CODEX
87
CODEX
The Old Testament (Septuagint Version, except
Daniel, which is taken from the Version of Theodo-
tion) takes up 617 folios. On account of the afore-
mentioned lacunae, the Old Testament text lacks the
following passages : Gen., i-xlvi, 28; II lungs, ii, 5-7,
10-13; Pss. cv, 27-cxxx\'ii, 6. The order of the
books of the Old Testament is as follows: Genesis to
Second Paralipomenon, First and Second Esdras,
Psalms. Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Canticle of Canticles,
Job, AA'isdom, Ecelesiasticus, Esther. Judith, Tobias,
the Minor Prophets from Osee to Malachy, Isaias,
Jeremias, Baruch, Lamentations and Epistle of Jere-
mias, Ezechiel, Daniel; the Vatican Codex docs not
contain the Prayer of Manasses or the Books of
Machabees. The Xew Testament begins at fol. 618.
Owing to the loss of the final quinterns, a portion of
the Pauline Epistles is missing: Heli., ix. 14-xiii, 2.5,
the Pastoral Letters. Ejiislle to Philemon; also the
discovered by him, is rightly considered to be the
oldest extant copy of the Bible. Like the Codex
Sinaiticus it represents what Westcott and Hort call
a "neutral text", i. e. a text that antedates the modi-
fications found in all later manuscripts, not only the
modifications found in the less ancient .\ntiochene
recensions, but also those met with in the Eastern and
Alexandrine recensions. It may be said that the
Vatican Codex, written in the first half of the fourth
century, represents the text of one of those recensions
of the Bible which were current in the third centurj',
and that it belongs to the family of manuscripts made
use of by Origen in the composition of his Hexapla.
The originarhome of the Vatican Codex is uncertain.
Hort thinks it was written at Rome ; Rendel Harris,
Armitage Robinson, and others attribute it to Asia
Minor. A more common opinion maintains that it
was written in EL'Vpt. Annitaui' Hnbinson believes
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Apocalypse. It is possible that there may also be
some extra-canonical writings missing, like the Epistle
of Clement. The order of the New Testament books
is as follows: Gospels, Acts of the .\postles. Catholic
Epistles, St. Paul to the Romans, Corinthians (I-II),
Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Thessalonians (I-
II), Hebrews.
In the Vatican Codex we find neither the Ammonian Sections nor the Eusebian Canons (q. v.). It is, how- ever, divided into sections, after a manner that is common to it with the Codex Zacynthius (Cod. S), an eighth-century Scriptural manuscript of St. Luke. The .\cts of the .\postles exhibit a special division into thirty-six chapters. The Catholic Epistles bear traces of a double division, in the first and earlier of which some believe that the Second Epistle of Peter was wanting. Tlie division of the Pauline Epistles is quite peculiar: they arc treated as one book, and nuniliered continuously. It is clear from this enumeration that in the copy of the Scriptures reproduced by the \ati- can Codex the Epistle to the Hebrews wa.s placed between the Epi.stle to the Galatians and the l'-[)istle to the Ephesians.
The Vatican Codex, in spite of the views of Tischen- dorf, who held for the priority of the Codex Sinaiticus,
that both the \'aticanus and the Sinaiticus were origi-
nally together in some ancient librarj'. His opinion
is based on the fact that in the margins of both manu-
scripts is found the same special system of chapters
for the Acts of the Apostles, taken from the division
of Euthalius, and found in two other important codices
(Amiatinus and Fuldensis) of the Latin Vulgate.
Tischendorf believed that three hands had worked at
the transcription of the Vatican Codex. He identified
(?) the first hand (B'). or transcriber, of the Old Testa-
ment with the transcriber of a part of the Old Testa-
ment and some folios of the New Testament in the
Codex Sinaiticus. This primitive text was revised,
shortly after its original transcription, with the aid of
a new manuscript, by a corrector (B' — For the Old
Testament B' is quoted by Swete as B*). Six centu-
ries .after (according to some), a third hand (B', B")
retraced the faded letters, leaving but very little of
the original imtouched. According to Fabiani, how-
ever, this retracing was done early in the fifteenth
century by the monk Clemens ((/ui swruin XV ineunle
floniiase indetur). In modern times (fifteenth-six-
teenth century) the mi-ssing folios were added to the
codex, in order, as Tregelles conjectures, to prepare it
for use in the Vatican Library. Old catalogues show
