$' I?) A n n 6" REESE LIBRARY •J^ jCiNIVERSITY of CALIFORNIA. i Received_ Accessions No. /C _V of the Epistles; while the discussion of any special text of itself de- termines at once the meaning of the letter attached to the codex containing it, as, if a passage in the Epistle to the Romans were in question, a simple reference to Codex D would instantly be understood as referring to No. 107 of the National Library at Paris, and not to Codex D of the Gospels and Acts. There is but one uncial manuscript, which contains the entire New Testament — the word entire taken in a general sense, for even this codex has rare and slight omissions. Only about thirty of all kinds contain substantially all of the Christian books. The copies which have the Gospels are far more numerous than those of other parts of the New Testament. Sixty-three uncials of all sorts are tabulated accord- ing to the most recent computations,*" and fifty-six of these contain the Gospels,t or parts of them. To the number of uncials should now be added the Codex * Compare The Critical Handbook, E. C. Mitchell (1880) with Tables revised by Dr. Ezra Abbot. t Scrivener ; Plain Introduction, 269. 48 THE STORY OF THE MANUSCRIPTS. Rossanensis, recently discovered, which is described in detail in a future chapter. It is to be reckoned with the copies of the Gospels. Some of these uncials are mere fragments, one containing only six leaves (Y) with one hundred and thirty-seven verses of St. John, another (W*) having only six verses of the same Gos- pel. Of the cursive manuscripts six hundred and twenty-three are enumerated by Scrivener as having the Gospels. There are fourteen uncials and two hundred and thirty-two cursives of the Acts and Gen- eral Epistles; fifteen uncials and two hundred and eighty-three cursives of the Epistles of St. Paul ; five uncials and one hundred and five cursives of the Revelation; sixty-one uncial and two hundred and eighty-five cursive Evangelistaria are mentioned, and seven uncial and seventy-four cursive copies of the Praxapostolos. After giving the lists of these man- uscripts, covering many pages of his Introduction to the Criticism of the New Testament, Scrivener adds the Greek words of St. Matthew's Gosj^el, ix. 37 : — " TJie harvest truly is plenteous^ but the laborers are few."" It should be remembered, however, that even this great number of registered manuscripts does not ex- haust the list of documents employed by the critic, for it does not mention the versions, nor the patristic sources for the determination of the text. From what has been said already, it will readily be seen that the determination of the age of a manu- script is of first importance. This is accomplished by a careful study of the style of the letters, and the kind MANUSCRIPTS OF THE SCRIPTURES. 49 of material upon which it is written, the use of ac- cents, divisions, punctuation, marginal adornments or notes, inscriptions, subscriptions, and similar signs. There is little difficulty in assigning a date, with a very considerable degree of certainty, to many of the codices in our possession, and of the more doubtful cases the opinions of scholars vary not more than by a single century in any important instance. The method of ascertaining the date of the writing is substantially the same as that which may be applied to any printed book. A rare copy of Spenser's works lies before the writer, and a glance at the texture of the paper and at the quaint type is sufficient to produce the convic- tion that the book could not have been printed within the last fifty years, nothwithstanding its fresh bind- ing ; and a closer inspection leaves no room for wonder that the title-page should bear the date 1679. A copy of Froissart's Chronicles, printed in black-letter upon paper that has been yellowed by the passage of hun- dreds of years, will tell its story of antiquity to any child, and the skilled eye of the lover of books will have little trouble in assigning it a date within a few decades of the true one. And so in the case of the manuscripts under consideration, it is evident that if the date of the production of any one of them is not inscribed upon it, — for in many instances the date is thus written and needs only to be verified by a con- currence of the characteristics of the manuscript it- self, — the fact that it is written upon vellum of an early century would indicate beyond question that it was not produced during the later centuries, in which 50 THE STORY OF THE MANUSCRIPTS. the brown and rough paper made of cotton rags was used. The employment of uncials of a particular form, similar to those found in other manuscripts of a known date, settles the question for some of the codices, examples of which will be noticed hereafter in the chapters upon the most celebrated documents extant. If there are several columns upon a single page, after the manner more anciently employed in the production of the papyrus-rolls, the manuscrij^t may be ascribed to a date very near to the time of such rolls themselves. Again, if the stichometrical form of writing is employed, it is plain that some date must be assigned within the limits of the time in which it was the fashion to follow the example set by Euthalius of Alexandria. Or if it is a palimpsest which is to be examined, it is safe to assign to the older writing, over which the later text was written, a great antiquity, as in the case of the Codex of Ephraem, as it is called, and which surely belonged to the fifth century. But the more minute signs by which the age of a manuscript may be tested are of still greater importance, for they serve to fix the time of the writing with greater exactness, after the gen- eral period has been determined. Slight peculiarities in the formation of the letters and the use of ad- ditional marks frequently betray valuable secrets, and in some cases even the hand of the transcriber is revealed. The celebrated critic, Dr. F. II. Scrivener, .s])eaks of three manuscripts as certainly written by the same scribe, and he adds a fourth to the number, whose elegant characters and highly finished pages MANUSCRIPTS OF THE SCRIPTURES. 51 bear almost unmistakable testimony to the skill of the same accomplished workman. It would be impossible, as well as unnecessary, in the absence of the manu- scripts themselves, or of facsimile copies, to indicate to the reader these slighter marks, which are of such great importance to critical scholars. It suffices to say, that the utmost confidence may be placed in the decisions drawn from them by these competent critics, and that if anything may be believed upon evidence afforded by others, the case of the antiquity and authority of the most celebrated copies of the Scrip- tures may be considered settled. It would be a great error to supj^ose that critical w^ork upon the manuscripts has only been done in our later times. It is frequently asserted by those who oppose the Scriptures on the ground of genuineness, that the age in which they were written and came into use was wholly uncritical, and that a spurious document might easily have found its way to the acceptance of the churches. Just the contrary, how- ever, is the case. The quotations of the earliest Fathers, to which brief reference has already been made, prove beyond question that they studied the documents in their possession with scrupulous care, comparing one with another and noting their differ- ences, weighing the evidence for the truth, not only of every entire work, but of every reading of the vari- ous copies, with eager solicitude. Origen was a dis- criminating student and editor of the Septuagint, and his labors upon the text of the New Testament were the work of an acute and trained scholar ', and Eusebius, 52 THE STORY OF THE MANUSCRIPTS. a man of the greatest learning, spared no pains nor ex- pense, in journeys and study, to discover sources of Christian history, and his division of all the books in the hands of the churches into three classes, the genuine, the disputed, and the spurious, proves the care with which such documents were scrutinized. Evidence of this kind, from the middle of the third and the beginning of the fourth centuries, is of indisputable importance in critical study. But the very manuscripts themselves bear testimony to the constant efforts through all the succeeding centuries to secure a correct text of Scrip- ture, for they are filled with marginal notes and cor- rections, often lamentably false, but showing the desire to reach the truth, if possible. Moreover the exertions of learned communities, such as those of Alexandria and Carthage, can by no means be forgotten. In these centres of learning, there was the greatest interest manifested in the new Christian literature and its prin- cipal doctrines. Writers were found to oppose, as well as to favor, and the result of the numerous controver- sies was inevitably in favor of a close discrimination of any differences in the manuscrijDts which were the subjects of discussion. And yet, it is not claimed that even the most elaborate studies of the early centuries are to be at all compared with the researches of more modern times. It was very natural when editions of the Bible began to appear in print in the fifteenth, and especially in the sixteenth, century, that the text thus given to the world should at once assert for itself a peculiar authority, and also be subjected to a wide criticism upon the part of scholars. In the year 1502 MANUSCRIPTS OF THE SCRIPTURES. 53 Cardinal Ximenes engaged a large number of scholars to prepare an edition of the whole Bible in the origi- nal Hebrew and Greek with the Chaldee of Onkelos, the Septuagint Greek, and the Vulgate. This immense undertaking was commenced by the study of the New Testament, which was finished in 1514 and published in 1520. For this edition the celebrated scholars en- gaged in the work had the use of manuscripts said to have been put at their disposal by the guardians of the Papal Library at Rome. What these manuscripts were has never been clearly known, though they were probably of late dates. This edition was called the Complutensian New Testament, from Complutum, where the work was executed. An edition by Eras- mus followed in 1516, and another in 1519, confessedly prepared with too much haste and from manuscripts still preserved at Basle, dating from about the sixteenth century, with one or two others somewhat older but not of prime value. Other editions appeared from time to time, the names of Colinaeus, Stephens, Beza, the Elzevirs, and others, standing upon their pages, but still deficient in the great elements of sound criticism afterward to be enunciated. Out of these early efforts, however, grew the term Textus Receptus, or the Re- ceived Text. The name has sometimes been applied to the text of Stephens, sometimes to that of Beza, and when the edition of the Elzevirs in 1624 appeared, to some degree uniting the texts of Stephens and Beza, the term was also applied to the new work. With some indefiniteness, therefore, and yet with a general reference to the text of this period, the term Textus 54 THE STOEY OF THE MANUSCRIPTS. Receptus has come down to this day. But it is mani- fest that the comparatively few and late manuscripts used in the j^reparation of these early editions could only give results often imperfect, and gradually the desires of Biblical scholars were kindled for a further correction of the text. Bentley in England undertook the work, but his edition was never completed. Ger- man scholars united their efforts in the task of classi- fying existing documents. Griesbach, Scholz, and others brought their departments of study up to the dignity of science. But it was reserved for Lachmann, beginning in 1821, to give application to the great princij^les of criticism which are generally acknowl- edged at the present time, and which demand an utter freedom from the claims of the received text, conced- ing authority to it only as it is supported by the most ancient and valuable manuscripts. Thus it was that only in the present century the science of Biblical Criticism cast off its shackles and advanced to its greatest triumphs. Almost simulta- neously the renowned scholars, Constantin Tischendorf in Germany, and Samuel Prideaux Tregelles, began their publications. Other scholars of almost equal note have devoted their lives to the same pursuits with unexampled and well rewarded ardor. Great discoveries, hereafter to be detailed in these pages, and of the most romantic interest, have contributed their invaluable aid to the revision of the sacred text. No longer are the precious secrets of the earliest Christian documents buried away in monasteries and libraries, but in editions of the New Testament of little cost may be possessed by every one. MANUSCRirTS OF THE SCRIPTURES. 55 The question may well be raised, however, concern- ing the discovery and use of the ancient copies of the Scriptures : Is there no chance of mistake ? Is it not possible even that the critics may be deceived by de- liberate attempts at imposture? In the eager search for such documents — these "rolls And old records from ancient times derived, Some made in books, some in long parchment scrolls, That were worm-eaten all and full of canker-holes," — the value of them has been fully published, and some- times great sums offered for them. May not the " worm-eaten " and " canker-holed " vellum have been counterfeited, the text accurately forged, and the whole fraud palmed off upon guileless students, who have been only too ready to believe in what promised satisfaction to their long-cherished desires ? Such attempts at imposture have actually been made, but the very fact that they were detected and are now famous as among the most skilfully executed frauds the world has ever seen, is a guarantee of the superior watchfulness and the critical learning of Christian scholars. No bolder attempts to deceive, nor any more nearly successful in the case of any important Scriptural documents, have been made than those which have rendered the name of Constantino Simonides famous, in connection especially with the Sinaitic manuscript discovered by Tischendorf. An account of this attempt must be deferred to the chap- ter upon that celebrated codex, but similar efforts may be mentioned here, as illustrative of the method 56 THE STORY OF THE MANUSCRIPTS. pursued. This same man, Constantine Simonicles, early in the year 1856, through the aid of a professor in Leipzig, undertook to sell a manuscript of the Egyptian History of Uranios, son of Anaximines, to the Academy of Berlin. A few leaves of the very ancient and important Shepherd of Hermas were also offered, and these were bought, while twenty-five hundred thalers, only half the price of the history, were paid. At this juncture a message arrived from Professor Lykurgos of Athens, that both the manu- scripts were probably spurious. Professor Tischen- dorf at once examined them critically and pronounced them false. But when people have been cheated they do not like to confess it, and in this instance there was much opposition to the decision of Tischendorf. Simonides himself had not ventured to go to Berlin with his wares, and the negotiations had been effected by proxies, as already said. Tischendorf, who had examined the documents in Leij^zig, instantly tele- graphed to Humboldt in Berlin, and the despatch was given to the president of the Academy. By his order the documents were tested microscopically and chemically, and Simonides was promptly arrested. But this was not the only attempt made by this man. He offered to the Bodleian Library at Oxford, Eng- land, several manuscripts, some of which were genu- ine. These were of no very great value, but were discussed by the librarian with the vendor, and a ready agi*eement as to their belonging to the tenth, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries was obtained. But then a few fragments were produced, handled with MANUSCRIPTS OF THE SCRIPTURES. 57 the greatest care, which revealed an uncial text appar- ently of the highest antiquity. The vellum upon which it was written was stained by age, and bore every mark of having come down from a very remote time. The librarian smelt of the leaves, gave them back to the vendor, with the single remark that the manuscript dated from the middle of the nineteenth century, and the foiled Simonides departed. Unfortu- nately, however, he found a lover of such treasures in a private home in Worcestershire, and sold them there for a large sum. If it were a question only of the materials used, imposition might be easily practised ; but the text betrays it, and the most exact imitation in other respects must always fail in the text to meet the demands of the deeply versed scholarship of mod- ern days. Scrivener says that " with respect to Bib- lical manuscripts in particular, we may confidently assert that there are fifty persons at least now in Eng- land who, on internal grounds alone, from their inti- mate knowledge of what a genuine record ought to and must contain, would at once detect with perfect ease any — the most highly finished — imitation that dis- honest skill could execute, provided the document ex- tended beyond the length of a very few lines." * * Six Lectures, p. 22. UlTIVERSITY 58 TILE STORY OF TIIE MANUSCRIPTS. CHAPTER lY. THE ALEXANDRINE MANUSCRIPT. The Codex A is the earliest that was thoroughly studied by scholars for the purpose of correcting the text of the New Testament and determining, with a greater degree of accuracy than had been previously attained, what must have been the original reading of the manuscripts given to the churches in the apostolic age. This Codex is, however, only the third in point of value and antiquity, being outranked in these respects by B, the most celebrated document of the Vatican, and by J^, the Sinaitic manuscript in the possession of the Russian government. The Alexandrine manuscript is in the British Museum. It was presented to Charles I. in 1628 by Cyril Lucar, the Patriarch of Constantinople, who brought it himself from Egypt. When the British Museum was founded in 1753, it was immediately transferred from the royal private collection to this national depository. It is in four volumes, three of which contain the Old Testament in the Septuagint version, and the fourth the New Testament with many defects, for it commences with the sixth verse of the twenty-fifth chapter of Matthew's Gospel, omits the THE ALEXANDRINE MANUSCRIPT. 59 passage from John vi. 50 to John viii. 52, and also that from 2 Cor. iv. 13 to xii. 6. In several places, too, single letters have been cut off in the process of binding. But at the close of the New Testament is added a work of rare value, since it is the only extant copy of the earliest of the Apostolic Fathers, the Epistle of Clement of Rome to the Corinthians, to- gether with a part of a second epistle, whose author- ship is more doubtful. The Patriarch of Constanti- nople, who secured the manuscri23t during his previous patriarchate in Egypt,"^ testified in an autograph note upon the document itself, that the tradition in Egypt concerning it was, that it was written by Thecla, a noble lady of Egypt, thirteen hundred years previous to its acquisition by himself, which would place its origin early in the fourth century. This is consistent with an inscription in Arabic upon the reverse of the first leaf, which also declares it to be by the hand of Thecla, the martyr. But this declaration carries suspicion in itself. Thecla the martyr lived at a very early date ; and in the first Christian centu- ries a vast number of legends had gathered about her name. Her history is referred to by many great writers, Cyprian and Eusebius, Epiphanius, Austin, Gregory of Nazianzum, Chrysostom and others, re- cording the popular esteem in which her faith and virtues were held. Among the apocryj^hal writings ♦ According to another account emanating from one of Cyril's deacons, he obtained the manuscript at Mount Athos,-. where he dwelt for a long period previous to his Patriarchate in Alexandria. Comp. Bleek, Einleitung, § 269, 1. 60 THE STORY OF THE MANUSCRIPTS. that have claimed a place in the New Testament, is one called the Acts of Paul and Thecla, which Tertullian says was forged by a presbyter of Asia, who, "when convicted, confessed that he did it out of respect of Paul." The manuscript of this for- gery is in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, though it has been denied that this is the original Acts of Paul and Thecla, that was in the hands of early Christians. All this readiness to connect the name of Thecla with ancient Christian history, and the sanctity that was attached to her person, would nat- urally aid any tendency to unite her name with this valuable manuscript. If the idea were once started, that the jnartyr and saint made this precious volume, it would find constantly increasing support from the veneration bestowed upon her memory. But the fact that her martyrdom was so very early renders it entirely improbable, and certain signs in the manu- script itself declare it to have been impossible that it was written by her hand. May not the work have been done by some other Thecla, then, who has been confounded with the martyr on account of the popular predisposition to honor the saint? It is possible. Another Thecla, who was a friend and valued assistant pi Gregory of Nazianzum in the fourth century, may have been the copyist of the Alexandrine pages, and yet there is nothing to prove the fact, while some indications would seem to assign the work to a some- what later date, probably the beginning of the fifth century, the conclusion reached by Scrivener,* though * Six Lectures, p. 54 ; Plain Introduction, p. 92. THE ALEXANDRINE MANUSCRIPT. 61 Davidson has assigned it to the middle of that cen- tury.* On the whole, the conjecture of Tregelles as to the copyist seems the most likely to be true. He suggests, that the beginning of the 'New Testament portion of the manuscript, Matt. xxv. 6, is a part of the appointed lesson in the Greek church for the festival of Saint Thecia, and that her name may have been written on the margin at the top of the first page, a superscription that might have been readily mistaken for the name of the writer by whose hand the work was done. The margins liave been narrowed in the process of binding and the name has disap- peared, if it was ever there ; but certainly the fact that the first words of the New Testament portion are a part of the lesson appointed for this saint's day, is highly suggestive of the reason why her name should be so intimately connected with the codex. The vellum of this ancient book is well preserved, though in many places holes appear in the pages, and the material is so fragile that it is kept under glass, and none but the most competent scholars are allowed to touch it, and these only for the purposes of textual study. The letters are uncial, rounder, larger, and more elegant than those in the Vatican Codex. There is no separation between the words, though occasional marks of punctuation appear ; there are no accents or breathing marks, no cases of stichometry, and the abbreviations are not frequent. The text is divided into sections, or titloi, and Ammonian sections, called heads, but there are no such divisions as those origin- * Bib. Crit. p. 719. 02 THE STORY OF THE MANTJSCRIPTS. ated by Euthalius, though joaragraphs and periods are frequently marked by a new line and initial letter. This manuscript is the most ancient in which capital letters occur. Some of them are larger than others, but they are written in the same ink as the body of the text. In several places, at the beginnings of books, the first line is in vermilion. Each page has two columns, each of fifty lines, with about twenty letters to the line. Whoever the copyist was, though saint and martyr Thecla herself, the work shows many signs of careless- ness and inattention. There are frequent omissions and many mistakes in si^elling. Corrections often mar the page, and traces of the knife or sponge are very often discoverable. Letters originally omitted are written in between the lines over the spaces they should occupy. And apparently the text has at -some time been subjected to a revision, for certain correc- tions aj^pear, though unfortunately not always in the right place. In addition to these defects there are many occasioned by age, as when the first two or three letters of a line, those nearest the margin, have become obliterated. The general aspect of a page of the Alexandrine manuscript may be better imagined from the follow- ing illustration, which is a facsimile of the original text and its divisions. The passage chosen is that in the Gospel according to St. John i. 1-7. It is one free from such defects as have just been noted, but it gives a singular example of the way in which a new section is marked by a break in the middle of a line, •r U [_ z r 1 ® Z U CD ?2 ?— CD 3 X V h [ vfUfc c- "r z t ■< U z zl> u ' Z 2 f-t -s. f-h yx [^l-J\ (Mlt.»V THE ALEXANDRINE MANUSCRIPT. 65 while the first letter of the following line is made large, as if it were the initial of the new section. In this case the enlarged letter does not even begin a word, but stands in the middle of one. The facsimile of the plate is from the English edition of Home's Introduction. The Greek of this illustration, put into correspond- ing form in English, would appear somewhat as fol- lows : — Inthebeginningwasthewordandtheword wasvvithgi3andgdwasthevv0rd- hewasinthebeginningwithgd allthingsbyhimvveremade-andwith outhimwasmadenotonething thatwasmadeinhimlifewas' andthelifewasthelightofmn andtiielightinthedarknessshi neth-andthedarltnessitnotcom .PREHENDED THEREWASAMNSE TFROMGDTHENAMEOFHI MWASJOHN-THISONECAME FORAWITNESSTHATHEMIGHTWITN ESSCONCERXIXGTIIELIGHTTHATAL LMIGHTBELIEVETHROUGHHIM Each book is closed by ornamental designs, not very elaborate, but neatly done in the same ink as the text, with the name of the book written within the enclosed space. As already remarked in the beginning of the chapter, the Alexandrine manuscript was the first to be carefully applied to the correction of the text of the New Testa- ment. The first scholar who had facilities afforded him for studying the Codex critically was Patrick Young, N^ 66 THE STORY OF THE MANUSCRIPTS. the librarian to King Charles I. Three separate col- lations of the manuscript with the received texts were made by different scholars, and then, in 1786, the text of the manuscript itself was edited and published by Woide. It was a facsimile edition, for which the types were cut with great care. This edition was, in general, very accurate, and the few errors were such as to readily betray themselves and suggest the cor- rect reading. It is said that a comparison of Woide's edition with the manuscript itself, in the Epistle to the Galatians, for the purpose of testing the accuracy of the published' cojDy, revealed errors only in two letters, neither of which could possibly lead to a false render- ing of the words in which the mistake occurred. Such was the pioneer effort to lay before the scholars of the world the pages of the most ancient manuscripts of the Scripture, line for line, word for word, letter for letter, point for point, not one peculiarity left un- marked, in order that many minds might work upon the sacred task of proving the text already in the hands of the Christian world, and ascertaining more exactly, if jDOssible, what were the very words of the original documents that came from the inspired writers themselves. THE VATICAN MANUSCRIPT. 67 CHAPTER V. THE VATICAN MANUSCRIPT. Until within comparatively few years the Codex B, or Vaticanus, so named from the library of which it forms the chief ornament, was the most important manuscript in the possession of the Christian world. And it may even be the case that the remarkable dis- covery of the document to be described in the follow- ing chapter has not superseded this venerable copy in its foremost rank among the transcripts of the sacred originals. " The Vatican Library was founded by Pope Nicholas v., a great scholar and patron of learning, in the year 1448. Many previous attempts had been made to col- lect and preserve valuable works, but it was reserved for this energetic Pope to take the measures which should be finally successful, and which without inter- mission should receive the favor of succeeding pontiffs even till to-day. More than one hundred thousand vol- umes are there gathered, and the collection is especially rich in manuscripts, of which there are nearly twenty- five thousand. These are divided into three sections, the Latin containing more than seventeen thousand, the Greek about three thousand four hundred and fifty, and the Oriental over two thousand. Among them 6S THE STORY OF THE MANUSCRIPTS. are many treasures of almost inestimable price, but never from the days of Pope Nicholas himself until the present time has the Vatican Library possessed any work equal in importance to the Codex B., which is numbered 1209 in the class-catalogue. This manuscript has probably been in the Vatican Library from the time of its establishment. It appears in the first catalogue, made in 1475. Certain charac- teristics of the text seem to indicate an Alexandrine origin, but this cannot be determined with accuracy. It has been thought that it may once have belonged to the library of a learned Greek ecclesiastic named Bessarion, who became estranged from the Greek church through the debates of the Councils of Ferrara and Florence, sought naturalization in Italy, and was preferred to the Cardinalate by Pope Eugenius IV., who was the immediate predecessor of the founder of the Vatican Library. His* house in Rome was almost an academy, the repository of a large collection of choice manuscripts and the resort of learned men. It is hardly probable that the Codex B, however, formed a part of his collection, for at his death he bequeathed his library, with all its manuscripts, to the city of Venice, thus beginning the Library of St. Mark's in that city. Perhaps nothing more is true than that it received some corrections, and the filling up of certain lacunce, out of a manuscript in the Cardinal's possession. Codex B is perhaps a hundred years older than the Alexandrine manuscript, and belongs certainly to the fourth century. Tischendorf considered it of the same THE VATICAN MANUSCRIPT. 69 date as the Sinaitic manuscript, to be spoken of in the next chapter, and Tregelles believed it to have been in existence as early as the Council of Nice in 325. At all events the division of the New Testament into paragraphs in a manner which became utterly disused after the Eusebian canons were introduced, about the year 340, shows that it was written prior to that date. It contains the Septuagint version of the Old Testar ment, of which, however, considerable portions have been lost, all the Book of Genesis to Chapter xlvi. 48, and Psalms cv. to cxxxvii. inclusive ; and the New Testament, with the exception of the Epistles to Phi- lemon and Titus, the two to Timothy, that to the Hebrews after the fourteenth verse of Chapter ix, and the whole of the Revelation. These books of the New Testament are indeed found in the volume, but they do not belong to the ancient manuscript, being the product of the fifteenth century. The whole of the text is bound in one volume in red morocco, a quarto, measuring ten and a half inches in length, ten inches in breadth, and between four and five inches in thickness. There are 759 very thin and delicate leaves of vellum, of which 146 belong to the New Testament. The text is uncial, written in three narrow columns to a page, and the characters are clear, simple, and beautiful, a little smaller than those of the Codex Alexandrinus, and a little larger than those of the manuscript of Philodemus, a treatise on music, which was the first of the Herculaneum rolls successfully opened and given to the public. In fact the Vatican manuscript is the most similar to these 70 THE STORY OF THE MANUSCRIPTS. rolls of Herculaneum of all of the copies of the Scrip- tures thus far discovered. There are no divisions between the words, but where a change from one sub- ject to another occurs there is sometimes a space of an entire letter, sometimes of only half a letter, to mark the transition. In the orimial writino^ the initial letters were of the same size as all the others, but a later hand has written larger initials over the old and simpler characters. No punctuation appears except such as has been interpolated by later scribes, and this is rare, only four points being inserted in the first six chapters of the Gospel of Matthew. As it stands at present the text is provided with accents and marks of aspiration, which Avere at one time consid- ered the work of the original writer. Indeed this question gave rise to a very strange and almost in- explicable disagreement among some of the earlier critics.* Blanchini gave a facsimile in which neither the accents nor breathings appeared, and Montfaucon strongly asserted the same thing. But Birch, in his Prolegomena, declared that it had both, and criticized the former editors for not marking the fact. At last Hug determined, by the use of powerful glasses, that the accents and breathings, which were really there, were in a different ink from the main body of the text and had been added by some later scribe. Titles to the various books are written above them, and subscrip- tions are also found, which for the most part merely repeat the titles. Sometimes words are added by later copyists, as in the case of the Epistles to the Romans, * Davidson, Bib. Crit. p. 722. THE VATICAN MANUSCRIPT. 71 where To the Romans is the genuine subscription, and the words It was written from Corinth were added. The long passage of time faded the ink of the text, and at some early date the letters were retouched by a careful hand throughout large portions of the man- uscript. This gives a very peculiar appearance to the document, and has rendered the difficulties of its critical study considerably greater. A remarkable treatment of the Epistles of Paul is to be noticed, for they are written as if they were all one book, and the notation of the sections is continuous throughout all. This celebrated manuscript has always been consid- ered of the highest value in the determination of the true readings of Scripture. And yet it has always been with the greatest difficulty that any scholars, except such as have had official connection with the Vatican Library, have gained access to its pages. Its first collation was made in 1669 by Bartolocci, and a very imperfect transcript of it is now in Paris. The next was by an Italian named Mico, and was executed for the assistance of Bentley about 1725, when he pro- posed his edition of the New Testament in Greek. Other collations appeared. Xo work of equal impor- tance was attempted upon the manuscript, until Car- dinal Mai undertook a facsimile edition, which was completed in 1838. The history of this edition is strange, and to some degree obscure. The purpose of the Cardinal himself seems to have been chansfeable, for some representations are to the effect that he de- 72 THE STORY OF THE MANUSCRIPTS. sired to make his work a facsimile, while others prove from his own words that it was to be only a close imi- tation of the text, and a work for more general use, "like the English edition of Mill." However this may be, the learned Cardinal spent his leisure hours during a period of ten years upon the work, printing five quarto volumes, and subsequently the New Testa- ment separately in a cheap octavo form. The work was not given to the public, however, for several years. For some reason it did not receive the approval of the Koman censors of the press. It is said that when Rome was in the hands of Republicans and the Pope had fled to Gaeta, Cardinal Mai offered his work to a publisher at Berlin, who declined the proposal on account of the high price demanded by the author. The Pope returned to his capital in 1850, and the fet- ters of i3apal authority once more closed around the publication of many books useful to the world. In 1854 Cardinal Mai died. The ban was removed three years later and his work was published, but then it at once appeared doubtful whether the story of its offer to a Berlin publisher was true or not. The work was found to have been done in such a careless and incomplete fashion, and its author was known to be such a thorough and painstaking scholar that the re- pression of the earlier volumes printed in 1838 was suspected to have been at his own will, and many thought that the work would never have been given to the public, had the Cardinal lived.* Indeed the * Scrivener, Plain Introduction, p. 102. THE VATICAN MANUSCRIPT. 73 very papal authorities, by whom the publication was finally effected, were so conscious of its defects and piqued by the failure of their representative, its author, that they at once began the preparation of a new edition under the charge of Vercellone, a monk of St. Barnar bas, which was completed and published in 1859. But this revised edition was still very insufficiently done, and gave little satisfaction to the greater scholars of the day. The jealousy with which this precious manuscript is guarded by the Roman authorities is well illustrated in the attempts which were made by two of the great- est Biblical scholars to secure the privilege of studying and copying its pages. In 1845 Dr. Tregelles went to Rome with the sole design of obtaining access to the Codex, if possible. He sought the interference of Car- dinal Wiseman before leaving England and received a letter by which it was hoped his task would be made the easier. After some trouble he succeeded at last in receiving permission to see the volume. Two prel- ates, however, were detailed to watch him, and they would not suffer him to open the volume without pre- viously searching his pockets and taking away from him ink and paper. Any prolonged study of a pas- sage was sufficient to call for their interference, when the book would be hurriedly taken away from him, but he succeeded in making some notes on his cuffs and finger-nails ! Scrivener relates that a similar attempt was made by Dean Alford in 1861, and that Cardinal Antonelli gave him a special order to work with the 74 THE STORY OF THE MANUSCRIPTS. manuscript for the purpose, of verifying passages ; but the librarian considered this simply a permission to look at the book, but not to use it. But perhaps Tischendorf s experience was stranger than either of these. In 1843, two years previous to the effort made by Tregelles, he went to Rome, after having spent much time in working upon manuscripts at Basle and in other cities. For more than a year he was a well- known student of the ancient treasures in the libraries of Italy, at Rome and Naples, Turin, Milan, Florence, and Venice. He spent much time in the Vatican, but his requests for the most famous of all the manuscripts were denied. It was claimed by the custodians that the pope himself had forbidden access to it. Tischen- dorf describes his difficulties in the most interesting manner in a communication to the Leipziger Zeitung * of May 31, 1866. He says: "I had been commended in the most earnest manner by Guizot to the French ambassador Count Latour Maubourg; I was also favored with many letters of introduction from Prince John (of Saxony) to his j^ersonal friends of high rank, and in addition, with a very flattering note from the Archbishop Affre of Paris, directed to Gregory XVI. The latter, after a prolonged audience granted to me, took an ardent interest in my undertakings ; Cardinal Mai received me with kind recognition ; Cardinal Mez- zofanti honored me with some Greek verses composed in my praise : but notwithstanding I had to content ♦ Wissenschaftliche Beilage, pp. 189-192. THE VATICAN MANUSCRIPT. 75 myself with six liours f for a hasty examination of the Codex Vaticanus, and the transcription in facsimile of a few lines." This great jealousy was doubtless due in part to the fact that just at this time Cardinal Mai was most deeply engaged ui^on his edition of the same manuscript, of which five volumes were already com- pleted. It was not unnatural that fear should be en- tertained, lest the Roman edition should be prejudiced by the publications of the German scholar, if more generous access to the original were allowed. It is evident that even a Tischendorf could do but little under the circumstances. Twenty-three years later he made another attempt with better success. In the meantime he had dis- covered the Sinaitic manuscript, and it had been pub- lished in sumptuous form under the patronage of the Czar, and a copy had been presented to the Pope. The latter wrote an autograph letter to Tischendorf, " in which he expressed his highest apj^reciation, yes, his admiration of this publication," and added such messages of regard in a letter written by his 'maestro di camera^ that the scholar deemed the opportunity too favorable to be lost; and at once asked permission by letter to publish the Codex Vaticanus, mentioning the opinion that had been expressed even by two Roman Catholic scholars, that this work should be done by his hands. He was answered so doubtfully, that he resolved to wait for no further preliminaries, t That is, the regular hours for work in the library, from 9 to 12, A. M., for two days. 7G THE STORY OF THE MANUSCRIPTS. but start at once for Kome. He arrived there on the nineteenth of February, 1864.* He was kindly received by Cardinal Antonelli, and on the twenty- fourth day of February was bidden to an audience with the Pope. A long conversation ensued, and Tischendorf preferred his request to be allowed to publish the manuscript at his own expense. The Pope said : " But the Codex has already been pub- lished by Cardinal Mai." " Yes," answered the per- sistent and acute German, "and for that matter the New Testament twice ; but these editions are intended only for the ordinary use. I, on the contrary, wish to undertake a diplomatic and palaeographic edition, and indeed for the very purpose of showing that £Lt least in all the principal respects the edition of Mai is correct, which is not universally believed." The Pope retorted : " But it must be believed without that ; it is a matter of the faith (^ un' affare della fede)." Tischendorf urged the fact, however, that Mai's edi- tion did not have the full confidence of scholars, and that a publication by other than Roman hands, sup- porting Mai's work in all important particulars, would carry greater weight than any issued under the open patronage of His Holiness. For a time the result of the audience remained doubtful, but at last a verbal order from Cardinal Antonelli was received, by which * This date is given in his own account in the Leipziger Zeitung, from which in part, this outline of his attempts is com- piled. The later date 1866 is given by some writers, who have told the story of his life and labors. THE VATICAN MANUSCRIPT. 77 permission was granted to thoroughly inspect the manuscript, only under the jiledge that such a publica- tion as had been described to the Pope should not be kept in view, since the Pope himself proposed to issue such a work through Catholic hands.* The regular working-time of the library was extended from three to six hours and the private room of Cardinal Pitra was assigned for the work. Permission was also given to disregard the many Roman feast-days and vacations, which reduce the work-days of the Vatican Library to only ninety-nine in the year. These were great con- cessions. But it is probable that they suffered material modification. In the Prolegomena to his N. T. Vati- can um, issued in 1867, Tischendorf says that he was restricted to three hours each day, and the assertion is repeated in another place. In the same paragraph of his Prolegomena (p. viii.), he says: "I took the greatest care not to lose even the smallest portion of these three hours. But I undertook to examine letter by letter the whole of the Scriptures of the 'New Testament from the beginning But while I was comparing the written pages with the edited copies, I * This was the edition by Vercellone and Cozza, which finally- appeared in one folio volume at Korae in 18G8. A volume of the Old Testament followed in 1869, and the work was after- wards completed in three more volumes, though not until after the death of Vercellone. Tischendorf 's type for the Codex Sinaiticus were sent to Rome for this edition, in return for the courtesies he had received at Vercellone's hands. This edition is known as that of Vercellone and Cozza, and copies of it may- be seen in this country. {6 THE STORY OF THE MANUSCRIPTS. could not refrain from transcribing many whole pages." These pages were to be used, he claimed, in no Avay prejudicial to the agreement under Avhich he had gained access to the document; but the action was nevertheless observed by a self-apj^ointed spy, a Prus- sian Jesuit, who reported his observations to the custodians of the library and through them to the Pope. The book was immediately taken away from him. He had succeeded, however, in copying nearly the whole of the first three Gospels. " I seemed as if struck by a thunderbolt," he exclaims, " but I did not give way to despair." It was shown how the comple- tion of his w^ork, so far from injuring the proposed Roman edition, would be of essential profit to it, and even the editor of that work himself favored the cause of the German scholar. Tischendorf was ena- bled, indeed, to render valuable assistance to Ver- cellone, so that the latter said to him, as he was leaving Rome : " If anything is accomplished (in the new edition) we owe it to you." In spite of all objections, therefore, the precious manuscript was granted to him for a few hours more. "And so I succeeded," he says, in the article in the Leipziger Zeitung already mentioned, " in preparing the whole New Testament for a new, reliable edition, so as to attain every de- sired result with respect both to the palaeographic peculiarities of the manuscript, and especially to its most surprising relations to the Codex Sinaiticus." The difiiculty of the work, the wonderful dexterity with which it was accomplished, and the joy of the THE VATICAN MANUSCRIPT. 79 scholar in his success, may be the better conceived, when it is said that the total time during which the manuscript was subject to his inspection was only forty-two hours ! The collation was published, in the common Greek type, in 1867. The score of pages which were transcribed, however, are printed as in the original in three columns on a page, each column containing the same number of lines, and the lines the same number of words, as in the ancient text. This publication, achieved thus through the greatest diffi- culties and by excessive toil, is the most valuable re- production of the text as it appears in the Vatican manuscript. Add to this the fact that the Vatican text is generally considered superior to any other for purjDoses of criticism, not even the Sinaitic Codex excepted save in the opinion of its discoverer, and the value of Tischendorf 's work will readily be seen to be of the highest. It was indeed one of the three greatest achievements of his life, the discovery and publication of }^, the deciphering of the Ephraem palimpsest, and this edition of the chief treasure of the Vatican — a group of performances quite sufficient to establish the fame of the great scholar, even apart from the many other distinguished services rendered by him to the Christian world. In view of the great desirability of having such a manuscript freely accessible to scholars, one item of its history is of special interest. In the year 1798 Rome came into possession of the French, who estab- lished a republic, which, however, was destined to 80 THE STORY OF THE MANUSCRIPTS. only a brief existence. But although in 1799 the allied powers restored the Pope, in 1808 the troops of Napoleon I. again entered the city, and the Papal dominions were made an appendage of the French empire. The conqueror caused large numbers of the treasures of art and literature accumulated in the city to be transferred to Paris, where they became a part of the imperial collection. The precious Codex B was not overlooked, and for several years it was in Paris, and during that time might have been studied with comparative leisure. But unfortunately the great scholars had not yet appeared, who were afterwards the most competent men of all the world to give the manuscript the treatment it deserved. It lay in the Imperial Library uncared for except by a critic, J. L. Hug, whose abilities were not equal to the demands of the case, but who nevertheless realized its value, and printed in 1810 a paper upon the " Antiquity of the Vatican Manuscript." This essay called attention to the document, but in 1815 came Waterloo, Napoleon was finally dethroned, and the treasures he had col- lected again suffered change. Codex B was restored to Rome. This very year, in which the famous docu- ment once more returned to the Papal library with all its restrictions, Tregelles at the age of three years was only just learning his native English tongue, and the afterwards renowned Tischendorf was a babe of two years, the delight of his parents' home in Legenfeld, Germany. As an example of the text of this manuscript, the omonocofioye&HK^ OTinfo^rsi^Miceic T"ONo^'ece6KAe<;;ei M ri H rfi 6 I o^ €l X € N r^r AY TA C Tfp Kf O CKAI €K %. CT;^cjciCAfdYAeNl6y T -A. en e i n OM€