Ps. 4919-7910. The codex opens (1, f. 3) with a table of the books written in uncial letters somewhat later than the body of the MS. The first volume contains the Octateuch with Kings and Chronicles (oμov Bißrias). The books of Chronicles are followed (Vol. II.) by the Prophets (πроpηται is) Minor and Major, Jeremiah, including Baruch, Lamentations and the Epistle; Daniel (Theodotion's version) is succeeded by Esther, Tobit, Judith, Esdras 1, 2, and the four books of Maccabees. The third volume contains the Psalter, with Ps. CLI., and the Canticles, Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, the Song of Solomon, the Wisdom of Solomon, and the Wisdom of the Son of Sirach. The table shews that the Psalms of Solomon once occupied a place at the end of the fourth volume which contains the New Testament." 1 This codex contains all of the present Canon of the New Testament except Mt. 11-256; John 650 – 852; 2 Cor. 413-127. It also has the two epistles of Clement except 158-63, 213-20 2

This manuscript was in the possession of the Patriarch of Alexandria for many centuries before it was presented to Charles I. of England in 1628. Swete says: 3

"It seems probable that A, which, as far back as the furthest period to which we can trace its history, was preserved in Egypt, had been originally written there; and, as Mr. E. M. Thompson has pointed out, the occurrence of Egyptian forms of the Greek letters in the superscriptions and colophons of the books proves that the MS., if not absolutely written in Egypt, must have been immediately afterwards removed thither.""

To the same family belongs the Codex Ephraem C, also of the fifth century, now in the National Library at Paris. It is a bundle of fragments, preserving three-fifths of the whole original manuscript in the uncial character. But it is a palimpsest; that is, the original letters have faded or been washed out, and the manuscript has been written over by selections from Ephraem the Syrian.*

The Codex Vaticanus 452 of the Prophets,5 of the eleventh century, was also originally in the possession of the Patriarch of Alexandria, and presents a text of the same general char

1 Swete, l.c., p. xxii.

2 See Gregory, Prolegomena, p. 355. 3 l.c., p. xxiii, note.

See Gregory, Prolegomena, pp. 366 seq.

5 H. & P., 91.

acter as A. So also does the Codex Ambrosianus of the Law, assigned to the fifth century by Ceriani.2

To these may be added the Codex Bodleianus of Genesis of the eighth century. These represent an Alexandrian official text, but probably later than the revision of Hesychius.

4

E. Klostermann thinks that the recension of Hesychius is represented by Codex Vaticanus, gr. 556.5 Ceriani claims the text of Codex Marchalianus for Hesychius."

So far as the New Testament is concerned, Hort thinks that the text of A is mixed with both Syrian and Western readings. Silberstein has made a careful examination of the text of 3 Kings (1 Kings of our Bible), and finds that of the 259 Hexapla additions as indicated by the asterisk, nine-tenths appear in A, and that there can be no doubt of the dependence of this text upon the recension of Origen.7

Similar detailed work on all the books of the Old and New Testaments is necessary before the exact relation of A to Origen and Hesychius and the earlier Alexandrian text can be fully determined.

"The text of A stands in broad contrast to those of either B or, though the interval of years is probably small. The contrast is greatest in the Gospels, where A has a fundamentally Syrian text, mixed occasionally with pre-Syrian readings, chiefly Western. In the other books the Syrian base disappears, though a Syrian occurs among the other elements. In the Acts and Epistles the Alexandrian outnumber the Western readings. All books except the Gospels, and especially the Apocalypse, have many pre-Syrian readings not belonging to either of the aberrant types; in the Gospels these readings are of rare occurrence. By a curious and apparently unnoticed coincidence the text of A in several books agrees with the Latin Vulgate in so many peculiar readings devoid of Old Latin attestation as to leave little doubt that a Greek MS. largely employed by Jerome in this revision of

1 Cornill, Ezekiel, s. 71.

2 Monumenta Sacra et Profana, III., Mediol., 1864. See also Swete, 1.c., p. xxvi, for a full description.

3 See Swete, l.c., p. xxvi.

6 Ceriani, de Codice Marchaliano.

8. 73.

4 Analecta, s. 10.

5 H. & P., 26.

See Nestle in Urtext und Uebersetzungen,

7 Z. A. T. W., 1893, s. 68, 69; 1894, s. 26.

the Latin version must have had to a great extent a common original with A."1

.

Hort thinks that "Not a single Greek MS. of any age has transmitted to us an Alexandrian text of any part of the New Testament free from large mixture with other texts."2

VIII. THE TEXT OF THE HEXAPLA

The uncial manuscript Marchalianus of the Prophets, dating from the sixth or seventh century, represents the Greek text of Origen's Hexapla on the margin. The chief authority for this text, however, is the Codex Sarravianus in Leyden, containing the Heptateuch. Codex Venetus, gr. 1, may be added on the authority of Lagarde, Ceriani, and Giesebrecht.5 Cornill adds also the cursives, Codex Chisianus of the Prophets," the Codex Barberinus of the Prophets. The Codex Coislinianus, containing the Octateuch, also has the text of the Hexapla. The recently discovered Hexapla of a section of the Psalms gives us the exact copy of the work of Origen. The other manuscripts need careful comparison with this so soon as it may be published.

There is no evidence that Origen or Eusebius or Pamphilus issued a revised text of the New Testament.

IX. THE SO-CALLED WESTERN TEXT

The Codex Bezæ, D,9 of the Gospels and Acts, from the sixth century, contains "substantially a Western text of Cent. II., with occasional readings probably due to Cent. IV. . . . Western texts of the Pauline Epistles are preserved in two

1 Westcott and Hort, New Testament in Greek, Introduction, 1882, p. 152. 2 l.c., p. 150.

3 This is XII. of H. & P. See Cornill, Ezekiel, s. 15; Nestle, l.c., s. 73.

.

4 H. & P., IV. and V.; published in phototype by Omont, Leyden, 1897. See Strack, l.c., s. 196; Nestle, Urtext und Uebersetzung, s. 72.

5 H. & P., 23. E. Klostermann, Analecta, s. 9-10, 34, shows that it belongs with H. & P., XI., Vat. gr. 2106, making up a complete Old Testament.

6 This manuscript alone gives the old Greek translation of Daniel; all others give Theodotion.

7 H. & P., 86, contains the Prophets except Daniel.

8 H. & P., X. See Buhl, l.c., s. 138; Nestle, l.c., s. 72.

9 See Gregory, Prolegomena, pp. 369 seq.

independent uncials, D2 and G." This Western text is thus described by Hort:

G3

"The chief and most constant characteristic of the Western readings is a love of paraphrase. Words, clauses, and even whole sentences, were changed, omitted, and inserted with astonishing freedom, wherever it seemed that the meaning could be brought out with greater force and definiteness. They often exhibit a certain rapid vigour and fluency which can hardly be called a rebellion against the calm and reticent strength of the apostolic speech, for it is deeply influenced by it, but which, not less than a tamer spirit of textual correction, is apt to ignore pregnancy and balance of sense, and especially those meanings which are conveyed by exceptional choice or collocation of words. . . .

"Another equally important characteristic is a disposition to enrich the text at the cost of its purity by alterations or additions taken from traditional and perhaps from apocryphal or other nonbiblical sources. . .

"Besides these two marked characteristics, the Western readings exhibit the ordinary tendencies of scribes whose changes are not limited to wholly or partially mechanical corruptions. . . .

"As illustrations may be mentioned the insertion and multiplication of genitive pronouns, but occasionally their suppression where they appeared cumbrous; the insertion of objects, genitive, dative, or accusative, after verbs used absolutely; the insertion of conjunctions in sentences which had none, but occasionally their excision where their force was not perceived, and the form of the sentence or context seemed to commend abruptness; free interchange of conjunctions; free interchange of the formulæ introductory to spoken words; free interchange of participle and finite verb with two finite verbs connected by a conjunction; substitution of compound verbs for simple as a rule, but conversely where the compound verb of the true text was difficult or unusual; and substitution of aorists for imperfects as a rule, but with a few examples of the converse, in which either a misunderstanding of the context or an outbreak of untimely vigour has introduced the imperfect. A bolder form of correction is the insertion of a negative particle, as in Mt. 212 (où being favoured, it is true, by the preceding Tov), Lk. 114, and Rom. 419; or its omission, as in Rom. 5, Gal. 25, 58.

"Another impulse of scribes abundantly exemplified in Western readings is the fondness for assimilation. In its most obvious

1 Westcott and Hort, l.c., pp. 148, 149. D2 Codex Bornerianus.

Codex Claromontanus;

form it is merely local, abolishing diversities of diction where the same subject-matter recurs as part of two or more neighbouring clauses or verses, or correcting apparent defects of symmetry. But its most dangerous work is 'harmonistic' corruption; that is, the partial or total obliteration of differences in passages otherwise more or less resembling each other. Sometimes the assimilation is between single sentences that happen to have some matter in common; more usually, however, between parallel passages of greater length, such especially as have in some sense a common origin. To this head belong not only quotations from the Old Testament, but parts of Ephesians and Colossians, and again of Jude and 2 Peter, and, above all, the parallel records in the first three Gospels, and to a certain extent in all four."1

There are great differences of opinion as to the value of this Western text, especially between British and German scholars.2 Rendel Harris, in his recent study of this text, makes the following statements:

"So extensively has the Greek text of Codex Bezæ been modified by the process of Latinization that we can no longer regard D as a distinct authority apart from it. In the first instance it may have been such; or, on the other hand, it may have been the original from which the first Latin translation was made. But it is probably safe to regard D + d as representing a single bilingual tradition.

...

"It is the Bezan Latin that is of prime importance, while the Greek has no certain value except where it differs from its own Latin, and must not any longer be regarded as an independent authority....

"The coincidences between D and Irenæus take us again to a primitive translation that cannot be as late as the end of the second century. And finally, an examination of the relicts of Tatian's Harmony, and of the Syriac Versions shows reason for

1 Westcott and Hort, l.c., pp. 122-125.

2 "Eine rätselhafte Handschrift, über deren Wert die Meinungen weit auseinander gehen. Während die einen in ihr das einzigartige Denkmal einer zwar verwilderten, aber sicherlich manches Ursprüngliche enthaltenden Textesgestalt erblicken, wie sie vor der endlichen Konstituierung des Kanons verbreitet gewesen, gilt sie anderen als der Hauptrepräsentant des durch willkürliche Aenderungen und Interpolationen entstellten sogen. Occidentalischen (western) Textes, und dazwischen stehen eine Anzahl Sonderauffassungen, welche ihrerseits der Eigenart der unter allen Umständen hochbedeutsamen Urkunde Rechnung zu tragen suchen." Von Gebhardt in Urtext und Uebersetzungen der Bibel, s. 31.