Lest anyone feel shortchanged ....
> 
> A Brief History of the Bible - 4
> 
> "Codex Vaticanus" is the name usually given to the 4th century MS of the
> Greek Bible, Vat. gr. 1209, in the Vatican Library.  I wonder if anyone on
> the list has actually seen it?
> 
> Its presence in the Vatican Library is vouched for by an entry in the 1481
> catalogue, and probably by one in the 1475 catalogue;  its previous history
> is unknown - at least to me!  

Batiffol conjectured that it was brought to Rome by Cardinal Bessarion (a 
noted collector of MSS), and had been in Italy since the 10th-11th
century.
 
> It contains the Septuagint OT, and the Greek NT as far as Hebrews 9:14,
> after which the rest has been lost.  "The sheets are of a fine vellum, said
> to be of antelopes' skins, each page being composed of three columns of over
> forty lines" (ODCC).

Actually, several other leaves from this MS have been lost (and supplied
by a 15th century hand), most notably the first part of Genesis (to 46.28)
and Ps 105/106.27 - 137/138.6. The MS did not contain 1-4 Maccabees, and
the order of books in the OT portion is somewhat unusual.
 
> The Cambridge scholar F.J.A. Hort, thought that it was of Roman provenance,
> but more recent scholars believe it was written in Alexandria.  Westcott and
> Hort, who edited the N.T. on the basis of Vaticanus and Sinaiticus, thought
> that these represented a "Neutral" text, less subject to corrupting
> influences of editorial revision than any other.  It is my understanding
> that more recent scholars do not attempt to distinguish between a "Neutral"
> text and the "Alexandrian" text;  but of course I speak under the correction
> of the ever-vigilant Bob.

These sorts of textual evaluations have come under close scrutiny in light
of the evidence from the papyri, which frequently provide earlier texts
that do not fit neatly into the classifications based on the 4th/5th
century (and later) manuscripts. For the Jewish scriptural materials (OT),
generalizations about text-types in MS B or other large-scale codices are
impossible to make; some books/sections seem to show a high quality early
text, others not so. Of course, the age and textual histories of these OT
materials are more complex than the NT collection. In general (but not
invariably), MS B seems to reflect selfconsciously careful, even textually
conservative, editorial choices in a period when Christian scribes and
scholars could operate more openly in the flush of official recognition of
the Christian movement. At present, an Egyptian setting for the text (and
textual work) represented in MS B seems likely.

> Vaticanus was the basis of the Sixtine edition of the Septuagint published
> at Rome in 1587.  The complete text was first edited by A. Mai in 1857.  The
> NT was edited, after Mai, by Constantine Tischendorf (Leipzig, 1867), the
> discoverer of Sinaiticus.  More of him later.
> 
> As an undergraduate (reading English) I was required to read the
> Introduction to Westcott and Hort's "The New Testament in the Original
> Greek" (1881) as my introduction to textual criticism.  Of course, a great
> deal of work has been done since then, but I have always regarded it as one
> of the books most necessary for all people to know.
> 
> Vaticanus is regularly indicated by the siglum "B" in the apparatus of
> critical editions of the Bible.

For NT critics, it also is represented by "03" -- facsimile editions
appeared in 1868-72 and 1904, and most recently a color reproduction (with
introduction by Carlo Martini) in 1968 [of the entire MS? I haven't seen
this item, personally]

> 
> I might have started with another early MS, "Codex Bezae", now in the
> Cambridge University Library.  It is a little later than Vaticanus, probably
> 5th century.  It is a bilingual (Greek and Latin) MS of the Gospels, in the
> order Matthew, John, Luke, Mark, with Acts, and a small fragment of the
> Latin of the third letter of St John.
> 
> It was taken by the Bishop of Clermont to the Council of Trent and used by
> Stephanus for his edition of the NT published at Paris in 1550.  Its earlier
> history is uncertain.  It came into the possession of Theodore Beza, who
> presented it to the University of Cambridge in 1581.
> 
> This Beza (De Besze) was a Calvinist divine who published a number of
> editions of the scriptures.  In 1565 he published his first edition of the
> Greek text of the NT, to which were added the Vulgate and his own Latin
> translation.  This is regarded as the first critical edition of the NT;  he
> had consulted 17 MSS, as well as the variants collected by H. Stephanus and
> the edition published by R. Stephanus (Estienne) in 1550.  In 1582 he
> brought out a second edition, supplemented by the Codex Bezae, which he had
> picked up (I know not how) in Lyons, together with the Peshitta (a Syriac
> version), and his Latin translation of an Arabic version.
> 
> Codex Bezae represents what Westcott and Hort were to call the "Western"
> text of the NT.  It is usually indicated by the siglum "D".

Also designated "05" -- dated to the 6th century in the (earlier)
Nestle-UBS editions of the NT (I don't have the most recent at hand),
although the Alands seem to opt for 5th c. in their <t>Text of the NT</>.
A very controversial witness, perhaps produced by someone in Egypt or
North Africa whose native language was Latin (so the Alands). The
designation "Western" is used with a large grain of salt these days.

> 
> Oriens.
> 


Bob
-- 
Robert A. Kraft, Religious Studies, University of Pennsylvania
227 Logan Hall (Philadelphia PA 19104-6304); tel. 215 898-5827
[log in to unmask]
http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/rs/rak/kraft.html


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