Chapter II · MATERIALS OF THE TEXTUAL CRITICISM OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. (continued 2)

74The last-mentioned codices have not yet been thoroughly collated, some of them having been only recently discovered.

The following are indicated by Hebrew letters.

ב. Of the ninth or tenth century: in the Monastery of St. Andrew at Athos: contains the Gospels with lacunæ.

ג. Gregorianus, a purple manuscript from Cappadocia now admitted to be part of N.

ד^6-13. Several leaves dating from the fifth to the ninth century, discovered at Sinai by J. R. Harris and published by him (Biblical fragments from Mount Sinai, 1890): ד¹² contains the double conclusion of Mark: ד¹³ is a purple fragment of the seventh century containing a few verses from the first chapter of Luke, perhaps only a quotation.

ק. Swete indicates with this letter the fragment cited above as T^l, which exhibits the double conclusion of Mark’s Gospel. See his Gospel according to St. Mark, pp. xcii., xcix.

ר. An Oxyrhynchus fragment of the fifth or sixth century, published by Grenfell and Hunt, The Oxyrhynchus Papyri, Part I. with eight Plates, London, 1898: contains only Mark x. 50 f. and xi. 10 f.: cited by Swete. (T^g Greg.)

Part II. of The Oxyrhynchus Papyri (1899, pp. 1-8) contains a fragment of John’s Gospel (cc. i. and xx.) from a sheet of a papyrus codex written between 200 and 300 A.D. This is one of the earliest fragments that have been discovered of a papyrus book (not a roll). It exhibits already the abbreviations usually found in theological manuscripts, such as Θ̅Σ̅, Ι̅Η̅Σ̅, Χ̅Σ̅, Π̅Ν̅Α̅. The Codex agrees with א in several readings not found elsewhere. (T^x Greg.) See Addenda, p. xv.

Acts and Catholic Epistles.

The second group is composed of manuscripts of the Acts and Catholic Epistles which are distinguished from those in the first by affixing the exponent ₂ at the bottom of the symbol.

א A B exhibit the Acts and Catholic Epistles complete:

E₂ D have the Acts all but entire:

K L have the Catholic Epistles complete:

C P have the greater part of them.

75For א A B C D F^a (a few verses of the Acts), see above.

E₂. Laudianus 35, in Oxford, written at the end of the sixth century: bilingual, Latin-Greek, the Latin occupying the place of honour on the left: breaks off at Acts xxvi. 29: the text very peculiar and somewhat like that of D. The manuscript was formerly in Sardinia, and was probably brought to England by Theodore of Tarsus in 668. It was employed by the Venerable Bede (d. 735) in his Expositio of the Acts and afterwards in his Expositio Retractata. Archbishop Laud presented the manuscript with many others to the University of Oxford. Fell and Mill made use of it. Scrivener, i. 121, Plate X. 25.

G₂. Of the seventh century, a single leaf in St. Petersburg containing Acts ii. 45-iii. 8, torn from the cover of a Syriac manuscript.

G^b. Of the ninth century, a palimpsest of six leaves in Rome containing portions of Acts xvi. 32-xviii. 20. (Vat. Gr. 2302.)

H₂. Ninth century, in Modena, has the Acts with some lacunæ.

I₂. Fragments in St. Petersburg of the fifth and seventh centuries: four leaves from three different manuscripts of the Acts.

K₂. Of the ninth century: brought to Moscow from Athos: contains the Catholic and Pauline Epistles.

L₂. Written at the end of the ninth century: in the Angelica Library at Rome: contains the Acts from c. viii. onwards, the Catholic Epistles, and the Pauline down to Hebrews xiii.

P₂. Of the ninth century: formerly in the possession of Bishop Porfiri of Kiev and now at St. Petersburg: published by Tischendorf: contains Acts, Catholic and Pauline Epistles, and Apocalypse, with several lacunæ.

S₂. Of the eighth or ninth century: at Athos: contains Acts, Catholic Epistles, Romans, portions of 1 and 2 Corinthians, and Ephesians.

ב₂. A palimpsest of the fifth century: in Rome: rediscovered by Batiffol: consists of fragments of Acts, James, 1 and 2 Peter, 1, 2, and 3 John, Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, 76Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, 1 Thessalonians, 1 and 2 Timothy, Titus, Philemon, and Hebrews.

Pauline Epistles.

The third group is composed of manuscripts of the Pauline Epistles. Of these there is a comparatively large number, which may be taken as indicating the important position ascribed to Paul even in early times. א, however, is the only Codex that contains his Epistles complete; in D L they are almost complete, and A B C E F G K exhibit the greater part of them.

For א A B C, see above.

A is defective in 2 Cor. iv. 13-xii. 6 inclusive.

B breaks off at Hebrews ix. 14, consequently 1 and 2 Timothy, Titus, and Philemon are wanting.

D₂. Codex Claromontanus: takes its name from Clermont near Beauvais. The manuscript was written in the sixth century, and is bilingual in Greek and Latin, having the Greek on the left-hand page. The Greek is wanting in Rom. i. 1-7, 27-30, and in 1 Cor. xiv. 13-22. In Gal. v. 9 D₂ reads δολοῖ, and in verse 14 ἐν ὑμῖν, in both places agreeing with Marcion. At least nine hands are distinguishable in the manuscript, one of whom corrected the text in over 2000 places in the ninth or tenth century. Two leaves are palimpsest, their text being written over part of a play of Euripides. Hebrews has evidently been copied into the Codex from a different manuscript by a later scribe. Before it is a list of “versus scribtuarum sanctarum,” one of the oldest stichometric catalogues of the books of the Old and New Testaments, which is derived from an early Greek original. This Catalogus Claromontanus is given in Westcott’s History of the Canon, App. D, xx. p. 563, and in his Bible in the Church, App. B, p. 309. See also Zahn, Geschichte des N. T. Kanons, II. 157-172, 1012; Jülicher, Einleitung, § 40. Thirty-five leaves of Codex D₂ were stolen by John Aymont in 1707, but afterwards restored by their purchasers, some of them in 1720, and the others in 1729. (See Plates II. and III.)

77E₃. Sangermanensis, of the ninth century: also Greek-Latin: brought from St. Germain de Près to St. Petersburg during the Revolution: in the Greek merely an incorrect transcript of D₂, and may therefore be dismissed. See p. 179 n. 1.

F₂. Augiensis, of the ninth century: another Greek-Latin manuscript: defective in Rom. i. 1-iii. 19; 1 Cor. iii. 8-16; vi. 7-14; Col. ii. 1-8; Philemon 21-25: Hebrews from the first only in the Latin. The manuscript was formerly at Reichenau (Augia Dives, hence its name). It was purchased by Bentley in 1718 for 250 Dutch florins, and is now at Cambridge. An edition of it was published by Scrivener in 1859. For F^a, see above, p. 66.

Scrivener, An exact transcript of the Codex Augiensis ... to which is added a full collation of fifty manuscripts containing various portions of the Greek N. T., 1859. F. Zimmer, Der Codex Augiensis eine Abschrift des Boernerianus (ZfwTh., 1887, i. 76-91).

G₃. Boernerianus, of the ninth century, so called from Professor C. F. Boerner of Leipzig, who purchased it in 1705: now in Dresden. It is a Greek-Latin manuscript, the Latin being interlinear. It is manifestly the second part of Δ, and has a close affinity with F₂, though the Greek of F was not copied from G, as Zimmer and Hort assert. The fact is rather that both are derived from one and the same original, in which e.g. ως γαγγρα ινα νομην εξει, sicut cancer ut serpat, was found in 2 Tim. ii. 17, and ημεθα δε δουλωμενοι, eramus autem servientes, in Gal. iv. 3. This manuscript contains some interesting Irish verses.^[70] At the end of Philemon there stands the title προς Λαουδακησας, ad laudicenses, but the Epistle that should have followed has been lost.

P. Corssen, Epistularum Paulinarum codices graece et latine scriptos Augiensem, Boernerianum, Claromontanum examinavit, inter se 78comparavit, ad communem originem revocavit. Specimen primum, 1887. Alterum, 1889.

Euthalian Recension.

H₃. Written in the sixth century, one of the most valuable manuscripts, but unfortunately incomplete. Its leaves were used in 975 and 1218 to cover some manuscripts at Mount Athos. Forty-one of these have been rescued, of which 22 are now in Paris, 8 at Mount Athos, 3 in St. Petersburg, 3 in Moscow, 2 in Turin, and 3 in Kiev. They contain portions of 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Colossians, 1 Thessalonians, 1 and 2 Timothy, Titus, and Hebrews. The value of the manuscript is indicated in the subscription, which runs, “I, Euthalius,^[71] wrote this volume of the Apostle Paul as carefully as possible in stichoi, so that it might be read with intelligence: the book was compared with the copy in the library at Cæsarea, written by the hand of Pamphilus the saint.”^[72] The subscription may of course have stood in the original of H, and simply been copied into it along with the text, as in the case of the minuscules 15, 83, and 173 of the Acts. But no matter, it serves to locate the text of this manuscript, and it is one of our main witnesses for the so-called Euthalian Recension of the Acts and Catholic Epistles.

In or previous to the year 396, a deacon called Euthalius, afterwards known as Bishop of Sulce,^[73] published an edition of the Acts and Catholic and Pauline Epistles, in which, following the rules laid down by the Greek schools of oratory, the text was carefully broken up into lines, the length of which depended on the sense (sense-clauses), and divided into paragraphs or chapters. Euthalius also provided a system of Church lections, added a summary of contents to the various chapters, and catalogued the quotations 79from the Old Testament and elsewhere in the separate Epistles and in the entire group. This edition became a sort of model for later times, and seems to have been made use of for the Armenian version among the rest. The comparison of the manuscript with those of Pamphilus, as well as other additions, would seem then to have been made on the occasion of a later revision. Ehrhard, however, thinks that we have the autograph edition of this system in Codex H, but that Evagrius is to be read instead of Euthalius in the place where the name has been erased. This view is combated by Dobschütz, and in part rightly. Working independently of both, Conybeare, from Armenian sources, establishes the year 396 as the date of Euthalius. But in a parchment manuscript of the eleventh century in the library of the Laura at Mount Athos, Wobbermin found a fragment of a dogmatic treatise with the inscription, Εὐθαλίου ἐπισκόπου Σούλκης ὁμολογία περὶ τῆς ὀρθοδόξου πίστεως, from which he makes out that Euthalius lived in the second half of the seventh century and that Sulce was in Sardinia. See G. Krüger in the Lit. Cent. Blatt 1899, No. 14.

Omont, Notice sur un très ancien manuscrit grec en onciales des épîtres de S. Paul, Paris, 1889. J. A. Robinson, Euthaliana, Texts and Studies, iii. 3, 1895. (See S. Berger, Bull. Crit., 96, 8.) Th. Zahn, Euthaliana, Theol. Lit. Blatt., 1895, 593, 601. Ehrhard, Der codex H ad Epistolas Pauli und Euthalius diaconus, Eine palaeographisch-patrologische Untersuchung in the Centralblatt für Bibliothekswesen, 1891, pp. 385-411. E. v. Dobschütz, Ein Beitrag zur Euthaliusfrage, in the same magazine, 1893, pp. 49-70; Euthaliusstudien in the ZKG. xix. pp. 107-154 (1898): also, Euthalius, in the PRE³, v. pp. 631-633 (1898). Islinger, Die Verdienste des Euthalius um den neutestamentlichen Bibeltext, Hof. 1867 (Prog.). Conybeare, On the Codex Pamphili and date of Euthalius, in the Cambridge Journal of Philology, xxiii. 241 (1895). R. L. Bensly, The Harklean Version etc., pp. 9, 27 (1889). See also J. A. Robinson, Texts and Studies, vi. 1; C. Butler, The Lausiac History of Palladius, p. 104 ff., and note 2, p. 188 below.

80I₂, K₂, L₂, P₂: See above, p. 75.

M₂. Codex Ruber, of the ninth century: four leaves written in bright red ink or other colouring matter, two of them in London and the other two in Hamburg.

N₂. Of the ninth century, consisting of two leaves with portions of Galatians and Hebrews: in St. Petersburg.

O₂. Of the ninth century, two leaves in the same library containing portions of 2 Corinthians.

O^b. Of the sixth century, one leaf with part of Ephesians: in Moscow.

Q₂. Of the fifth century, five papyrus leaves with fragments of 1 Corinthians: in St. Petersburg.

R₂. Of the seventh century, a single leaf with part of 2 Corinthians: in Grotteferrata.

S₂. See above, p. 75.

T^g. A few sentences from 1 Timothy. See TiGr., p. 441.

T^s. Two leaves containing 1 Corinthians i. 22-29, written in the ninth or tenth century, and published simultaneously with T^i-r. Gregory now designates T^g as T^{a Paul}, and T^s as T^{b Paul}.

ב₂. See above, p. 75.

ד¹⁴. A fragment of papyrus containing part of 1 Corinthians, cc. i., ii., iii., written in the fifth century.

The first seven verses of the first chapter of Romans have been published in The Oxyrhynchus Papyri, Part II. (pp. 8 f., Plate II.). The fragment is probably a schoolboy’s exercise. It is written in a large rude uncial hand, and dates from the first half of the fourth century. In verse 7 it reads Κ̅Υ̅ Χ̅Ρ̅Υ̅ Ι̅Η̅Υ̅.

Apocalypse.

There are fewest manuscripts of the Apocalypse. It is found entire only in א A B, while C and P exhibit portions of it. In the Apocalypse, however, it is to be observed that Codex B is not the famous Codex Vaticanus 1209 but a much later manuscript 2066, dating from the end of the 81eighth century. It would be better, therefore, with some editors, to call it Q or B₂.

Altogether the number of Greek manuscripts is as follows^[74]:—

Uncials:

Gospels, 73

Acts and Catholic Epistles, 19

Pauline Epistles, 28

Apocalypse, 7

—-

Total, 127

Cursives, 3702

Book-hand and hand of common life.

In closing our survey of the extant uncials, it is to be borne in mind that we are not at liberty to regard even the oldest of them as presenting the very form of the New Testament autographs. The books of the New Testament, at all events the majority of them, were not originally intended for publication at all, while the others were meant for only a limited circle of readers. Now these recent papyrus discoveries have shown conclusively what a vast difference existed even in those days between the book-hand and what we may call the hand of common life and business. A glance at Kenyon’s Palæography of Greek Papyri will show how fundamental is the distinction between literary and non-literary papyri. That writer states that in many cases the difference is just as marked as between handwriting and print at the present day, and he instances also the distinction between the book-hand and the charter-hand of the Middle Ages. Of course documents of this or the other class may occasionally be found written in the hand that is not the usual one, a prescription, e.g., in book-hand, or conversely a literary text in the hand of common life. The greater part of Aristotle’s work on the Polity of the Athenians, for instance, has been preserved in the common hand. This papyrus, which is 82attributed to the first century of the Christian era, is the work of four scribes. But only one of these writes in a style approximating to the book-hand; the other parts are written in a very cursive style on the back of an old account, probably by one who had borrowed a copy of the work for a short time and transcribed it with the help of two or three friends or slaves. Kenyon quite properly instances this as an illustration of the manner of the origin and propagation of the New Testament books, and suggests that this mode of propagation has to be considered in connection with times of persecution. Our very oldest manuscripts are superb codices, editions de luxe, such as could be prepared only in an age when the Church had attained a position of affluence and power. The distinction referred to above is one that has had but little attention paid to it hitherto, as is shown by the illustration given in Harris’s excellent work on the New Testament autographs. It is manifest at the same time that this consideration is of great importance in trying to understand the origin and dissemination of the various readings that occur in our manuscripts. It is just a pity that Kenyon has not given a sample of this manuscript of Aristotle in his book, seeing that the latter is more accessible to the ordinary student than the complete facsimile edited in 1891 by the Trustees of the British Museum, or the Plate published in the second volume of the work of the Palæographical Society.

Uncial and minuscule script.

A further consideration is emphasised by means of these papyrus discoveries—viz. that no distinction of time can be drawn between the uncial and cursive hands found in the manuscripts. Even in the very earliest documents the hand of common life displays a very cursive character, and a fairly cursive uncial hand with ligatures is not necessarily later than an uncial hand without ligatures. It is somewhat different in the case of writing on parchment: here the old distinction of uncial and minuscule manuscripts is rightly maintained, only we must guard against supposing that the 83minuscule hand and the cursive are quite the same thing; nor must we forget that for a considerable time the older uncial and the later minuscule scripts were in use together.^[75] The sharp line of demarcation, therefore, which has hitherto been drawn in the textual criticism of the New Testament between these two classes of manuscripts has no real justification in fact. The present account, however, is intended merely as a survey of the position of things up to the present, and the following description of the minuscules is subject to that limitation.

(b.) SOME OF THE MORE IMPORTANT MINUSCULES.

Minuscules.

When the Greek New Testament began to be printed, the editors had necessarily to be content with indifferent and late minuscules, and even those who followed them, like Bentley and Lachmann, thought they were at liberty to disregard these altogether and to found their text exclusively on the oldest uncials. They forgot that the text of a late manuscript may be derived from a very early and good source through comparatively few intermediaries, and that it is possible to reconstruct a lost original by means of a comparison of several witnesses. Accordingly, in more recent times, English editors like Tregelles, Burgon, Ferrar, Hoskier, and Scrivener have rendered great service in the way of collating manuscripts, and the last-mentioned as well as Gregory in Germany has also catalogued them. At the present moment a systematic investigation in this department is being carried on in Berlin. Most of the minuscules are still written on parchment which began to be mixed with paper in the ninth century, and was ultimately superseded by it. Various minuscules contain commentaries and other additional matter, such as the List of the Seventy Apostles, short Biographies of the Apostles, Summaries of the journeys of St. Paul, or notes as to the date and place of the composition of the different books. When dates are given in the manuscripts, 84they are still as a rule computed in the Byzantine manner, reckoning from the Creation of the world (5508 B.C.). In only a few cursives is the date reckoned from the Birth of Christ.

Since the time of Wettstein the minuscule manuscripts have been indicated by Arabic numerals, the numbers in each of the four groups beginning with 1, so that one and the same manuscript may have three or four numbers—18^evv. e.g. being 113^Acts, 132^Paul, and 51^Apoc., while 209^evv is the same as 95^Acts, 108^Paul, and 46^Apoc. It is still more awkward that in the two principal works on the minuscules, that of Scrivener and of Gregory, the recently discovered manuscripts are numbered differently. Our enumeration will follow that of Scrivener.

Minuscules of the Gospels.

1 (Acts 1, Paul 1). Of the tenth century, but according to others of the twelfth or the thirteenth, in Basel, with beautiful miniatures which were stolen prior to 1860. The manuscript was borrowed by Reuchlin and used by Erasmus for his second edition. (Scrivener, i. 137, Plate IX. 23.)

2. Of the twelfth century, though some strangely suppose the fifteenth: also in Basel: formerly purchased for two Rhenish florins: printed by Erasmus.

3. Of the twelfth century, in Vienna, lent to Erasmus for his second edition.

Ferrar Group.

4-41 are all in the National Library at Paris. 4-9 and 38 were used by Stephen. The most notable among them is 13, together with 69, 124, 211, 346, 348, 556, 561 (788), 624, and 626, which are remarkable for their very peculiar form of text and their additions.^[76] Luke xxii. 43, 44 is found after Matthew xxvi. 39, and John vii. 53—viii. 11 after Luke xxi. 38. The subscriptions, moreover, state that Matthew was written in Hebrew eight years after our Lord’s Ascension, and contained 2522 ρηματα and 2560 stichoi, Mark ρωμαιστι ten years 85after the Ascension with 1675 ρηματα and 1604 stichoi, Luke ελληνιστι fifteen years after with 3803 (lege 3083) ρηματα and 2750 stichoi, and John thirty-two years after with 1938 ρηματα. These manuscripts were referred to a common archetype by the Irish scholar Ferrar, and were accordingly denominated the Ferrar Group, and indicated by the letter Φ before that symbol was appropriated to the Codex Beratinus. Most of them came from Calabria, and another has lately been added to the number. Their additions, however, as Rendel Harris shows, are rather of Syrian origin. In the first edition I ventured to suggest that these manuscripts might go back to Lucian the Martyr (d. 312) of whom Jerome makes mention, saying that he knew of codices quos a Luciano (et Hesychio) nuncupatos paucorum hominum adserit perversa contentio, quibus ... nec in novo testamento profuit emendasse, cum multarum gentium linguis scriptura ante translata doceat falsa esse quae addita (cod. E edita) sunt. That, however, is not possible in the event of the so-called Syrian recension being the work of Lucian, which Hort indicates as possible. In any case, these minuscules have preserved to us a very early attempt to restore the text.

16 is noteworthy as being written in four different colours according to the contents. The continuous narrative is written in green, the words of Jesus and the Angels are in red and occasionally in gold, the words of His followers are in blue, while those of the Pharisees, the multitude, and of the devil, are written in black.

28. Contains relics of a very ancient text and bears some resemblance to D.

33. Written about the tenth century: the “queen of the cursives”: its text bears a greater resemblance to that of B, D, L than does that of any other cursive. The manuscript is much damaged, but 34, which is equally old, is still in splendid condition, as though it were fresh from the hand of the artist. (Scrivener, i. 343, Plate XIII. 39.)

38. Sent by the Emperor Michael Palæologus to St. Louis (d. 1270).

8651. At Oxford: text resembles that of the Complutensian.

59. At Cambridge: has many points of connection with D.

61. Of the fourteenth or fifteenth century. This is the notorious Codex Montfortianus, now in Dublin, which derives its name from one of its later possessors. It was this manuscript, “codex apud Anglos repertus,” that decided Erasmus to insert in his third edition of 1522 the passage of the Three Heavenly Witnesses, 1 John v. 7, 8. It was probably written by a Franciscan monk of the name of Froy or Roy. Its twin brother, the parchment codex Ravianus (Rau), formerly numbered 110, and now in Berlin, which also contains the passage, proves to be nothing more than a transcript of the text of the Complutensian. Manuscripts, it may be observed, continued to be prepared long after the invention of printing. Melanchthon, e.g., wrote out the Epistle to the Romans three times in Greek; and the manuscript in the Zurich Library hitherto cited as 56^Paul is nothing else than a copy of Erasmus’s printed edition of 1516 made by Zwingli in the following year.

69. Cf. 13 above, and see J. R. Harris, Origin of the Leicester Codex of the New Testament, 1887. (Scrivener, i. 343, Plate XIII. 40.)

77 and 78. Formerly in the fine library of Matthias Corvinus, King of Hungary (d. 1490).

90. In this manuscript the Gospels are in the order John, Luke, Matthew, Mark.

106. Would be important, but has been lost sight of since the time of Wettstein.

140. Presented to Pope Innocent VII. by the Queen of Cyprus. This manuscript reads διηρθρώθη in Luke i. 64, therein agreeing with the Complutensian.

146-153. In Rome, came from Heidelberg.

154-156. Once the property of Christina, Queen of Sweden.

157. In Rome: its text is said to bear a considerable resemblance to the quotations found in the early Christian writer Marcion. See below, p. 211.

87164. The subscription of this manuscript states that it was compared with certain ancient manuscripts in Jerusalem.

205-215 and 217 are in Venice, being part of the donation of Cardinal Bessarion. 209 contains the whole of the New Testament, and was the Cardinal’s own copy which he had with him at the Council of Florence in 1439.

218-225 are in Vienna.

226-233 are in the Escorial.

237-259 are at Moscow, with the exception of four at Dresden.

263-320 are in Paris, with the exception of 272, which was removed thence to the British Museum.

274 exhibits the shorter conclusion of Mark’s Gospel in the lower margin. (See Plate X.)

405-418 are now in Venice, and, like U, once belonged to the Nani family.

422-430. In Munich.

431. This manuscript is sometimes stated to have perished at Strassburg, in the war of 1870, like 180^Acts. This, however, is incorrect.

452. In Parma, one of the most superb codices.

473. Of the ninth and tenth centuries, a purple manuscript with gold lettering, said to have been written by the Empress Theodora. See under N. above, and note, p. 151.

481, dated 7th May 835, is the earliest manuscript of the Greek New Testament bearing an exact date.

531. Written in a microscopic hand.

604. Written in the twelfth century, now in the British Museum, exhibits 2724 variations from the Textus Receptus, and has besides 270 readings peculiar to itself. It is the only witness we know that supports that peculiar form of the second petition of the Lord’s Prayer found in Marcion in the second century, and in Gregory of Nyssa in the fourth, ἐλθέτω τὸ ἅγιον πνεῦμά σου ἐφ’ ἡμᾶς καὶ καθαρισάτω ἡμᾶς (Luke xi. 2).^[77]

88743 has the double conclusion in Mark.

1071. See under D, p. 66.

In his Gospel according to St. Mark, Swete cites frequently, in addition to those just mentioned and those of the Ferrar Group, 1, 28, 33, 66, 109, 118, 131, 157, 209, 238, 242, 299, 435, 473, 475, 556, 570, 736.

Acts.

2 and 4. Used by Erasmus.

7-10. Used by Stephen.

15, 83, 173. These, like א in the Old Testament and H₃, were compared with the Codex of Pamphilus—i.e. were faithfully copied from such an exemplar.

33. The parent manuscript of Montfortianus. See above, p. 86.

42. Closely related to the Complutensian.

52. Once in the possession of Stunica, the chief editor of the Complutensian. It has now disappeared.

61 has been designated the most important minuscule of the Acts. This, however, is an exaggeration.

137 supplements D E where these are defective.

158. Used by Cardinal Mai to supply the defects of Codex B in the Pauline Epistles.

162. Of the fourteenth or fifteenth century, now in Rome: a bilingual in Latin and Greek: contains the passage 1 John v. 7.

182. Numbered 110 by Hort, who calls it one of the best of the cursives.

220. One of the finest manuscripts of the latter part of the New Testament.

232. An equally superb copy, on which a monk called Andreas bestowed three years’ labour.

246. Written in gold letters for Charlotte, Queen of Cyprus (d. 1487).

419. Written in 800 by the Empress Maria, after being divorced by Constantine VI.

89

Pauline Epistles.

7. Used by Erasmus.

56 and 66 are quite worthless, being simply copies of Erasmus’s printed text. (See above under 61^evv).

67. A valuable manuscript on account of its corrector having evidently made use of an exemplar with a text very closely akin to that of B M.

80 bears a close resemblance to 69^evv.

Apocalypse.

1. This was the only manuscript at Erasmus’s command for this part of the New Testament. It is defective in the last chapter from verse 16 to the end. For the rest it exhibits a fairly good text. (See p. 3 f.)

36. A text akin to א.

38 has a text resembling that of A C.

68. Resembles A.

95 does so still more. This last has the reputation of being one of the best minuscules of the Apocalypse.

The number of minuscules under each class is, according to Scrivener (Miller), as follows:—

Gospels, 1326

Acts and Catholic Epistles, 422

Pauline Epistles, 497

Apocalypse, 184

——

2429

A great many New Testament manuscripts are in England. Some are in the possession of private individuals, like those at Parham Park in Sussex belonging to Lord de la Zouche. In 1870-72 the Baroness Burdett Coutts brought with her from Janina in Epirus over one hundred manuscripts, of which sixteen were of the Gospels, one of them belonging to the Ferrar Group, and as many were Evangeliaria. There are 90136 manuscripts of the New Testament in the British Museum.

The number in Great Britain is 438

In the National Library of Paris, 298

In Germany, 140

In Italy, 644

For the total number of Greek manuscripts arranged according to countries, see Scrivener, i., Indices I., II., pp. 392 ff.

What a vast number of manuscripts are still waiting to be examined is shown by the account given by Dr. von der Goltz. Accompanied by Dr. G. Wobbermin, he made a journey to Athos in the winter of 1897-98, and there in that ancient Monastery, the Laura of St. Athanasius, he found, among about 1800 manuscripts altogether, including Lectionaries, some 250 codices of the New Testament, of which only a very few have been noted by Gregory. And these manuscripts may be of the very utmost importance, as witness the further statement of the same explorer. He was looking through the manuscripts of the Apostolos, to which he and his companion had to give most of their attention, when his eye fell on one written in the tenth or eleventh century, containing the following note before the Pauline Epistles: γεγράφθαι ἀπὸ ἀντιγράφου παλαιοτάτου, οὗ πεῖραν ἐλάβομεν ὡς ἐπιτετευγμένου ἐκ τῶν εἰς ἡμᾶς ἐλθόντων Ὠριγένους τόμων ἢ ὁμιλιῶν εἰς τὸν ἀπόστολον ... ἐν οἷς οὖν παραλλάττει ῥητοῖς πρὸς τὰ νῦν ἀποστολικά, διπλῆν τὴν λεγομένην παρεθήκαμεν ἔξωθεν, ἵνα μὴ νομισθῇ κατὰ προσθήκην ἢ λεῖψιν ἡμαρτῆσθαι τουτὶ τὸ ἀποστολικόν. And from the subscription at the end of the Pauline Epistles we learn that the manuscript, or, as von der Goltz believes, the exemplar from which it was copied, was written by a monk called Ephraim. See further in von der Goltz, Eine textkritische Arbeit des zehnten bezw. sechsten Jahrhunderts herausgegeben nach einem Kodex des Athosklosters Lawra. Mit einer Doppeltafel in Lichtdruck. Leipzig, 1899. (Texte und Untersuchungen, Neue Folge, ii. 4); and compare below, p. 190.

91Literature.—On 2^evv, see Hoskier, above, p. 5.

On 13, see W. H. Ferrar, Collation of four important Manuscripts of the Gospels, edited by T. K. Abbott, Dublin, 1877. J. P. P. Martin, Quatre manuscrits du N. T., auxquels on peut ajouter un cinquième, Amiens, 1886. J. R. Harris, On the Origin of the Ferrar Group, London, 1894. K. Lake, “Some new members of the Ferrar Group of MSS. of the Gospels,” in the Journal of Theological Studies, I. i. pp. 117-120. The well-known manuscript of the pre-Lutheran German Bible, the Codex Teplensis, has the words from John viii. 2, “in the morning he came again into the temple,” after Luke xxi. 38, an arrangement similar to that which is characteristic of the Ferrar Group, in which John vii. 53-viii. 11 is found after Luke xxi. 38. See S. Berger, Bull. Crit., 1894, p. 390. See Addenda, p. xv.

On 561, Codex Algerinae Peckover, see J. R. Harris in the Journal of the Exegetical Society, 1886, 79-96.

On 892^evv, see Harris, “An Important Manuscript of the N. T.” in the Journal of Biblical Literature, ix., 1890, 31 ff.

On Minuscules of the Apocalypse, see Bousset, Textkritische Studien in T. und U., xi. 4.

C. R. Gregory, “Die Kleinhandschriften des N. Testaments” (Theologische Studien für B. Weiss., Göttingen, 1897, 274-283).

E. J. Goodspeed, “A Twelfth Century Gospel Manuscript” (Biblical World, x. 4).

(c.) LECTIONARIES.

Lectionaries.

Till quite recently the Lectionaries, or Books of Church Pericopae, were even more neglected than the minuscules. And yet they are reliable witnesses to the text of the Bible in the provinces to which they belong, on account of their official character and because their locality can be readily distinguished. The slight alterations of the text occurring at the beginning of the pericopae, and consisting usually in the insertion of the subject of the sentence or of an introductory clause, are easily recognisable as such, and deceive no one. It is not always easy to determine the date of such books, because the uncial hand was employed in this sort of manuscript much longer than in the others. Among the oldest, perhaps, 92is 135, a palimpsest (of which there is a considerable number among the Lectionaries), assigned by Tischendorf to the seventh century, and 968, written on papyrus and ascribed to the sixth century, which was found in Egypt in the year 1890. When these Lectionaries originated has not yet been clearly made out.^[78] Up till the present 980 Evangeliaria—i.e. Lessons from the Gospels—have been catalogued, and 268 Apostoli or Praxapostoli—i.e. Lessons from the Acts and Epistles. Some of them are magnificently executed; some, alas, have been sadly mutilated. 117, in Florence, is a very beautiful codex; and 162, in Siena, is perhaps “one of the most splendid Service-books in the world.” 235 may have been written in part by the Emperor Alexius Comnenus (1081-1118). 286 is the Golden Evangeliarium on Mount Sinai, dating from the ninth to the eleventh century, though the tradition of the monks says that it was written by no less a personage than the Emperor Theodosius (d. 395). Tischendorf’s 352-360 are now in the National Library at Paris. 355 is printed in Omont’s Catalogue (see above, p. 71). 45^evl is a fragment of black parchment inscribed with gold letters preserved at Vienna.^[79] 40 is kept in the Escorial along with the reliques of St. Chrysostom, and regarded as his autograph.^[80] Bilingual Lectionaries are also found, in Greek and Arabic for example. The arrangement of these Service-books varies with the time and region in which they were composed. Several fragments which were formerly regarded as parts of manuscripts of the 93Gospels should perhaps be classed among the Evangeliaria—e.g. the solitary leaf of a Bible manuscript Württemberg is known to possess, and the Tübingen Fragment, formerly classed among the uncials as R of the Gospels, but now enumerated as 481^evl. An important Syriac Lectionary will fall to be considered under the head of the Versions.

For further details, reference must be made to Scrivener, to TiGr., and now especially to Gregory, Textkritik, i. pp. 327-478.

2. Versions.

Versions.

Our second source of material for the reconstruction of the text of the New Testament is the early Versions. The value of their testimony depends on their age and fidelity. When did the first versions originate? This question reminds us of the Inscription on the Cross, a portion of which is still exhibited in Rome. It was written in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin. But we may get further back still. Palestine at the time of Christ was a country where the most diverse languages and dialects came into contact with each other. In the last century B.C. a transformation had occurred, which might be regarded as a counterpart to the supplanting of Norman French by English, or of Low by High German. Aramaic had already taken the place of the old Hebrew, and after the time of Alexander came the intrusion of Greek, and later still of Latin. Some of the disciples of Jesus bore old Hebrew names, like James (Ἰάκωβος) and John (Ἰωάννης); others had names wholly or partly Aramaic, as Cephas (= Peter), the cognomen of Simon, and Bartholomew; while others, again, had Greek names, as Philip (Φίλιππος) and Andrew (Ἀνδρέας). To the question what language Jesus Himself spoke, the most probable answer is that it was Aramaic with a Galilean colouring. “Thou art a Galilean, thy speech bewrayeth thee,” said the Jerusalem girl to Peter. The Galileans, like the Babylonians and the Samaritans, were recognisable by their not distinguishing the gutturals so sharply as the pure Jews did. At the same time, Jesus 94certainly understood the Hebrew of the Old Testament. But those words of His that have been preserved are Aramaic—talitha, abba, and so is sabaqtani in Matthew xxvii. 46, and Mark xv. 34, if that is the original form of the text, and not asabthani, as a number of manuscripts show.

In what language, however, the first record of the preaching of the Gospel was made, whether it was in the classic Hebrew of the Old Testament or in the Aramaic of the time, is still subject of dispute.^[81] But as this question is of moment only for the original sources, and even then for only a certain part of the New Testament—viz. the Gospels—it does not fall to be considered here. We have to do only with those versions that are derived from the Greek, and again with those of them only that are important for the criticism of the text, which are the oldest.

The versions which are of consequence here may be placed under three or four heads.

East.

In the East, Antioch, with its semi-Greek, semi-Syrian population, very early became the centre of the new faith, which, indeed, obtained its name there, and must very soon have established itself in Damascus and Mesopotamia. In that region the form of Aramaic now commonly known as Syriac was spoken.

West, South.

In the West, Greek was mostly spoken and understood, even in Rome. Paul consequently, and others as well as he, wrote to Rome in Greek. At the same time, the need must have existed, even in the second century, of having the Gospel in the Latin language in parts of Africa, in the north of Italy, and in the South of Gaul. Quite as early, perhaps, the new faith spread to Egypt, which at that time was a kind of centre of religious culture, and so we find in Egypt not one but several versions in various dialects.

The Gothic version of Ulfilas deserves special mention as being the oldest monument of Christianity among the 95Germanic people, and valuable too in the criticism of the text.

L. J. M. Bebb, Evidence of the Early Versions and Patristic Quotations, etc., in Studia Biblica, ii., Oxford, 1890. Lagarde, De Novo Testamento ad Versionum Orientalium fidem edendo. Berlin (1857); with slight alterations in his Ges. Abhandlungen, 1886, pp. 84-119. Reprinted 1896. Urtext (see p. 7). Copinger (see p. 6). An earlier bibliographical work is the Bibliotheca Sacra post ... Jacobi Le Long et C. F. Boerneri iteratas curas ordine disposita, emendata, suppleta, continuata ab A. G. Masch. Halle, 1778-90, 4to. Pars I., De editionibus textus originalis. Pars II., De versionibus librorum sacrorum (3 Vols.). R. Simon, Histoire critique des versions du N. T., 1690. Nouvelles observations sur le texte et les versions du N. T., 1695.

(a.) SYRIAC VERSIONS.

Peshitto.

The Bible used in the Syrian Church has long and deservedly borne the honourable appellation of “the Queen of the Versions.” It was first published in 1555 at the expense of the Emperor Ferdinand I. by J. Albert Widmanstadt with the assistance of a Syrian Jacobite called Moses, who came from Mardin as legate to Pope Julius III. The type for this edition was beautifully cut by Caspar Kraft of Ellwangen. All the branches into which the Syrian church was divided in the fifth century have used the same translation of the Scriptures. To this day the Syriac New Testament wants the five so-called Antilegomena—viz. 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, Jude, and the Apocalypse—a sufficient proof that it goes back to a time and a region in which these books were not yet reckoned in the Canon of the New Testament. In place of these it contained in early times an alleged Third Epistle of Paul to the Corinthians, and an Epistle of the Corinthians to Paul (cf. below, p. 142). To distinguish it from other Syriac translations, this Version has been called by Syriac scholars, since the tenth century, the Peshiṭto—i.e. the “Simple” or 96perhaps the “Common,” which is sometimes pronounced Peshiṭtå (פְשִׁיטתָא) and spelt simply Peshitto.

When and where was this translation made? An ancient Syrian tradition asserts that it was done by the Apostle Thaddaeus, who came on a mission to Abgar Uchama—i.e. Abgar the Black—King of Edessa, after the death of Jesus, which mission, they say, arose out of a correspondence that Abgar had previously had with Jesus. Another tradition ascribes it to Aggaeus (Aggai), the disciple of Thaddaeus, and it is even attributed to Mark the Evangelist. It is also said that Luke was by birth a Syrian of Antioch, a tradition which may preserve an element of truth.

The earliest notice of a Syriac Gospel is found in Eusebius’s Ecclesiastical History, iv. 22. That historian mentions that Hegesippus (c. 160-180) quotes certain things from the Gospel of the Hebrews—i.e. of the Palestinian (?) Jewish Christians, and from the Syriac (sc. Gospel), and particularly from the Hebrew dialect, showing that he himself was a convert from the Hebrews (ἔκ τε τοῦ καθ’ Ἑβραίους εὐαγγελίου καὶ τοῦ Συριακοῦ καὶ ἰδίως ἐκ τῆς Ἑβραΐδος διαλέκτου τινὰ τίθησιν, ἐμφαίνων ἐξ Ἑβραίων ἑαυτὸν πεπιστευκέναι). This can hardly be understood otherwise than as implying that a Syriac version was already in existence. Whether it contained all the four Gospels or only one of them, or Tatian’s Harmony of the Gospels, as Michaelis supposed and as Zahn has recently shown some ground for believing, or whether it contained a primitive Gospel, now perished, cannot be established with certainty.

From the middle of the present century manuscripts of this version have found their way into European libraries in great numbers. Some of these are inestimable. At least ten date from the fifth, and thirty from the sixth century. This is somewhat remarkable when we remember how small a remnant of the Greek manuscripts has been preserved. G. H. Gwilliam is at present engaged on an edition of the Syriac Tetraevangelium for the University of Oxford on the 97basis of forty manuscripts. The task might seem to be an easy one, considering that these Syriac manuscripts display a far greater unanimity in their text than is found in any written in Greek. The difficulty in their case lies in another direction.

Curetonian.

In the year 1842 a Syriac manuscript containing considerable portions of the Gospels was brought from Egypt and deposited in the British Museum. It was afterwards published by Dr. Cureton in 1858 with the title “Remains of a very antient recension of the four Gospels in Syriac hitherto unknown in Europe.” Cureton himself thought he had discovered the original of St. Matthew’s Gospel in this version. While this was easily shown to be a mistake, the question as to the relationship between the Curetonian Syriac and the Peshitto, whether the two texts are independent of each other, or if not, which is the earlier and which the recension, is not yet decided.

Lewis.

It seemed as if the solution of the problem was in sight when fragments of a Syriac palimpsest were discovered on Mount Sinai in February 1892 by Mrs. Lewis and her sister, Mrs. Gibson. These they perceived to be part of a very old manuscript of the Gospels, and Professor Bensly of Cambridge recognised that their text was closely related to that of the Curetonian. (See Plate V.) A second expedition was made to Sinai in the spring of 1893, when the fragments were transcribed by Professor Bensly, F. C. Burkitt, and J. R. Harris. As Bensly died three days after their return, the manuscript was published by the others in 1894, with an introduction by Mrs. Lewis. On a third visit to Sinai this lady completed the work of the triumvirate, and also published an English translation of the whole. How, then, is this Sinai-Syriac or Lewis-Syriac, as it is called, related to the Curetonian and to the Peshitto? The problem becomes more complicated still by the introduction of a fourth factor, the most important of them all.

Tatian.

From early sources it was known that Tatian,^[82] a Syrian and 98a pupil of Justin Martyr, composed a harmony of the Gospels called the Diatessaron—i.e. τὸ διὰ τεσσάρων εὐαγγέλιον, an expression which may be taken either as referring to the four Gospels or as a musical term equivalent to harmony or chord. This Harmony was in use among the Syrians till the fifth century. Theodoret, Bishop of Cyrus, informs us that he destroyed 200 copies of it in his semi-Syriac, semi-Greek diocese.^[83] About the same time Bishop Rabbulas of Edessa (407-435) instructed his presbyters and deacons to see that all the churches possessed and read a copy of the Distinct Gospel—i.e. not mixed or harmonised. The Lewis-Syriac bears this very title, Gospel of the Distinct or Divided, which is found also as the title of Matthew’s Gospel in the Curetonian version. Tatian’s Harmony has not yet been discovered in Syriac, but a Latin Harmony of the Gospels derived from it has long been known, and in 1883 a Harmony in Arabic was published by Ciasca which proves to be a translation from the Syriac made by Ibn et-Tabib (d. 1043) or a recension of it. Again, in 1836 the Armenian version of a Syriac Commentary by Ephraem of Edessa (d. 373) was printed, and translated into Latin in 1876. [Evangelii concordantis expositio facta a S. Ephraemo doctore Syro. In Latinum translata a J. B. Aucher, ed. G. Moesinger. Venetiis.] Finally Theodor Zahn discovered in the works of the Syriac writer Aphraates, who wrote between 337 and 345, quotations which must be derived from this Harmony of Tatian; and isolated quotations from Tatian are also found in later Syriac authors. And so the materials are provided for deciding the question whether or not Tatian made use of an earlier Syriac version in the preparation of his Harmony, and how T^(atian), Syr^cu(reton), Syr^sin and Syr^sch(aaf)[84] are related to each other. The most probable view perhaps is that T is the earliest form in which the Gospel came to Syria, that in Syr^cu and Syr^sin we have two attempts to exhibit T in the form of a version of the separate Gospels which 99were not generally accepted, while Syr^sch actually succeeded and passed into general use.

The interest attaching to this question may be learned from the form in which the text of Matthew i. 16 is given in these witnesses. Syr^sch agrees exactly with our present Greek text, but Syr^cu presents a form which, when translated into Latin, reads, Joseph cui desponsata virgo Maria genuit Jesum Christum. Now, the only Greek manuscripts that present a form corresponding to this are four minuscules, 346, 556, 624 and 626, which differ in this respect even from the other members of the Ferrar Group to which they belong. In these four manuscripts the verse reads, Ἰωσὴφ ᾧ μνηστευθῆσα (sic) παρθένος Μαριὰμ ἐγέννησεν Ἰησοῦν τὸν λεγόμενον Χριστόν. In the Latin, however, this text is represented by a number of the oldest manuscripts, seven at least, one of which omits the word virgo, while two have peperit instead of genuit, and τὸν λεγόμενον is omitted. But in Syr^sin we find: Joseph: Joseph autem cui desponsata (erat) virgo Maria genuit Jesum Christum. The passage is similarly cited in the recently published Dialogue of Timotheus and Aquila,^[85] along with two other forms, thus:—Ἰακὼβ ἐγέννησεν τὸν Ἰωσὴφ τὸν ἄνδρα Μαρίας, ἐξ ἧς ἐγεννήθη Ἰησοῦς ὁ λεγόμενος Χριστὸς, καὶ Ἰωσὴφ ἐγέννησεν τὸν Ἰησοῦν τὸν λεγόμενον Χριστόν.

The exact wording of Tatian can no longer be determined, but it is evident that of these three forms in which the verse is found, only one or none can be the original. If we had no more than our oldest uncials or the great body of our minuscules to go by, no one could have the slightest suspicion that in our Greek text all is not in perfect order. But here, in an old Syriac fragment from the far East, there suddenly appears a reading which is also found in Latin witnesses from the far West, and which is confirmed by four 100solitary Greek manuscripts, written probably in Calabria at the close of the Middle Ages. How are these facts connected, and how do they stand to the other two readings, that of the common Greek text, and that of the Lewis-Syriac? The history of the text of the New Testament presents many such problems.

Philoxenus-Polycarp.

But Syrian scholars were not satisfied with those forms of the New Testament already mentioned. In the year of Alexander 819 (A.D. 508),^[86] a new and much more literal version was made from the Greek at the desire of Xenaia (Philoxenus), Bishop of Mabug^[87] (488-518), by his rural Bishop Polycarp. Part of this version was published in England by Pococke in 1630—viz. the four Epistles in the Antilegomena not included in the Peshitto, 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, and Jude. Unfortunately this edition was prepared from a somewhat inaccurate manuscript, which is now in the Bodleian Library. The later European editions of the Syriac New Testament took the text of these Epistles from Pococke’s edition, which was also the one used for critical editions of the Greek text. In 1886 Isaac H. Hall published a phototype edition of another manuscript of this version (the Williams MS.), the property of a private gentleman in America, and corrected from it the text of the Syriac New Testament issued by the American Bible Society. The other parts of this version have not yet been found, but the same American scholar thought he discovered the Gospels in a ninth century manuscript belonging to the Syrian Protestant College in Beirut, and deposited in the Library of the Union Theological Seminary in New York.^[88] Bernstein thought he made the same discovery in 1853 in a manuscript belonging to the Angelica Library in Florence.

Thomas of Heraclea.

On the basis of four manuscripts sent from Diarbeker in 1736 to Dr. Gloucester Ridley, Joseph White published, 101between 1778 and 1803,^[89] a version which he designated by the name of Versio Philoxenia, and which still passes under this title. But this so-called Philoxenian version is not the identical version made for Philoxenus by Polycarp, but a revision undertaken by Thomas of Heraclea (Charkel), in the year 616-7. This revision was made at Alexandria with the object of making the Syriac text represent the Greek as closely as possible, even to the order of the words and the insertion of the article. The critical symbols used by Homeric commentators, the asterisk and the obelus, as well as numerous marginal notes, were employed to indicate the various readings found in the manuscripts. And it is very remarkable to observe that there were manuscripts in Alexandria at the beginning of the seventh century which were regarded by Thomas of Harkel as particularly well authenticated, but which deviate in a marked degree from the bulk of our present manuscripts, and which, especially in the Acts, agree almost entirely with Codex D, which occupies so singular a position among Greek manuscripts. A new edition of the Syriac text is necessary before any further use can be made of it in the criticism of the New Testament. Mr. Deane set himself to this task, going on the basis of sixteen manuscripts in England alone, but unfortunately he was unable to bring it to a conclusion.

Apocalypse.

The Apocalypse was first edited in 1627 by de Dieu at Leyden, from a manuscript that had been in the possession of Scaliger. It is found in a few other manuscripts, in one, e.g., that was transcribed about this same time for Archbishop Ussher from a Maronite manuscript at Kenobin on Mount Lebanon. It is not found in the Syriac New Testament, but the later editions insert it from de Dieu. In Apoc. viii. 13, instead of “an eagle in the midst of heaven” (ἐν μεσουρανήματι), the Syriac translator took it as “in the 102midst with a bloody tail” (μεσος, ουρα, αιμα). Another Syriac version, in which this error is avoided, was discovered in 1892 by J. Gwynn in a Codex belonging to Lord Crawford, and published by him as the first book printed in Syriac at the Dublin University Press. Still more interesting is it to know that in a manuscript, once the property of Julius Mohl, and now in Cambridge, both the so-called Epistles of Clement are found after the Catholic Epistles. This manuscript, part of which was published by Bensly in 1889 (see above, p. 79), contains a note at the end to the effect that it was derived, so far as the Pauline Epistles are concerned, from the copy of Pamphilus.^[90]

About the same time and in the same region, Paul of Tella translated one of the best Greek manuscripts of the Old Testament into Syriac almost as literally as Thomas of Harkel, thereby doing immense service in the construction of the Syriac Hexapla, a work of inestimable value for the textual criticism of the Old Testament.

Evangeliarium Hierosolymitanum.

Mention may be made here of another Syriac version of the New Testament, the so-called Jerusalem or Palestinian Syriac (Syr^hr or Syr^hier). This version, hitherto known almost solely from an Evangeliarium in the Vatican of the year 1030, was edited by Count Miniscalchi Erizzo at Verona in 1861-4, and an excellent edition was published in 1892 in Bibliothecae Syriacae a Paulo de Lagarde collectae quae ad philologiam sacram pertinent. And now not only have two fresh manuscripts of this Evangeliarium been discovered on Mount Sinai by J. R. Harris and Mrs. Lewis, and edited by Mrs. Lewis and Mrs. Gibson, but fragments of the Acts and 103Pauline Epistles have also been found and published, as well as portions of the Old Testament and other Church literature.^[91] The dialect in which these fragments are written is quite different from ordinary Syriac, and may, perhaps, bear a close resemblance to that in which Jesus spoke to His disciples. At what time and in what region this entire literature took its rise is not yet determined with certainty. The Greek text on which the Evangeliarium is based has many peculiarities. In Matthew xxvii. 17, e.g., the robber is called Jesus Barabbas, or, rather, Jesus Barrabbas, a fact known to Origen, but now recorded only in a few Greek minuscules by the first or second hand.

What used to be called the Versio Karkaphensis or Montana is not really a version, but merely the Massoretic work of a monastery school intended to preserve the proper spelling and pronunciation of the text of the Bible.

No other branch of the Church has taken such pains as the Syrian, faithfully to transmit and to circulate the Gospel. From the mountains of Lebanon and Kurdistan, from the plains of Mesopotamia and the coast of Malabar, and even from distant China there have come into the libraries of Europe Syriac manuscripts of the utmost value for the textual criticism of the New Testament.

Literature on the Syriac Versions:—

J. G. Christian Adler, Novi Testamenti Versiones Syriacae, Simplex, Philoxeniana, et Hierosolymitana. Denuo examinatae et ad fidem codicum manu scriptorum ... novis observationibus atque tabulis aere incisis illustratae. Hafniae, pp. viii. 206. With eight Plates. 1789, 4to. For the complete list of editions up to 1888, see my Litteratura Syriaca (Syr. Gr., 2nd edition, pp. 20 ff.). Appendix thereto in Urt., 227 ff.; R. Duval, La Littérature Syriaque. Paris, 1899, pp. 42-67; TiGr., 813-822; Scrivener, fourth edition, ii. 6-40, with the help of Gwilliam and Deane; The Printed Editions of the Syriac New Testament, in the Church Quarterly Review, 1888, 104July, 257-297; G. H. Gwilliam, in the Studia Biblica et Ecclesiastica (Oxford), ii. 1890, iii. 1891; F. C. Conybeare, The growth of the Peshitta Version of the New Testament, in the American Journal of Theology, 1897, iv. 883-912; Burkitt, in the Journal of Theological Studies, i. (July 1900), 569 ff., referring to his forthcoming edition of the Evangelion da-Mepharreshe, says that he has had to go over the Gospel quotations of St. Ephraem, and closes by saying, “I confess that I am unconvinced that what we call the New Testament Peshitta was in existence in St. Ephraem’s day, and I believe that we owe both its production and victorious reception to the organizing energy of the Great Rabbula, Bishop of Edessa from 411 to 435 A.D.”

1. Till Gwilliam’s edition of the Gospels appears, which has been promised since 1891, the best edition will be the Editio Princeps of Widmanstadt, 1555; then that of Leusden and Schaaf, Novum Domini nostri Jesu Christi Testamentum Syriacum cum versione latina cura et studio J. Leusden et C. Schaaf editum. Ad omnes editiones diligenter recensitum et variis lectionibus magno labore collectis adornatum. Lugd. Bat., 1709, 4to. Acc. Schaaf, Lexicon Syriacum concordantiale. The text reprinted by Jones at Oxford, 1805; the editions of the London Bible Society, 1816 and 1826, and better still, the Syriac and New-Syriac editions of the American Mission in Urmia, 1846, and of the American Bible Society of New York, 1868, 1874, and frequently (with the Nestorian vocalisation). An edition is promised from the Jesuit Press at Beyruth, Nouveau Testament Syriaque en petits caractères, d’après plusieurs manuscrits anciens, éd. par le P. L. Cheikho.

The New Testament part of the Peshitto has been very much neglected in the present century. On the O.T., investigations, chiefly in the form of dissertations on most of the books, have been published, establishing the relation of the Syriac to the Massoretic text, the Septuagint, and the Targum. But almost nothing of this sort has been done for the N.T., at least in Germany, since the time of Michaelis and Löhlein. The question has never once been taken up how many translators’ hands can be distinguished in the N.T.

J. D. Michaelis, Curae in Versionem Syriacam Act. Apost. cum consectariis criticis de indole, cognationibus et usu versionis Syriacae tabularum Novi Foederis. Göttingen, 1755. C. L. E. Löhlein, Syrus Epistolae ad Ephesios interpres in causa critica denuo examinatus, Erlangen, 1835.

2. Cureton’s Remains (1858) is now out of print. Till Burkitt’s 105new edition appears its place will be taken by Baethgen’s Retranslation into Greek (Evangelienfragmente. Der griechische Text des Curetonschen Syrers wiederhergestellt, Leipzig, 1885); and more especially by Albert Bonus’s Collatio codicis Lewisiani rescripti evangeliorum Syriacorum cum codice Curetoniano, Oxford, 1896; and by Carl Holzhey’s Der neuentdeckte Codex Sinaiticus untersucht. Mit einem vollständigen Verzeichnis der Varianten des Codex Sinaiticus und Codex Curetonianus, Munich, 1896. See A. Bonus, The Sinaitic Palimpsest and the Curetonian Syriac, in the Expository Times, May 1895, p. 380 ff. The publications of T. R. Crowfoot, Fragmenta Evangelica, Pars I., II., 1870, 1872, and Observations on the Collations in Greek of Cureton’s Syriac Fragments, 1872, contain useful material, but there are a good many mistakes.

3. The Editio Princeps of the Lewis text is, of course, that of Bensly, Harris, and Burkitt, The Four Gospels in Syriac, transcribed from the Sinaitic Palimpsest ... Cambridge, 1894. To this must be added its complement by Mrs. Lewis, Some Pages of the Four Gospels retranscribed (with or without an English translation), London, 1896; further, Last Gleanings from the Sinai Palimpsest, Expositor, Aug. 1897, pp. 111-119; also, An Omission from the Text of the Sinai Palimpsest, Expositor, Dec. 1897, p. 472. On the discovery of the manuscript, see Mrs. Gibson, How the Codex was found, ... Cambridge, 1893, and Mrs. Lewis, In the shadow of Sinai, ... Cambridge, 1898; also Mrs. Bensly, Our Journey to Sinai, ... With a chapter on the Sinai Palimpsest. London, 1896. See also Mrs. Lewis, The Earlier Home of the Sinaitic Palimpsest, Expositor, June 1900, pp. 415-421. The text has been translated into German by Adalbert Merx, who has added a brief but valuable critical discussion. Berlin (Reimer), 1897. The second part, comprising the commentary, has not yet appeared. See also Gwilliam’s notice of the editio princeps in the Expository Times, Jan. 1895, p. 157 ff.

4. On Tatian, the latest and best is Zahn, Evangelienharmonie, PRE³, v. (1898), 653 ff.; also his Forschungen, i. (1881), Tatian’s Diatessaron, ii. p. 286 ff. (1883), iv. (1891); Gesch. des Kanons, i. 387-414, ii. 530-556. J. H. Hill, The earliest Life of Christ ever compiled from the Four Gospels, being the Diatessaron of Tatian (c. A.D. 160), literally translated from the Arabic Version. Edinburgh, 1893. J. R. Harris, The Diatessaron of Tatian, a Preliminary Study. Cambridge, 1890. The Diatessaron, a Reply, in the Contemporary 106Review, Aug. 1895, in answer to W. R. Cassels, in the Nineteenth Century, April 1895; also by the same writer, Fragments of the Commentary of Ephrem Syrus upon the Diatessaron. London, 1895.... J. H. Hill, A Dissertation on the Gospel Commentary of S. Ephrem the Syrian ... Edinburgh, 1896. J. A. Robinson, Tatian’s Diatessaron and a Dutch Harmony, in the Academy, 24th March 1894. Hope W. Hogg, The Diatessaron of Tatian, with introduction and translation, in the Ante-Nicene Library. Additional Volume ... edited by Allan Menzies. Edinburgh, 1897, pp. 33-138. W. Elliott, Tatian’s Diatessaron and the Modern Critics. Plymouth, 1888. I. H. Hall, A Pair of Citations from the Diatessaron, in the Journal of Biblical Literature, x. 2 (1891), 153-155. J. Goussen, Pauca Fragmenta genuina Diatessaroniana, appended to the Apocalypsis S. Joannis Versio Sahidica, 1895. See also Bäumer in the Literarischer Handweiser, 1890, 153-169; the article Tatian in the Encyclopædia Britannica, and Hastings’ Bible Dictionary, vol. ii. p. 697 f.

5. On the later Syriac versions, see Urt., 228, 236 f.; Gwynn, The older Syriac Version of the four Minor Catholic Epistles, Hermathena, No. xvi. (vol. vii.), 1890, 281-314. Merx, Die in der Peschito fehlenden Briefe des Neuen Testamentes in arabischer der Philoxeniana entstammender Uebersetzung ... Zeitschrift für Assyriologie, xii. 240 ff., 348 ff., xiii. 1-28. Bensly, The Harklean Version of the Epistle to the Hebrews, ... Cambridge, 1889. In this edition will be found the subscription mentioned above, connecting the manuscript with that of Pamphilus. See Addenda, p. xv.

6. On the Jerusalem Evangeliarium, see Urt., 228, 237. Zahn, Forschungen, i. 329 ff. Lagarde, Mitteilungen, i. 111, iv. 328, 340. A. de Lagarde, Erinnerungen an P. de Lagarde, p. 112 ff. Lewis and Gibson, The Palestinian Syriac Lectionary of the Gospels re-edited from two Sinai MSS. and from P. de Lagarde’s edition of the Evangeliarium Hierosolymitanum, London, 1899. The Lectionary published in the Studia Sinaitica, vi., contains, in the N.T., passages from Acts, Romans, 1 and 2 Cor., Gal., Ephes., Philip., Col., 1 Thess., 1 and 2 Tim., Heb., James. See notice in the Expository Times, Jan. 1898, p. 190 ff. The Liturgy of the Nile, published by G. Margoliouth, 1896 (Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Oct. 1896, 677-731, and also published separately), contains Acts xvi. 16-34. See also Woods, The New Syriac Fragments in the Expository Times, Nov. 1893.

107

(b.) LATIN VERSIONS.

Jerome.

The name most closely associated with the Latin Versions of the New Testament is that of Jerome (Hieronymus). This scholar was born at Stridon, on the borders of Dalmatia,^[92] about the year 345, and educated at Rome. After leading for some time a hermit life in Palestine, Jerome returned to Rome, and it was during his residence there, in the year 382, that he was urged by Pope Damasus to undertake a revision of the Latin version of the New Testament then in use. This he did, and in 383 sent the Pope, who died in the following year, the first instalment of the work, the Four Gospels, accompanied with a letter beginning thus:—“Thou compellest me to make a new work out of an old; after so many copies of the Scriptures have been dispersed throughout the whole world, I am now to occupy the seat of the arbiter, as it were, and seeing they disagree, to decide which of them accords with the truth of the Greek; a pious task, verily, yet a perilous presumption, to pass judgment on others and oneself to be judged by all.” He anticipates that everyone, no matter who, learned or ignorant, that takes up a Bible and finds a discrepancy between it and the usual text will straightway condemn him as an impious falsifier who presumed to add to or alter or correct the ancient Scriptures. But he comforts himself with the reflection that it is the High Pontiff himself that has laid this task upon him, and that the testimony of his jealous opponents themselves proves that discrepancies are an indication of error (verum non esse quod variat, etiam maledicorum testimonio comprobatur); for if they tell us we are to rest our faith on the Latin exemplars, they must first say which, because there are almost as many versions as manuscripts (tot enim sunt exemplaria paene quot codices); if it is to be the majority of these, why not rather go back to 108the Greek original which has been badly rendered by incompetent translators (a vitiosis interpretibus male edita), made worse instead of better by the presumption of unskilful correctors (a praesumptoribus imperitis emendata perversius), and added to or altered by sleepy scribes (a librariis dormitantibus aut addita sunt aut mutata). In a letter to his learned friend Marcella, written in the year 384, he gives instances of what he complains of, citing, e.g., Romans xii. 11, where tempori servientes had hitherto been read instead of domino servientes (καιρῷ instead of κυρίῳ), and 1 Tim. v. 19, “against an elder receive not an accusation,” where the qualifying clause, “except before two or three witnesses,” was dropped, and also 1 Tim. i. 15, iii. 1, where humanus sermo was given in place of fidelis. In all three instances, our most recent critical editions decide in favour of Jerome, against the Old Latin Version. In the last instance cited, we know of only one Latin-Greek manuscript that has ἀνθρώπινος instead of πιστός, and that only in c. iii. 1, viz. D*. Jerome accordingly issued an improved version of the New Testament, beginning with the Gospels. For this purpose he made a careful comparison of old Greek manuscripts (codicum Graecorum emendata conlatione sed veterum). In his version he was also careful only to make an alteration when a real change of meaning was necessary, retaining in all other cases the familiar Latin wording. The Gospels were in the order which has been the prevailing one since his day—Matthew, Mark, Luke, John.

Augustine.

We learn from the great Church Teacher Augustine, who lived in Africa about the same time (354-430), that there was an endless variety and multitude of translators (latinorum interpretum infinita varietas, interpretum numerositas). He tells us that while it was possible to count the number of those who had translated the Bible—i.e. the Old Testament—from Hebrew into Greek, the Latin translators were innumerable; that in the early age of the Christian faith (primis fidei temporibus), no sooner did anyone gain possession of a Greek 109Codex, and believe himself to have any knowledge of both languages, than he made bold to translate it (ausus est interpretari). |Itala.| The advice he himself gives is to prefer the Italic version to the others, as being the most faithful and intelligible (in ipsis autem interpretationibus Itala praeferatur; nam est verborum tenacior cum perspicuitate sententiae. De Doctrina Christiana, ii. 14, 15). |Vulgate.| On the ground of this passage, the pre-Jeromic versions have been comprehended under the title of the Itala, as distinguished from Jerome’s own work, which is called the Vulgate, seeing that it became the prevailing text in the Church of the Middle Ages. By the Itala, Augustine himself, however, must have referred to a particular version, and, according to the usage of that time, the word cannot mean anything else than a version originating in or prevalent in Italy—i.e. the North of Italy, what is called Lombardy. It is not difficult to understand how it came to pass that Augustine used such a version in Africa, seeing that he was a pupil of Ambrose, Bishop of Milan. In recent times Burkitt has revived the opinion that by Itala Augustine means neither more nor less than Jerome’s Revision of the Gospels. He demonstrates that Augustine’s De Consensu, written about the year 400, is based on Jerome’s revised text. In this, Zahn^[93] agrees with him on grounds that admit of no question so far as this point is concerned. But Wordsworth-White^[94] will not admit the inference that Augustine must have meant this Revision when he spoke of Itala in the year 397, seeing that in his letter to Jerome,^[95] written in 403, he thanks God for the interpretation of the Gospel, “quasi de opere recenter cognito,” while in his earlier letters to Jerome^[96] he makes no mention of it: “quod mirandum esset si in opere ante sex annos publici iuris facto eam collaudasset.”^[97]

110(1.) Latin Versions before Jerome.

Old Latin Texts.

Where, when, and by whom was the New Testament, or at least were parts of it, first translated into Latin? From the passage in Augustine quoted above, we learn that it was done by all and sundry in the very earliest times of the Christian faith. Rome used to be regarded as the place where the Latin versions took their rise. But it was observed that Greek was very commonly employed as the written language at Rome, especially among Christians. The first Bishops of Rome have pure Greek names, and even the first representative of the Roman Church with a Latin name, the Clement that wrote the Epistle to the Corinthians about the year 95, even he wrote in Greek. Moreover, when the relics of the Old Latin Bibles began to be examined, it was observed that their language, both in vocabulary and grammar, entirely agreed with that found in African writers of that age, and in some things agreed with these alone. |African Latin.| It is, of course, a fact that the majority of the writers of that age known to us are African. Till quite recently, therefore, it was held to be tolerably well made out that the birthplace of the Latin Bible is to be found in Africa. It was regarded by many as equally certain, that in spite of the statements of Jerome and Augustine, and in spite too of the various forms in which the Old Latin Bible now exists, these all proceed from a common origin, or at most from two sources, so that it was not quite correct to speak of a “multitude of translators” in the very earliest times. The settlement of this question is rendered more difficult by the fact that, while the extant copies of the pre-Jeromic Bible are undoubtedly very early, they are few in number, and for the most part mutilated. The reason of this is not far to seek. For, as time went on and Jerome’s new version came to be more and more exclusively used, manuscripts of the earlier version lost their 111value, and were the more frequently used for palimpsests and book covers. One has also to take into account how liable the text of both was to be corrupted, either by the copyist of an Old Latin Bible inserting in the margin, or even interpolating in the text, various passages from Jerome’s translation that seemed to him to be a decided improvement, or conversely, by the scribe who should have written the new rendering involuntarily permitting familiar expressions to creep in from the old. It is estimated that we have about 8000 manuscripts of Jerome’s recension, of which 2228 have been catalogued by Gregory. Samuel Berger, the most thorough investigator in this field, examined 800 manuscripts in Paris alone. But on the other hand, only 38 manuscripts of the Old Latin Version of the New Testament are known to exist. The credit of collecting the relics of these pre-Jeromic versions of the Old and New Testament, so far as they were accessible at that time, belongs to Peter Sabatier the Maurist (Rheims, 1743, 3 vols. folio).

In critical editions of the New Testament the manuscripts of the pre-Jeromic versions are indicated by the small letters of the Roman alphabet. They are the following:—

1. Gospels.

a. Vercellensis: according to a tradition recorded in a document of the eighth century this manuscript was written by Eusebius, Bishop of Vercelli, who died in the year 370 or 371. Recent scholars, however, date it somewhat later. It is written on purple with silver letters. The order of the Gospels is that found in most of these Old Latin MSS.—viz. Matthew, John, Luke, Mark. The manuscript is defective in several places.

The codex was edited by Irico in 1748, and by Bianchini in 1749 along with some of the others in his Evangeliarium Quadruplex. This latter edition was reprinted, with some inaccuracies, in Migne’s Patrologia Latina, vol. xii. The manuscript was again edited by 112Belsheim; Codex Vercellensis. Quatuor Evangelia ante Hieronymum latine translata ex reliquiis Codicis Vercellensis, saeculo ut videtur quarto scripti, et ex Editione Iriciana principe denuo ededit (sic) Jo. Belsheim. Christiania, 1894.

b. Veronensis: of the fourth or fifth century, also written with silver on purple. In this Codex, John vii. 44-viii. 12 has been erased. The manuscript is defective.

Edited by Bianchini (see above). A Spagnolo, L’Evangeliario Purpureo Veronese. Nota (Torino, 1899. Estratta dagli Atti dell’ Accademia Reale delle Scienze di Torino).

c. Colbertinus: in Paris, written in the twelfth century, but still containing the Old Latin text in the Gospels, though exhibiting Jerome’s version in other parts.

Edited by Sabatier, and again by Belsheim; Codex Colbertinus Parisiensis. Quatuor Evangelia ante Hieronymum latine translata post editionem Petri Sabatier cum ipso codice collatam denuo edidit Jo. Belsheim. Christiania, 1888.

d. The Latin part of Codex D; see p. 64 ff.

e. Palatinus: of the fourth or fifth century, written like a b f i j on purple with gold and silver letters: now in Vienna, with one leaf in Dublin.

Two other fragments were published in 1893 by Hugo Linke from a transcript made for Bianchini in 1762. The entire codex was edited by Belsheim, Christiania, 1896. See von Dobschütz in the LCbl., 1896, 28.

f. Brixianus, of the sixth century, in Brescia. In their new edition of the Vulgate, Wordsworth and White printed the text of this manuscript underneath that of Jerome for comparison’s sake as probably containing the text most nearly resembling that on which Jerome based his recension. But see Burkitt’s Note in the Journal of Theological Studies, I. i. (Oct. 1899), 129-134, and the note to p. 139 in Addenda.

ff₁. Corbeiensis I., contains the Gospel according to Matthew alone. The manuscript formerly belonged to the Monastery 113of Corbey, near Amiens, and with others was transferred to St. Petersburg during the French Revolution.

ff₂. Corbeiensis II., written in the sixth century and now in Paris: contains the Gospels with several lacunæ.

On Belsheim’s editions of ff₁ and ff₂ (1881 and 1887), see E. Ranke in the ThLz., 1887, col. 566, and S. Berger, Bull. Crit., 1891, 302 f.

g₁. Sangermanensis I., of the ninth century, in Paris, exhibits a mixed text. The manuscript was used by Stephen for his Latin Bible of 1538.

g₂. Sangermanensis II., written in an Irish hand of the tenth century, has a mixed text: in Paris (Lat. 13069).

h. Claromontanus, of the fourth or fifth century, now in the Vatican: has the Old Latin text in Matthew only. The manuscript is defective at the beginning down to Matt. iii. 15 and also from Matt. xiv. 33-xviii. 12.

Edited by Mai in his Scriptorum Veterum Nova Collectio, iii. 257-288, and by Belsheim, Christiania, 1892.

i. Vindobonensis, of the seventh century, contains fragments of Luke and Mark written on purple with silver and gold.

Edited by Belsheim, Codex Vindobonensis membranaceus purpureus ... antiquissimae evangeliorum Lucae et Marci translationis Latinae fragmenta edidit Jo. Belsheim. Lipsiae, 1885 (cum tabula).

j (z in TiGr.). Saretianus or Sarzannensis, of the fifth century, contains 292 verses from John written on purple. The manuscript was discovered in 1872 in the Church of Sarezzano, near Tortona, and is not yet completely edited.

Compare G. Amelli, Un antichissimo codice biblico Latino purpureo conservato nella chiesa di Sarezzano presso Tortona. Milan, 1872.

k. Bobiensis, of the fifth century, is perhaps the most important of the Old Latin manuscripts, but unfortunately contains only fragments of Matthew and Mark. It is said to have belonged to St. Columban, the founder of the monastery of Bobbio, who died in the year 615. It is now preserved at 114Turin. See Burkitt on Mark xv. 34 in Codex Bobiensis in the Journal of Theological Studies, i. 2 (Jan. 1900), p. 278 f.

l. Rehdigeranus, in Breslau, purchased in Venice by Thomas von Rehdiger in 1569. Matthew i. 1-ii. 15 and a good deal of John wanting.

Edited by H. Fr. Haase, Breslau, 1865, 1866: Evangeliorum quattuor vetus latina interpretatio ex codice Rehdigerano nunc primum edita.

m. Does not represent any particular manuscript and should properly be omitted here. It indicates the Liber de divinis scripturis sive Speculum, a work mistakenly ascribed to Augustine, consisting of a collection of proof-passages (testimonia) from the Old and New Testaments. All the books of the latter are made use of except Philemon, Hebrews, and 3 John, but the Epistle to the Laodicæans is cited among the number.

Fragmenta Novi Testamenti in translatione latina antehieronymiana ex libro qui vocatur Speculum eruit et ordine librorum Novi Testamenti exposuit J. Belsheim. Christiania, 1899.

n o p. Are fragments at St. Gall: published in the Old Latin Biblical Texts, see below, p. 131 f.

n. Written in the fifth or sixth century, has probably been in the Library at St. Gall since its foundation. It contains portions of Matthew and Mark, with John xix. 13-42.

o. Written in the seventh century, possibly to take the place of the last leaf of n, which is wanting, contains Mark xvi. 14-20.

p. Two leaves of an Irish missal written in the seventh or eighth century.

a₂. Is part of the same manuscript as n. It consists of a leaf containing Luke xi. 11-29 and xiii. 16-34. It was found in the Episcopal archives at Chur, and is preserved in the Rhætisches Museum there.

q. Monacensis, written in the sixth or seventh century, came originally from Freising. Published in the Old Latin Biblical Texts.

115r or r₁ and r₂. Usserianus I. and II., are both in Dublin. The former is written in an Irish hand of the seventh century, and has several lacunæ. r₂ belongs to the ninth or tenth century and has an Old Latin text in Matthew resembling that of r₁. It shows affinity with Jerome’s text in Mark, Luke, and John, of which, however, only five leaves remain.

Edited by T. K. Abbott, Evangeliorum versio antehieronymiana ex codice Usseriano (Dublinensi), adjecta collatione codicis Usseriani alterius. Accedit versio Vulgata.... Dublin, 1884, 2 Parts.

s. Four leaves with portions of Luke, written in the sixth century. The fragments came originally from Bobbio, and are now in the Ambrosian Library at Milan. Published in the Old Latin Biblical Texts.

t. A palimpsest very difficult to decipher, containing portions of the first three chapters of Mark, written in the fifth century, and now at Berne. Published in the Old Latin Biblical Texts.

v. Bound in the cover of a volume at Vienna entitled, Pactus Legis Ripuariæ: exhibits John xix. 27-xx. 11. Published in the Old Latin Biblical Texts.

aur. Aureus or Holmiensis, written in the seventh or eighth century, exhibits the Gospels entire, with the exception of Luke xxi. 8-30. An inscription in old English states that the manuscript was purchased from the heathen (the Danes?) by Alfred the Alderman for Christ Church, Canterbury, when Alfred was King and Ethelred Archbishop (871-889). It was afterwards in Madrid, and is now at Stockholm. It is really a Vulgate text with an admixture of Old Latin readings. Published by Belsheim in 1878.

δ. Is the interlinear Latin version of Δ (see p. 72), and is interesting on account of its alternative readings given in almost every verse—e.g. uxorem vel conjugem for γυναῖκα, Matt. i. 20. Compare Harris, The Codex Sangallensis, Cambridge, 1891.

On the Prolegomena found in many Old Latin and Vulgate manuscripts 116of the Gospels, see Peter Corssen, Monarchianische Prologe zu den vier Evangelien. Leipzig, 1896 (TU., xv. 1). This has been supplemented by von Dobschütz’s Prolog zur Apostelgeschichte. See also Jülicher in the GGA., 1896, xi. 841-851. J. S. in the Revue Critique, 1897, vii. 135 f. H. Holtzmann in the Th. Lz., 1897, xii. col. 231 ff. A. Hilgenfeld, Altchristliche Prolegomena zu den Evangelien in the ZfwTh., 1897, iii. 432-444.

2. Acts.

d m As for the Gospels.

e. The Latin text of E. See above, p. 75.

g. Gigas Holmiensis, the immense manuscript of the entire Latin Bible preserved at Stockholm. The text is Old Latin only in the Acts and Apocalypse, the rest of the New Testament exhibiting Jerome’s version. The manuscript was brought to Sweden from Prague as a prize of war in 1648, along with the Codex Argenteus.

The Acts and Apocalypse were edited by Belsheim, Christiania, 1879. On this see O. v. Gebhardt in the ThLz., 1880, col. 185. A new collation of this manuscript was made for W.-W. by H. Karlsson in 1891.

g₂. In Milan, is part of a Lectionary written in the tenth or eleventh century, and contains the pericope for St. Stephen’s day, Acts vi. 8-vii. 2, vii. 51-viii. 4.

Published by Ceriani in his Monumenta Sacra et Profana, i. 2, pp. 127, 128. Milan, 1866.

h. Floriacensis, a palimpsest formerly belonging to the Abbey of Fleury on the Loire, and now in Paris, written probably in the seventh century. It contains fragments of the Apocalypse, Acts, 1 and 2 Peter, and 1 John, in this order. (Tischendorf’s reg.: Blass’s f.)

The latest and best edition is that of S. Berger: Le Palimpseste de Fleury. Paris, 1889.

p₂, written in the thirteenth century, exhibits a text with 117an admixture of Old Latin readings in the Acts only. The manuscript came originally from Perpignan, and is now in Paris, No. 321. It was used by Blass.

Published by Berger: Un ancien texte latin des Actes des Apôtres, etc. Paris, 1895. See von Dobschütz in the ThLz., 1896, 4; Haussleiter in the Th. Lbl., no. 9; Schmiedel in the L. Cbl., no. 33; E. Beurlier, Bull. Crit., 1896, 32, p. 623.

s₂. Bobiensis, a palimpsest of the fifth or sixth century at Vienna, containing fragments of Acts xxiii., xxv.-xxviii., and of James and 1 Peter.

x₁. Written in the seventh or eighth century, contains the Acts with the exception of xiv. 26-xv. 32. The manuscript is preserved at Oxford and is not completely published.

w. Is the symbol given by Blass to a paper manuscript of the New Testament written, it seems, in Bohemia in the fifteenth century, and now at Wernigerode. In the main it exhibits Jerome’s text even to a greater extent than p, but preserves elements of the Old Latin, particularly in the latter half of the Acts. The mixture is similar to that observed in the Provençal New Testament,^[98] which is derived from a Latin manuscript of this nature, and to that in the pre-Lutheran German Bible. (See Urt., p. 127 f.)

On Acts, see especially P. Corssen, Der Cyprianische Text der Acta Apostolorum. Berlin, 1892.

3. Catholic Epistles.

h m s. As above.

ff. Corbeiensis, at St. Petersburg, of the tenth century, contains the Epistle of James.

Edited by Belsheim in the Theologisk Tidsskrift for den evangelisk-lutherske Kirke i Norge (N.S. Vol. ix. Part 2); also by J. Wordsworth, The Corbey St. James, etc., in Studia Biblica, i. pp. 113-150. Oxford, 1885.

118q. Written in the seventh century, and preserved at Munich, contains fragments of 1 John, and of 1 and 2 Peter. The text exhibits the passage of the Three Heavenly Witnesses in 1 John v., but verse 7 follows verse 8.

Published by Ziegler in 1877, Bruchstücke einer vorhieronymianischen Uebersetzung der Petrusbriefe.

4. Pauline Epistles.

m. As for the Gospels.

d e f g. The Latin versions of the Greek Codices D E F G.

gue. Guelferbytanus, of the sixth century, contains fragments of Romans cc. xi.-xv., found in the Gothic palimpsest at Wolfenbüttel. See p. 69.

Published by Tischendorf in his Anecdota Sacra et Profana, 1855, pp. 153-158. See Burkitt, in the Journal of Theological Studies, i. 1 (Oct. 1899), p. 134, and compare the note to p. 139 in the Addenda, p. xv.

r. Written in the fifth or sixth century, came originally from Freising, and is now at Munich: contains portions of Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, 1 Timothy, and Hebrews.

Ziegler, Italafragmente der paulinischen Briefe. Marburg, 1876. Wölfflin, Neue Bruchstücke der Freisinger Itala (Münchener Sitzungsberichte, 1893, ii. 253-280).

r₂. Also at Munich, a single leaf, with part of Phil. iv. and of 1 Thess. i.

r₃. In the Benedictine Abbey of Göttweih on the Danube: fragments of Romans v. and vi. and of Galatians iv. and v., written on leaves used as a book cover.

Published by Rönsch in the ZfwTh., xxii. (1879), pp. 234-238.

x₂. At Oxford, of the ninth century, contains the Pauline Epistles: defective from Heb. xi. 34-xiii. 25.

See also Fr. Zimmer, Der Galaterbrief im altlateinischen Text, als Grundlage für einen textkritischen Apparat der Vetus Latina in the 119Theologische Studien und Skizzen aus Ostpreussen. Königsberg, i. (1887), pp. 1-81.

5. Apocalypse.

The only manuscripts are m as for the Gospels, and g and h as for the Acts, h exhibits only fragments of cc. i. and ii., viii. and ix., xi. and xii., and xiv.-xvi.

For the Old Latin Biblical Texts edited by Wordsworth and White, see below, p. 131.

Latin Fathers.

On account of the small number of these manuscripts the quotations of the Latin Fathers are valuable, especially those of Cyprian of Carthage,^[99] and after them the recently discovered citations in Priscillian, who was the first to suffer death as a heretic in the year 385. In the Apocalypse we have the quotations of Primasius, Bishop of Hadrumet (ca. 550), who used in his commentary on the Apocalypse not only his own Old Latin Bible but also a revised version the same as that used by the African Donatist Tyconius. In attempting to classify these witnesses it was found that the text of certain manuscripts coincided with that of the Bible used by Cyprian—viz., in the Gospels k especially, in Acts h, and in the Apocalypse Primasius and h. This family has accordingly been designated the African.

Tertullian, a still earlier African Father, undoubtedly refers to the existence of a Latin Version in his time, but the quotations found in his Latin works cannot be taken into account, for this reason, that in citing the New Testament he seems to have made an independent translation from the Greek for his immediate purpose.^[100]

120As for the quotations in Augustine, they are found to resemble the text of f and q in the Gospels, particularly the former, and that of q, r, and r₃ in the Epistles. To this group, therefore, the name Italian has been given. It has, however, been deemed necessary to regard this Italian family as being itself a revised and smoother form of a still earlier version styled the European, which is thought to be represented by g, g₂, and s in the Acts, by ff in the Epistles, and by g in the Apocalypse.

Old Latin Texts.

As illustrating the way in which the various forms deviate from each other, take the text of Luke xxiv., verses 4, 5, 11, and 13 as exhibited by a b c d e f and the Vulgate (vg).

v. 4.—All the seven agree in the opening words, Et factum est dum; but after that there follows:—

(1) stuperent a c, mente consternatae essent b, vg; mente consternatae sunt e, aporiarentur d, haesitarent f.

(2) de hoc a c f, de facto b, de eo d, de isto e, vg.

(3) ecce a c d f, vg; et ecce b e.

(4) viri duo a f, duo viri b c d e, vg.

(5) adstiterunt a f, astiterunt c, adsisterunt d, steterunt b e, vg.

(6) iuxta illas a f, secus illas b c e, vg; eis d.

(7) in veste fulgenti a f, vg; in veste fulgente b c e, in amictu scoruscanti d.

(8) v. 5: timore autem adprehensae inclinantes faciem ad terram a; cum timerent autem et declinarent vultum in terram b e f, vg; conterritae autem inclinaverunt faciem in terram c; in timore autem factae inclinaverunt vultus suos in terra d.

(9) v. 11: et visa sunt a b c (visae) e f, vg; et paruerunt d.

(10) illis a, ante illos b, vg; apud illos c e, in conspectu eorum d, coram illos f.

121(11) tanquam a, sicut b e, vg; quasi c d f.

(12) delira a, deliramentum b e f, vg; (b spells -lirr-, and f -ler-), deliramenta c, derissus d.

(13) v. 13: municipium a, castellum b c d e f, vg.

(14) stadios habentem LX ab hierusalem a, quod aberat stadia sexaginta ab hierusalem b, quod abest ab ierosolymis stadia sexag. c, iter habentis stadios sexag. ab hierus. d, quod est ab hierosolymis stadia septem e, quod aberat spatio stadiorum LX ab hierus. f, quod erat in spatio stadiorum sexaginta ab hierusalem vg.

(15) cui nomen a, nomine b c d e f, vg.

(16) ammaus a, cleopas et ammaus b, emmaus c f, vg; alammaus d, ammaus et cleopas e.

Is not this almost exactly as Jerome said: tot exemplaria, quot codices? And when we take into account that all this variety in the Latin manuscripts is not simply due to a difference in translation, but that a similar diversity exists in the Greek,^[101] we can easily understand what a task it is to extricate the original text from out these conflicting witnesses. At the same time, we have evidence of the singular position in which D stands to all the others; while the last example also affords an illustration of the way in which mistakes might arise. The reading ᾗ ὄνομα in verse 13 would preclude any possibility of misunderstanding. But suppose the reader or the translator had before him a manuscript like D, in which the reading was ὀνόματι. What happened, we shall suppose, was this. The phrase, “Emmaus by name,” was taken as referring, not to the village, but to the subject of the sentence; 122the other name, Cleopas, was then inserted from verse 18, and in time placed even before Emmaus by a later copyist. And accordingly we find, even in Ambrose of Milan, that the two travellers are regularly called Ammaon et Cleopas. It was just as Jerome said: a vitiosis interpretibus male edita, a praesumptoribus imperitis emendata perversius, a librariis dormitantibus aut addita aut mutata.

(2.) The Latin Version of Jerome.

Codex Epternacensis.

It is a comparatively easy task to restore the work of Jerome; first of all because all our present manuscripts are derived from one and only one source, secondly because the number of existing manuscripts is very great, and lastly because some of them at least go back to the sixth century. There is a Codex in Paris which formerly belonged to the Church of St. Willibrord at Echternach, written by an Irish hand of the eighth or ninth century, and containing a subscription copied from its original to the following effect: proemendavi ut potui secundum codicem in bibliotheca Eugipi praespiteri quem ferunt fuisse sci Hieronymi, indictione VI. p(ost) con(sulatum) Bassilii u. c. anno septimo decimo. That must have been in the year 558. |Codex Amiatinus.| Codex Amiatinus, now in Florence, was formerly supposed to belong to the same time, but this turns out to be a mistake, because it has been proved that it was written for Ceolfrid, Abbot of Wearmouth, who died at Langres on the 25th September 716, on his way to Rome, where he intended to present this Codex to the Pope. |Codex Fuldensis.| One of the oldest and most valuable manuscripts of the Vulgate is at Fulda, where it has been preserved, perhaps, from the time of Boniface. This Codex Fuldensis was written between 540 and 546, by order of Bishop Victor of Capua, and corrected by himself. It contains the whole of the New Testament according to Jerome’s version, only in place of the four separate Gospels it has a Harmony composed by Victor, who followed Tatian’s plan, 123using the Latin text of Jerome. Victor’s Harmony in turn became the basis of the so-called Old German Tatian.

Wordsworth and White.

The task of restoring the original text of Jerome’s version has been undertaken in England by the Bishop of Salisbury, who has been at work on all the available material for more than fifteen years. The edition bears the title, Novum Testamentum Domini nostri Jesu Christi secundum editionem sancti Hieronymi ad codicum manuscriptorum fidem recensuit Johannes Wordsworth in operis societatem adsumpto Henrico Juliano White. Five parts of the first volume have already appeared, containing the four Gospels with an Epilogus ad Evangelia.^[102] In France, J. Delisle, the Director of the Paris National Library, has rendered great service by his work upon the manuscripts under his care; while Samuel Berger has constituted himself pre-eminently the historian of the Vulgate by bringing fresh testimony from the early Middle Ages and the remotest provinces of the Church to bear upon the history of the Vulgate and its text as well as on the origin and dissemination of the different forms. In his compendious Histoire de la Vulgate pendant les premiers siècles du moyen âge (Paris, 1893), he has, e.g., indicated no fewer than 212 different ways in which the books of the Old Testament were arranged in the manuscripts that he examined, and thirty-eight varieties in the order of the New Testament books. In Germany Bengel applied himself to the reconstruction of the Latin text of the Bible in the last century, and in this he was followed by Lachmann in the present century, while Riegler, van Ess, and Kaulen have added to our knowledge of the history of the Vulgate. Dr. Peter Corssen has followed up the labours of Ziegler and Rönsch in the particular field of the pre-Jeromic Bible and its text with a methodical examination of the earlier editions, and E. v. Dobschütz has begun to publish Studies in the Textual Criticism of the Vulgate. The valuable researches of Carlo Vercellone (1860-64) were concerned almost exclusively with 124the Old Testament, and do not seem to have been followed up in Italy. “Utinam Papa Leo XIII.,” says Gregory, “tanta scientia tanta magnanimitate insignis curam in se suscipiat textus sacrosanctorum Bibliorum Latini edendi; cura, opus ecclesia et Papa dignum.” Meanwhile Wordsworth and White appear to have accomplished as much as is possible at present in the field of the Gospels.^[103]