Page images
PDF
EPUB

whence it is certainly determined that the present roll is not a copy from any exemplar of the Jews in Europe; for no other synagogue rolls known in Europe are observed to have the same characteristics, at least as far as appears from any description of Hebrew manuscripts that is extant.1

"With respect to the several sorts of skins and hand-writing, the answer of some Indian Jews, when interrogated concerning this MS., is worthy of remark. By one account, it was brought from Senna in Arabia; and by another account, it came from Cashmir: which two accounts are cleared up on an examination of the MS., since part of it being composed of brown skins, and the writing very similar to that seen in rolls of Arabian and African extraction, there is a possibility that such part is the fragment of an Arabian or African MS., as those Jews relate: and the other account, viz. that it was brought from Cashmir, may also be equally true; since that part consisting of red skins so well corresponds with their own description of copies found in the synagogues of the Eastern Jews. The consideration of this point attaches still greater consequence to the roll itself, which, as it is found to consist of fragments of copies purely Oriental, and seemingly unconnected with the Western Jewish copies, we may now conclude the same to be ample specimens of copies in those parts of the world. It is true, indeed, that a great part of the text is wanting, and the whole book of Leviticus; yet, notwithstanding the large deficiencies of the MS., it ought to be a satisfaction to know, that herein are ample specimens of at least three antient copies of the Pentateuch, whose testimony is found to unite in the integrity and pure conservation of the Sacred Text, acknowledged by Christians and Jews in these parts of the world."2

[ocr errors]

The following testimony of Bishop Marsh to the value of the Codex Malabaricus is too valuable to be omitted. "A manuscript Roll of the Hebrew Pentateuch, apparently of some antiquity, and found among the black Jews in the interior of India, must be regarded at least as a literary curiosity, deserving the attention of the learned in general. And as this manuscript appears, on comparison, to have no important deviation from our common printed Hebrew text, it is of still greater value to a theologian, as it affords an additional argument for the integrity of the Pentateuch. The Hebrew manuscripts of the Pentateuch, preserved in the West of Europe, though equally derived, with the Hebrew manuscripts preserved in India, from the autograph of Moses, must have descended from it through very different channels; and therefore the close agreement of the former with the latter is a proof, that they have preserved the original text in great

1 See Mr. Thomas Yeates's" Collation of an Indian copy of the Pentateuch, with preliminary remarks, containing an exact description of the manuscript, and a notice of some others, Hebrew and Syriac, collected by the Rev. C. Buchanan, D. D. in the year 1806, and now deposited in the Public Library, Cambridge. Also a collation and description of a manuscript roll of the Book of Esther, and the Megillah of Ahasuerus, from the Hebrew copy, originally extant in brazen tablets at Goa; with an English Translation.” pp. 2, 3, 6, 7. Cambridge, 1812. 4to.

2 Ibid. p. 8.

purity, since the circumstances, under which the MS. was found, forbid the explanation of that agreement on the principle of any immediate connexion. It is true that, as this Manuscript (or rather the three fragments of which this manuscript is composed) was probably written much later than the time when the Masoretic text was established by the learned Jews of Tiberias, it may have been wholly derived from that Masoretic text: and in this case it would afford only an argument, that the Masoretic text had preserved its integrity, and would not affect the question, whether the Masoretic text itself were an accurate representative of the Mosaic autograph. But, on the other hand, as the very peculiar circumstances, under which the manuscript was found, render it at least possible, that the influence of the Masora, which was extended to the African and European Hebrew manuscripts by the settlement of the most distinguished Oriental Jews in Africa and Spain, never reached the mountainous district in the South of India; as it is possible, that the text of the manuscript in question was derived from manuscripts anterior to the establishment of the Masora, manuscripts even, which might have regulated the learned Jews of Tiberias in the formation of their own text, the manuscript appears for these reasons to merit particular attention." Such being the value of this precious manuscript, Mr. Yeates has conferred a great service on the biblical student by publishing his collation, of which future editors of the Hebrew Bible will doubtless avail themselves.

In the seventh and following volumes of the Classical Journal there is a catalogue of the biblical, biblico-oriental, and classical manuscripts at present existing in the various public libraries in Great Britain.

1 See Yeates's Collation of an Indian copy of the Pentateuch, &c. pp. 40, 41.

SECTION II.

ON THE MANUSCRIPTS OF THE GREEK SCRIPTURES.

1. GENERAL OBSERVATIONS ON GREEK MANUSCRIPTS.

I. On what materials written. —II. Form of letters. - III. Abbreviations. IV. Codices Palimpsesti or Rescripti.-V. Account of the different Families, Recensions, or Editions of Manuscripts of the New Testament. 1. The system of Dr. Griesbach and Michaelis. -2. Of Dr. Scholz. 3. Of M. Matthæi.-4. Of Mr. Nolan. -VI. On the Fœdus cum Græcis, or coincidence between many Greek Manuscripts and the Vulgate Latin Version.

[ocr errors]

I. THE Greek manuscripts which have descended to our time, are written either on vellum or on paper; and their external form and condition vary, like the manuscripts of other antient authors. The vellum is either purple-coloured or of its natural hue, and is either thick or thin. Manuscripts on very thin vellum were always held in the highest esteem. The paper also is either made of cotton, or the common sort manufactured from linen, and is either glazed, or laid (as it is technically termed), that is, of the ordinary roughness. Not more than six manuscript fragments on purple vellum are known to be extant; they are described in the following sections of this chapter. The Codex Claromontanus, of which a brief notice is also given in a subsequent page, is written on very thin vellum. All manuscripts on paper are of much later date; those on cotton paper ing posterior to the ninth century, and those on linen subsequent to the twelfth century; and if the paper be of a very ordinary quality, Wetstein pronounces them to have been written in Italy, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

be

II. The letters are either capital (which in the time of Jerome were called uncial, i. e. initial) or cursive, i. e. small; the capital letters, again, are of two kinds, either unadorned and simple, and made with straight thin strokes, or thicker, uneven, and angular. Some of them are supported on a sort of base, while others are decorated, or rather burthened with various tops. As letters of the first kind are generally seen on antient Greek monuments, while those of the last resemble the paintings of semibarbarous times, manuscripts written with the former are generally supposed to be as old as the fifth century, and those written with the latter are supposed to be posterior to the ninth century. Greek manuscripts were usually written in capital letters till the seventh century, and mostly without any divisions of words: and capitals were in general use until the eighth century, and some even so late as the ninth; but there is a striking difference in the forms of the letters after the seventh century. Great alterations took place in the eighth, ninth, and tenth centuries: the Greek letters in the manuscripts copied by the Latins in the ninth century, are by no means regular; the a, e, and y, being inflected like the a, e, and y, of the Latin alphabet. Towards the close of the tenth century, small or cursive letters were generally adopted;

VOL. II.

7

and Greek manuscripts written in and since the eleventh century are in small letters, and greatly resemble each other, though some few exceptions occur to the contrary. Flourished letters rarely occur in Greek manuscripts of the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries. The fac-similes of the Alexandrian and other manuscripts, given in the subsequent pages of this work, will furnish the reader with a tolerably correct idea of the various styles of Greek writing which obtained at different periods between the sixth and the fourteenth centuries.

The most antient manuscripts are written without accents, spirits, or any separation of the words; nor was it until after the ninth century that the copyists began to leave spaces between the words. Michaelis, after Wetstein, ascribes the insertion of accents to Euthalius bishop of Sulca in Egypt, A. D. 458.2

III. Nearly the same mode of spelling obtains in antient manuscripts which prevails in Greek printed books; but, even in the earliest manuscripts, we meet with some words that are abbreviated by putting the first and last letters, and sometimes also the middle letter, for an entire word, and drawing a line over the top: thus OC, KC, IC, XC, ΥΣ, ΣΗΡ, ΙΗΛ, ΟΙ ΙΣΗΛ, ΠΝΛ, ΠΗΡ, ΜΗΡ, ΟΥΝΟΣ, ΑΝΟΣ, ΙΛΗΜ, ΔΑΔ, respectively denote Θεος God, Κύριος Lord, Ιησους Jesus, Χριςος Christ, Υιος a son, Σωτης Saviour, Ισραηλ Israel, Πνευμα spirit, Πατης father, Μητης mother, Ουρανος heaven, Ανθρωπος man, Ιερουσαλημ Jerusalem, Δαυιδ David. At the beginning of a new book, which always commences at the top of a page, the first three, four, or five lines are frequently written in vermilion ; and, with the exception of the Alexandrian and Vatican manuscripts, all the most antient codices now extant have the Eusebian xɛpaλaia and 208, of which we have given an account in a subsequent chapter.*

Very few manuscripts contain the whole either of the Old or of the New Testament. By far the greater part have only the four Gospels, because they were most frequently read in the churches; others comprise only the Acts of the Apostles and the Catholic Epistles; others, again, have the Acts, and St. Paul's Epistles; and a very few contain the Apocalypse. Almost all of them, especially the more antient manuscripts, are imperfect, either from the injuries of time, or from neglect.5

All manuscripts, the most antient not excepted, have erasures and 1 Wetstein's Prolegomena to his edition of the Greek Testament, vol. i. pp. 1— 3. Astle on the Origin of Writing, pp. 60-76. 2d edit. Wetstein has given an alphabet from various Greek manuscripts, and Astle has illustrated his observations with several very fine engravings.

2 Wetstein, Proleg. p. 73. Michaelis, vol. ii. PP. 519-524.

3 Concerning Greek Abbreviations, see Montfaucon's Palæographia Græca, pp. 345-370. Mr. Astle has also given a specimen of Greek abbreviations from two Psalters. -On Writing, p. 76. plate vi.

4 See Part I. Chap. IV. infra.

5 The Codex Cottonianus, for instance, when perfect, contained only the Book of Genesis; the Codex Cæsareus contains only part of the same book, together with a fragment of the Gospel of Luke: the Alexandrian manuscript wants the first twenty-four chapters of Saint Matthew's Gospel; and the Codex Bezæ contains only the four Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles.

corrections; which, however, were not always effected so dexterously, but that the original writing may sometimes be seen. Where these alterations have been made by the copyist of the manuscript (à primá manu, as it is termed), they are preferable to those made by later hands, or à secundâ manu. These erasures were sometimes made by drawing a line through the word, or, what is tenfold worse, by the penknife. But, besides these modes of obliteration, the copyist frequently blotted out the old writing with a sponge, and wrote other words in lieu of it: nor was this practice confined to a single letter or word, as may be seen in the Codex Beza.1 Authentic instances are on record, in which whole books have been thus obliterated, and other writing has been substituted in the place of the manuscript so blotted out: but where the writing was already faded through age, they preserved their transcriptions without further erasure.

IV. These manuscripts are termed Codices Palimpsesti or Rescrip i. Before the invention of paper, the great scarcity of parchment in different places induced many persons to obliterate the works of antient writers, in order to transcribe their own or those of some other favourite author in their place: hence, doubtless, the works of many eminent writers have perished, and particularly those of the greatest antiquity; for such, as were comparatively recent, were transcribed, to satisfy the immediate demand; while those, which were already dim with age, were erased. It was for a long time thought, that this destructive practice was confined to the eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries, and that it chiefly prevailed among the Greeks it must, in fact, be considered as the consequence of the barbarism which overspread those dark ages of ignorance; but this destructive operation was likewise practised by the Latins, and is also of a more remote date than has usually been supposed.

In general, a Codex Rescriptus is easily known, as it rarely happens that the former writing is so completely erased, as not to exhibit some traces in a few instances, both writings are legible. Many such manuscripts are preserved in the library of the British Museum. Montfaucon found a manuscript in the Colbert Library, which had been written about the eighth century, and originally contained the works of St. Dionysius: new matter had been written over it, three or four centuries afterwards, and both continued legible.3 Muratori saw in the Ambrosian library a manuscript comprising the works of the venerable Bede, the writing of which was from eight to nine hundred years old, and which had been substituted for another upwards of a thousand years old. Notwithstanding the efforts which had been made to erase the latter, some phrases could be deciphered, which

1 Wetstein's Prolegomena, pp. 3-8. Griesbach has discovered the hands of FIVE different correctors in the Codex Claromontanus. See his Symbole Criticæ, tom. ii. pp. 32-52.

2 Peignot, Essai sur l'Histoire de Parchemin, p. 83, et seq.

3 Paleogr. Græc. pp. 231. 233. The greater part of the manuscripts on parchment, which Montfaucon had seen, he affirms, were written on parchment, from which some former treatise had been erased, except in those of a verv antient date. Mem. de l'Acad. de Inscript. tom. ix. p. 325.

« PreviousContinue »