AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF THE NEW TESTAMENT

BY A H McNEILE
Copyright A H McNeile - first published at the University Press, Oxford 1927.
2nd Edition revised by C S C WILLIAMS 1953.
This Edition prepared for Katapi in Arial Unicode MS by Paul Ingram 2003.

Chapter XI - Part 1

TEXTUAL CRITICISM

HOME | The Need | The Material

§ I. THE NEED

THERE are still readers of the Bible whose thoughts have never been carried to any stage in its history behind the Authorized Version. They know that the Greek Testament has come down to us; but how, they have never thought of inquiring. Printing having begun in the age of Caxton, the books must have been preserved in nothing but handwriting during the centuries before that. And the study of the manuscripts themselves (apart from their contents), which is called palaeography, is a fascinating study, possible only to a few experts, but the results of which are indispensable for the scientific examination of the text of the New Testament. The material of which they are composed, the arrangement of sheets, columns, and so on, the style of handwriting, scholia or notes by the scribes, even the ink employed, can all help in the determination of their date, and sometimes of their place of origin.

 

But more important than all palaeographical details is the 'text' found in them. If the reader were to examine twenty manuscripts of, say, the First Gospel, he would find, in all probability, that no two of them were verbally identical throughout a single chapter. That is to say, their text would not be identical. Not one of them would contain a text exactly the same as what the evangelist wrote, but the object of textual criticism is to discover that as nearly as possible. If it were found that the manuscripts divided themselves into four groups, those in each group containing a text very similar to each other's, but with a good many marked differences from the text in the other groups, we should say that they presented four types of text. And if, on studying the history of the manuscripts, we found reason to believe that the four types of text represented more or less the forms in which the Gospel was read in four well-defined areas or districts, we should speak of them as 'local texts'. And that is, in fact, what we do find, as we shall see later on.

 

A printer can make a thousand copies of a book absolutely identical because each sheet is an impression of the same type. But when scribes copied manuscripts they were always subject to limitations of eye and hand. Add to that the fact that in the early days of writing there were numerous abbreviations, no spaces between the words, no small as distinct from capital letters, and practically no stops, and it will be seen that the opportunity for slips was very large. If we imagine the opening of this chapter to run:                       

THEREARESTILLREADERSOFT

BIBWHOSETHOUGHTSHAVENEV

BNCARRIETOANYSTAGEINITS

we get some idea of how a careless or sleepy scribe could go wrong. Jerome himself speaks of librariis dormientibus (Pref. to Vulg. Gospels). The following are among the commonest of purely clerical errors: Confusion between letters, e.g. Ο and Θ. Omission of a final word or letter before a clause or word beginning with the same word or letter, and conversely of an initial word or' letter after a clause or word ending with the same word or letter. 'Homoeoteleuton', i.e. the passing of the scribe's eye from words or letters in one sentence to the same words or letters in a subsequent sentence, omitting everything between. (The name implies that the words or letters stand at the end of a clause, but the same slip is often made in respect of words or letters that stand in any position.) 'Dittography', i.e. the accidental repetition of one or more letters. Trans­position. The misunderstanding of an abbreviation; e.g. in Acts xiii.23 C^ΩΤΗΡΑ or IHCO^ΩVN was apparently abbreviated C^ΩTHRAIN or CPAIN which a scribe read as C^ΩTHPIAN or CRIAN These have operated at all times, and the most conscientious and highly trained scribes never wholly escaped them.

 

But the great majority of corruptions had found their way into the text before the end of the third century, in a period during which a much more disturbing element was at work. The history of the Canon makes it clear that it was some time before the books of the New Testament came to be invested with a sacredness equal to that of the Old. If a scribe reproduced what he felt to be the exact sense that the writer in­tended, 'the reverence', as Hort says, 'paid to the apostolic writings, even to the most highly and widely venerated among them, was not of the kind that exacted a scrupulous jealousy as to their text as distinguished from their substance'. So that it was 'quite possible to intend nothing but faithful transcrip­tion, and yet to introduce changes due to interpretation of sense'. Sometimes this took the form of a scarcely conscious alteration, which was, from the scribe's point of view, an emendation in order to preserve what he felt sure the writer meant, but it did, in fact, depart from the writer's wording, and often from his meaning. Often, though not as often as von Soden imagined, a scribe familiar with a harmony like Tatian's would be influenced by it. Let us picture an earnest-minded Christian, say from Rome, visiting Antioch. He has known the Third Gospel for the last year or two; he has heard it read on Sundays, and loved and valued it, and knows parts of it by heart. And he now, for the first time, hears the First Gospel read, and obtains permission to make a copy of it. When Matthew and Luke are very similar, he is in constant danger of putting down the words from Luke that he knows by heart, instead of looking word by word at the manuscript before him, to be sure of preserving all the little differences, in which he would not be greatly interested. Thus he carries home a 'text' of Matthew that has been corrupted by assimilation with Luke, and all the manuscripts which are copied from his, and all which are in turn copied from them, will carry on the corrupt text. Conversely, a Christian from Antioch comes to Rome, and in copying Luke corrupts his manuscript by assimilation in other passages, and other copyists hand on those corruptions. This kind of thing happened with practically every copy made. Sometimes, too, intentional alterations were made to 'improve' the narrative even doctrinally. (Cf. C. S. C. Williams, Alterations to the Text of the Synoptic Gospels and Acts.)

 

Assimilation, though the commonest, was not the only source of corruption. The author might quote an Old Testament passage in a translation known to him, or might pos­sibly translate it himself from the Hebrew, while the scribe inadvertently put down the wording of the better-known LXX. Or the manuscript that was being copied contained an Old-Testament sentence, and the scribe carelessly continued it to the extent of a few words because he knew the LXX passage by heart. Or he had heard some preacher tell a story about Jesus Christ, and when he found the same story in the manuscript that he was copying, he deliberately enriched it by some details or words from his own knowledge. The critical sense had not yet been born which would make people anxious to compare copies with the original to be sure of their accuracy. And when copies had begun to be made, perhaps on better papyrus, or more durable vellum, it was not thought worth while to preserve the original, which was very likely beginning to be faded or frayed, though to us it would be worth many times its weight in gold. Lastly, if a scribe had before him two manuscripts of the same writing, each with its different heritage of corruption, he would be convinced that they were both too valuable to disregard, and he would copy details from both, some right and some wrong, thus making a 'mixed' text which other copyists would perpetuate after him.

 

So the history of every book and chapter, almost of every verse, was a history of corruption. And the task of textual criticism is to discover these corruptions and by the scientific means known to modern scholars to try to arrive at a text as close as possible to that which the author wrote. It is obvious that the need for it is great. Very small, it is true, for that kind of reading of the New Testament, which is by far the most important. We steep ourselves in it in order to know the great facts and doctrines of our religion, to obtain the spiritual food that comes from a devotional study of the words and deeds and character of our Lord, and of those who knew Him best. For that greatest of all purposes any text, or, for that matter, any translation, will suffice. But for an intellectual grasp even of these great things it is important, and for scientific, literary study it is essential, to search for the text of every verse and clause which is as far as possible free from corruptions. How much needs to be done can be realized from the fact that, apart from the more ancient papyri, the oldest Greek manu­scripts that have come down to us are not earlier than the fourth century, and only two are earlier than the fifth. When the books had become canonical, accepted as sacred and in­spired Scripture, expert scribes copied them with far greater care; but in the second and third centuries the care taken over them was nothing like so scrupulous, and most Christians were confined to the humbler classes and largely devoid of literary or clerical skill. Quotations by Christian writers, and translations of the books made before the fourth century, are often a help in determining the text of a given passage at that time and place, before later corruptions sprang up. But the copyists of these translations, and of the works of the Fathers, made mistakes in them of exactly the same kinds - clerical slips, errors of assimilation, and so on - requiring textual criticism of the versions and Fathers if they are to be of use in the textual criticism of the Greek manuscripts of the New Testament.

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§ 2. THE MATERIAL

Table of MSS | Gospels | Acts | Pauline Epistles | Catholic Epistles | Apocalypse | Versions | Bibliography

Before studying the methods that have been employed it is necessary to have some idea of the material at our disposal. In extent and variety it is many times as great as that for any other literature in the world. (An introduction to one of the modern editions of the Greek text, such as A. Merk's or J. M. Dover's or A. Souter's (and ed., 1947), indicates the wealth of material and the sigla employed.) That might seem to be favourable to an accurate knowledge of the original wording. And broadly speaking it is. For the great purposes of the Christian religion we may be confident that we possess a very close approximation to what was originally written, and that no future discoveries have the least chance of altering our New Testament in any essential. But in details of scientific study the multiplicity of the material offers complex problems, which only a long succession of scholars can expect to solve.

The manuscripts here given are not in their alphabetical or numerical order, which has no relation to their value or date. They comprise only the more important ones, and are arranged in groups, the meaning of which will be explained later. The capital letters denote manuscripts written, as all Greek manuscripts of the New Testament were in the early centuries, in large letters like capitals, called Uncials; the numerals those written in the ordinary, small running hand, called Cursives or Minuscules; while small italic letters stand for the manu­scripts of the Old Latin version. The cursives were mostly later in time than the Uncials, and date from the ninth century; but some of them are of greater value than some of the Uncials, having been copied from good early manuscripts. The grouping here indicated represents the general position that these manuscripts may be said to occupy in the distribution of texts. But it must be remembered that every one of them contains a larger or smaller proportion of readings that belong to other groups, some deeply affected by the Byzantine revision. The mention of some of them—only a few of the more important—implies only that readings characteristic of the group can be found in them in sufficient quantities to warrant their being placed as members of the group.

Gospels
(a)			Alexandrian	B א C L Δ (in Mk.) 33 Ψ Z Θ 579 (ex­cept Matt.) 892 1241 157 X and the following papyri, P1 P3 P4 P5 P19 P22 P28 P35 P39 P55, and the Coptic versions, the Sahidic and Bohairic.
(b)			Eastern
	1.		'Antiochene'	the old Syriac, extant in the Sinaitic and Curetonian MSS.
	2.		'Caesarean'
		(i)		P45 W (in part) fam.1 28 fam.13 and
		(ii)		Θ 565 700 P6 (?) P37.
(c)			Western
	1		African	W (for Mk.i.1-v.30) k (Mk. Matt.) e and c (Mk. Lk.) [m].
	2		European	D b a ff2 h (Matt.) i r c  (Matt. Jn.) n ff g g2 l q.
Acts
(a)			Alexandrian	B א A C Ψ 33 81 P45.
(b)			Eastern (?)	181 307 88 1739 P8 (?) P41(?).
(c)			Western
		(i)	African	H (?) p m and citations in Cyprian and Augustine,
		(ii)	European	D E2 P29 P38 P48 gig g2 s m t d and the Harklean Syriac margin.
Pauline epistles
(a)			Alexandrian	B א A C I M P Ψ 17 1739 P10 P11 P13 P14 P15 Pl6 Pl7 P26 P27 P30 P31 P32 P34 P40 P46 P49 P5l P61.
(b)			Eastern	H3.
(c)			Western
		(i)	African	No true representative, [m] .
		(ii)	European	D2 F2 G3.
Catholic epistles
(a)			Alexandrian	B א A C Ψ P2 33 81 P20 P23 P54.
(b)			Western	H m ff s q and citations in Tertullian.
Apocalypse
				A א C P2 (025) B2 (046) 44 (051) 183 (052) 38 (2020) 95 (2040) P18 P24 P43 P47.
			African	H [m].
			European	g.

Byzantine ('Syrian' or 'Antiochian ') representing on the whole the later, standardized or Antioch-Constantinople text: For the Gospels: A E S V; for Acts and the Epistles: H₂ L₂ P₂ (in Acts and 1 Pet.) and (except Acts) K₂. These may be mentioned as typical, but the revised text is to be found in several other uncials, and in the mass of cursives.

The Versions, other than those named above, will be described on pp.408-13.

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GOSPELS

a) Alexandrian

Codex VATICANUS (B). Vatican, Rome.

This famous codex is in the Vatican library at Rome, and was already there when the first catalogue was made in 1475, the library having been founded by Pope Nicholas in 1448.

It originally contained the whole Bible, but parts of both Testaments are now lost. From the New Testament are lacking part of Hebrews (from the middle of the word καθαριεῖ - kathariei in ix.14), 1, 2 Tim., Tit., Philem., Apoc. According to one series of its chapter divisions the Pauline epistles are treated as if they were one continuous book, and the figures show that in some earlier manuscript from which they were taken Hebrews stood after Galatians. Hort (Introd., p.233.) says, 'The scribe reached by no means a high standard of accuracy, and on the other hand his slips are not proportionately numer­ous or bad'; and he goes on to describe them. Although it is not the age of a manuscript that is important but its text, it is of interest that B is the oldest known vellum codex of the New Testament, having been written in the fourth century. (A papyrus fragment of the first half of the second century has been found, P⁵².)

Its chapter divisions require a separate note.
Eusebius divided each of the Gospels into little sections. These he numbered, and arranged tables consisting of parallel columns in which were placed the numbers of those sections in each Gospel dealing with the same event. This was equivalent to making a harmony of the Gospels without writing out all the sections at length. This division was based on a harmony, which is lost to us, made by Ammonius of Alexandria on the basis of Matthew. It has been noticed that the chapter divi­sions in cod. B א (partly) Θ 579 seem to be the remains of a scheme which appears to have belonged originally to such a harmony; and A. Schmidtke in his edition of codex 579 (Leip­zig, 1903) suggests that it was that of Ammonius. And accepting the view that B represents the Hesychian revision (seep. 434), he thinks that Hesychius may have extended the system of Ammonius. The latter, in basing his harmony on Matthew, omitted a good deal of material in the other Gospels, and Hesychius preserved his divisions but went on, with less care and minuteness, to divide the passages which Ammonius had not used. But when the separate Gospels were written in full, the apparatus for the harmony was of no further use, and, when considered apart from the original scheme, the length of the several divisions was very different. Eusebius, therefore, made a new division into chapters and subdivisions to combine the usefulness of the Ammonian harmony with the pre­sentation of the separate Gospels. Lake (J.T.S. vii, 1905-6, pp. 292 ff.) thinks that though this is not proved, it is very likely true. At any rate a harmony lies behind B א, their relationship to which is somewhat analogous to that of the sin. and cur. Syriac MSS. to the Diatessaron.

 

Codex SINAITICUS (א). British Museum, London.

Discovered by Tischendorf in the monastery of St. Catherine on Mt. Sinai in separate pieces in 1844 and 1859, finally published by him and presented by the monks of Sinai to the Czar of Russia in 1862. It was bought in 1933 from the Soviet Government for the British Museum for £100,000.

It contained the whole Bible, with the addition of Ep. Barnabas and a mutilated fragment of the Shepherd of Hennas, written in four columns to a page.

It suffered from the hands of a succession of correctors, and illustrates the process of conforming manuscripts to the Byzantine standard (see pp.430 f.). Of the seven detected by Tischendorf the third (א^c or א^c.a. ) has an importance of his own, since he has written a colophon at the end of Esther stating that the manuscript had been collated with a copy which had itself been corrected by the hand of the holy martyr Pamphilus. His corrections thus have a connexion with the Eastern text.

The codex belongs to the fourth, or perhaps the fifth, century.

 

Codex EPHRAEMI rescriptus (C).

In the National Library at Paris.

This is a palimpsest, as the Latin participle in the title indicates, i.e. a manuscript from which the original writing was almost erased by a later scribe who used it as material for another writing. A twelfth-century scribe wrote over it a Greek translation of thirty-eight tractates of Ephraem the Syrian. Before it was mutilated it contained the whole Greek Bible. It now contains portions of the Old Testament, and considerable fragments of every book of the New except 2 Thessalonians and 2 John. It is written in one column to a page, which became the usual practice. As in the case of א, correctors endeavoured to bring it into conformity with the Byzantine standard. Tischendorf speaks of two, whose work, however, affected Matthew and Luke more than Mark and John. Codex C, with L and the Boh., shows the most charac­teristic forms of grammatical and stylistic correction which Hort classed as Alexandrian and thought might be the work of the reviser Hesychius (see p.431). At the same time C has a good deal of mixture with the Western text.
It belongs to the early fifth century.

 

Codex REGIUS (L).

In the National Library at Paris.

Two columns to a page.
Contains the Four Gospels, with small lacunae in each of them except the Third. It is badly written by a scribe who was perhaps ignorant of Greek, a feature which, as Streeter (The Four Gospels, p. 2.) points out, is noticeable in other important manuscripts which have a large non-Byzantine element, e.g. D Δ 28, and still more conspicuously Θ; he thinks that they must have been written in out-of-the-way places, where the Byzantine revision had not yet, or had only recently, pene­trated. Next to B א it is the most important witness to the Alexandrian text of the Gospels, the Byzantine infusion being found chiefly in Matt.i-xviii; Mk.i, ii.
It belongs to the eighth century.

 

Codex SANGALLENSIS (Δ).

In the monastery of St. Gall, where it was probably written;

… but it was perhaps brought thither by an Irish scribe of the ninth century.
One column to a page.
Contains the Four Gospels, with a short lacuna in John xix.
It is a Graeco-Latin manuscript, the Latin being written between the lines of the Greek. The Latin is of little value, except for the occasional Old Latin readings that it preserves; it is mainly Vulgate with some assimilations to the Greek. And the Greek is of interest only in Mark, especially chs.iii-xii, where the text is closely allied with that of the C L 33 group; in the other Gospels it is mostly Byzantine with a few earlier readings.
It belongs to the ninth century or possibly later.

 

CODEX 33 (= Acts 13, Paul. 17).

In the National Library at Paris.

One column to a page.
Contains the New Testament except the Apocalypse.
This manuscript, which Eichhorn called 'the Queen of Cursives', is a great deal more valuable than many of the Uncials, because in spite of many Byzantine, and some 'Western', readings it sides, on the whole, with the foregoing manuscripts, and is thus the best cursive that we possess containing an Alexandrian type of Gospel text.
It belongs to the ninth century.

 

Codex LAURENSIS (Ψ).

In the Laura on Mt. Athos.

One column to a page.
It originally contained the New Testament except the Apocalypse, but has lost Matthew and Mark i-ix. 5 (το σοὶ μίαν - to soi mian), and one page of Hebrews. The Catholic epistles are in the curious order Pet., Jas., Jn., Jude. The whole of it except Mark has been more or less corrected into conformity with the Byzantine text. In Mark, on the other hand, the fundamental text is later Alexandrian of the C L 33 type, with a few Byzantine readings, but also (Lake, J.T.S. i, 1900, pp. 290 ff.) some Western readings of an early, pre-Origenistic type, which hold somewhat the same textual position as the Western elements in Clem. Alex. In the other Gospels there is a rather larger proportion of Alexan­drian readings than in A.
It probably belongs to the eighth century.

 

Codex BORGIANUS (T).

In Rome at the College De Pro­paganda Fide.

Two columns to a page.
It is a remarkable manuscript in more ways than one. It is Graeco-Sahidic, con­taining fragments of Lk.xxii, xxiii; Jn.vi-viii, of which the Greek has preserved a little more than the Sahidic. The text is Alexandrian, and the presence of the Sahidic is one of the proofs that this type of text belongs to Egypt. It is valuable in that it stands even nearer to B than to M, so that if we possessed more of it than these fragments, it would probably rank next to B as a primary authority for the early Alexandrian text.
It belongs to the fifth century.

 

Codex DUBLINENSIS (Z).

In the library of Trinity Col­lege, Dublin.

One column to a page.
It is a palimpsest containing fragments of Matthew amounting to about one-third of the Gospel, the upper writing being various patristic passages.
The text is valuable, having a close affinity with that of א.
It belongs to the sixth, or possibly the fifth, century.

 

Codex ZACYNTHIUS (Θ).

London.

The property of the British and Foreign Bible Society; obtained from the island of Zacynthus, and presented to the Society in 1820.
It possesses chapter-divisions found in B and 579.
It belongs to the eighth century.

 

CODEX 579.

In the National Library at Paris.

One column to a page.
Contains the Four Gospels, but lacking Jn.xx.15-xxi.25. In Matthew it has an ordinary Byzantine text; but in the other Gospels it affords a good instance of the possibility of a late cursive having a high value. It belongs to the thirteenth century, but is probably copied directly from a sixth-century Uncial (So A. Schmidtke, Die Evangelien eines alien Uncialcodex, 1903; cited by Streeter.) that was thoroughly Alexandrian, without being more markedly akin to one manuscript than to another in the main group. Its non-Byzantine readings, therefore, which are most numerous in Luke, have all the value of the text of its Uncial parent. 'The value of a MS. of this kind', as Streeter says, 'appears where it supports a reading of B, א, or L, which is otherwise unsupported. (V. Scheil, Revue Biblique, i, 1892, pp. 198-214 and J. Merell, ibid. xlvii, 1938, pp. 1-22, cf. M. J. Lagrange, Critique textuelle, pp. 118-24.)

 

CODEX 892.

British Museum.

One column to a page.
Contains the Four Gospels, but lacking John x.6-12, 18; xiv.24-xxi.25. Like the foregoing it has suffered a large amount of Byzantine admixture, but the basis of its text is Alexandrian, which, as frequently, is best preserved in Mark.
It belongs to the ninth or tenth century.

 

CODEX 1241 (= Acts 290, Paul. 338).

In the monastery at Mt. Sinai.

Contains the whole New Testament, with a text somewhat similar to that of the foregoing.
It belongs to the twelfth, thirteenth, or fourteenth century.

 

CODEX 157.

In the Vatican Library at Rome.

One column to a page.
Contains the Four Gospels.
It is to be noted that although it was made for the Emperor its text is not simply the standard Byzantine, but is Alexandrian to much the same extent as the three preceding manuscripts. At the same time points of contact have been found between it and the Palesti­nian Syriac (Syr.^heir) on the one hand and the text of Marcion on the other. It contains a colophon at the end of each of the Gospels stating that it was 'copied and corrected from the ancient exemplars from Jerusalem preserved on the Holy Mountain', i.e. probably Sinai. This is found in the compound half-Uncial, half-Cursive MS. Λ-566, and in several cursives of little value.
It was made for John II Comnenus in the twelfth century.

 

Codex MONACENSIS (X).

In the University Library at Munich.

Two columns to a page.
Contains two fragments of the Four-Gospels, in the order Jn., Lk., Mk., Matt., with patristic comments on each of them except Mark, which illus­trates the noticeable fact of the small attention paid to Mark as compared with the others. A few notable readings are to be found in it of the later Alexandrian type. It belongs to the end of the tenth century.

 

P1	A third- or fourth-century papyrus codex, Oxyrhynchus Pap.2. It gives a fragment of the text of Matt.i.
P3	A fifth-or sixth-century lectionary codex giving fragments of Lk.vii and x. (C. Wessely, Wiener Studien, iv. 198 ff.)
P4	A fourth-century lectionary codex1 giving parts of Lk.i-vi. (V. Scheil, Revue Biblique, i, 1892, pp. 198-214 and J. Merell, ibid. xlvii, 1938, pp. 1-22, cf. M. J. Lagrange, Critique textuelle, pp.118-24.)
P5	A third-century (lectionary?) papyrus, Ox.Papyri 208 and 1781, giving fragments of Jn.i, xvi, and xx. (Cf. C. Wessely, Patrologia Orientalis, iv. 142-4.)
P19	A fifth-century codex, Ox. Pap. 1170, giving parts of Matt.x.32-xi.5.
P22	A late third-century roll, Ox. Pap. 1228, having fragments of Jn.xv.25-xvi.32.
P28	A fourth-century codex, Ox. Pap. 1596, with fragments of Jn.vi.
P35	A seventh-century codex, having fragments of Matt.xxv. (Papiri Greci e Latini, i.1, ed. G. Vitelli, 1912.)
P39	A fourth-century codex, Ox. Pap. 1780, having part of Jn.viii.I4-22. (Cf. Lagrange, Revue Biblique, xxxv, 1926, p. 90.)
P55	A sixth-century codex, Pap. Gr. Vindob. 26214, having fragments of Jn.i. (P. Sanz, Griechische literarische Papyri christlichen Inhaltes, i (1946), pp. 58 f.. For fuller information about the papyri see G. Maldfeld and B. M. Metzger, Journal of Biblical Literature, Ixviii, 1949, pp. 359-70.)

 

The Coptic version in the SAHIDIC and BOHAIRIC dialects (called by Hort Thebaic and Memphitic respectively) of southern and northern Egypt.

The former contains fragments of all the books of the New Testament, except Titus and Philemon; the latter contains the whole New Testament, in the order Gospels, Pauline epp., Catholic epp., Acts, Apoca­lypse. But in both forms of the version the last book is treated as occupying an inferior position, which may perhaps have been due to the criticisms passed on it by Dionysius of Alexan­dria. Since St. Antony is said to have heard the Gospels read in church in the vernacular when he was a boy, Egypt (if the tradition is correct) must have had a version of them at least by the middle of the third century, if not by the end of the second. And Hort claimed this date for the versions that have come down to us, supporting thereby the high antiquity of the B text. Many scholars were doubtful whether the Bohairic version was older than the seventh or eighth century, however, though some of them have revised their opinion since Sir Herbert Thompson *(The Gospel of John according to the earliest Coptic Manuscript, 1924, cf. his The Coptic Version of the Acts and the Pauline Epistles in the Sahidic Dialect, 1932.) published a fifth-century manuscript of John written in sub-Akhmimic. The Sahidic version, according to most modern scholars, dates from the third to the fourth centuries, though Thompson and Horner urge a second-century date. The latter (The Coptic versions of the New Testament, 1898-1924.) published anonymously both versions, with an apparatus, which still remains an indispensable supplement to Tischendorf's octavo, maior, for its evidence not only of the Coptic manuscripts but also of the Syriac, Armenian, and Ethiopia versions. The comparative purity of the Coptic text is explained by Tischendorf as due, first, to the schism between the Jacobites and the Melchites, then to the Arab pressure, a century and a half later, which began to thrust out the Coptic language, and lastly to the critical care of scholars in Egypt in the twelfth century.

 

Besides these there are fragments of Middle-Egyptian versions, Fayyumic, Memphitic, and Akhmimic manuscripts having been found. (Cf. M. M. Parvis and A. P. Wikgren, New Testament Manuscript Studies, 1950, pp.35-38.)

(b) Eastern

(i) 'Antiochene'

The most important witness to the Eastern text is not a Greek manuscript but the Old Syriac version, which has reached us in two manuscripts. (The term 'Eastern' is misleading if it implies that the Old Syriac version is not closely related to the 'Western' text, which it is, though it does not contain the more obvious 'Western' vagaries. Syr.^cur is inferior to Syr.^sin as a witness to this type of text in the East.)

 

SINAITIC SYRIAC.

Two columns to a page.
Contains the Four Gospels in the usual order.
It seems to be earlier than the fifth century.
This is a manuscript of what was called the Evangelion da-Mepharreshe, 'The Evangel of the Separated ones', i.e. the Four Gospels as separate writings, not combined into a harmony such as the Diatessaron of Tatian. It is a palimpsest, the upper writing consisting of lives of saints written in 778, discovered by Mrs. Lewis (The Old Syriac Gospels, 1910; cf. F. C. Burkitt, Evangelion da-Mepharreshe, 1904.) and Mrs. Gibson of Cambridge in the convent of St. Catherine on Mt. Sinai in 1892, from which year till 1897 successive transcriptions and photo­graphs were taken. It appears to have been written at some place near Antioch, possibly Edessa, though it is uncertain whether the translation itself belonged to Antioch or Palestine (see pp.436 f.). It contains some Georgian signatures, and formed part of a collection of manuscripts, which found its way to Mt. Sinai.

 

CURETONIAN SYRIAC.

So called because it was first edited by Dr. Cureton in 1858.
There are 82½ leaves in the British Museum and 3 at Berlin. It came from the library of the Convent of St. Mary Deipara in the Natron valley, west of Cairo, to which it was presented by the monk Habibai.

Eighty of the surviving leaves reached England in 1842 as part of a volume of the Gospels made up in the year AD 1222 from various MSS. of the same size; the other leaves of the volume were taken from copies of the Peshitta, and the binder hardly seems to have been aware that the text of C was different from the rest. The remaining leaves came to Europe as fly-leaves to strengthen the bindings of other books... Two more detached leaves reached the British Museum in 1847. (Ibid., p. 7.)

Two columns to a page.
Contains fragments of the Four Gospels in the unusual order Matt., Mk., Jn., Lk., the only fragment of Mark (xvi.i7b-20) being followed immediately by John on the same page.
It cannot be later than the early part of the fifth century.

The date of the Old Syriac version and its precise relation to Tatian's Diatessaron are still matters of dispute. (Cf. Parvis and Wikgren, op. cit., pp. 27 ff. See also A. Voobus, Theologische Zeitschrift, vii, 1951, pp. 30-38.)

(2) 'Caesarean'

It is to B. H. Streeter more than anyone that credit is due for the emergence of a theory that a textual family existed other than the Alexandrian and Western, though related some­how to both, and other than the Byzantine, however much he was indebted to the work of others like Ferrar and Lake before him for the isolation and grouping of certain minuscules like the fam.¹³ and the fam.¹ groups (see below) respectively. He thought that the Koridethi MS. Θ (see below) stood at the head of this family and that 28, 565, and 700 with fam.¹ and fam.¹³ and W for Mark (after v.30)