more frequent in manuscripts of the Greek Testament than we are at present aware of.

In Vatican MS. older sections, there are 93 sections in Rom. 1, 2 Corinth. Gal. Eph. Coloss. 1, 2 Thess. to Hebr. ix. 14.

9. We have not thought it needful to insert in this place either a list of the τίτλοι of the Gospels, or of the κεφάλαια of the rest of the New Testament, or the tables of the Eusebian canons, inasmuch as they are all accessible in such ordinary books as Stephen's Greek Testament 1550 and Mill's of 1707, 1710. The Eusebian canons are given in Bishop Lloyd's Oxford [pg 069] Greek Test. of 1827 &c. and in Tischendorf's of 1859. We exhibit, however, for the sake of comparison, a tabular view of “Ancient and Modern Divisions of the New Testament.” The numbers of the ῥήματα and στίχοι in the Gospels are derived from the most approved sources, but a synopsis of the variations of manuscripts in this respect has been drawn up by Scholz, Prolegomena N. T. vol. i. Cap. v, pp. xxviii, xxix84. A computation of their number, as also of that of the ἀναγνώσματα, is often given in the subscription at the end of a book.

10. On the divisions into chapters and verses prevailing in our modern Bibles we need not dwell long. For many centuries the Latin Church used the Greek τίτλοι (which they called breves) with the Euthalian κεφάλαια, and some of their copies even retained the calculation by στίχοι: but about a.d. 1248 Cardinal Hugo de Sancto Caro, while preparing a Concordance, or index of declinable words, for the whole Bible, divided it into its present chapters, subdividing them in turn into several parts by placing the letters A, B, C, D &c. in the margin, at equal distances from each other, as we still see in many old printed books, e.g. Stephen's N. T. of 1550. Cardinal Hugo's divisions, unless indeed he merely adopted them from Lanfranc or some other scholar, such as was very probably Stephen Langton the celebrated Archbishop of Canterbury, soon took possession of copies of the Latin Vulgate; they gradually obtained a place in later Greek manuscripts, especially those written in the West of Europe, and are found in the earliest printed and all later editions of the Greek Testament, though still unknown to the Eastern Church. They certainly possess no strong claim on our preference, although they cannot now be superseded. The chapters are inconveniently and capriciously unequal in length; occasionally too they are distributed with much lack of judgement. [pg 070] Thus Matt. xv. 39 belongs to ch. xvi, and perhaps ch. xix. 30 to ch. xx; Mark ix. 1 properly appertains to the preceding chapter; Luke xxi. 1-4 had better be united with ch. xx, as in Mark xii. 41-44; Acts v might as well commence with Acts iv. 32; Acts viii. 1 (or at least its first clause) should not have been separated from ch. vii; Acts xxi concludes with strange abruptness. Bp. Terrot (on Ernesti's Institutes, vol. ii. p. 21) rightly affixes 1 Cor. iv. 1-5 to ch. iii. Add that 1 Cor. xi. 1 belongs to ch. x; 2 Cor. iv. 18 and vi. 18 to ch. v and ch. vii respectively: Col. iv. 1 must clearly go with ch. iii.

In commendation of the modern verses still less can be said. As they are stated to have been constructed after the model of the ancient στίχοι (called “versus” in the Latin manuscripts), we have placed in the Table the exact number of each for every book in the New Testament. Of the στίχοι we reckon 19241 in all, of the modern verses 795985, so that on the average (for we have seen that the manuscript variations in the number of στίχοι are but inconsiderable) we may calculate about five στίχοι to every two modern verses. The fact is that some such division is, simply indispensable to every accurate reader of Scripture; and Cardinal Hugo's divisions by letters of the alphabet, as well as those adopted by Sanctes Pagninus in his Latin version of the whole Bible (1528), having proved inconveniently large, Robert Stephen, the justly celebrated printer and editor of the Greek Testament, undertook to form a system of verse-divisions, taking for his model the short verses into which the Hebrew Bible had already been divided, as it would seem by Rabbi Nathan, in the preceding century. We are told by Henry Stephen (Praef. Concordantiae) that his father Robert executed this design on a journey from Paris to Lyons “inter equitandum86;” that is, we [pg 071] presume, while resting at the inns on the road. Certain it is that, although every such division must be in some measure arbitrary, a very little care would have spared us many of the disadvantages attending that which Robert Stephen first published at Geneva in his Greek Testament of 1551, from which it was introduced into the text of the Genevan English Testament of 1557, into Beza's Greek Testament of 1565, and thence into subsequent editions. It is now too late to correct the errors of the verse-divisions, but they can be neutralized, at least in a great degree, by the plan adopted by modern critics, of banishing both the verses and the chapters into the margin, and breaking the text into paragraphs, better suited to the sense. The pericopae or sections of Bengel87 (whose labours will be described in their proper place) have been received with general approbation, and adopted, with some modification, by several recent editors. Much pains were bestowed on their arrangement of the paragraphs by the Revisers of the English version of 1881.

11. We now come to the contents of manuscripts of the Greek Testament, and must distinguish regular copies of the sacred volume or of parts of it from Lectionaries, or Church-lesson books, containing only extracts, arranged in the order of Divine Service daily throughout the year. The latter we will consider presently: with regard to the former it is right to bear in mind, that comparatively few copies of the whole New Testament remain; the usual practice being to write the four Gospels in one volume, the Acts and Epistles in another: manuscripts of the Apocalypse, which was little used for public worship, being much rarer than those of the other books. Occasionally the Gospels, Acts, and Epistles form a single volume; sometimes the Apocalypse is added to other books; as to the Pauline Epistles in Lambeth 1186, or even to the Gospels, in a later hand (e.g. Cambridge University Libr. Dd. 9. 69: Gospels No. 60, dated a.d. 1297). The Apocalypse, being a short work, is often [pg 072] found bound up in volumes containing very miscellaneous matter (e.g. Vatican. 2066 or B; Brit. Mus. Harleian. 5678, No. 31; and Oxon. Barocc. 48, No. 28). The Codex Sinaiticus of Tischendorf is the more precious, in that it happily exhibits the whole New Testament complete: so would also the Codices Alexandrinus and Ephraemi, but that they are sadly mutilated: no other uncial copies have this advantage, and very few cursives. In England only five such are known, the great Codex Leicestrensis, which is imperfect at the beginning and end; Butler 2 (Evan. 201) Additional 11837, dated a.d. 1357, and (Evan. 584) Additional 17469, both in the British Museum; Canonici 34 (Evan. 488) in the Bodleian, dated a.d. 1515-16. Additional MS. 28815 (Evan. 603, and Paul 266, and Apoc. 89) in the British Museum and B-C. ii. 4 at Sir Roger Cholmely's School, Highgate, are separated portions of one complete copy. The Apocalypse in the well-known Codex Montfortianus at Dublin is usually considered to be by a later hand. Besides these Scholz enumerates only nineteen foreign copies of the whole New Testament88; making but twenty-four in all, as far as was then known, out of the vast mass of extant documents.

12. Whether copies contain the whole or a part of the sacred volume, the general order of the books is the following: Gospels, Acts, Catholic Epistles, Pauline Epistles, Apocalypse. A solitary manuscript of the fifteenth century (Venet. 10, Evan. 209) places the Gospels between the Pauline Epistles and the Apocalypse89; in the Codices Sinaiticus, Leicestrensis, Fabri (Evan. 90), and Montfortianus, as in the Bodleian Canonici 34, the copy in the King's Library Brit. Mus. (Act. 20), and the [pg 073] Complutensian edition (1514), the Pauline Epistles precede the Acts. The Pauline Epistles stand between the Acts and the Catholic Epistles in Phillipps 1284, Evan. 527; Parham 71. 6, Evan. 534; Upsal, Sparfwenfeldt 42, Acts 68; Paris Reg. 102 A, Acts 119; Reg. 103 A, Acts 120. In Oxford Bodl. Miscell. 74 the order is Acts, Cath. Epp., Apocalypse, Paul. Epp., but an earlier hand wrote from 3 John onwards. In Evan. 51 Dr. C. R. Gregory points out minute indications that the scribe, not the binder, set the Gospels last. In the Memphitic and Thebaic the Acts follow the Catholic Epistles (see below, vol. ii, chap. iii). The Codex Basiliensis (No. 4 of the Epistles), Acts Cod. 134, Brit. Mus. Addl. 19388, Lambeth 1182, 1183, and Burdett-Coutts III. 1, have the Pauline Epistles immediately after the Acts and before the Catholic Epistles, as in our present Bibles. Scholz's Evan. 368 stands thus, St. John's Gospel, Apocalypse, then all the Epistles; in Havniens. 1 (Cod. 234 of the Gospels, a.d. 1278) the order appears to be Acts, Paul. Ep., Cath. Ep., Gospels; in Ambros. Z 34 sup. at Milan, Dean Burgon testifies that the Catholic and Pauline Epistles are followed by the Gospels; in Basil. B. vi. 27 or Cod. 1, the Gospels have been bound after the Acts and Epistles; while in Evan. 175 the Apocalypse stands between the Acts and Catholic Epistles; in Evan. 51 the binder has set the Gospels last: these, however, are mere accidental exceptions to the prevailing rule90. The four Gospels are almost invariably found in their familiar order, although in the Codex Bezae (as we partly saw above, p. 65) they stand Matthew, John, Luke, Mark91; in the Codex Monacensis (X) John, Luke, [pg 074] Mark, Matthew (but two leaves of Matthew also stand before John), also in the Latin k; in Cod. 90 (Fabri) John, Luke, Matthew, Mark; in Cod. 399 at Turin John, Luke, Matthew, an arrangement which Dr. Hort refers to the Commentary of Titus of Bostra on St. Luke which accompanies it; in the Curetonian Syriac version Matthew, Mark, John, Luke. In the Pauline Epistles that to the Hebrews immediately follows the second to the Thessalonians in the four great Codices Vaticanus, Sinaiticus, Alexandrinus, and Ephraemi92: in the copy from which the Cod. Vatican. was taken the Hebrews followed the Galatians (above, p. 57). The Codex Claromontanus, the document next in importance to these four, sets the Colossians appropriately enough next to its kindred and contemporaneous Epistle to the Ephesians, but postpones that to the Hebrews to Philemon, as in our present Bibles: an arrangement which at first, no doubt, originated in the early scruples prevailing in the Western Church, with respect to the authorship and canonical authority of that divine epistle.

13. We must now describe the Lectionaries or Service-books of the Greek Church, in which the portions of Scripture publicly read throughout the year are set down in chronological order, without regard to their actual places in the sacred volume. In length and general arrangement they resemble not so much the Lessons as the Epistles and Gospels in our English Book of Common Prayer, only that every day in the year has its own proper portion, and the numerous Saints' days independent services of their own. These Lectionaries consist either of lessons from the Gospels, and are then called Evangelistaria or Evangeliaria (εὐαγγελιστάρια)93; or from the Acts and Epistles; termed Praxapostolos (πραξαπόστολος) or Apostolos94: the general name of Lectionary is often, though incorrectly, confined to the latter class. A few books called ἀποστολοευαγγέλια have lessons [pg 075] taken both from the Gospels and the Apostolic writings. In Euchologies, or Books of Offices, wherein both the Apostolos and the Gospels are found, the former always precede in each Office, just as the Epistle precedes the Gospel in the Service-books of Western Christendom. The peculiar arrangement of Lectionaries renders them very unfit for the hasty, partial, cursory collation which has befallen too many manuscripts of the other class, and this circumstance, joined with the irksomeness of using Service-books never familiar to the habits even of scholars in this part of Europe, has caused these documents to be so little consulted, that the contents of the very best and oldest among them have until recently been little known. Matthaei, of whose elaborate and important edition of the Greek Testament (12 tom. Riga 1782-88) we shall give an account hereafter, has done excellent service in this department; two of his best copies, the uncials B and H (Nos. 47, 50), being Evangelistaria. The present writer also has collated three noble uncials of the same rank, Arundel 547 being of the ninth century, Parham 18 bearing date a.d. 980, Harleian 5598, a.d. 995. Not a few other uncial Lectionaries remain quite neglected, for though none of them perhaps are older than the eighth century, the ancient character was retained for these costly and splendid Service-books till about the eleventh century (Montfaucon, Palaeogr. Graec. p. 260), before which time the cursive hand was generally used in other Biblical manuscripts. There is, of course, no place in a Lectionary for divisions by κεφάλαια, for the so-called Ammonian sections, or for the canons of Eusebius.

The division of the New Testament into Church-lessons was, however, of far more remote antiquity than the employment of separate volumes to contain them. Towards the end of the fourth century, that golden age of Patristic theology, Chrysostom recognizes some stated order of the lessons as familiar to all his hearers, for he exhorts them to peruse and mark beforehand the passages (περικοπαί95) of the Gospels which were to be publicly read to them the ensuing Sunday or Saturday96. All the information [pg 076] we can gather favours the notion that there was no great difference between the calendar of Church-lessons in earlier and later stages. Not only do they correspond in all cases where such agreement is natural, as in the proper services for the great feasts and fasts, but in such purely arbitrary arrangements as the reading of the book of Genesis, instead of the Gospels, on the week days of Lent; of the Acts all the time between Easter and Pentecost97; and the selection of St. Matthew's history of the Passion alone at the Liturgy on Good Friday98. The earliest formal Menologium, or Table of proper lessons, now extant is prefixed to the Codex Cyprius (K) of the eighth or ninth century; another is found in the Codex Campianus (M), which is perhaps a little later; they are more frequently found than the contrary in later manuscripts of every kind; while there are comparatively few copies that have not been accommodated to ecclesiastical use either by their original scribe or a later hand, by means of noting the proper days for each lesson (often in red ink) at the top or bottom or in the margin of the several pages. Not only in the margin, but even in the text itself are perpetually interpolated, mostly in vermilion or red ink, the beginning (ἀρχή or αρχ) and ending (τέλος or τελ) of each lesson, and the several words to be inserted or substituted in order to suit the purpose of public reading; from which source (as we have stated above, p. 11) various readings have almost unavoidably sprung: e.g. in Acts iii. 11 τοῦ ἰαθέντος χωλοῦ of the Lectionaries ultimately displaced αὐτοῦ from the text itself.

We purpose to annex to this Chapter a table of lessons throughout the year, according to the use laid down in Synaxaria, Menologies, and Lectionaries, as well to enable the student to compare the proper lessons of the Greek Church with our own, as to facilitate reference to the manuscripts themselves, which are now placed almost out of the reach of the inexperienced. On comparing the manner in which the terms are used by different scribes and authors, we conceive that Synaxarion (συναξάριον) is, like Eclogadion, a name used for a table of daily lessons for the year beginning at Easter, and that these have varied but slightly in the course of many ages throughout the whole Eastern Church; that tables of Saints' day lessons, called Menologies, (μηνολόγιον), distributed in order of the months from September (when the new year and the indiction began) to August, differed widely from each other, both in respect to the lessons read and the days kept holy99. While the great feasts remained entirely the same, different generations and provinces and even dioceses had their favourite worthies, whose memory they specially cherished; so that the character of the menology (which sometimes forms a larger, sometimes but a small portion of a Lectionary) will often guide us to the country and district in which the volume itself was written. The Parham Evangelistarium 18 affords us a conspicuous example of this fact: coming from a region of which we know but little (Ciscissa in Cappadocia Prima), its menology in many particulars but little resembles those usually met with100.

14. It only remains to say a few words about the notation adopted to indicate the several classes of manuscripts of the Greek Testament. These classes are six in number; that containing [pg 078] the Gospels (Evangelia or Evan.), or the Acts and Catholic Epistles (Act. and Cath.), or the Pauline Epistles (Paul.), or the Apocalypse (Apoc.), or Lectionaries of the Gospels (Evangelistaria or Evst.), or those of the Acts and Epistles (Apostolos or Apost.). When one manuscript (as often happens) belongs to more than one of these classes, its distinct parts are numbered separately, so that a copy of the whole New Testament will appear in four lists, and be reckoned four times over. All critics are agreed in distinguishing the documents written in the uncial character by capital letters; the custom having originated in the accidental circumstance that the Codex Alexandrinus was designated as Cod. A in the lower margin of Walton's Polyglott. Lectionaries in uncial letters are not marked by capitals, but by Arabic numerals, like cursive manuscripts of all classes101. Of course no system can escape some attendant evils. Even the catalogue of the later manuscripts is often upon its first appearance full of mis-statements, of repetitions and loose descriptions, which must be remedied and supplied in subsequent examination, so far as opportunity is granted from time to time. In describing the uncials (as we purpose to do in the two next chapters) our course is tolerably plain; but the lists that comprise the last eight chapters of this volume, and which respectively detail the cursive manuscripts and the Lectionaries of the Greek Testament, must be regarded only as an approximation to what such an enumeration ought to be, though much pains and time have been spent upon them: the comparatively few copies which seem to be sufficiently known are distinguished by an asterisk from their less fortunate kindred.

For indeed the only method of grappling with the perplexity produced by the large additions of manuscripts, especially of the cursive character, which constant discovery has effected during late years, is to enumerate arithmetically those which have been supplied from time to time, as was done in the last edition of this work, carefully noting if they have been examined by a competent judge or especially if they have been properly collated. In the Appendix of the third edition, the late Dean Burgon continued his work in this direction by adding a list of some [pg 079] three hundred and seventy-four cursives, besides the others with which he had previously increased the number before known. That list, as was stated in the Postscript to the Preface, awaited an examination and collation by competent persons. Such an examination has been made in many instances by Dr. C. R. Gregory, who also, whether fired by Dean Burgon's example as shown in his published letters in the Guardian or not, has in his turn added with most commendable diligence in research a very large number of MSS. previously unknown. Some more have been added in this edition, but much work is still required of scholars, before this mass of materials can be used with effect by Textual students.

Appendix To Chapter III. Synaxarion And Eclogadion Of The Gospels And Apostolic Writings Daily Throughout The Year.

[Gathered chiefly from Evangelist. Arund. 547, Parham 18, Harl. 5598, Burney 22, Gale O. 4. 22, Christ's Coll. Camb. F. 1. 8, compared with the Liturgical notes in Wake 12, and those by later hands in Cod. Bezae (D). Use has been made also of Apostolos B-C. iii. 24, B-C. iii. 53, and the Euchology, or Book of Offices, B-C. iii. 42.]

Ἐκ τοῦ κατὰ Ἰωάννην [Arundel 547]

Τῇ ἁγίᾳ καὶ μεγάλῃ κυριακῇ τοῦ πάσχα.

Κυριακῇ τῆς πεντηκοστῆς

Ἐκ τοῦ κατὰ Ματθαῖον.

Ἐκ τοῦ κατὰ Μάρκον.

Ἀρχὴ τῆς ἰνδικτοῦ τοῦ νέου ἔτους, ἤγουν τοῦ εὐαγγελιστοῦ λουκᾶ [Arund. 547, Parham 18].

Τῶν νηστειῶν (Lent).

σαββάτῳ α´, Mark ii. 23-iii. 5. Heb. i. 1-12.

Κυριακῇ α´, John i. 44-52. Heb. xi. 24-40.

σαββάτῳ β´, Mark i. 35-44. iii. 12-14.

Κυριακῇ β´, ii. 1-12. i. 10-ii. 3.

σαββάτῳ γ´, 14-17. x. 32-37.

Κυριακῇ γ´, viii. 34-ix 1. iv. 14-v. 6.

σαββάτῳ δ´, vii. 31-37. vi. 9-12.

Κυριακῇ δ´, ix. 17-31. 13-20.

σαββάτῳ ε´, viii. 27-31. ix. 24-28.

Κυριακῇ ε´, x. 32-45. 11-14.

σαββάτῳ ϛ´ (of Lazarus) John xi. 1-45. xii. 28-xiii. 8.

Κυριακῇ ϛ´ τῶν Βαΐων, Matins, Matt. xxi. 1-11; 15-17 [εἰς τὴν λιτήν, Mark x. 46-xi. 11, Burney 22]. Liturgy, John xii. 1-18. Phil. iv. 4-9.

Τῇ ἁγίᾳ μεγάλῃ (Holy Week).

2nd, Matins, Matt. xxi. 18-43. Liturgy, xxiv. 3-35.

3rd, Matins, xxii. 15-xxiv. 2. Liturgy, xxiv. 36-xxvi. 2.

4th, Matins, John (xi. 47-53 (al 56) Gale) xii. 17 (al. 19)-47 (al. 50). Liturgy, Matt. xxvi. 6-16.

5th, Matins, Luke xxii. 1-36 (39, Gale). Liturgy, Matt. xxvi. 1-20.

Εὐαγγέλιον τοῦ νιπτῆρος, John xiii. 3-10.

μετὰ τὸ νίψασθαι, 12-17104; Matt. xxvi. 21-39; Luke xxii. 43, 44; Matt. xxvi. 40-xxvii. 2. 1 Cor. xi. 23-32.

Εὐαγγέλια τῶν ἁγίων πάθων ιυ χυ. (Twelve Gospels of the Passions).

(1) John xiii. 31-xviii. 1. (2) John xviii. 1-28. (3) Matt. xxvi. 57-75. (4) John xviii. 28-xix. 16. (5) Matt. xxvii. 3-32. (6) Mark xv. 16-32. (7) Matt. xxvii. 33-54. (8) Luke xxiii. 32-49. (9) John xix. 25-37. (10) Mark xv. 43-47 (11) John xix. 38-42. (12) Matt. xxvii. 62-66.

Εὐαγγέλια τῶν ὡρῶν τῆς ἁγίας παραμονῆς. (Night-watches of Vigil of Good Friday).

Hour (1) Matt. xxvii. 1-56. (3) Mark xv. 1-41. (6) Luke xxii. 66-xxiii. 49. (9) John xix. 16 (al. 23 or xviii. 28)-37.

Τῇ ἁγίᾳ παρασκευῇ (Good Friday) εἰς τὴν λειτουργίαν (ἑσπέρας, B-C. III. 42).

Matt. xxvii. 1-38; Luke xxiii. 39-43; Matt. xxvii. 39-54; John xix. 31-37; Matt. xxvii. 55-61. 1 Cor. i. 18-ii. 2.

Τῷ ἁγίῳ καὶ μεγάλῳ σαββάτῳ (Easter Even).

Matins, Matt, xxvii. 62-66. 1 Cor. v. 6-8 (Gal. iii. 13, 14, B-C. III. 24). Evensong, Matt, xxviii. 1-20. Rom. vi. 3-11 (λειτουργ. Matt. xxviii. 1-20, ἑσπέρας Rom. vi. 3-11, B-C. III. 42).

Εὐαγγέλια ἀναστάσιμα ἑωθινά (vid. Suicer Thes. Eccles. 1. 1229), eleven Gospels, used in turn, one every Sunday at Matins, beginning with All Saints' Day (B-C. III. 42). In some Evst. these are found at the end of the book.

(1) Matt. xxviii. 16-20. (2) Mark xvi. 1-8. (3) ib. 9-20. (4) Luke xxiv. 1-12. (5) ib. 12-35. (6) ib. 36-53. (7) John xx. 1-10. (8) ib. 11-18. (9) ib. 19-31. (10) John xxi. 1-14. (11) ib. 15-25.

We have now traced the daily service of the Greek Church, as derived from the Gospels, throughout the whole year, from Easter Day to Easter Even, only that in Lent the lessons from the 2nd to the 6th days inclusive in each week are taken from the book of Genesis. The reader will observe that from Easter to Pentecost St. John and the Acts are read for seven weeks, or eight Sundays. The first Sunday after Pentecost is the Greek All Saints' Day, their Trinity Sunday being virtually kept a fortnight earlier; but from the Monday next after the day of Pentecost (Whit-Monday) St. Matthew is used continuously every day for eleven weeks and as many Sundays. For six weeks more, St. Matthew is appointed for the Saturday and Sunday lessons, St. Mark for the other days of the week. But inasmuch as St. Luke was to be taken up with the new year, the year of the [pg 086] indiction [Arund. 547], which in this case must be September 24105, if all the lessons in Matthew and Mark were not read out by this time (which, unless Easter was very early, would not be the case), they were at once broken off, and (after proper lessons had been employed for the Sunday before and the Saturday and Sunday which followed106 the feast of the Elevation of the Cross, Sept. 14) the lessons from St. Luke (seventeen weeks and sixteen Sundays in all) were taken up and read on as far as was necessary: only that the 17th Sunday of St. Matthew (called from the subject of its Gospel the Canaanitess) was always resumed on the Sunday preceding that before the Carnival (πρὸ τῆς ἀποκρέω), which is also named from its Gospel that of the Prodigal, and answers to the Latin Septuagesima. Then follow the Sunday of the Carnival (ἀποκρέω) or Sexagesima, that of the Cheese-eater (τυροφάγου) or Quinquagesima, and the six Sundays in Lent. The whole number of Sunday Gospels in the year (even reckoning the two interpolated about September 14) is thus only fifty-three, the Canaanitess coming twice over: but in the Menology or Catalogue of immoveable feasts will be found proper lessons for three Saturdays and Sundays about Christmas and Epiphany, which could either be substituted for, or added to the ordinary Gospels for the year, according as the distance from Easter in one year to Easter in the next exceeded or fell short of fifty-two weeks. The system of lessons from the Acts and Epistles is much simpler than that of the Gospels: it exhibits fifty-two Sundays in the year, without any of the complicated arrangements of the other scheme. Since the Epistles from the Saturday of the 16th week after Pentecost to the Sunday of the Prodigal could not be set (like the rest) by the side of their corresponding Gospels, they are given separately in the following table107.

On The Menology, Or Calendar Of Immoveable Festivals And Saints' Days.

We cannot in this place enter very fully into this portion of the contents of Lectionaries, inasmuch as, for reasons we have assigned above, the investigation would be both tedious and difficult. All the great feast-days, however, as well as the commemorations of the Apostles and of a few other Saints, occur alike in all the books, and ought not to be omitted here. We commence with the month of September (the opening of the year at Constantinople), as do all the Lectionaries and Synaxaria we have seen108.

Sept. 1. Simeon Stylites, Luke iv. 16-22; Col. iii. 12-16 (1 Tim. ii. 1-7, B-C. III. 53).

2. John the Faster, Matt. v. 14-19 (Wake 12). (John xv. 1-11, Parham 18.)

8. Birthday of the Virgin, Θεοτόκος, Matins, Luke i. 39-49, 56 (B-C. III. 24 and 42). Liturgy, Luke x. 38-42; xi. 27, 28; Phil. ii. 5-11. Κυριακῇ πρὸ τῆς ὑψώσεως, John iii. 13-17; Gal. vi. 11-18.

14. Elevation of the Cross, Matins, John xii. 28-36. Liturgy, John xix. 6-35 (diff. in K and some others); 1 Cor. i. 18-24.

σαββάτῳ μετὰ τὴν ὕψωσιν, John viii. 21-30; 1 Cor. i. 26-29. Κυριακῇ μετὰ τὴν ὕψωσιν Mark viii. 34-ix. 1; Gal. ii. 16-20.

18. Theodora109, John viii. 3-11 (Parham).

24. Thecla, Matt. xxv. 1-13; 2 Tim. i. 3-9.

Oct. 3. Dionysius the Areopagite, Matt. xiii. 45-54; Acts xvii. 16 (19, Cod. Bezae)-34 (16-23, 30, B-C, III. 24) (diff. in K).

6. Thomas the Apostle, John xx. 19-31; 1 Cor. iv. 9-16.

8. Pelagia, John viii. 3-11110.

9. James son of Alphaeus, Matt. x. 1-7, 14, 15.

18. Luke the Evangelist, Luke x. 16-21; Col. iv. 5-9, 14, 18.

23. James, ὁ ἀδελφόθεος, Mark vi. 1-7; James i. 1-12.

Nov. 8. Michael and Archangels, Matins, Matt, xviii. 10-20. Liturgy, Luke x. 16-21; Heb. ii. 2-10.

13. Chrysostom, Matins, John x. 1-9. [pg 088] Liturgy, John x. 9-16; Heb. vii. 26-viii. 2.

Nov. 14. Philip the Apostle, John i. 44-55; Acts viii. 26-39.

16. Matthew the Apostle, Matt. ix. 9-13; 1 Cor. iv. 9-16.

17. Gregory Thaumaturgus, Matt. x. 1-10 (Wake 12); 1 Cor. xii. 7, 8, 10, 11.

25. Clement of Rome, John xv. 17-xvi. 1; Phil. iii. 20-iv. 3.

30. Andrew the Apostle, John i. 35-52; 1 Cor. iv. 9-16.

Dec. 20. Ignatius, ὁ θεόφορος, Mark ix. 33-41; Heb. iv. 14-v. 6 (Rom. viii. 28-39, B-C. III. 24).

Saturday before Christmas, Matt. xiii. 31-58 (Luke xiii. 19-29, Gale); Gal. iii. 8-12.

Sunday before Christmas, Matt. i. 1-25; Heb. xi. 9-16 (9, 10, 32-40, B-C. III. 24).

24. Christmas Eve, Luke ii. 1-20; Heb. i. 1-12. Προεόρτια, 1 Pet. ii. 10 (B-C. III. 24).

25. Christmas Day, Matins, Matt. i. 18-25. Liturgy, Matt. ii. 1-12; Gal. iv. 4-7.

26. εἰς τὴν σύναξιν τῆς Θεοτόκου, Matt. ii. 13-23; Heb. ii. 11-18.

27. Stephen111, Matt. xxi. 33-42 (Gale); Acts vi. 1-7.

Saturday after Christmas, Matt. xii. 15-21; 1 Tim. vi. 11-16.

Sunday after Christmas, Mark i. 1-8; Gal. i. 11-19. The same Lessons for

29. Innocents (Gale). Saturday πρὸ τῶν φώτων, Matt. iii. 1-6; 1 Tim. iii. 13-iv. 5.

Sunday πρὸ τῶν φώτων, Mark i. 1-8; 1 Tim. iii. 13-iv. 5 (2 Tim. iv. 5-8, B-C. III. 24).

Jan. 1. Circumcision, Luke ii. 20, 21, 40-52; 1 Cor. xiii. 12-xiv. 5.

5. Vigil of θεοφανία, Luke iii. 1-18; 1 Cor. ix. 19-x. 4.

6. Θεοφανία (Epiphany) Matins, Mark i. 9-11. Titus ii. 11-14 (B-C. III. 42 adds iii. 4-7). Liturgy, Matt. iii. 13-17.

7. John, ὁ πρόδρομος, John i. 29-34.

Saturday μετὰ τὰ φῶτα, Matt. iv. 1-11; Eph. vi. 10-17.

Sunday μετὰ τὰ φῶτα, Matt. iv. 12-17; Eph. iv. 7-13.

16. Peter ad Vincula, John xxi. 15-19 (B-C. III. 42).

22. Timothy, Matt. x. 32, 33, 37, 38; xix. 27-30; 2 Tim. i. 3-9.

Feb. 2. Presentation of Christ, Matins, Luke ii. 25-32. Liturgy, Luke ii. 22-40; Heb. vii. 7-17.

3. Simeon ὁ θεοδόχος and Anna, Luke ii. 25-38; Heb. ix. 11-14.

23. Polycarp, John xii. 24-36,

24. Finding of the Head of John the Baptist. Matins, Luke vii. 18-29 (17-30, B-C. iii. 42). Liturgy, Matt. xi. 5-14; 2 Cor. iv. 6-11.

March 24. Vigil of Annunciation, Luke i. 39-56 (Gale).

25. Annunciation, Luke i. 24-38; Heb. ii. 11-18.

April 23. St. George, Matins, Mark xiii. 9-13. Liturgy, Acts xii. 1-11 (Cod. Bezae)112.

25. (Oct. 19, B-C. III. 24). Mark the Evangelist, Mark vi. 7-13; Col. iv. 5, 10, 11, 18.

30. James, son of Zebedee, Matt. x. 1-7, 14, 15.

May 2. Athanasius, Matt. v. 14-19; Heb. iv. 14.-v. 6.

8. (Sept. 26, B-C. III. 42). John, ὁ θεόλογος, John xix. 25-27; xxi. 24, 25; 1 John i. 1-7 (iv. 12-19, B-C. III. 42).

21. Helena, Luke iv. 22, &c., Evst. 298.

26. Jude the Apostle, John xiv. 21-24.

June 11. Bartholomew and Barnabas the Apostles, Mark vi. 7-13; Acts xi. 19-30.

19. Jude, brother of the Lord, Mark vi. 7-13, or εὐαγγέλιον ἀποστολικόν (Matt. x. 1-8? June 30).

24. Birth of John the Baptist, Luke i. 1-25; 57-80; Rom. xiii. 11-xiv. 4.

29. Peter and Paul the Apostles, Matins, John xxi. 15-31. Liturgy, Matt. xvi. 13-19; 2 Cor. xi. 21-xii. 9.

30. The Twelve Apostles, Matt. x. 1-8. July 20. Elijah, Luke iv. 22, &c., Evst. 229.

22. Mary Magdalene, ἡ μυροφόρος, Mark xvi. 9-20; 2 Tim. ii. 1-10.

Aug. 1. τῶν ἁγίων μακκαβαίων, Matt. x. 16, &c., Evst. 228 and others.

Aug. 6. Transfiguration. Matins, Luke ix. 29-36 or Mark ix. 2-9. Liturgy, Matt. xvii. 1-9; 2 Pet. i. 10-19.

15. Assumption of the Virgin, Luke x. 38-42 (Gale, Codex Bezae).

20. Thaddaeus the Apostle, Matt. x. 16-22; 1 Cor. iv. 9-16.

25. Titus, Matt. v. 14-19 (Gale); 2 Tim. ii. 1-10.

29. Beheading of John the Baptist, Matins, Matt. xiv. 1-13. Liturgy, Mark vi. 14-30; Acts xiii. 25-32 (39, B-C. III. 24).

Εἰς τὰ ἐγκαίνια, Dedication, John x. 22 (17, Gale)—28 (Gale, Cod. Bezae); 2 Cor. v. 15-21: Heb. ix. 1-7.

At Cambridge (Univ. Libr. II. 28. 8) is a rare volume containing the Greek Gospel Church-Lessons, Θεῖον καὶ ἱερὸν εὐαγγέλιον, Venice, 1615-24, once belonging to Bishop Hacket: also the Apostolos of a smaller size. Another edition appeared in 1851, also at Venice.

For a comparison of the Greek with the Coptic Calendar, see p. 77, note 2. For the Menology in the Jerusalem Syriac Lectionary, see Vol. II, Chap. 1.

Chapter 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 [pg 091] 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 books113. 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, [pg 092] 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 lines114.” 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 scholars115, 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 separated116. Small [pg 093] 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. 2117. 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 facsimiles118.

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 antiquity119—when Constantino Simonides, a Greek of [pg 095] 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 months120 (he inscribed on [pg 096] 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 Vaticanus121. 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 volume122.

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 [pg 097] 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 1672123), sent this most precious [pg 098] 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 Martyr124. 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 [pg 099] the Old Testament almost complete125, 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 σύ126 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, [pg 100] 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 [pg 101] 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 decidedly128.

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 martyr129, whether [pg 102] 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 26130; 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 [pg 103] 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 I131, 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 others132. 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 [pg 104] 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, [pg 105] 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. θυ 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 history133. 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 [pg 106] 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 1587134), 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 [pg 107] tend very powerfully to confirm. Each column contains ordinarily forty-two lines135, 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 eleventh136), 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 stops137 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 [pg 108] descent in the genealogies of our Lord (Matt. i, Luke iii138), 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 Testament139, 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 [pg 109] 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 Polyglott141) 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. [pg 110] 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 value142; 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 [pg 111] 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 enough143; 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 each144. 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 [pg 112] allowed to see the manuscript, but hindered from transcribing any of its readings145.

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 [pg 113] 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 notified146; 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 Vercellone147. This [pg 114] 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 incapacity148. 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 1861149, 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 [pg 115] 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 it150. 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 [pg 116] 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 lines152, from the corrections of a second yet ancient scribe (B2), and those of the person (B3) who retraced the faded writing at a later period153. 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 [pg 117] 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 1868154, 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 adscititious156. 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 [pg 118] 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 copy158, whose discovery he [pg 119] 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 [pg 120] 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 enough159. 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 Christianity160. 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 ambiguous161. Dr. Hort, on no very substantial [pg 121] 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 volume162. 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 Paris163. 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 [pg 122] 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 it164, 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 elaborate165. 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 [pg 123] 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 [pg 124] 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 Church166. 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 texts167. 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 [pg 125] 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 abbey169 conveyed this portion of it to Beza, whose influence at that juncture was paramount among the French Reformed170.

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 text171, [pg 127] 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 [pg 128] 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 itself172. 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 [pg 129] (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 throughout173, 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 [pg 130] (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.

Chapter 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 recto175. 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 [pg 132] 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 [pg 133] 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 [pg 134] 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. [pg 135] 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 ΤΗΣ 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 [pg 136] 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 [pg 137] 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 [pg 138] 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 margin176 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, [pg 139] 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 [pg 140] 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, [pg 141] 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 [pg 142] 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. 313-4178. 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. [pg 143] 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 1762181, 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 Evangelists182; Codex Q, on thirteen leaves, twelve fragments of 247 verses from SS. Luke and John183; 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 [pg 144] 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 [pg 145] 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 fragments185, 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 [pg 146] 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 [pg 147] that its uncials look as if written by a Copt, from their resemblance to Coptic letters186: 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. [pg 148] 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 [pg 149] 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 [pg 150] 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 almost188 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 canons189, 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 fragments191. 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 facsimile192 at the expense of Trinity College, and [pg 154] 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 since193, 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 lines194. The so-named Ammonian sections are given, but not the [pg 155] 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). [pg 156] 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 survive195. 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 perfect196, 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 844197. 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 [pg 157] to us by the admirable edition in lithographed facsimile of every page, by H. Ch. M. Rettig [1799-1836], published at Zurich, 1836198, 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 G199. St. Mark's Gospel represents a text different from that of the other [pg 158] 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 colours200. We transcribe three lines, taken almost at random, from pp. 80-1 (Matt. xx. 13-15), in order to explain our meaning:

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. III201, 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 [pg 161] 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. 33203, 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 [pg 162] 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, [pg 163] 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 [pg 164] 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 Harnack204. 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 [pg 165] 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 ἰσ 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, [pg 166] 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 [pg 167] 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 [pg 168] 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.

Chapter VI. Uncial Manuscripts Of The Acts And Catholic Epistles, Of St. Paul's Epistles, And Of The Apocalypse.

Chapter VII. Cursive Manuscripts Of The Gospels. Part I.

The later manuscripts of the Greek Testament, written in cursive characters from the tenth down to the fifteenth century or later, are too numerous to be minutely described in an elementary work like the present. We shall therefore speak of them with all possible brevity, dwelling only on a few which present points of especial interest, and employing certain abbreviations, a list of which we subjoin for the reader's convenience225.

The other Abbreviations will be evident upon perusing this work. Where Chart. is not printed, the MS. is written on vellum. The Latin numeral within square brackets denotes the date of the book, whether fixed by a subscription in the book itself, or approximated by other means, e.g. [xiii] indicates a book of the thirteenth century. The Arabic numerals within ordinary brackets denote the number of lines on a page. Thus 297 (38) = 297 leaves and thirty-eight lines in a page. The names within parentheses indicate the collators or inspectors of each manuscript, and if it has been satisfactorily examined, an asterisk is prefixed to the number by which it is known. If the copy contain other portions of the New Testament, its notation in those portions is always given. Measurements where given are in inches226.