The Criticism of the New Testament. Frederick Henry Ambrose Scrivener
Epistle, and on the same page (fol. 139, verso), commences a kind of Postscript (having little connexion with the sacred text), the larger portion of which is met with under the title of Dicta Abbatis Pinophi, in the works of Rabanus Maurus, Archbishop of Mayence, who died in a.d. 856; from which circumstance the Cod. Augiensis has been referred to the ninth century. Palaeographical arguments also would lead us to the same conclusion. The Latin version (a modification of the Vulgate in its purest form, though somewhat tampered with in parts to make it suit the Greek text211) is written in the cursive minuscule character common in the age of Charlemagne. The Greek must have been taken from an archetype with the words continuously written; for not only are they miserably ill divided by the unlearned German212 scribe, but his design (not always acted upon) was to put a single middle point at the end of each word. The Latin is exquisitely written, the Greek uncials are neat, but evidently the work of an unpractised hand, which soon changes from weariness. The shapes of eta, theta, pi, and other testing letters are such as we might have expected from the date; some others have an older look. Contrary to the more ancient custom, capitals, small but numerous, occur in the middle of the lines in both languages. Of the ordinary breathings213 and accents there are no traces. Here and there we meet with a straight line, inclined between the horizontal and the acute accent, placed over an initial vowel, usually when it should be aspirated, but not always (e.g. ίδιον 1 Cor. vi. 18). Over ι and υ double or single points, or a comma, are frequently placed, especially if they begin a syllable; and occasionally a large comma or kind of circumflex over ι, ει, and some other vowels and diphthongs. The arrangement of the Greek forbids punctuation there; in the Latin we find the single middle point as a colon or after an abridgement, the semicolon (;) sometimes, the note of interrogation (?) when needed. Besides the universal forms of abridgement (see p. 49), [symbol] and [symbol] are frequent in the Greek, but no others: in the Latin the abbreviations are numerous, and some of them unusual: Scrivener (Cod. Augiensis Proleg. pp. xxxi-ii) has drawn up a list of them. This copy abounds as much as any with real variations from the common text, and with numberless errors of the pen, itacisms of vowels, and permutations of consonants. It exhibits many corrections, a few primâ manu, some unfortunately very recent, but by far the greater number in a hand almost contemporary with the manuscript, which has also inserted over the Greek, in 106 places, Latin renderings differing from those in the parallel column, but which in eighty-six of these 106 instances agree with the Latin of the sister manuscript.
G. Cod. Boernerianus, so called from a former possessor, but now in the Royal Library at Dresden. In the sixteenth century it belonged to Paul Junius of Leyden: it was bought dear at the book-sale of Peter Francius, Professor at Amsterdam, in 1705, by C. F. Boerner, a Professor at Leipsic, who lent it to Kuster to enrich his edition of Mill (1710), and subsequently to Bentley. The latter so earnestly wished to purchase it as a companion to Cod. F, that though he received it in 1719, it could not be recovered from him for five years, during which he was constantly offering high sums for it214: a copy, but not in Bentley's hand, had been already made (Trin. Coll. B. xvii. 2). Cod. G was published in full by Matthaei in 1791, in common type, with two facsimile pages (1 Cor. ii. 9-iii. 3; 1 Tim. i. 1–10), and his edition is believed to be very accurate; Anger, Tischendorf, Tregelles, Böttiger and others who have examined it have only expressly indicated three errors215. Rettig has abundantly proved that, as it is exactly of the same size, so it once formed part of the same volume with Cod. Δ (see p. 157 and note): they must date towards the end of the ninth century, and may very possibly have been written in the monastery of St. Gall (where Δ still remains) by some of the Irish monks who flocked to those parts. That Cod. G has been in such hands appears from some very curious Irish lines at the foot of one of Matthaei's plates (fol. 23), which, after having long perplexed learned men, have at length been translated for Dr. Reeves, the eminent Celtic scholar216. All that we have said respecting the form of Cod. Δ applies to this portion of it: the Latin version (a specimen of the Old Latin, but as in Codd. Bezae and Laudianus much changed to suit the Greek) is cursive and interlinear; the Greek uncials coarse and peculiar; the punctuation chiefly a stop at the end of the words, which have no breathings nor accents. Its affinity to the Cod. Augiensis has no parallel in this branch of literature. Scrivener has noted all the differences between them at the foot of each page in his edition of Cod. F: they amount to but 1,982 places, whereof 578 are mere blunders of the scribe, 967 changes of vowels or itacisms, 166 interchanges of consonants, seventy-one grammatical or orthographical forms; the remaining 200 are real various readings, thirty-two of them relating to the article. While in Cod. F (whose first seven leaves are lost) the text commences at Rom. iii. 19, μω; λεγει, this portion is found complete in Cod. G, except Rom. i. 1–5; ii. 16–25. All the other lacunae of Cod. F occur also in Cod. G, which ends at Philem. 20 ἐν χρω: there is no Latin version to supply these gaps in Cod. G, but a blank space is always left, sufficient to contain what is missing. At the end of Philemon G writes (ad) Προς (laudicenses) λαουδακησασ217 (incipit) αρχεται (epistola) επιστολη, but neither that writing nor the Epistle to the Hebrews follows. It seems tolerably plain that one of these manuscripts was not copied immediately from the other, for while they often accord even in the strangest errors of the pen that men unskilled in Greek could fall into, their division of the Greek words, though equally false and absurd, is often quite different: it results therefore that they are independent transcripts of the same venerable archetype (probably stichometrical and some centuries older than themselves) which was written without any division between the words218. From the form of the letters and other circumstances Cod. F may be deemed somewhat but not much the older; its corrector secundâ manu evidently had both the Greek and the Latin of Cod. G before him, and Rabanus, in whose works the Dicta Pinophi are preserved (p. 178), was the great antagonist of Godeschalk, on whom the annotator of Codd. ΔG bears so hard. Cod. G is in 4to, of ninety-nine leaves, with twenty-one lines in each. The line indicating breathing (if such be its use, see p. 178) and the mark > employed to fill up spaces (p. 51), more frequent in it than in F.
Since Dr. Scrivener wrote the above, a very valuable little treatise—a “specimen primum”—has been given to the learned world by Herr P. Corssen219, and a most clear and carefully argued paper has been sent to the editor by the Rev. Nicholas Pocock of Clifton. Both Herr Corssen and Mr. Pocock agree in showing that F was not derived from G, nor G from F, but that they come from the same original. Both agree, again, that the Greek version is derived, at least in large measure, from the Latin, as in such instances as the following, which are supplied by Mr. Pocock, who holds, and appears to prove, that F and G were copied from an interlinear manuscript: ut sciatis, ινα οιδαται (F, G), 1 Thess. iii. 3; sicut cancer ut serpat, ως γαγγρα, ινα νομηνεξει (G), 2 Tim. ii. 17, F having the same reading, only dividing the last word; Gal. iv. 3 eramus autem servientes, ημεθα δε δουλωμενοι (F, G). Herr Corssen considers that a Latin was the scribe of the original, that it was written in Italy, and that it was better than the Claromontanus (D), to which it had affinities, this last having an amended text with corrections from the Greek. The original of all three he supposes to date from not before the fifth century. But in some of these last suppositions we are getting upon the ocean of conjecture.
H. Cod. Coislin. 202 is a very precious fragment, of which twelve leaves are in the Imperial Library at Paris; nine are in the monastery or laura of St. Athanasius at Mount Athos, and have been edited by M. Duchesne in the “Archives des missions scientifiques et littéraires” (1876); two more are at Moscow, and have been described by Matthaei (D. Pauli Epp. ad Hebr. et Col. Riga, 1784, p. 58); some others are in the Antonian Library of St. Petersburg (three); some more in the Imperial Library as described by Muralt (two), or in that of Bishop Porphyry (one), or at Turin (two). The leaves at Paris contain 1 Cor. x. 22–29; xi. 9–16; 1 Tim. iii. 7–13; Tit. i. 1–3; 15-ii. 5; iii. 13–15; Heb. ii. 11–16; iii. 13–18; iv. 12–15. At Mount Athos are 2 Cor. x. 18-xi. 6; xi. 12-xii. 2; Gal. i. 1–4; ii. 4–17; iv. 30-v. 5. At Moscow, Heb. x. 1–7; 32–38. At St. Petersburg, 2 Cor. iv. 2–7; 1 Thess. ii. 9–13; iv. 5–11 (Antonian); Gal. i. 4–10; ii. 9–14 (Imperial). In the Library of Bishop Porphyry, Col. iii. 4–11; and at Turin, 1 Tim. vi. 9–13; 2 Tim. ii. 1–9. They are in quarto, with large square uncials of about sixteen lines on a page, and date from the sixth century. Breathings and accents are added by a later hand, which retouched this copy (see Silvestre, Paléographie Universelle, Nos. 63,