Apocalypse

1. This was the only manuscript at Erasmus’s command for this part of the New Testament. It is defective in the last chapter from verse 16 to the end. For the rest it exhibits a fairly good text. (See p. f.)

36. A text akin to א.

38 has a text resembling that of A C.

68. Resembles A.

95 does so still more. This last has the reputation of being one of the best minuscules of the Apocalypse.

The number of minuscules under each class is, according to Scrivener (Miller), as follows:—

Gospels, 1326

Acts and Catholic Epistles, 422

Pauline Epistles, 497

Apocalypse, 184

2429

A great many New Testament manuscripts are in England. Some are in the possession of private individuals, like those at Parham Park in Sussex belonging to Lord de la Zouche. In 1870-72 the Baroness Burdett Coutts brought with her from Janina in Epirus over one hundred manuscripts, of which sixteen were of the Gospels, one of them belonging to the Ferrar Group, and as many were Evangeliaria. There are 136 manuscripts of the New Testament in the British Museum.

The number in Great Britain is 438

In the National Library of Paris, 298

In Germany, 140

In Italy, 644

For the total number of Greek manuscripts arranged according to countries, see Scrivener, i., Indices I., II., pp. 392 ff.

What a vast number of manuscripts are still waiting to be examined is shown by the account given by Dr. von der Goltz. Accompanied by Dr. G. Wobbermin, he made a journey to Athos in the winter of 1897-98, and there in that ancient Monastery, the Laura of St. Athanasius, he found, among about 1800 manuscripts altogether, including Lectionaries, some 250 codices of the New Testament, of which only a very few have been noted by Gregory. And these manuscripts may be of the very utmost importance, as witness the further statement of the same explorer. He was looking through the manuscripts of the Apostolos, to which he and his companion had to give most of their attention, when his eye fell on one written in the tenth or eleventh century, containing the following note before the Pauline Epistles: γεγράφθαι ἀπὸ ἀντιγράφου παλαιοτάτου, οὗ πεῖραν ἐλάβομεν ὡς ἐπιτετευγμένου ἐκ τῶν εἰς ἡμᾶς ἐλθόντων Ὠριγένους τόμων ἢ ὁμιλιῶν εἰς τὸν ἀπόστολον ... ἐν οἷς οὖν παραλλάττει ῥητοῖς πρὸς τὰ νῦν ἀποστολικά, διπλῆν τὴν λεγομένην παρεθήκαμεν ἔξωθεν, ἵνα μὴ νομισθῇ κατὰ προσθήκην ἢ λεῖψιν ἡμαρτῆσθαι τουτὶ τὸ ἀποστολικόν. And from the subscription at the end of the Pauline Epistles we learn that the manuscript, or, as von der Goltz believes, the exemplar from which it was copied, was written by a monk called Ephraim. See further in von der Goltz, Eine textkritische Arbeit des zehnten bezw. sechsten Jahrhunderts herausgegeben nach einem Kodex des Athosklosters Lawra. Mit einer Doppeltafel in Lichtdruck. Leipzig, 1899. (Texte und Untersuchungen, Neue Folge, ii. 4); and compare below, p. .

Literature.—On 2evv, see Hoskier, above, p. .

On 13, see W. H. Ferrar, Collation of four important Manuscripts of the Gospels, edited by T. K. Abbott, Dublin, 1877. J. P. P. Martin, Quatre manuscrits du N. T., auxquels on peut ajouter un cinquième, Amiens, 1886. J. R. Harris, On the Origin of the Ferrar Group, London, 1894. K. Lake, “Some new members of the Ferrar Group of MSS. of the Gospels,” in the Journal of Theological Studies, I. i. pp. 117-120. The well-known manuscript of the pre-Lutheran German Bible, the Codex Teplensis, has the words from John viii. 2, “in the morning he came again into the temple,” after Luke xxi. 38, an arrangement similar to that which is characteristic of the Ferrar Group, in which John vii. 53-viii. 11 is found after Luke xxi. 38. See S. Berger, Bull. Crit., 1894, p. 390. See Addenda, p. xv.

On 561, Codex Algerinae Peckover, see J. R. Harris in the Journal of the Exegetical Society, 1886, 79-96.

On 892evv, see Harris, “An Important Manuscript of the N. T.” in the Journal of Biblical Literature, ix., 1890, 31 ff.

On Minuscules of the Apocalypse, see Bousset, Textkritische Studien in T. und U., xi. 4.

C. R. Gregory, “Die Kleinhandschriften des N. Testaments” (Theologische Studien für B. Weiss., Göttingen, 1897, 274-283).

E. J. Goodspeed, “A Twelfth Century Gospel Manuscript” (Biblical World, x. 4).