A B C D):
These manuscripts have simply been
studied too fully for there to be any hope of a complete examination here,
let alone complete bibliographies.
The sections below attempt no more than brief summaries.
Note: In the catalog which follows, bold type indicates a full entry. Plain type indicates a short entry, which may occur under another manuscript.
Additional note regarding the Great Uncials (especially
A B C D):
These manuscripts have simply been
studied too fully for there to be any hope of a complete examination here,
let alone complete bibliographies.
The sections below attempt no more than brief summaries.
Contents:
* (01)
* A (02)
* B (03)
* C (04)
* Dea (05)
* Dp (06)
* Dabs
* Ee (07)
* Ea (08)
* Ep: see Dabs
* Fe (09)
* Fa
* Fp (010)
* Ge (011)
* Ga: see 095
* Gb: see 0120
* Gp (012)
* He (013)
* Ha (014)
* Hp (015)
* I (016)
* Ke (017)
* Kap (018)
* Le (019)
* Lap (020)
* Me (021)
* Mp: see 0121 and 0243
* N (022)
* Papr (025)
* Q (026)
* R (027)
* S (028)
* T (029)
* Tg (Scrivener Tp): see 061
* Tk (Scrivener Tg): see 085
* U (030)
* W (032)
* X (033)
* Z (035)
* G (Gamma, 036)
* D (Delta, 037)
* Q (Theta, 038)
* L (Lambda, 039)
* 
(Xi, 040)
* P (Pi, 041)
* F (Phi, 043)
* Y (Psi, 044)
* 046
* 047
* 048
* 055
* 056
* 061
* 085
* 095 and 0123
* 0121 and 0243
* 0122
* 0123: see 095 and 0123
* 0212
* 0243: see 0121 and 0243 *
(01)The entire New Testament portion, plus part of the Old and the non-Biblical books,
are in London, British Museum Add. 43725. A handful of Old Testament leaves are at
Leipzig. Originally found at Saint Catherine's Monastery on Mount Sinai, hence
the name "Codex Sinaiticus." A few stray leaves of the codex apparently remain at Sinai.
is the famous
Sinaiticus, the great discovery of Constantine von Tischendorf, the only surviving complete
copy of the New Testament written prior to the ninth century.
presumably originally contained the complete Greek Bible plus at least two
New Testament works now regarded as non-canonical: Barnabas and the Shepherd of Hermas.
As it stands now, we have the New Testament complete (all in London; 148 leaves
or 196 pages total), plus
Barnabas and Hermas (to Mandate iv.3.6). Of the Old Testament, we have about 250
leaves out of an original total of some 550. Apart from the portions still at Sinai
(which are too newly-found to have been included in most scholarly works), the Old
Testament portion consists of portions of Gen. 23, 24, Numbers 5-7 (these first portions
being cut-up fragments found in the bindings of other books), plus, more
or less complete, 1 Ch. 9:27-19:17, 2 Esdras (=Ezra+Nehemiah) 9:9-end, Esther,
Tobit, Judith, 1 Maccabees, 4 Maccabees (it appears that 2 and 3 Maccabees never formed
part of the text), Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lament. 1:1-2:20, Joel,
Obadiah, Jonah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi, Psalms,
Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, Wisdom of Solomon, Sirach, Job.
Dated paleographically to the fourth century. It can hardly be earlier, as the manuscript contains the Eusebian Canons from the first hand. But the simplicity of the writing style makes a later dating effectively impossible.
Tischendorf was of the opinion that four scribes wrote the manuscript; he labelled them A, B, C, and D. It is now agreed that Tischendorf was wrong. The astonishing thing about these scribes is how similar their writing styles were (they almost certainly were trained in the same school), making it difficult to distinguish them. Tischendorf's mistake is based on the format of the book: The poetic books of the Old Testament are written in a different format (in two columns rather than four), so he thought that they were written by scribe C. But in fact the difference is simply one of page layout; scribe C never existed. For consistency, though, the three remaining scribes are still identified by their Tischendorf letters, A, B, and D.
Of the three, scribe D was clearly the best, having almost faultless spelling. A, despite having a hand similar to D's, was a very poor scribe; the only good thing to be said about him was that he was better than B, whose incompetence is a source of almost continual astonishment to those who examine his work.
The New Testament is almost entirely the work of scribe A; B did not contribute at all, and D supplied only a very few leaves, scattered about. It is speculated (though it is no more than speculation) that these few leaves were "cancels" -- places where the original copies were so bad that it was easier to replace than correct them. (One of these cancels, interestingly, is the ending of Mark.)
It has been speculated that Sinaiticus was copied from dictation. This is because a number of its errors seem to be errors of hearing rather than of sight (including an amusing case in 1 Macc. 5:20, where the reader seems to have stumbled over the text and the copyist took it all down mechanically). Of course, the possibility cannot be absolutely ruled out that it was not Sinaiticus's exemplar, but one of its ancestors, which was taken down from dictation. In the case of the New Testament, at least, it seems likely that it was not taken from dictation but actually copied from another manuscript.
Sinaiticus is one of the most-corrected manuscripts of all time. Tischendorf counted 14,800 corrections in what was then the Saint Petersburg portion alone!
The correctors were numerous and varied. Tischendorf groups them into five sets, denoted a, b, c, d, e, but there were actually more than this. Milne and Skeat believe "a" and "b" to have been the original scribes (though others have dated them as late as the sixth century); their corrections were relatively few, but those of "a" in particular are considered to have nearly as much value as the original text.
The busiest correctors are those collectively described as "c," though in fact there were at least three of them, seemingly active in the seventh century. When they are distinguished, it is as "c.a," "c.b," and "c.pamph." Corrector c.a was the busiest of all, making thousands of changes throughout the volume. Many of these -- though by no means all -- were in the direction of the Byzantine text. The other two correctors did rather less; c.pamph seems to have worked on only two books (2 Esdras and Esther) -- but his corrections were against a copy said to have been corrected by Pamphilius working from the Hexapla. This, if true, is very interesting -- but colophons can be faked, or transmitted from copy to copy. And in any case, the corrections apply only to two books, neither in the New Testament. There may have been as many as two others among the "c" correctors; all told, Tischendorf at one time or another refers to correctors c, ca, cb, cc, and cc*.
Correctors d and e were much later (e is dated to the twelfth century), and neither added particularly many changes. Indeed, no work of d's is known in the New Testament.
It is unfortunate that the Nestle-Aland edition has completely befuddled this system
of corrections. In Nestle-Aland 26 and beyond,
a and
b are
combined as 1;
the correctors
c are
conflated as 2,
and (most confusing of all)
e
becomes c.
(For more information about the correctors of
,
see the article on Correctors.)
The history of Tischendorf's discovery of Codex Sinaiticus is told in nearly every introduction to New Testament criticism; I will not repeat it in any detail here (especially since there is a great deal of controversy about what he did). The essential elements are these: In 1844, Tischendorf visited Saint Catherine's Monastery on Mount Sinai. (Sadly, he did not do much to investigate the many fine minuscules at Mount Sinai, such as 1241 and 1881). At one point, he noted 43 sheets of very old parchment in a waste bin, destined to be burned. Tischendorf rescued these leaves (the Leipzig portion of Sinaiticus, all from the Old Testament), and learned that many more existed. He was not able to obtain these leaves, and saw no sign of the manuscript on a second visit in 1853.
It was not until 1859, near the end of a third visit, that Tischendorf was allowed to see the rest of the old manuscript (learning then for the first time that it contained the New Testament -- complete! -- as well as the Old). Under a complicated arrangement, Tischendorf was allowed to transcribe the manuscript, but did not have the time to examine it in full detail. Tischendorf wanted to take the manuscript to the west, where it could be examined more carefully.
It is at this point that the record becomes unclear. The monks, understandably,
had no great desire to give up the greatest treasure of their monastery. Tischendorf,
understandably, wanted to make the manuscript more accessible (though not necessarily
safer; unlike Saint Petersburg and London, Mount Sinai has not suffered a revolution
or been bombed since the discovery of
).
In hindsight, it seems quite clear that the monks were promised better terms than
they actually received (though this may be the fault of the Tsarist government rather
than Tischendorf). Still, by whatever means, the manuscript wound up in Saint
Petersburg, and later was sold to the British Museum.
There is at least one interesting sidelight on this, in that Tischendorf's story of his discovery has a clear historical precedent in the discovery of the Percy Manuscript. In around 1753, Thomas Percy was visiting his friend Humphrey Pitt when he discovered the maids burning a paper folio. (A much more reasonable thing to burn than a pile of parchments, which do not burn well!) Percy was able to rescue the century-old poetic miscellany, which eventually inspired him to publish his Reliques in 1765. [Source: Nick Groom, The Making of Percy's Reliques, Oxford, 1999, p. 6.] Happily, the parallels did not extend beyond that point: Percy edited, rewrote, and generally misrepresented his manuscript; Tischendorf published Sinaiticus with great precision.
However unfair these proceedings, they did make the Sinaiticus available to the world. Tischendorf published elaborate editions in the 1860s, Kirsopp Lake published a photographic edition before World War I, and once the manuscript arrived in the British Museum, it was subjected to detailed examination under ordinary and ultraviolet light.
The fact that is
both early and complete has made it the subject of intense textual scrutiny.
Tischendorf, who did not pay much attention to text-types, did not really analyse its text,
but gave it more weight than any other manuscript when preparing his eighth and
final critical edition. Westcott and Hort regarded it as, after B, the best and
most important manuscript in existence; the two made up the core of their
"neutral" text. Since then, nearly everyone has listed it as a primary
Alexandrian witness: Von Soden listed it as a member of the H type; the Alands
list it as Category I (which, in practice, means
purely Alexandrian); Wisse lists it as Group B in Luke; Richards classifies it as
A2 (i.e. a member of the main Alexandrian group) in the Johannine Epistles,
etc. The consensus was that there were only two places where the manuscript is not
Alexandrian: the first part of John, where it is conceded
that it belongs to some other text-type, probably "Western," (Gordon D. Fee,
in a study whose methodology
I consider dubious -- one can hardly divide things as closely as a single verse! -- puts
the dividing point at 8:38), and in the
Apocalypse, where Schmid classifies it in its own, non-Alexandrian, type with P47.
The truth appears somewhat more complicated. Zuntz, analysing 1 Corinthians
and Hebrews, came to the conclusion that
and B do not belong to the same text-type. (Zuntz's terminology is confusing,
as he refers to the P46/B type as "proto-Alexandrian,"
even though his analysis makes it clear that this is not the same type
as the mainstream Alexandrian text.) The true Alexandrian text of Paul, therefore,
is headed by , with
allies including A C I 33 81 1175. It also appears that the Bohairic Coptic tends toward
this group, although Zuntz classified it with P46/B (the Sahidic Coptic
clearly goes with P46/B), while 1739, which Zuntz places with P46/B,
appears to me to be separate from either.
This leads to the logical question of whether
and B actually belong together in the other parts of the Bible. They are everywhere
closer to each other than to the Byzantine text -- but that does not mean that they
belong to the same type, merely similar types. In Paul they are definitely separate. There
are hints of the same in the Gospels: B belongs to a group with P75, and this
group seems to be ancestral to L. Other witnesses, notably Z, cluster around
. While no one is
yet prepared to say that B and
belong to separate text-types in the gospels, the possibility must at least be admitted
that they belong to separate sub-text-types.
In Acts, I know of no studies which would incline to separate
and B, even within
the same text-type. On the other hand, I know of no studies which have examined the
question. It is likely that the two do both belong to the Alexandrian type, but whether
they belong to the same sub-type must be left unsettled.
In Paul, Zuntz's work seems unassailable. There is no question that B and
belong to different
types. The only questions are, what are those types, and what is their extent?
Zuntz's work is little help, but it would appear that the
-type
is the "true" Alexandrian text. P46 and B have only one
certain ally (the Sahidic Coptic) and two doubtful ones (the Bohairic Coptic, which
I believe against Zuntz to belong with ,
and the 1739 group, which I believe to be a separate text-type).
, however, has many
allies -- A, C, 33 ('s
closest relative except in Romans), and the fragmentary I are all almost pure examples
of this type. Very many minuscules support it with some degree of mixture; 81, 1175, and
1506 are perhaps the best, but most of the manuscripts that the Alands classify as
Category II or Category III
in Paul probably belong here (the possible exceptions are the members of
Families 365/2127,
330, and
2138). It is interesting to note that the
Alexandrian is the only non-Byzantine type with a long history -- there are no
P46/B manuscripts after the fourth century, and the "Western"
text has only three Greek witnesses, with the last dating from the ninth century,
but we have Alexandrian witnesses from the fourth century to the end of the manuscript
era. Apart from certain fragmentary papyri,
is the earliest and best of these.
The situation in the Catholic Epistles is complicated. The work of Richards on the
Johannine Epistles, and the studies of scholars such as Amphoux, have clearly revealed
that there are (at least) three distinct non-Byzantine groups here: Family 2138,
Family 1739 (which here seems to include C), and the large group headed by
P72, ,
A, B, 33, etc. Richards calls all three of these Alexandrian, but he has no
definition of text-types; it seems evident that Amphoux is right: These are
three text-types, not three groups within a single type.
Even within the Alexandrian group, we find distinctions. P72 and B
stand together. Almost all other Alexandrian witnesses fall into a group headed
by A and 33 (other members of this group include
Y, 81, 436).
stands alone;
it does not seem to have any close allies. It remains to be determined whether
this is textually significant or just a matter of defective copying (such things
are harder to test in a short corpus like the Catholic Epistles).
As already mentioned, Schmid analysed the manuscripts of the Apocalypse and
found that
stood almost alone; its only ally is P47. The other non-Byzantine
witnesses tend to cluster around A and C rather than
. The
general sense is that the A/C type is the Alexandrian text (if nothing else,
it is the largest of the non-Byzantine types, which is consistently true of the
Alexandrian text). Certainly the A/C type is regarded as the best; the
P47/
type is regarded as having many peculiar readings.
von Soden: d2
Many critical apparati (including those of Merk and Bover) refer to
using the
siglum "S."
Note: As with all the major uncials, no attempt is made to compile a complete bibliography.
Collations:
A full edition, with special type and intended to show the exact nature of the corrections, etc. was published by Tischendorf in 1861. This is now superseded by the photographic edition published by Kirsopp Lake (1911).
Sample Plates:
Images are found in nearly every book on NT criticism which contains pictures.
Editions which cite:
Cited in all editions since Tischendorf.
Other Works:
See especially H. J. M. Milne and T. C. Skeat, Scribes and Correctors of
Codex Sinaiticus (1938)
British Museum, Royal 1 D.v-viii. Volumes v, vi, and vii (as presently bound) contain the Old Testament, volume viii the New Testament. Originally given to the English by Cyril Lucar, at various times patriarch of Alexandria and Constantinople. He had it from Alexandria, and so the manuscript came to be called "Codex Alexandrinus," but it is by no means sure that it had always been there.
A originally contained the entire Old and New Testaments, plus I and II Clement and (if the table of contents is to be believed) the Psalms of Solomon. As the manuscript stands, small portions of the Old Testament have been lost, as have Matthew 1:1-25:6, John 6:50-8:52 (though the size and number of missing leaves implies that John 7:53-8:11 were not part of the manuscript), 2 Cor. 4:13-14:6. The final leaves of the manuscript have been lost, meaning that 2 Clement ends at 12:4. Like the New Testament, the Old contains some non-canonical or marginally canonical material: 3 and 4 Maccabees, Psalm 151, Odes.
There is some slight disagreement about the date of A. A colophon attributes it to Thecla, working in the time of Saint Paul (!), but this is clearly a later forgery. Although most experts believe the manuscript is of the fifth century, a few have held out for the late fourth. The number of scribes has also been disputed; Kenyon thought there were five, but Milne and Skeat (who had better tools for comparison) suggest that there are only two, possibly three. (The uncertainty lies in the fact that part of the New Testament, beginning with Luke and ending with 1 Cor. 10:8, present a rather different appearance from the rest of the New Testament -- but when compared in detail, the hand appears extremely similar to the scribe who did the rest of the New Testament.) Occasional letterforms are said to resemble Coptic letters, perhaps hinting at Egyptian origin, but this is not universally conceded.
A contains a significant number of corrections, both from the original scribe
and by later hands, but it has not undergone the sort of major overhaul we see in
or D or
even B (which was retraced by a later hand). Nor do the corrections appear to
belong to a particular type of text.
The story of how A reached its present location is much less involved than
that of its present neighbour .
A has been in England since 1627. It is first encountered in Constantinople
in 1624, though it is likely that Cyril Lucar (recently translated from
the Orthodox Patriarchate of Alexandria to that of Constantinople) brought it
with him from Egypt. Lucar was involved in a complex struggle with the Turkish
government, the Catholic church, and his own subordinates, and presented the
codex to the English in gratitude for their help. The Church of Constantinople
was disorderly enough that Lucar seems to have had some trouble keeping his hands
on the codex, but it eventually was handed over to the English.
After arriving in Britain, it did have one brief adventure: During the English Civil War, there was threat of dispersal of the Royal Library (the core of what became first the British Museum then the British Library). When Librarian Patrick Young was allowed to retire, he took the Alexandrinus with him; it was finally returned to the Library in 1664. Given how erratic was the behavior of Cromwell's followers, that may have been just as well.
A is somewhat confounding to both the friends and enemies of the Byzantine text, as it gives some evidence to the arguments of both sides.
A is Byzantine in the gospels; there can be no question of this. It is, in fact, the oldest Byzantine manuscript in Greek. (The Peshitta Syriac is older, and is Byzantine, but it obviously is not Greek.) But it is not a "normal" Byzantine witness -- that is, it is not directly related to the Kx type which eventually became dominant. The text of A in the Gospels is, in fact, related to Family P (Von Soden's Ik). Yet even those who documented this connection (Silva Lake and others) note that A is not a particularly pure member of Family P. Nor, in their opinions, was it an ancestor of Family P; rather, it was a slightly mixed descendent. The mixture seems to have been Alexandrian -- the obvious example being the omission of John 7:53-8:11, but A also omits, e.g., Luke 22:43-44 and (in the first hand) John 5:3. Westcott and Hort felt the combination of B and A to be strong and significant. We are nonetheless left with the question of the relationship between A and the rest of the Byzantine text. The best explanation appears to me to be that A is derived from a Byzantine text very poorly and sporadically corrected against an Alexandrian document (most likely not systematically corrected, but with occasional Byzantine readings eliminated as they were noticed in an environment where the Alexandrian text dominated). But other explanations are certainly possible.
The situation in the rest of the New Testament is simpler: A is Alexandrian
throughout. It is not quite as pure as
or B or the majority of the papyri; it has a few Byzantine readings. But the
basic text is as clearly Alexandrian as the gospels are Byzantine. The Alands,
for instance, list A as Category I in the
entire New Testament except for the Gospels (where they list it as
Category III for historical reasons). Von
Soden calls it H (but Ika
in the Gospels).
In Acts, there seems to be no reason to think A is to be associated particularly
with or
B. It seems to be somewhat closer to P74.
In Paul, the situation changes. A clearly belongs with
(and C 33
etc.) against P46 and B. This was first observed by Zuntz, and
has been confirmed by others since then.
The case in the Catholic Epistles is complicated. The vast majority
of the so-called Alexandrian witnesses seem to be weaker texts of a type
associated with A and 33. (Manuscripts such as
Y, 81, and 436 seem to
follow these two, with Byzantine mixture.) The complication is that neither
B nor
seems to be part of this type. The simplest explanation is that the
Alexandrian text breaks down into subtypes, but this has not been
proved.
In the Apocalypse, A and
once again part company. According to Schmid,
forms a small
group with P47, while A is the earliest and generally best of a much larger
group of witnesses including C, the vulgate, and most of the non-Byzantine minuscules.
In this book, the A/C text is considered much the best witness. Based on its number
of supporters relative to the
P47/
text, one must suspect the A/C text of being the mainstream Alexandrian text, but
this cannot really be considered proved -- there simply aren't enough early
patristic writings to classify the witnesses with certainty.
von Soden: d4
Note: As with all the major uncials, no attempt is made to compile a complete bibliography.
Collations:
The first publication of the manuscript was as footnotes to the London Polyglot. The symbol "A" comes from Wettstein. A photographic edition (at reduced size) was published by Kenyon starting in 1909.
Sample Plates:
Images are found in nearly every book on NT criticism which contains pictures.
Editions which cite:
Cited in all editions since Tischendorf (plus Wettstein, etc.)
Other Works:
Vatican Library, Greek 1209. The manuscript has been there for its entire known history; hence the title "Codex Vaticanus."
B originally contained the entire Old and New Testaments, except that it never included the books of Maccabees or the Prayer of Manasseh. The manuscript now has slight defects; in the Old Testament, it omits most of Genesis (to 46:28) and portions of Psalms (lacking Psalms 105-137). In the New Testament, it is defective from Hebrews 9:14 onward (ending KATA), omitting the end of Hebrews, 1 and 2 Timothy, Titus, Philemon, and the Apocalypse. It is possible that additional books might have been included at the end -- although it is also possible that the Apocalypse was not included. Indeed, it is barely possible (though this is rarely mentioned) that B originally omitted the Pastorals; this would accord with the contents of its relative P46.
It is universally conceded that B belongs to the fourth century, probably to the
early part of the century. It is in many ways very primitive, having very short
book titles and lacking the Eusebian apparatus. It has its own unique system of
chapter identifications; that in the gospels is found elsewhere only in
. It uses a continuous system of
numbers in Paul, showing that (in one or another of its ancestors), Hebrews
stood between Galatians and Ephesians, even though Hebrews stands after
Thessalonians in B itself. There is a second system in Paul as well; this doubling
of chapter enumerations, in fact, is found also in Acts and the Catholic Epistles,
save that 2 Peter is not numbered (perhaps because it was not considered canonical
by the unknown person who created this chapter system).
A single scribe seems to have been responsible for the New Testament, though two scribes worked on the Old. There were two primary correctors, though the dates of both are rather uncertain. The first is tentatively dated to the sixth century; the second comes from the tenth or eleventh. The second of these is much the more important, though more for damage done than for the actual readings supplied. This scribe, finding the manuscript somewhat faded, proceeded to re-ink the entire text (except for a few passages which he considered inauthentic). This scribe also added accents and breathings. This re-inking had several side effects, all of them (from our standpoint) bad. First, it defaced the appearance of the letters, making it much harder to do paleographic work. Second, it rendered some of the readings of the original text impossible to reconstruct. And third (though related to the preceding), it makes it very difficult to tell if there are any original accents, breathings, punctuation, etc. Such marks will generally disappear under the re-inking. Only when such a mark has not been re-inked can we be sure it came from the original hand.
It is not absolutely certain when B was damaged, but it certainly happened in the manuscript era, because a supplement with the missing material was later added to the volume. This supplement is late, in a minuscule hand (manuscript 1957, dated paleographically to the fifteenth century; it is believed that the Apocalypse was copied from a manuscript belonging to Cardinal Bessarion. It has been conjectured that Bessarion supplied the manuscript to the Vatican library, but this is pure conjecture; all that is known is that the manuscript has been in the library since the compiling of the first catalog in 1475.)
This is the manuscript. The big one. The key. It is believed that every non-Byzantine edition since Westcott and Hort has been closer to B than to any other manuscript. There is general consensus about the nature of its text: Westcott and Hort called it "Neutral" (i.e. Alexandrian); Von Soden listed it as H (Alexandrian), Wisse calls it Group B (Alexandrian), the Alands place it in Category I (which in practice also means Alexandrian). No other substantial witness is as clearly a member of this text-type; B very nearly defines the Alexandrian text.
Despite the unanimity of scholars, the situation is somewhat more complicated than is implied by the statement "B is Alexandrian." The facts change from corpus to corpus.
In the Gospels, Westcott and Hort centered the "Neutral"/Alexandrian
text around B and .
At that time, they agreed more closely with each other than with anything else
(except that Z had a special kinship with
). Since that
time, things have grown more complex. B has been shown to have a special affinity
with P75 -- an affinity much greater than its affinity with
, and of
a different kind. The scribal problems of P66 make it harder to
analyse (particularly since
departs the Alexandrian text in the early chapters of John), but it also
appears closer to B than .
Among later manuscripts, L has suffered much Byzantine mixture, but its
non-Byzantine readings stand closer to B than to
.
Thus it appears that we must split the Alexandrian text of the Gospels into,
at the very least, two subfamilies, a B family
(P66, P75, B, L, probably the Sahidic Coptic) and an
family (,
Z, at least some of the semi-Alexandrian minuscules). This is a matter
which probably deserves greater attention.
There is little to be said regarding Acts. B seems once again to be the purest
Alexandrian manuscript, but I know of no study yet published which fully details
the relations between the Alexandrian witnesses. It is likely that B, A, and
all belong
to the same text-type. We have not the data to say whether there are
sub-text-types of this text.
In Paul, the matter is certainly much more complex. Hort described B, in that
corpus, as being primarily Alexandrian but with "Western" elements.
This was accepted for a long time, but has two fundamental flaws. First, B has
many significant readings not found in either the Alexandrian
( A C 33 etc.)
or the "Western" (D F G latt) witnesses. Several good examples of this come from
Colossians: In 2:2, B (alone of Greek witnesses known to Hort; now supported by P46
and implicitly by the members of Family 1739) has
tou qeou Cristou; in 3:6, B (now supported
by P46) omits
epi tous uious ths apeiqeias.
Also, B was the earliest witness known to Hort; was it proper to define its text
in terms of two text-types (Byzantine and Alexandrian) which existed only in later
manuscripts?
It was not until 1946 that G. Zuntz examined this question directly; the results were published in 1953 as The Text of the Epistles: A Disquisition Upon the Corpus Paulinum. Zuntz's methods were excessively labourious, and cannot possibly be generalized to the entire tradition -- but he showed unquestionably that, first, B and P46 had a special kinship, and second, that these manuscripts were not part of the mainstream Alexandrian text. This was a major breakthrough in two respects: It marked the first attempt to distinguish the textual history of the Epistles from the textual history of the Gospels (even though there is no genuine reason to think they are similar), and it also marked the first attempt, in Paul, to break out of Griesbach's Alexandrian/Byzantine/Western model.
Zuntz called his proposed fourth text-type "proto-Alexandrian" (p. 156), and lists as its members P46 B 1739 (and its relatives; Zuntz was aware of 6 424** M/0121 1908; to this now add 0243 1881 630 2200) sa bo Clement Origen.
It appears to me that even this classification is too simple; there are five text-types in Paul -- not just the traditional Alexandrian, Byzantine, and "Western" texts, but two others which Zuntz combined as the "Proto-Alexandrian" text. (This confusion is largely the result of Zuntz's method; since he worked basically from P46, he observed the similarities of these manuscripts to P46 but did not really analyse the places where they differ.) The Alexandrian, "Western," and Byzantine texts remain as he found them. From the "Proto-Alexandrian" witnesses, however, we must deduct Family 1739, which appears to be its own type. Family 1739 does share a number of readings with P46 and B, but it also shares special readings with the Alexandrian and "Western" texts and has a handful of readings of its own. It also appears to me that the Bohairic Coptic, which Zuntz called Alexandrian, is actually closer to the true Alexandrian text.
This leaves B with only two full-fledged allies in Paul: P46 and the Sahidic Coptic. I also think that Zuntz's title "Proto-Alexandrian" is deceptive, since the P46/B type and the Alexandrian text clearly split before the time of P46. As a result, I prefer the neutral title P46/B type (if we ever find additional substantial witnesses, we may be able to come up with a better name).
When we turn to the Catholics, the situation seems once again to be simple. Most
observers have regarded B as, once again, the best of the Alexandrian witnesses --
so, e.g., Richards, who in the Johannine Epistles places it in the A2
group, which consists mostly of the Old Uncials:
A B C
Y 6.
There are several disturbing points about these results, though. First, Richards lumps together three groups as the "Alexandrian text." Broadly speaking, these groups may be described as Family 2138 (A1), the Old Uncials (A2), and Family 1739 (A3). And, no matter what one's opinion about Family 1739, no reasonable argument can make Family 2138 an Alexandrian group. What does this say about Richards's other groups?
Another oddity is the percentages of agreement. For the A2 group, Richards gives these figures for rates of agreement with the group profile (W. L. Richards, The Classification of the Greek Manuscripts of the Johannine Epistles, SBL Dissertation Series, 1977, p. 141):
| Manuscript | Agreement % |
| Y | 96% |
| C | 94% |
| 94% |
| B | 89% |
| A | 81% |
| 6 | 72% |
This is disturbing in a number of ways. First, what is 6 doing in the group?
It's far weaker than the rest of the manuscripts. Merely having a 70% agreement
is not enough -- not when the group profiles are in doubt!
Second, can Y, which has
clearly suffered Byzantine mixture, really be considered the leading witness
of the type? Third, can C (which was found by Amphoux to be associated with
Family 1739 in the Catholics) really be the leading Old Uncial of this type?
Fourth, it can be shown that most of the important Alexandrian minuscules (e.g.
33, 81, 436, none of which were examined by Richards) are closer to A than
to B or .
Ought not A be the defining manuscript of the type? Yet it agrees with the
profile only 81% of the time!
A much more reasonable approach is to take more of the Alexandrian minuscules
into account, and a rather different picture emerges. Rather than being the
weakest Alexandrian uncial, A becomes (in my researches) the earliest and key
witness of the true Alexandrian type, heading the group A
Y 33 81 436 al.
The clear majority of the Alexandrian witnesses in the Catholics go here, either
purely (as in the case, e.g., of 33) or with Byzantine mixture (as, e.g., in 436
and its near relative 1067). In this system, both B and
stand rather
off to the side -- perhaps part of the same type, but not direct ancestors of
anything. We might also note that B has a special kinship, at least in the Petrine
epistles, with P72, the one substantial papyrus of the Catholic Epistles.
Despite Richards, it appears that B and P72 form at least a sub-type of
the Alexandrian text.
von Soden: d1
Note: As with all the major uncials, no attempt is made to compile a complete bibliography.
Collations:
B has been published several times, including several recent photographic editions (the earliest from 1904-1907; full colour editions were published starting in 1968). It is important to note that the early editions are not reliable. Tischendorf, of course, listed the readings of the manuscript, but this was based on a most cursory examination; the Vatican authorities went to extraordinary lengths to keep him from examining Vaticanus. Others who wished to study it, such as Tregelles, were denied even the right to see it. The first edition to be based on actual complete examination of the manuscript was done by Cardinal Mai (4 volumes; a 1 volume edition came later) -- but this was one of the most incompetently executed editions of all time. Not only is the number of errors extraordinarily high, but no attention is paid to readings of the first hand versus correctors, and there is no detailed examination of the manuscript's characteristics. Despite its advantages, it is actually less reliable than Tischendorf, and of course far inferior to recent editions. Philipp Buttmann produced a New Testament edition based largely on B, but he had B's text via Mai, which he seemingly didn't trust very much, so the resulting edition isn't much like B or anything else (except 2427, which apparently was copied from it).
Sample Plates:
Images are found in nearly every book on NT criticism which contains pictures.
Editions which cite:
Cited in all editions since Tischendorf
Other Works:
The bibliography for B is too large and varied to be covered here. The reader
is particularly referred to a work already mentioned:
G Zuntz, The Text of the Epistles: A Disquisition Upon the Corpus Paulinum.
See also, e.g., S. Kubo, P72 and the Codex Vaticanus.
Paris, National Library Greek 9.
C originally contained the entire Old and New Testaments, but was erased in the twelfth century and overwritten with Syriac works of Ephraem. The first to more or less completely read the manuscript was Tischendorf, but it is likely that it will never be fully deciphered (for example, the first lines of every book were written in red or some other colour of ink, and have completely vanished). In addition, very many leaves were lost when the book was rewritten; while it is barely possible that some may yet be rediscovered, there is no serious hope of recovering the whole book.
As it now stands, C lacks the following New Testament verses in their entirety:
(and, of course, C may be illegible even on the pages which survive). We might note that we are fortunate to have even this much of the New Testament; we have significantly more than half of the NT, but much less than half of the Old Testament.
The original writing of C is dated paleographically to the fifth century, and is quite fine and clear (fortunately, given what has happened to the manuscript since). Before being erased, it was worked over by two significant correctors, C2 (Cb) and C3 (Cc). (The corrector C1 was the original corrector, but made very few changes. C1 is not once cited in NA27.) Corrector C2 is though to have worked in the sixth century or thereabouts; C3 performed his task around the ninth century. (For more information about the correctors of C, see the article on Correctors.)
It was probably in the twelfth century that the manuscript was erased and overwritten; the upper writing is a Greek translation of 38 Syriac sermons by Ephraem.
It is usually stated that C is a mixed manuscript, or an Alexandrian manuscript with much Byzantine mixture. The Alands, for instance, list it as Category II; given their classification scheme, that amounts to a statement that it is Alexandrian with Byzantine influence. Von Soden lists it among the H (Alexandrian) witnesses, but not as a leading witness of the type.
The actual situation is much more complex than that, as even the Alands' own figures reveal (they show a manuscript with a far higher percentage of Byzantine readings in the gospels than elsewhere). The above description is broadly accurate in the Gospels; it is not true at all elsewhere.
In the Gospels, the Alands' figures show a manuscript which is slightly more Byzantine than not, while Wisse lists C as mixed in his three chapters of Luke. But these are overall assessments; a detailed examination shows C to waver significantly in its adherence to the Alexandrian and Byzantine texts. While at no point entirely pure, it will in some sections be primarily Alexandrian, in others mostly Byzantine.
Gerben Kollenstaart brings to my attention the work of Mark R. Dunn in An Examination of the Textual Character of Codex Ephraemi Syri Rescriptus (C, 04) in the Four Gospels (unpublished Dissertation, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary 1990). Neither of us has seen this document, but we find the summary, "C is a weak Byzantine witness in Matthew, a weak Alexandrian in Mark, and a strong Alexandrian in John. In Luke C's textual relationships are unclear" (Summarized in Brooks, The New Testament Text of Gregory of Nyssa, p. 60, footnote 1). I dislike the terminology used, as it looks much too formulaic and appears to assume that C's textual affinities change precisely at the boundaries between books. (Given C's fragmentary state, this is even more unprovable than usual.) But the general conclusion seems fair enough: Matthew is the most Byzantine, John the least. In all cases, however, one suspects Byzantine and Alexandrian mixture -- probably of Byzantine readings atop an Alexandrian base. This would explain the larger number of Byzantine readings in Matthew: As is often the case, the corrector was most diligent at the beginning.
Outside the Gospels, C seems to show the same sort of shift shown by its near-contemporary, A -- though, because C possessed Alexandrian elements in the gospels, the shift is less noticeable. But it is not unfair to say that C is mixed in the Gospels and almost purely non-Byzantine elsewhere.
In short works such as Acts and the Catholic Epistles, the limited amount of text available makes precise determinations difficult. In the Acts, we can at least state definitively that C is less Byzantine than it is in the Gospels, but any conclusion beyond that is somewhat tentative. The usual statement is that C is Alexandrian, and I know of no counter-evidence. Nonetheless, given the situation in the Catholic Epistles, I believe this statement must be taken with caution.
The situation in the Catholic Epistles is purely and simply confused.
The published evaluations do not agree. W. L. Richards, in his dissertation
on the Johannine Epistles using the Claremont Profile Method,
does a fine job of muddling the issue. He lists C as a member of the A2
text, which appears to be the mainstream Alexandrian text (it also contains
, A, and B).
But something funny happens when one examines C's affinities. C has a 74% agreement
with A, and a 77% agreement with B, but also a 73% agreement with 1739, and a 72%
agreement with 1243. This is hardly a large enough difference to classify C
with the Alexandrians as against the members of Family 1739. And, indeed, Amphoux
and Outtier link C with Family 1739, considering their common material
possible "Cæsarean."
My personal results seem to split the difference. If one assumes C is Alexandrian, it can be made to look Alexandrian. But if one starts with no such assumptions, then it appears that C does incline toward Family 1739. It is not a pure member of the family, in the sense that (say) 323 is; 323, after all, may be suspected of being descended (with mixture) from 1739 itself. But C must be suspected of belonging to the type from which the later Family 1739 descended. (Presumably the surviving witnesses of Family 1739 are descended from a common ancestor more recent than C, i.e. Family 1739 is a sub-text-type of the broader C/1241/1739 type.) It is possible (perhaps even likely) that C has some Alexandrian mixture, but proving this (given the very limited amount of text available) will require a very detailed examination of C.
In Paul, the situation is simpler: C is a very good witness, of the
Alexandrian type as found in
A 33 81 1175 etc. (This as opposed to the type(s) found in P46
or B or 1739). So far as I know, this has never been disputed.
In the Apocalypse, C is linked with A in what is usually called the
Alexandrian text. No matter what it is called, this type (which also
includes the Vulgate and most of the better minuscules) is considered
the best type. Note that this is not the sort of text found
in P47 and .
von Soden: d3
Note: As with all the major uncials, no attempt is made to compile a complete bibliography.
Collations:
Various editors extracted occasional readings from the manuscript, but Tischendorf was the first to read C completely. Tischendorf is often reported to have used chemicals, but in fact it is believed that they were applied before his time -- and they have hastened the decay of the manuscript. Tischendorf, working by eye alone, naturally did a less than perfect job. Robert W. Lyon, in 1958-1959, published a series of corrections in New Testament Studies (v). But this, too, is reported to be imperfect. The best current source is the information published in the Das Neue Testament auf Papyrus series. But there is no single source which fully describes C.
Sample Plates:
Sir Frederick Kenyon & A. W. Adams, Our Bible and the Ancient Manuscripts
Editions which cite:
Cited in all editions since Tischendorf
Other Works:
Mark R. Dunn, An Examination of the Textual Character of Codex Ephraemi Syri Rescriptus (C, 04)
in the Four Gospels (unpublished Dissertation, Southwestern Baptist Theological
Seminary 1990)
Cambridge, University Library Nn. 2. 41. The well-known Codex Bezae, so-called because it was once the possession of Theodore Beza.
Greek/Latin diglot, with the Greek on the left page. The Greek currently contains the Gospels and Acts with lacunae; the manuscript lacks Matt. 1:1-20, 6:20-9:20, 27:2-12, John 1:16-3:26, Acts 8:29-10:14, 21:2-10, 16-18, 22:10-20, 29-end. In addition, Matt. 3:7-16, Mark 16:15-end, John 18:14-20:13 are supplements from a later hand. The Gospels are in the "Western" order Matthew, John, Luke, Mark, though Chapman offered evidence that an ancestor had the books in the order Matthew, Mark, John, Luke.
Since the Greek and Latin are on facing pages, the contents of the Latin side is not precisely parallel; d (the symbol for the Latin of D; Beuron #5) lacks Matt. 1:1-11, 2:20-3:7, 6:8-8:27, 26:65-27:2, Mark 16:6-20, John 1:1-3:16, 18:2-20:1, Acts 8:21-10:3, 20:32-21:1, 21:8-9, 22:3-9, 22:21-end. In addition, the Latin includes 3 John 11-15.
The original contents of D are somewhat controversial. Obviously it must have contained the Gospels, Acts, and 3 John. This would seem to imply that the manuscript originally contained the Gospels, Catholic Epistles, and Acts (in that order). This, however, does not fit well with the pagination of the manuscript; Chapman theorized that the manuscript actually originally contained the Gospels, Apocalypse, 1 John, 2 John, 3 John, and Acts (in that order).
The manuscript has been variously dated, generally from the fourth to the sixth centuries. In the middle of the twentieth century, the tendency seemed to be to date it to the sixth century; currently the consensus seems to be swinging back toward the fifth. It is very difficult to achieve certainty, however, as the handwriting is quite unique. The Greek and Latin are written in parallel sense lines, and the scribe uses a very similar hand for both languages -- so much so that a casual glance cannot tell the one language from the other; one must look at the actual letters and what they spell.
The unusual writing style is only one of the curiosities surrounding the scribe of D. It is not clear whether his native language was Greek or Latin; both sides of the manuscript contain many improbable errors. (Perhaps the easiest explanation is that the scribe's native language was something other than Greek or Latin.)
D's text, as will be discussed below, was far removed from the Byzantine standard (or, perhaps, from any other standard). As a result, it was corrected many times by many different scribes. Scrivener believed that no fewer than nine correctors worked on the manuscript, the first being nearly contemporary with the original scribe and the last working in the eleventh or twelfth century. In general, these correctors brought the manuscript closer to the Byzantine text (as well as adding occasional marginal comments and even what appear to be magical formulae at the bottom of the pages of Mark). For more recent views on these correctors, see D. C. Parker's work on Codex Bezae; Parker redates some of the correctors (moving them back some centuries), and believes that one had an Alexandrian text.
The text of D can only be described as mysterious. We don't have answers about it; we have questions. There is nothing like it in the rest of the New Testament tradition. It is, by far the earliest Greek manuscript to contain John 7:53-8:11 (though it has a form of the text quite different from that found in most Byzantine witnesses). It is the only Greek manuscript to contain (or rather, to omit) the so-called Western Non-Interpolations. In Luke 3, rather than the Lucan genealogy of Jesus, it has an inverted form of Matthew's genealogy (this is unique among Greek manuscripts). In Luke 6:5 it has a unique reading about a man working on the Sabbath. D and F are the only Greek manuscripts to insert a loose paraphrase of Luke 14:8-10 after Matt. 20:28. And the list could easily be multiplied; while these are among the most noteworthy of the manuscript's readings, it has a rich supply of other singular variants.
In the Acts, if anything, the manuscript is even more extreme than in the Gospels. F. G. Kenyon, in The Western Text of the Gospels and Acts, describes a comparison of the text of Westcott & Hort with that of A. C. Clark. The former is essentially the text of B, the latter approximates the text of D so far as it is extant. Kenyon lists the WH text of Acts at 18,401 words, that of Clark at 19,983 words; this makes Clark's text 8.6 percent longer -- and implies that, if D were complete, the Bezan text of Acts might well be 10% longer than the Alexandrian, and 7% to 8% longer than the Byzantine text.
This leaves us with two initial questions: What is this text, and how much authority does it have?
Nineteenth century scholars inclined to give the text great weight. Yes, D was unique, but in that era, with the number of known manuscripts relatively small, that objection must have seemed less important. D was made the core witness -- indeed, the key and only Greek witness -- of what was called the "Western" text.
More recently, Von Soden listed D as the first and chief witness of his Ia text; the other witnesses he includes in the type are generally those identified by Streeter as "Cæsarean" (Q 28 565 700 etc.) The Alands list it as Category IV -- a fascinating classification, as D is the only substantial witness of the type. Wisse listed it as a divergent manuscript of Group B -- but this says more about the Claremont Profile Method than about D; the CPM is designed to split Byzantine strands, and given a sufficiently non-Byzantine manuscript, it is helpless. (Biologists have a term for this phenomenon: It's known as "long branch assimiliation." If you have a large mass of closely related entities, and two entities not related to the large mass, the two distant entities may look related just because they are way out in the middle of nowhere.)
The problem is, Bezae remains unique among Greek witnesses. Yes,
there is a clear "Western" family in Paul (D F G 629 and
the Latin versions.) But this cannot be identified with certainty with
the Bezan text; there is no "missing link" to prove the
identity. Not one manuscript contains a "Western" text of both
the Gospels and Paul! There are Greek witnesses which have some kinship with
Bezae --
in the early chapters of John; the fragmentary papyri
P29 and P38 and P48 in Acts.
But none of these witnesses are complete, and none are as extreme
as Bezae.
D's closest kinship is with the Latin versions, but none of them are as extreme as it is. D is, for instance, the only manuscript to substitute Matthew's genealogy of Jesus for Luke's. On the face of it, this is not a "Western" reading; it is simply a Bezan reading.
Then there is the problem of D and d. The one witness to consistently agree with Dgreek is its Latin side, d. Like D, it uses Matthew's genealogy in Luke. It has all the "Western Non-Interpolations." And, perhaps most notably, it has a number of readings which appear to be assimilations to the Greek.
Yet so, too, does D seem to have assimilations to the Latin.
We are almost forced to the conclusion that D and d have, to some extent, been conformed to each other. The great question is, to what extent, and what did the respective Greek and Latin texts look like before this work was done?
On this point there can be no clear conclusion. Hort thought that D arose more or less naturally; while he considered its text bad, he was willing to allow it special value at some points where its text is shorter than the Alexandrian. (This is the whole point of the "Western Non-Interpolations.") More recently, however, Aland has argued that D is the result of deliberate editorial work. This is unquestionably true in at least one place: The genealogy of Jesus. Is it true elsewhere? This is the great question, and one for which there is still no answer.
As noted, Bezae's closest relatives are Latin witnesses. And these exist in abundance. If we assume that these correspond to an actual Greek text-type, then Bezae is clearly a witness to this type. And we do have evidence of a Greek type corresponding to the Latins, in Paul. The witnesses D F G indicate the existence of a "Western" type. So Bezae does seem to be a witness of an actual type, both in the Gospels (where its text is relatively conservative) and in the Acts (where it is far more extravagant). (This is in opposition to the Alands, who have tended to deny the existence of the "Western" text.)
So the final question is, is Bezae a proper witness to this text which underlies the Latin versions? Here it seems to me the correct answer is probably no. To this extent, the Alands are right. Bezae has too many singular readings, too many variants which are not found in a plurality of the Latin witnesses. It probably has been edited (at least in Luke and Acts; this is where the most extreme readings occur). If this is true (and it must be admitted that the question is still open), then it has important logical consequences: It means that the Greek text of Bezae (with all its assimilations to the Latin) is not reliable as a source of readings. If D has a reading not supported by another Greek witness, the possibility cannot be excluded that it is an assimilation to the Latin, or the result of editorial work.
von Soden: d5
Note: As with all the major uncials, no attempt is made to compile a complete bibliography.
Collations:
The standard reference is probably still F. H. A. Scrivener, Bezae Codex Canatabrigiensis, simply because of Scrivener's detailed and careful analysis. J. Rendel Harris published a photographic reproduction in 1899. See also J. H. Ropes, The Text of Acts and A. C. Clark, The Acts of the Apostles, both of which devote considerable attention to the text of Bezae in Acts.
Sample Plates:
(Sample plates in almost all manuals of NT criticism)
Editions which cite:
Cited in all editions since Tischendorf, and most prior to that.
Other Works:
The most useful work is probably James D. Yoder's Concordance to the
Distinctive Greek Text of Codex Bezae. There are dozens of specialized
studies of one or another aspect of the codex, though few firm conclusions
can be reached (perhaps the most significant is the conclusion of Holmes
and others that Bezae has been more thoroughly reworked in Luke than in
Matthew or Mark). See also the recent work by D. C. Parker, Codex
Bezae.
Paris, National Library Greek 107, 107 AB. The famous Codex Claromontanus (not to be confused with the even more famous, or infamous, Codex Bezae, also designated D) -- so-called because Beza reported that it had been found at Clermont.
Greek/Latin diglot, with the Greek and Latin in stichometric lines on facing pages. Contains the Pauline Epistles with the slightest of lacunae: It lacks Romans 1:1-7 (though we can gain some information about the readings of D in these verses from Dabs). In addition, Romans 1:27-30 and 1 Corinthians 14:13-22 are supplements from a later hand. (Scrivener, however, notes that this hand is still "very old.") Hebrews is placed after Philemon.
The Latin side, known as d (Beuron 75) has not been supplemented in the same way as the Greek; it lacks 1 Corinthians 14:9-17, Hebrews 13:22-end. Romans 1:24-27 are a supplement.
Scrivener observes that the very fine vellum actually renders the manuscript rather difficult to read, as the writing on the other side often shows through.
Almost all scholars have dated D to the sixth century (some specifying the second half of that century). The writing is simple, without accents or breathings; some of the uncial forms seem to be archaic. The Greek is more accurately written than the Latin; the scribe's first language was probably Greek. We should note certain broad classes of errors, however. The scribe very frequently confuses the verb ending -qe with -qai; this occurs so regularly that we can only say that D is not a witness at variants of this sort.
A total of nine correctors have been detected, though not all of these are important. The first important corrector (D** or, in NA26, D1) dates probably from the seventh century; the single most active corrector (D*** or D2, who added accents and breathings and made roughly 2000 changes in the text) worked in the ninth or tenth century; the final significant corrector (D*** or Dc) probably dates from the twelfth century or later.
There is an inherent tendency, because D is a Greek/Latin diglot and because it is called "D," to equate its text with the text of Codex Bezae, making them both "Western." This is, however, an unwarranted assumption; it must be proved rather than simply asserted.
There is at least one clear and fundamental difference between Bezae and Claromontanus: They have very different relationships to their parallel Latin texts. The Greek and Latin of Bezae have been harmonized; they are very nearly the same text. The same is not true of Claromontanus. It is true that D and d have similar sorts of text -- but they have not been entirely conformed to each other. The most likely explanation is that dp was translated from a Greek text similar to Dp, and the two simply placed side by side.
Claromontanus also differs from Bezae in that there are Greek manuscripts similar to the former: The close relatives F and G are also akin, more distantly, to Claromontanus. All three manuscripts, it should be noted, have parallel Latin versions (in the case of F, on a facing page; the Latin of G is an interlinear). All three, we might add, are related to the Old Latin codices (a, b, m; they are rather more distant from r) which do not have Greek parallels.
Thus it seems clear that there is a text-type centred about D F G and the Latins. Traditionally this type has been called "Western," and there is no particular reason to change this name.
We should make several points about this Western text of Paul, though. First, it is nowhere near as wild as the text of Codex Bezae, or even the more radical Old Latin witnesses to the Gospels and Acts. Second, it cannot be demonstrated that this is the same type as is found in Bezae. Oh, it is likely enough that Bezae's text is edited from raw materials of the same type as the ancestors of D F G of Paul. But we cannot prove this! Astonishingly enough, there is not one Old Latin witness containing both the Gospels and Paul. There are a few scraps (primarily t) linking the Acts and Paul, but even these are quite minimal. Thus, even if we assume that Bezae and Claromontanus represent the same type, we cannot really describe their relative fidelity to the type (though we can make a very good assumption that Claromontanus is the purer).
We should also examine the relations between the "Western" witnesses in Paul. It is sometimes stated that F and G are descendents of D. This almost certainly not true -- certainly it is functionally untrue; if F and G derive from D, there has been so much intervening mixture that they should be regarded as independent witnesses.
Interestingly, there is a sort of a stylistic difference between D and F/G. F and G appear to have, overall, more differences from the Alexandrian and Byzantine texts, but most of these are small, idiosyncratic readings which are probably the result of minor errors in their immediate exemplars. D has far fewer of these minor variants, but has an equal proportion (perhaps even a higher proportion) of more substantial variants.
So far we have mentioned only these two uncials as relatives of D. We should note that these manuscripts were merely the leading witnesses of Von Soden's Ia1 type; with them he classified a number of minuscules: 88 181 915 917 1836 1898 1912. Several of these minuscules (e.g. 88 and 181) do appear to be somewhat related to each other, but there is no real evidence that they are akin to the key "Western" witnesses. (88*, it is true, joins the Western uncials in placing 1 Corinthians 14:34-35 after 14:40, but this is nearly unique). The only minuscule to show real kinship with the Western uncials is 629. It is likely, however, that this kinship is not properly genetic; rather, 629 is a Greek/Vulgate diglot, and there are instances where the Greek seems to have been conformed to the Latin. Since the Vulgate, in Paul, has many "Western" readings, this has given 629 something of a "Western" tinge.
The case is rather different for the Latin witnesses. These clearly are related to D F G. The Latin d is closest to D, though by no means identical; b is also closely related. It is rather more distant from a and m, and still more distant from r (the latter fragments sometimes seem to approach the Alexandrian text). The other Old Latin fragments of Paul are too short to assess properly.
The classification used by the Alands for the diglot uncials of Paul is fascinating. None of them is classified as Category IV -- in other words, the Alands do not regard them a belonging to the same type as Codex Bezae. (Of course, it should be noted have not published definitions of their categories, but that it is clear that Category IV has no definition at all; they simply placed witnesses there because they felt like it.) But the situation is curious even if we ignore Category IV. In the second edition of their Introduction, they list D, the oldest manuscript of the type, as Category III; the same description is applied to G -- but F, which is universally agreed to be a close relative of G, but inferior on the whole, is listed as Category II! The most charitable word I can think of for this is "inexplicable."
von Soden: a1026
Note: As with all the major uncials, no attempt is made to compile a complete bibliography.
Collations:
Tischendorf's 1852 edition remains the standard (if it can be found); beyond that, one must turn to K. Junack, Das Neue Testament auf Papyrus, Vol. 2: Die paulinischen Briefe
Sample Plates:
Aland & Aland (1 plate); also a facsimile in Scrivener
Editions which cite:
Cited in all editions since Tischendorf, and most prior to that.
Other Works:
There are actually two manuscripts which circulate under the symbol Dabs, correctly designated Dabs1 and Dabs2. Both are Greek/Latin diglots. It is one of the curiosities of textual criticism that almost no manuscripts are known which are copies of other manuscripts. Only two uncials are known to be copies of other uncials -- and both are copies of the Pauline Codex D/06 (Claromontanus). Their descriptions are as follows:
Basel, University Library A.N. III. 12. Contains the Gospels almost complete; lacks Luke 3:4-15, 24:47-end. Luke 1:69-2:4, 12:58-13:12, 15:8-20 are supplements in a later, cursive hand. Dated paleographically to the eighth century (so all recent authorities; Burgon argued for the seventh; the letterforms look old, but the accents, breathings, and punctuation argue that it is relatively recent). This makes it the very first purely Byzantine uncial in any part of the Bible; it is the first Byzantine manuscript to contain not merely the small, more ordinary Byzantine readings but also the story of the Adulteress (found earlier in D, but no one will claim Bezae is Byzantine!). (In the gospels, there are earlier almost-pure Byzantine uncials: A and the Purple Uncials; elsewhere, all Greek witnesses to the Byzantine text are even later than E. Obviously the Byzantine type is much older than E. E is simply the earliest pure representative of what became the dominant type in the Middle Ages.) All examiners have agreed on E's Byzantine nature; the Alands list it as Category V; von Soden lists it as Ki; Wisse calls it Kx Cluster W. (We might add that Kx Cluster W is Ki; Wisse's three chapters did not provide enough text to distinguish the two groups, but historical evidence seems to imply that they are distinct although very closely related.) Certain disputed passages are marked with asterisks (Matt. 16:2-3, Luke 22:43-44, 23:34, John 8:2-11). It is well and carefully written, and probably deserves inclusion in critical apparati as the leading witness of the later Byzantine type.
Oxford, Bodleian Library, Laud. Greek 35. Called "Codex Laudianus"
because it was donated to the Bodleian Library by William Laud
(1573-1645
),
the anti-Calvinist Archbishop of Canterbury under the British King Charles I.
Contains the Acts almost complete; lacks 26:29 (from paulos) to 28:26 (resuming after legon). The parchment is very thin, and there is some burn-through of ink, which, combined with the light colour of some letters, occasionally makes it difficult to read. Greek/Latin diglot, with the languages in parallel columns on the same page. The Latin is on the left. The manuscript is divided into sense lines of sorts, for purposes of parallelism, but as the lines are generally no more than fifteen letters long (often consisting of a single word!), they rarely form any real sort of syntactic unit.
Dated paleographically to the sixth or seventh century, with most scholars inclining toward the sixth. It can be demonstrated that it was in existence by no later than 716, since the Venerable Bede used it at that time for his commentary Expositio Retractata. (Giving us, incidentally, two Latin readings now lost: 27:5, 28:2). Prior to that, it had been in Sardinia; an entry (not by the original hand) refers to an edict of a Byzantine governor of that island (which was under Byzantine rule from 534).
It is hard to know what to make of the scribe. Although Metzger calls the uncials "clumsy," in fact both Greek and Latin letterforms are clearly written if large. On the other hand, the scribe had a great deal of difficulty with his pen, which ran dry every few letters. Based on this fact, it appears to me that he wrote the Latin column first, then the Greek, rather than writing across the page.
The Greek of E, it is generally conceded, is more Byzantine than anything else. The manuscript is mixed, however, there are many "Western" and some Alexandrian readings. (In fact, the manuscript seems somewhat block-mixed; "Western" readings are much more common in some sections than in others.) The Latin is not the vulgate, but rather a unique version of the Old Latin.
This raises the question of whether the Greek has been conformed to the Latin or vice-versa. Different scholars have answered this differently. Scrivener, for instance, reports that "the Latin... is made to correspond closely with the Greek, even in its interpolations and rarest various readings. The contrary supposition that the Greek portion of this codex Latinised, or has been altered to coincide with the Latin, is inconsistent with the facts of the case." More recent scholars such as Ropes and Clark, however, maintain that the Greek has in fact been conformed to the Latin. In this context, it is worth noting that the Latin is in the left-hand column, usually regarded as the place of honour.
It should be added, however, that the Latin of e seems somewhat unusual. And the arrangement of the two parts, with such short sense lines, argues that both texts may have undergone some adjustment. This is, however, only logic.... The most important point is that E has a mixed text, heavily but not purely Byzantine. It also has a number of interesting long readings, the most famous being Acts 8:37 (the Ethiopian Eunuch's acceptance of faith). By its nature, any reading in E must be taken with some hesitation and examination of its sources. This is reflected in earlier classifications of the manuscript: Von Soden listed it as Ia1 (i.e. as part of the core "Western" text), but the Alands list it as only Category II.
von Soden: a1001
Note: As with all the major uncials, no attempt is made to compile a complete bibliography.
Collations:
First published, with many inaccuracies, by Hearne in 1715 (Sabatier used this transcription in his Old Latin edition). Also collated by Tischendorf. Ropes and Clark also studied the manuscript in detail. Finally, if it can be found, there is a Ph.D. dissertation by O. Kenneth Walther, Codex Laudianus G 35: A Re-Examination of the Manuscript, Including a Reproduction of the Text and an Accompanying Commentary. The manuscript will also be published in the Acts volume of Das Neue Testament auf Papyrus.
Sample Plates:
Metzger, Manuscripts of the Greek Bible (1 page)
Metzger, The Text of the New Testament (1 page -- a smaller version of the above)
Sir Frederick Kenyon & A. W. Adams, Our Bible and the Ancient Manuscripts
(that same page again)
Editions which cite:
Cited in all editions since Tischendorf
Other Works:
Utrecht, University Library MS. 1. Contains the Gospels with significant lacunae, especially in Luke; the damage has been progressive, and some leaves have been lost since Wettstein saw it in 1730. (Between 1730 and 1830 it was in private hands, and was unbound, with the leaves becoming disordered and torn.) As it stands now, it begins with Matt. 9:1 (though in Wetstein's time it apparently started at 7:6); it also lacks Matt. 12:1-44, 13:55-14:9, 15:20-31, 20:18-21:5, (24:13-15 according to SQE but not Scrivener), Mark 1:43-2:8, 2:23-3:5, 11:6-26, 14:54-15:5, 15:39-16:19, John 3:5-14, 4:23-38, 5:18-38, 6:39-63, 7:28-8:10, 10:32-11:3, 12:14-25, 13:34-end. Luke is in even worse shape; Scrivener reports that there are 24 different lacunae, and SQE does not even bother collating the manuscript in that book. Dated paleographically to about the ninth century (so Tischendorf, von Soden, Aland; Tregelles preferred the tenth century). It has the Ammonian sections but not the Eusebian references; otherwise it has all the features of late uncials, including accents and breathings. The text is definitely Byzantine; the Alands list it as Category V; von Soden lists it as Ki. Wisse's classification doesn't mean much in this case; he lists F as Kmix in Luke 1, but it is defective for the other two chapters. In all likelihood it is actually either Kx or Ki (what Wisse would call Kx Cluster W). The date of the manuscript makes it potentially important for the history of the Byzantine text, but the large number of lacunae significantly reduce its value; it would have been much better had another Byzantine manuscript (preferably one of a type other than Kx) been used in the apparatus of SQE and UBS4.
This Symbol No Longer Used. This symbol was given by Wettstein to a manuscript of the Septuagint (M of sixth or seventh century) in which he found, in the original hand, a marginal text containing Acts 9:24-25. Uncials of the Acts were few enough that Wettstein included this as an uncial witness to Acts. Detailed examination later showed it to include several other New Testament passages. The complete list is: Matt. 5:48, 12:48, 27:25, Luke 1:42, 2:24, 23:21, John 5:35, 6:53, 55, Acts 4:33, 34, 9:24, 25, 10:13, 15, 22:22, 1 Cor. 7:39, 11:29, 2 Cor. 3:13, 9:7, 11:33, Gal. 4:21, 22, Col. 2:16, 17, Heb. 10:26. When Gregory regularized the catalog of uncials, however, he eliminated Fa on the grounds that it was not a continuous-text manuscript; it has not been cited since.
Cambridge, Trinity College B.XVII.1. Codex Augiensis, so-called because it comes from the monastery of Augia Dives in Lake Constance.
Greek/Latin diglot. The Greek lacks Romans 1:1-3:19, 1 Cor. 3:8-16, 6:7-14, Col. 2:1-8, Philem. 21-25, Hebrews. Save for the lacuna in Romans, all of these defects are supplied in the Latin. All the omissions save that in Romans are also paralleled in the sister manuscript Gp. The clear conclusion (also supported, e.g., by the pagination) is that both F and G were copied from a manuscript which omitted the passages in 1 Corinthians through Hebrews, but that the Romans passage (or most of it) was originally present in the manuscript and has now been lost. (Note: The general run of the Latin is not the Vulgate, but Hebrews does have a Vulgate text; in addition; NA26 lists the Latin sections not paralleled in the Greek as being supplements, but this seems to be based not on the nature of the writing but on its relationship with the Greek.)
The Greek and Latin are in parallel columns on the page, with the Greek in the inner column (closer to the spine of the book) and the Latin in the outer. Where the Greek fails, the Latin occupies the full width of the page.
Dated paleographically to the ninth century. Greek and Latin are both beautifully written, but the Greek quite incompetently; it is clear that the scribe was more comfortable in Latin (the most obvious example of this is word division: the exemplar clearly did not have word divisions, and while the scribe put in points to show divisions, they are very often in error. Another example is his handling of o and w; these vowels are often confused -- a trait I notice that I share as a user of the Roman alphabet). The scribe was almost certainly a native speaker of German.
The first and most obvious point about F is that it is an immediate relative of G, Codex Boernianus. The resemblances are both textual (they agree almost absolutely) and physical (they have the same lacunae).
It is generally conceded that G, although less attractive, has the better text. For this reason, many editions cite G and not F. This fact has also led to some rather absurd speculation -- notably that F is a copy of G. This is not the case. The two manuscripts are not direct descendents of one another; rather, they have a recent common ancestor. It is not impossible that they are sisters, both derived from a somewhat defective Greek/Latin diglot. Even this is by no means certain, however. It is worth noting that F and G, while they have nearly identical Greek texts, do not have identical Latin texts. The Latin of G (known as g) is a strict interlinear translation of the Greek. F, however, has a parallel Latin version, and this version is not the same as the Latin of G. Rather, the Latin of F (known as f) is a modified Vulgate. As the Latin version does not exactly match the Greek, it seems likely that it has been conformed to an Old Latin version.
It is worth noting that both G and F are written without heavy correction by the scribes. This strongly implies that both were copying texts that lay before them, rather than editing their Latin sides to match the Greek. In other words, there was probably (note the word probably; this is simply logic, and not assured!) an ancestor before the scribe of G with an interlinear Latin, and an ancestor before the scribe of F with a parallel Latin, including the lacunae in the Greek. Since the ancestor of F/G probably did not contain both an interlinear and a parallel Latin, there is presumably an intermediate manuscript in one or the other case. Continuing the logic, it appears more likely that G is copied directly from the common exemplar than that F is -- had the exemplar resembled F, it is likely that G's interlinear Latin would more nearly resembled f. Thus the highest likelihood is not that F and G are sisters, but that they are no closer than aunt and niece, and it is possible that they are merely cousins of some degree. (Thus the tendency to cite only G in the critical apparatus, ignoring F, is to be deplored; there may well be readings where F preserves the family text better than G, though it seems clear that G is overall the better and more complete witness. The only significant scholars to disagree with this assessment seem to be the Alands, who -- in what can only be labelled an inexplicable classification -- list F as Category II, but G, and D for that matter, as Category III.)
The relationship with Codex Claromontanus (D) has also been a matter of discussion. I have seen stemma implying that F and G are descended from D, and others implying a common ancestor which was the parent of D. This is quite absurd; there are simply too many major differences between the three (perhaps the best single example of this is the ending of Romans: D includes 16:25-27 at the end of that book, but F and G omit altogether). No one will deny that these three manuscripts form a text-type, but they are by no means immediate kin.
For the relationship between the "Western" text of Paul (the usual name given to the text of D F G and the Latin versions) to the "Western" text of Codex Bezae, see the entry on that manuscript and the entry on Codex Claromontanus.
von Soden: a1029
Note: As with all the major uncials, no attempt is made to compile a complete bibliography.
Collations:
The basic work remains F. H. A. Scrivener, An Exact Transcript of Codex Augiensis. One may check this against the Pauline portion of Das Neue Testament auf Papyrus.
Sample Plates:
Editions which cite:
Because of its close similarity to G, most editions cite F only intermittently.
The primary exceptions are Tischendorf and NA26 and NA27
Other Works:
London, British Museum Harley 5684 (a single leaf, taken from the codex by J. C. Wolff and given to Bentley, is in Cambridge, Trinity College B.XVII.20; it contains Matt. 5:29-31, 39-43). Called codex Wolfii A after the first important owner (though the manuscript in fact originated in the east, and was brought to the west by Andrew Erasmus Seidel), or alternately Codex Harleianus after its present location. Contains the Gospels with lacunae; lacks Matt. 1:1-6:6 (a small part of this, be it noted, being included on the Cambridge leaf), 7:25-8:9, 8:23-9:2, 28:18-Mark 1:13, Mark 14:19-25, Luke 1:1-13, 5:4-7:3, 8:46-9:5, 12:27-41, 24:41-end, John 18:5-19, 19:4-27. Portions of this damage were rectified by later hands: One scribe supplied Matt. 28:18-Mark 1:8 and John 18:5-19, another Luke 12:27-41. Earlier editors, such as Scrivener, dated the manuscript to the tenth century, but the Alands have lowered this to the ninth century. (Part of the problem may be the scribe's coarse writing, small uncials drawn with a pen much too large for the chosen size; Scrivener gives a facsimile showing irregular accents and breathings and demonstrating the ugly writing style.) There is more agreement about the text; all would agree that it is Byzantine. Von Soden classified it as Ki, and the Alands list it as Category V; Wisse describes it as Kx. There are hints of something more, though; even the Alands' figures show G as having a relatively high number of non-Byzantine, non-UBS readings (a total of 21, out of 288 readings tested; by way of comparison, E has 9 such "s" readings out of 326 readings examing, H has 7 in 265 test readings; M has 12 in 327; S has 12 in 327). It may be simply that the manuscript is carelessly written, but in working through the apparatus of SQE, I was struck by how many of the non-Byzantine readings seemed to be "Cæsarean." Great care, of course, must be taken in dealing with the "Cæsarean" text, as its very existence is questionable and the text has never been properly defined -- but this pattern of readings may imply that the handful of non-Byzantine readings, few though they are, are not errors and may have some slight value. (I repeat, however, that this is based solely on my subjective examination of the SQE critical apparatus; the matter needs to be examined in detail before this is taken as fact.)
Dresden, Sächsiche Landesbibliothek A 145b. Codex Boernerianus, so-called because it was formerly owned by C. F. Börner of Leipzig.
Greek/Latin interlinear diglot, lacking Romans 1:1-4, 2:17-24, 1 Cor. 3:8-16, 6:7-14, Col. 2:1-8, Philem. 21-25, Hebrews. These defects were clearly present in the exemplar as well, as all are shared by Fp, which was derived from the same exemplar.
It has been argued that G and the gospel manuscript D were originally part of the same volume; they are are similarly written, both are interlinear diglots, and the pages are exactly the same size. We should note, though, that not all commentators are convinced by these arguments. There is at least one counter-argument, though it is textual rather than physical or paleographic: The text of D is Byzantine, with Alexandrian elements in Mark; the text of G is purely and simply "Western." And while there are genuine physical similarities between the manuscripts (probably because they both derive from Saint Gall), D appears rather finer and fancier (though this may simply be because the Gospels are usually given finer treatment).
Dated paleographically to the ninth century by all authorities. The manuscript is written without accents or breathings, but with spaces between words (sometimes misplaced), in a stiff, awkward hand; the letterforms do not much resemble other manuscripts of the period (save D; while the two may not be part of the same volume, they are almost certainly from the same school as they resemble each other even in small details of preparation). The latin interlinear is written above the Greek, with the Greek lettering fairly large and the Latin extremely small. There is some slight decoration in colour, though not nearly as much as in D. A dot and an enlarged letter marks the beginning of phrases. It has been theorized (probably correctly) that the exemplar of G was written in some sort of sense lines, as the separate phrases and enlarged letters are almost evenly spaced.
A peculiar fact about the manuscript is that it contains (on folio 23) some verses in (archaic) Irish Gaelic referring to a pilgrimage to Rome. The writing in these verses appears similar to that of the Latin; the original scribe may have been Irish (many Irish monks settled in Saint Gall). But this point has not, as far as I know, been proved.
Another fact is that the scribe doesn't seem to have been accustomed to the type of text he copied. G (along with F and 629) omits Romans 16:25-27 -- but the scribe of G left room for the verses after 14:23. There is no sign of this in F; the simplest explanation (though by no means sure!) is that the scribe of G was more accustomed to a text containing those verses there.
In the entry on Fp, we noted the similarities between F and G. Not only are they both Greek/Latin diglots, but they have the same lacunae (with the exception of the first part of Romans, where F is defective). The similarity is further confirmed by their texts. Scrivener, who collated both, lists 1,982 differences -- but breaks them down as 578 blunders of the scribe, 967 vowel changes (including itacisms), 166 instances of interchanged consonants, and 71 grammatical or orthographic differences, 32 instances of addition or omission of the article, and 168 instances of clear variants.
Like F, the word division is sometimes peculiar, implying that the two were copied from an exemplar without word divisions. The two do not use identical word divisions, however, meaning that they can hardly have been copied from one another. That neither is a copy of the other is confirmed by much additional evidence. The key fact, perhaps, is that the two are in completely different styles: F has a facing Latin text, G an interlinear, but both are copied without major corrections by the scribes, implying that both Greek and Latin texts were present in their current forms in the exemplars. Nor do the Latin versions match closely.
Of the two, G seems to be the more accurate overall (despite the much uglier writing). One often finds G cited to the exclusion of F. This is unfortunate, since both are needed to reconstruct the exemplar, but certainly G is the one to choose if only one is to be cited.
That F and G belong to the same text-type as Dp and the Old Latin versions need not be doubted. This type is generally called "Western," though no absolutely convincing proof has been offered that this is truly the same type as found in Codex Bezae in the gospels. The relationship between D, F, and G is somewhat involved; while F and G are cousins or closer (see the discussion in the entry on F), D is much more distant -- not really kin at all, except at the text-type level. (Some manuals show D as an uncle, or even a direct ancestor, of F and G, but this is extremely unlikely -- there are too many differences; consider, for instance, their various forms of the ending of Romans.) Examination seems to show that F and G have more minor divergences from the common Alexandrian and Byzantine text than D (indeed, F and G may be the most idiosyncratic of all manuscripts in this regard, adding, changing, and omitting articles, pronouns, and other secondary words almost at random). They may actually have fewer large variants than D, however (this position was first stated by Corssen in 1889; I came to the conclusion independently). Casual inspection also seems to imply that F and G fall slightly closer to P46 and B than does D.
The Latin side of G, known as g (Beuron 77), is less interesting than the Greek. As an interlinear, it has been heavily conformed to the Greek, though there probably was an independent Latin version behind it (and used as a crib). An interesting feature of g is that it sometimes has alternate rendering. Metzger cites an example from 1 Corinthians 3:2; the Greek text reads gala umas epoteisa (NA26 gala umas epotisa). The alternate readings are for umas, where g reads vos vel vobis. It is at least possible that some of these alternate readings are places where the Latin reference edition used to compile g disagreed with the Greek text of G (particularly as there are instances where g does not match G at all).
Most classifications of G, of course, have closely followed the classification of F -- Von Soden, e.g., lists both as Ia1, in the same group as D (and, we must note, some unrelated minuscules). The one curiosity is the Alands, who place G in Category III but F in Category II. (For further discussion, see the entry on Fp).
von Soden: a1028
Note: As with all the major uncials, no attempt is made to compile a complete bibliography.
Collations:
First published by Matthei, in an edition said to be highly accurate but,
of course, now nearly inaccessible. Scrivener published a detailed collation
against F in F. H. A. Scrivener, An Exact Transcript of
Codex Augiensis. One may check this against the Pauline portion of
Das Neue Testament auf Papyrus.
Sample Plates:
Metzger, Manuscripts of the Greek Bible (1 plate)
Aland & Aland, The Text of the New Testament (1 plate)
Editions which cite:
Cited in all editions since Tischendorf, and some before.
Other Works:
Primarily at Hamburg, University Library, Cod. 91 in scrin.; one folio (formerly in the possession of Bentley, who never returned it to its rightful owner) is in Cambridge, Trinity College Library B.XVII.20. Called Codex Seidelianus II (after the man who brought it from the east) or Wolfii B after the first important owner. Contains the Gospels with major lacunae; lacks Matt. 1:1-15:30, 25:33-26:3, Mark 1:32-2:4, 15:44-16:14, Luke 5:18-32, 6:8-22, 10:2-19, John 9:30-10:25, 18:2-18, 20:12-25. It may never have been fully finished; it contains the Ammonian sections but not the Eusebian canons. Dated by all authorities to the ninth century. The text is definitely Byzantine -- though Scrivener reports that some esteemed H as having somewhat greater value than G, meaning probably that it was a little less Byzanine. This does not seem to be born out by the evidence; the Alands, naturally, list H as Category V, but also show it with a very low number of non-Byzantine readings (only 9 readings in either Category 2 or Category S; G, by contrast, has 25). My own informal experience bears this out; H has very few non-Byzantine readings. Wisse describes H as Kx. Von Soden (who designated it as e88) listed it as Ki, a group which Wisse considers part of Kx.
Modena, Biblioteca Estense, G.196 (II.G.3), folios 9-51 (the remaining folios, which contain the Catholic and Pauline Epistles, are now designated 2125). Codex Mutinensis. The uncial portion contains Acts only, and is defective for Acts 1:1-5:28, 9:39-10:19, 13:36-14:3, 27:4-28:31. The first three lacunae have been supplied in a minsucule hand (formerly designated h), the last by an uncial hand. Overall, the manuscript is dated to the ninth century, and Burgon thought the minuscule supplements to be "scarcely later," while the uncial supplement containing 27:4-28:31 has been dated to the eleventh century. The additional material found in 2125 was dated to the twelfth century by Scrivener, but the Alands give a tenth century date. There is little to be said about the text, save that it is Byzantine; the Alands list H as Category V, while Von Soden (who gave the manuscript the symbol a6) lists it as K with some I influence.
41 folios distributed among eight numbers in seven libraries in six cities: 8 leaves at the Great Lavra on Mount Athos; 3 leaves in Kiev (Nat.-Bibl. Petrov 26); 3 leaves in St. Petersburg (Bibl. Gr. 14); 3 leaves in Moscow (Hist. Mus. 563 and Ross. Gosud. Bibl. Gr. 166,1); 22 leaves in Paris (Bibl. Nat. Suppl. Gr. 1074 and Bibl. Nat. Coislin 202; the latter number also describing 94); 2 leaves at Turin (Bibl. Naz. A.1). Collectively known as Codex Coislinianus.
H presumably originally contained the entire Pauline corpus. At some point it was disassembled and the leaves used to bind other books (the Athos leaves were placed in the binding of a book dated 1218 by a monk named Makarius). The surviving leaves contain 1 Cor. 10:22-29, 11:9-16; 2 Cor. 4:2-7, 10:5-11:8, 11:12-12:4; Gal. 1:1-10, 2:9-17, 4:30-5:5; Col. 1:26-2:8, 2:20-3:11; 1 Thes. 2:9-13, 4:5-11; 1 Tim. 1:7-2:13, 3:7-13, 6:9-13; 2 Tim. 2:1-9; Titus 1:1-3, 1:15-2:5, 3:13-15; Hebrews 1:3-8, 2:11-16, 3:13-18, 4:12-15, 10:1-7, 10:32-38, 12:10-15, 13:24-25.
Dated paleographically to the sixth century. H is written on parchment in extremely large uncials (over 1.5 cm in height), one column per page. The text is written stichometrically. A later hand added accents and breathings to the text although not to the subscriptions of the books.
Aland and Aland list H as Category III; von Soden classifies it among the Alexandrian witnesses. From the stichometric arrangement of the lines, as well as the subscriptions to the various books (written in vermillion), H would appear to be based on the Euthalian edition of Paul -- probably the earliest example of this type.
A footnote to Titus claims that the text was corrected based on a manuscript written by Pamphilius. This is either an error or refers to the exemplar used for H; such corrections as we find in the text are almost always Byzantine (see the entry on correctors).
Overall, the text of H does appear to be Alexandrian, but with much Byzantine mixture. It is probably of more note for the history of the Euthalian text than the biblical text as a whole.
von Soden: a1022
Collations:
Sample Plates:
Editions which cite:
Cited in all editions since Tischendorf.
Other Works:
M. H. Omont, Notice sur un très ancien manuscrit grec
en onciales des Epîtres de Paul, conservé à la
Bibliothèque Nationale, 1889 (a partial edition, based on
materials available at the time).
Washington, Freer Gallery of Art, 06.275. Called Codex Freerianus or
Codex Washingtonensis. Contains fragments of the Pauline Epistles (84
folios). The extant fragments consists of (portions of)
1 Cor. 10:29, 11:9-10, 18-19,
26-27, 12:3-4, 27-28,
14:12-13, 22, 32-33, 15:3,
15, 27-28, 38-39, 59-50,
16:1-2, 12-13; 2 Cor. 1:1,
9, 16-17, 2:3-4, 14,
3:6-7, 16-17, 4:6-7,
16-17, 5:8-10, 17-18,
6:6-8, 16-18, 7:7-8,
13-14, 8:6-7, 14-17,
8:24-9:1, 9:7-8,
9:15-10:1, 10:8-10,
10:17-11:2, 11:9-10, 20-21,
28-29, 12:6-7, 14-15,
13:1-2, 10-11; Gal. 1:1-3,
11-13, 1:22-2:1, 2:8-9,
16-17, 3:6-8, 16-17,
24-28, 4:8-10, 20-23; Eph.
2:15-18, 3:6-8, 18-20,
4:9-11, 17-19, 28-30,
5:6-11, 20-24, 5:32-6:1,
6:10-12, 19-21; Phil. 1:1-4,
11-13, 20-23, 2:1-3,
12-14, 25-27, 3:4-6,
14-17, 4:3-6, 13-15; Col.
1:1-4, 10-12, 20-22,
27-29, 2:7-9, 16-19,
3:5-8, 15-17, 3:25-4:2,
4:11-13; 1 Thes. 1:1-2, 9-10,
2:7-9, 14-16, 3:2-5,
11-13, 4:7-10, 4:16-5:1,
5:9-12, 23-27; 2 Thes. 1:1-3,
10-11, 2:5-8, 14-17, 3:8-10;
1 Tim. 1:1-3, 10-13,
1:19-2:1, 2:9-13, 3:7-9,
4:1-3, 10-13, 5:5-9,
16-19, 6:1-2, 9-11,
17-19; 2 Tim. 1:1-3, 10-12,
2:2-5, 14-16, 22-24,
3:6-8, 3:16-4:1, 4:8-10,
18-20; Tit. 1:1-3, 10-11,
2:4-6, 14-15, 3:8-9; Philem.
1-3, 14-16; Heb. 1:1-3,
9-12, 2:4-7, 12-14,
3:4-6, 14-16, 4:3-6,
12-14, 5:5-7, 6:1-3,
10-13, 6:20-7:2, 7:7-11,
18-20, 7:27-8:1, 8:7-9,
9:1-4, 9-11, 16-19,
25-27, 10:5-8, 16-18,
26-29, 35-38, 11:6-7,
12-15, 22-24, 31-33,
11:38-12:1, 12:7-9, 16-18,
25-27, 13:7-9, 16-18,
23-25.
These represent 84 leaves (many fragmentary) out of an original total
of about 210; Hebrews followed 2 Thessalonians. The manuscript is generally
dated to the fifth century, though a few have suggested the sixth century
instead. There is little doubt about the text; it is clearly
Alexandrian. Von Soden (who designated it as
a1041) lists it
as type H, while the Alands place it in Category II,
ascribing it to the Egyptian text. Their own numbers, however, make this
dubious; of the 34 readings of I, only one is purely Byzantine, while 22
agree with UBS against the Byzantine text; six agree with neither. While this
is too small a sample to allow for absolute certainty, on its face it implies
that I is not Category II but Category I, and Alexandrian, not a member of
the later Egyptian text. By the numbers, I is the most Alexandrian manuscript
of Paul! And my own checking indicates that I is the closest relative
of in
existence (and much closer to A C 33 than it is to P46 or B or
1739). Its fragmentary nature limits its usefulness, but where it exists,
I deserves to be treated with all the respect accorded to
or A.
Paris -- Bibliothèque Nationale Gr. 63. It was taken to Paris from Cyprus in 1673.
Contains the Gospels complete.
Dated paleographically to the ninth century. K is written on parchment, one column per page. The scribe was named Basil, and the manuscript was bound by one Theodulos. Scrivener says of the writing, "[It has] one column of about twenty-one lines per page, but the handwriting is irregular and varies much in size. A single point being often found where sense does not require it, this codex has been thought to have been copied from an older one arranged in sticoi.... The subscriptions, titloi, the sections, and indices of the kefalia of the last three gospels are believed to be the work of a later hand: the Eusebian canons are absent. The breathings and accents are primâ manu, but are often omitted or incorrectly placed. Itacisms and permutations of consonants are very frequent...."
Recognized from a very early date as Byzantine (so, e.g., Aland and Aland, who list it as Category V). Von Soden classified it as Ika, i.e. Family P. This has been confirmed by all who have investigated the matter, most recently by Wisse (who places K in the Pa group in all three tested chapters of Luke, and calls it a core member of the group).
Wisse distinguishes two groups within Family P -- Pa and Pb. Of these, Pa is more distinct and has more differences from the Byzantine bulk Kx. Among the more important members of this group are K itself, P, 1079, and 1546. A (which is, of course, the earliest substantial Byzantine witness) is a diverging member of this group. The case can thus be made that K belongs to the oldest family of the Byzantine text -- and it is the oldest complete witness to this text.
von Soden: e71
Collations:
Sample Plates:
Editions which cite:
Cited by Tischendorf (who also collated it).
Cited by von Soden, Merk, and Bover.
Cited as a secondary witness in NA26 and NA27,
but not in SQE13
Cited in UBS3 but not UBS4
Other Works:
All of the following pertain to Family P,
and so include information on K as well (although the works of Geerlings are sometimes
guilty of dubious methodology):
Jacob Geerlings, Family P
in John, Studies & Documents 23, 1963
Jacob Geerlings, Family P
in Luke, Studies & Documents 22, 1962
Jacob Geerlings, Family P
in Matthew, Studies & Documents 24, 1964
Silva Lake, Family P
and the Codex Alexandrinus: The Text According to Mark, Studies & Documents 5, 1937
Moscow -- Historical Museum V.93, S.97. Originally from Mount Athos.
Contains the Catholic Epistles complete and Paul almost complete (lacks Romans 10:18-1 Corinthians 6:13; 1 Corinthians 8:8-11). Includes a marginal commentary.
Dated paleographically to the ninth century. K is written on parchment, two columns per page.
Von Soden classifies K as I1 in Paul and Apr1 in the Catholics. This is based, however, on the commentary (being that of John of Damascus in Paul and, according to von Soden, that of Andreas in the Catholics). The text is correctly described by Aland and Aland as Category V (i.e. purely Byzantine).
Within the Byzantine tradition, K forms a pair with 0151. The two may be sisters; certainly they are very closely related. Taking the book of Galatians as an example, we find 279 variants which can count at least two papyri or uncials on each side. K and 0151 agree on 263 of these. (In addition, K has seven singular readings and 0151 has ten.) Of these 263 agreements, seven are found only in these two manuscripts (a very high rate of subsingular agreement for Byzantine manuscripts).
Even their sixteen disagreements are suggestive:
| Verse | K reads | 0151 reads |
| 1:22 | ths | tais |
| 2:4 | katadoulwswntai | katadoulwsontai |
| 3:8 | soi | su |
| 3:19 | w | o |
| 3:22 | - | ta |
| 4:4 | gennomenon ek | genomenon ek vid |
| 4:6 | krazwn | krazon |
| 4:7 | alla | all |
| 5:14 | seauton | eauton |
| 5:26a | ginomeqa | ginwmeqa |
| 5:26b | allhlois | allhlous |
| 6:4 | eautou | autou |
| 6:8 | eautou | autou |
| 6:9 | qerisomen | qeriswmen |
| 6:10 | ergaswmeqa | ergasomeqa |
| 6:13 | kauchswntai | kauchsontai |
Thus every difference between the two is trivial, usually revolving around vowel sounds. In this list there is not one instance of a reading that is clearly of genetic significance. In all likelihood these two commentary manuscripts descend from a common ancestor at a distance of no more than a handful of generations. It is unlikely, however, that one is copied from the other, since both have singular readings.
von Soden: I1 (Paul);
Apr1 (Cath)
Matthei's g
Scholz's 102a, 117p
Collations:
Sample Plates:
Metzger, The Text of the New Testament (1 page)
Editions which cite:
Cited in all editions since Tischendorf (though Nestle cites it only
silently).
Other Works:
Paris, National Library Greek 62. Codex Regius.
Contains the four Gospels with small lacunae: Now lacks Matt. 4:22-5:14, 28:17-end, Mark 10:16-30, 15:2-20, John 21:15-end. Portions of the remainder have been rendered difficult to read by damp.
Dated paleographically to the eighth century; it is, by general consent, the most important manuscript of that period. The manuscript is written in a fairly firm, if clearly late, hand, but the scribe was not especially competent. Errors in the text are common; errors in externals perhaps even more common. Scrivener notes that "The breathings and accents are often deficient, often added wrongly, and placed throughout without rule or propriety. The apostrophus is common, and frequently out of place; the points for stops are quite irregular...." The manuscript contains many ornamentations, but they are not regarded as attractive (Scrivener calls them "in questionable taste"). In addition, the lectionary apparatus and Eusebian material is included, but the number of errors in the latter may indicate that the scribe did not understand their purpose. There are also occasional marginal comments on the text (some even stand in the text, such as that on the variant endings of Mark).
It seems likely that the scribe was an Egyptian, more used to writing Coptic than Greek.
When Hort defined his text-types, he described an "Alexandrian" text which was basically the "neutral" text with some grammatical corrections. Hort could not point to a single pure witness, but the closest he came was L.
L is fascinating because, among all the late uncials, it is far and away the
least Byzantine. If having an Alexandrian text is taken as a measure of quality,
L is probably the fourth-best substantial manuscript of the Gospels, trailing only
P75, B, and .
L is not without a Byzantine element; the first half of Matthew agrees almost entirely with the Majority Text. But this element fades toward the end of Matthew, and the rest is quite different. (The logical conclusion is that the ancestor of L was corrected toward the Byzantine standard, but that the corrector gave up somewhere in Matthew. This is not unusual; we see something similar in manuscripts such as 579 and 1241). From that point on, L has mostly Alexandrian readings, although there are some readings of other sorts. Some are Byzantine; others seem to be simply the sorts of readings that crept into the tradition with time. (Hort would call these readings Alexandrian, and the Alands have labelled this late phase of the Alexandrian text "Egyptian," but there is no real reason to think that this is in any sense a separate text-type. It's simply a text-type which has undergone continuous mixt