CODEX
84
CODEX
MSS., ever joined to the text of the Old Testament.
Besides the hand of the original scribe, there are cor-
rections in several different hands, some probably
contemporarj' with the original, later liturgical anno-
tations and the nortes sanctorum, or formulae for telling
fortunes; all these are important for tracing the his-
tory of the MS.
Beza wrote in the letter accompanying his gift tliat the MS. was obtained from the raonasterj' of St. Irenaeus in Lyons, during the war in 1562. Lyons was sacked by the Huguenots in that year and this MS. was probably part of the loot. The reformer said it had lain in the monastery for long ages, neglected and covered with dust; but his statement is rejected by most modern scholars. It is claimed, in fact, that this codex is the one which was used at the Council of Trent in 1546 by William Dupr^ (English writers per- sist in calling this Frenchman a Prato), Bishop of Clermont in Auvergne, to confirm a Latin reading of John, xxi, si eum volo manere, which is found only in the Greek of this codex. Moreover, it is usually iden- tified with Codex ^, whose peculiar readings were collated in 154G for Stephens' edition of the Greek Testament by friends of his in Italy. Beza liimself, after having first denominated his code.x Lugduncnsis, later called it Clarornontanns , as if it came not from Lyons, but from Clermont (near Beauvais. not Cler- mont of Auvergne). All this, throwing Beza's orig- inal statement into doubt, indicates that the MS. was in Italy in the middle of the sixteentli century, and has some bearing upon the locality of the production.
It has commonly been held that the MS. originated in Southern France about the beginning of the sLxth centu:y. No one places it at a later date, chiefly on the evidence of the handwriting. France was chosen, partly because the MS. was found there, partly be- cause churches in Lyons and t he .South were of Greek foundation and for a long time continued the use of Greek in the Liturgy, while Latin was the vernacular — for some such community, at any rate, this bilin- gual codex was produced — and partly because the text of D bears a remarkable resemblance to the text quoted by St. Irenseus, even, says Nestle, in the mat- ter of clerical mistakes, so that it is possibly derived from his very copy. During the past five years, how- ever, the opinion of the best English textual critics has been veering to Southern Italy as the original home of D. It is pointed out that the MS. was used by a church practising the Greek Rite, as the hturgi- cal annotations concern the Greek text alone; that these annotations date from the ninth to the eleventh century, exactly the period of the Greek Rite in Southern Italy, while it had died out elsewhere in Latin Christendom, and show that the Byzantine Mass-lections were in use, which cannot have been the case in Southern France. The corrections, too, which concern the Greek text and but rarely the Latin, the spelling, and the calendar all point to Southern Italy. These arguments, however, touch only the home of the MS., not its birthplace, and MSS. have travelled from one end of Europe to the other. Ravenna and Sardinia, vv-here Greek and Latin influences also met, have likewise been sug- gested. It can only be said that the certainty with which tin recently it was ascribed to Southern France has been shaken, and the probabilities now favour Southern Italy.
Following Scrivener, scholars universally dated it from the beginning of the sixth century, but there is a tendency now to place it a hundred years earlier. Scrivener himself admitted that the handwriting was not inconsistent with this early date, and only as- signed it a later date by reason of the Latinity of the annotations. But the corrupt Latin is not itself in- compatible with an earlier date, while the freedom with which tlic Latin N. T. text is handled indicates a time when the Old Latin version was still current.
It probably belongs to the fifth centurj'. Nothing
necessitates a later date.
The type of text found in D is very ancient, yet it has survived in this one Greek MS. alone, though it is found also in the Old Latin, the Old Syriac, and the Old Amienian versions. It is the so-called Western Text, or one type of the Western Text. All the Fathers before the end of the third century used a similar text and it can be traced back to sub- Apostolic times. Its value is discussed elsewhere. D departs more widely than any other Greek codex from the ordinary text, compared with which as a standard, it is characterized by numerous additions, paraphrastic renderings, inversions, and some omis- sions. (For collation of text, see Scrivener, Bezse Codex, pp. xlix-lxiii; Nestle, Novi Test. Grteci Sup- plementum, Ciebhardt and Tischendorf ed., Leipzig, 1896.) One interpolation is worth noting here. Af- ter Luke, vi, 5, we read; "On the same day seeing some one working on the Sabbath, He said to him: 'O man, if you know what you do, blessed are you; but if you do not know, you are cursed and a trans- gressor of the law'." The most important omission, probably, is the second mention of the cup in Luke's account of the Last Supper.
The Latin text is not the Vulgate, nor yet the Old Latin, which it resembles more closely. It seems to be an independent translation of the Greek that faces it, though the fact that it contains two thousand varia- tions from its accompanying Greek text have led some to doubt tills. Of this number, however, only seven hundred and sixteen are said to be real variant read- ings, and some of these are derived from the Vulgate. If the translation be independent, both the Vulgate and Old Latin have influenced it greatly; as time went on, the influence of the Vulgate grew and proba- bly extended even to modifications of the Greek text. Cha.se, however, traces many of the variants to an original Syriac influence. The text, which was in so great honour in the Early Church, possesses a fasci- nation for certain scholars, who occasionally prefer its readings; but none professes to have really sohed the mystery of its origin.
Scrivener, Beztr Codex te.xt, introduction, and notes (Cam- bridge. 1864); Idem. An Introduction to the Textual Criticism of the New Testament (London. 1S94); Harris. Study of Codex Bezce, in the Cambridge Texts and Studies (Cambridge, 1893); Idem. Four Lectures on the Western Text (London, 1894); Idem, The Annotators of the Codex Beza (London, 1901); Westcott AND HoRT. Greek New Testament (New York), II; Chase, The Old Syriac Element in the Text of Codex Bezce (London. 1893); Idem, The Syro-Latin Texts of the Goapch (London. 18951; BnRKlTT. The Date of Codex lir-r, in T'-r Inumal of Theolog- ical Studies (July, 1902); valn'l.^ -in h.-^ by Lake and Brightman. ihid., vol. I; T. i — ' i/ of the Gospels
(London. 1898); Idem. .4r(a .1, '. lihiss's reconstruc- tion of Western Text of Act.,. .I.iii.zit. 1S9(J); Weiss. Der Codex D in der Aposlelgeschichte (I^ipzig. 1897).
John F. Fenlon.
Codex Canonum.
Ancient.
See C.\NONS, Collection op
Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus (symbol C), last in
the group of the four great uncial MSS. of the Greek
Bible, received its name from the treatises of St.
Ephra?m the Syrian (translated into Greek) which
were written over the original text. This took place
in the twelfth century, the ink of the Scriptural text
having become [lartially effaced through fading or
rubbing. Several Biblical codices are palimpsests
(see Manuscripts of the Bible), of which t'odex
Ephrtemi is the most important. After the fall of
Constantinople it was brought to Florence; thence it
was carried to Paris by Catherine de' Medici, and has
passed into the possession of the National Library.
Through Pierre .\Hx. Mont faucon, and Boivin, atten- tion w.as called to the underlying text, and .some of its readings given to the workl. The first complete col- lation of tlic \. T. was made by Wetstein (1716). Tischendorf published the N. T. in 184,3 and the
