This table says nothing about style of writing or material, but it may be taken as a general rule that MSS. earlier than the 13th century are on vellum and later than the 14th century are on paper, and that MSS. earlier than the 9th century are uncial and later than the 10th are minuscule. There are said to be 129 uncial MSS. of the New Testament (Kenyon, Textual Criticism of the New Testament, p. 45), but it is not easy to be quite accurate on the point.
Besides the MSS. mentioned in the table above, there are 281 MSS. containing commentaries on the Gospels, 169 on Acts and Epistles, 66 on the Apocalypse, 1072 lectionaries of the Gospels and 287 of Acts and Epistles, making a grand total of 3698 MSS. It must be remembered that the dating of the MSS., especially of minuscules, is by no means certain: Greek Palaeography is a difficult subject, and not all the MSS. have been investigated by competent palaeographers.
The notation of this mass of MSS. is very complicated. There are at present two main systems: (1) Since the time of Wetstein it has been customary to employ capital letters, at first of the Latin and latterly also of the Greek and Hebrew alphabets, to designate the uncials, and Arabic figures to designate the minuscules. Of this system there are two chief representatives, Gregory and Scrivener. These agree in the main, but differ for the more recently discovered minuscules. Gregory’s notation is more generally used, and Scrivener’s, though still followed by a few English scholars, is likely to become obsolete. This method of notation has various disadvantages. There are not enough letters to cover the uncials, the same letter has to serve for various fragments which are quite unconnected except by the accident of simultaneous discovery, and no information is given about the MS. referred to. (2) To remedy these drawbacks an entirely new system was introduced in 1902 by von Soden in his Die Schriften des neuen Testaments, Bd. 1, Abt. 1, pp. 33–40. He abandons the practice of making a distinction between uncial and minuscule, on the ground that for textual criticism the style of writing is less important than the date and contents of a MS. To indicate these he divided MSS. into three classes, (1) New Testaments (the Apocalypse being not regarded as a necessary part), (2) Gospels, and (3) Acts, Epistles and Apocalypse (the latter again being loosely regarded). These three classes he distinguished as δ (= διαθήκη), ε (= εὐαγγέλιον) and α (= ἀπόστολος). To these letters he attaches numbers arranged on a principle showing the century to which the MS. belongs and defining its contents more precisely. The number is determined thus:—MSS. of the δ and α classes from the earliest period to the 9th century inclusive are numbered 1 to 49; those of the 10th century 50 to 99; for the later centuries numbers of three figures are used, and the choice is made so that the figure in the hundreds’ place indicates the century, 1 meaning 11th century, 2 meaning 12th century, and so on; to all these numbers the appropriate letter, if it be δ or α, must be always prefixed, but if it be ε, only when there is any chance of ambiguity. In δ MSS. a distinction is made for those of the 11th and subsequent centuries by reserving 1 to 49 in each hundred for MSS. containing the Apocalypse, 50 to 99 for those which omit it. Similarly, in α MSS. a distinction is made according to their contents; the three-figure numbers are reserved for MSS. which contain Acts, Catholic Epistles and Pauline Epistles with or without the Apocalypse, the presence or absence of which is indicated as in the δ MSS.; but when a MS. consists of only one part a “1” is prefixed, thus making a four-figure number, and the precise part is indicated by the two last of the four figures; 00–19 means Acts and Catholic Epistles, 20–69 means Pauline Epistles and 70–99 means Apocalypse. In the case of ε MSS. 1–99 is used for the earliest MSS. up to the 9th century, and as this is insufficient, the available numbers are increased by prefixing a 0, and reckoning a second hundred from 01 to 099; 1000 to 1099 are MSS. of the 10th century; 100 to 199 are MSS. of the 11th century, 200–299 of the 12th century, and so on; as this is insufficient, the range of numbers is increased by prefixing a 1, and so obtaining another hundred, e.g. 1100 to 1199, and in the 12th and subsequent centuries, where even this is not enough, by passing on to the thousands and using 2000–2999 for the 12th century, 3000–3999 for the 13th and so on. In each case ε is prefixed whenever there is any chance of ambiguity. It is claimed that this system gives the maximum of information about a MS., and that it leaves room for the addition of any number of MSS. which are likely to be discovered. At present it has not seriously threatened the hold of Gregory’s notation on the critical world, but it will probably have to be adopted, at least to a large extent, when von Soden’s text is published.
[The full details of this subject can be found in E. Miller’s edition of Scrivener’s Introduction to the Criticism of the New Testament (George Bell, 1894); C. R. Gregory’s Prolegomena to Tischendorf’s Novum Testamentum Graece, Ed. VIII. critica major (Leipzig, 1894); C. R. Gregory’s Textkritik (Leipzig, 1900); H. von Soden’s Die Schriften des neuen Testaments (Berlin, Band i., 1902–1907); F. G. Kenyon’s Handbook to the Textual Criticism of the New Testament (London, 1901), especially valuable for a clear account of the Papyri fragments.]
It is neither possible nor desirable to give any description of most of these MSS., but the following are, critically, the most important.
Uncials.—Codex Vaticanus (Vat. Gr, 1209), Greg. B, v. Soden δ1; an uncial MS. of the 4th century. It is written in three columns and has forty-two lines to the column. It originally contained the whole Bible, but in the New Testament Heb. ix. 14, xiii. 25, 1 and 2 Tim., Tit., Philemon, Apoc., Codex Vaticanus.are now missing. It was written by three scribes of whom the writer of the New Testament was identified by Tischendorf as the scribe D of א (cod. Sinaiticus). The text has been corrected by two scribes, one (the διορθώτης) contemporary with the original writer, the other belonging to the 10th or 11th century. The latter probably also re-inked the whole of the MS. and introduced a few changes in the text, though some critics think that this was done by a monk of the 15th century who supplied the text of the lacuna in Heb. and of the Apocalypse from a MS. belonging to Bessarion. The text is the best example of the so-called Neutral Text, except in the Pauline epistles, where it has a strong “Western” element. How this MS. came to be in the Vatican is not known. It first appears in the catalogue of 1481 (Bibl. Vat. MS. Lat. 3952 f. 50), and is not in the catalogue of 1475, as is often erroneously stated on the authority of Vercellone. It was, therefore, probably acquired between the years 1475 and 1481. The problem of its earlier history is so entangled with the similar questions raised by א that the two cannot well be discussed separately. [Phototypic editions have been issued in Rome in 1889–1890 and in 1905.]
Codex Sinaiticus (St Petersburg, Imperial library), Greg. א, von Soden δ2; an uncial MS. of the 4th century. It was found in 1844 by C. Tischendorf (q.v.) in the monastery of St Catherine on Mt. Sinai, and finally acquired by the tsar in 1869. It is written on thin vellum in four columns Sinaiticus.of forty-eight lines each to a page. It contained originally the whole Bible, and the New Testament is still complete. At the end it also contains the Ep. of Barnabas and the Shepherd of Hermas, unfortunately incomplete, and there was probably originally some other document between these two. The text was written, according to Tischendorf, by four scribes, of whom he identified one as also the scribe of cod. Vaticanus. It was corrected many times, especially in the 6th century, by a scribe known as אa and in the 7th by אo. It has, in the main, a Neutral text, less mixed in the Epistles than that of B, but not so pure in the Gospels. The corrections of אo are important, as they are based (according to a note by that scribe, at the end of Esther) on an early copy which had been corrected by Pamphilus, the disciple of Origen, friend of Eusebius and founder of a library at Caesarea.
[The text of א was published in Tischendorf’s Bibliorum codex Sinaiticus Petropolitanus (vol. iv.,1862), and separately in his Novum Testamentum Sinaiticum (1863); in 1909 it was published in collotype by the Clarendon Press, Oxford. The relations of אo to Pamphilus are studied by Bousset in “Textkritische Studien zum N.T.” (in Texte u. Untersuchungen, xi. 4).]
If Tischendorf was right in identifying the scribe of B with that of part of א, it is obvious that these MSS. probably come from the same place. He was probably wrong, but there are some indications of relationship to justify the same view. The two most probable places seem to be Caesarea and Alexandria. The case for Caesarea is that the colophon written by אo at the end of Esther, and also of Ezra, shows that א was then in the library of Caesarea, and that a chapter division in Acts found both in א and B can also be traced to the same library. This is a fairly strong case, but it falls short of demonstration because it cannot be shown that the MS. corrected by Pamphilus was still at Caesarea when it was used by א, and because it is not certain either that the chapter divisions in Acts were added by the original scribes, or that א and B were at that time in their original home, or that the chapter divisions were necessarily only to be found at Caesarea. The case for Alexandria depends partly on the orthography of B, which resembles
