Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 4.djvu/117

 CODEX

85

CODEX

O. T. in 1845. The torn condition of many leaves, the faded state of the ink, and the covering of the original writing by the later made the decipherment an extremely difficult task ; some portions are hope- lessly illegible. Tischendorf, then a young man, won his reputation through this achievement. His results, however, have not been checked by other scholars, and so cannot yet be accepted without caution.

The codex, of good vellum, measures 12^ inches by 9 inches ; there is but one column to a page, G being the earliest example of this kind. The writing is a little larger than that of X, A, and B ; the first hand inserted no breathings or accents, and only an occa- sional apostrophe. The period is marked by a single point. Large capitals are frequent, as in A. The margin of the Gospels contains the Ammonian Sec- tions, but not the numbers of the Eusebian Canons, which were probably written in vermilion and have

To ^e e T I xn K lA H>.-i

THNTCONCXKey OH 6 M CU kTh CT^G

CI HcucnenoiH

M e N CD N 1 N XM IKH T*^M H CXAeyOMGNK
 * ^1 O R X C » X G I AH \C A

X€YTON nXJ'XAKlJL.

EXWONTecexoH^

>C Kp I N XJ H CAXTpT

oMeNeyxpecTO)* Tcu ocD H,e Txe-YAx

BlXCKXfXfeOycKAJ

rxp o e"c H M CD M n-jf

KXTXNXXICKON H cp I XX.*i.e Xcb I XM«

another. "Sometimes", says Kenyon, "it agrees with the neutral group of manuscripts, sometimes with the Western, not imfrequently with the Alexan- drian and perhaps oftenest with the Syrian". From certain displacements in the .Apocalypse, Hort infers that the book was copied from a codex of small leaves. Such an exemplar would not be used in church serv- ices and would have no guarantee of a good text. Pos- sibly the rest of the MS. was copied from similar codices.

Tischendorf, Codex Ephrwmi Syri Rcscri-ptus (Leipzig, 1843-184.';); Swete. Old Testament in Greek (Cambridge, 1891). II. pp. xiii, xiv. See also bibliography of Codex Alexan-

DRINUS.

John F. Fenlon.

Codex Sinaiticus (symbol X, though Swete and •a few other scholars use S), a Greek manuscript of the 1(1 ami .\ew Testaments, of the greatest antiquity

f M I N TON AO ro N TO Y©y<^ N XN X0€ HCM iMeicexiTH'

hlCTIN

IcxcexeecKAicH

M e PO N O ATTO C K

e I CToyc XI CD N X' /^ixxxxicrjoiKi

XAICKXiXeNXiCMi

nxfX^'efecoeKX

AONrXfXXf ITI^e

K A I oyce eTH n Ki^»

XI AN Oy 8 pCJU MX'I»J GNOlCOYKd>e

XHOH CAN Oineri nXTOYNT€C

R, xu, 2(-xin,

Library, St. Pktersburg

7-9, IV Century.

faded away. The Euthalian chapters are missing; the subscriptions are brief. From these indications and the character of the writing. Codex C is placed in the first half of the fifth century, along with A. Tisch- endorf distinguished two scribes (contemporaries), one for O. T., the other for N. T., and two correctors, one (C) of the si.xth, the other (C) of the ninth cen- tury; he conjectured that Egypt was the place of origin. With the exception of Tischendorf no modern has really studied the MS.

Originally the whole Bible seems to have been con- tained in it. At present, of the O. T. only some of the Hagiographa survive, in an imperfect state, namely nearly all of Ecclesiastes, about half of Eeclesiasticus and Wisdom, with fragments of Proverbs and ('anti- cles — in all 64 leaves. .Vbout two-thirds of the N. T. (145 leaves) remain, including portions of all the books except II Tlic.ss. and II John; no book is com- plete. The text of C is said to be very good in Wis- dom, very bad in Eeclesiasticus, two books for which its testimony is important. The N. T. text is very mixed, the scribe seems to have had before hun M.SS. of different types and to have followed now one now

and value; foimd on Mount Sinai, in St. Catherine's Monastery, by Constantine Tischendorf. He was visiting there in 1844, imder the patronage of Fred- erick Augustus, King of Saxony, when he discovered in a rubbish basket forty-three leaves of the Septua- gint, containing portions of 1 Par. (Chron.), Jer., Neh., and Esther; he was permitted to take them. He also saw the books of Isaias and I and IV Mach., belonging to the same codex as the fragments, but could not obtain possession of them; warning the monks of their value, he left for Europe and two years later published the leaves he had brought with him under the name of Codex Friderico-.\ugiistai.us, after his patron. They are preserved at Leipzig. On a second visit, in 185.3, he found only two short frag- ments of Genesis (which he printed on his return) and could learn nothing of the rest of the codex. In 1859 he made a third visit, this time under the patronage of the Czar, .\lexander II. This visit seemed likewise fruitless when, on the eve of his departure, in a chance conversation with the steward, he learned of the ex- istence of a manuscript there; when it was shown to him, he saw the very manuscript he had sought con-