Codex Sinaiticus and Others By PROF. A. S. HUNT T IIE
acquisition by the British Museum of the famous Codex Sinaiticus is a picturesque event which has aroused wide interest. If the price is high it can hardly be termed excessive, and probably not many of those who care at all for the things of the mind will be found to grudge the expenditure involved from the public purse. The manuscript is a magnificent specimen of fourth-century calligraphy, yielding the palm in point of antiquity and authority only to the Vaticanus at Rome. This is commonly considered to be somewhat more ancient, but the Sinaiticus, with its four columns to the page and rather larger script, is the more imposing of the pair. It is also for the New Testament the more complete, and in addition contains the Epistle of Barnabas and the " Shepherd " of Hernias. Another element of interest is the dramatic story of the discovery in the monastery of St. Catherine at Mt. Sinai by Tischendorf, who began by rescuing from a waste-paper basket some forty leaves (now at Leipzig) about to be consigned to the flames, and then at the end of a subsequent visit, when there seemed to be no hope of more, was led through a casual conversation to the detection of the rest of the treasure. There followed the amusing episode of the ingenious forger, Constantine Simonides, who after his exposure tried to revenge himself by declaring that the Codex Sinaiticus was his own handiwork. The manuscript has of course nothing to fear from that malicious imputation. Clever though he was, Simonides was quite incapable of fabricating anything on such a scale which could pass for a genuine product of a fourth-century scriptorium. The frag- ments of the New Testament on papyrus "undoubtedly written during the Apostolic age" which he published in facsimile in 1861 could impose upon no one possessed of any real experience of the genuine article.
The Sinaitic Codex, like that of the Vatican, is generally supposed to have been copied at Alexandria, a view to some extent supported by certain peculiarities of script ; but a century or so later it had found its way to Caesarea, as is plainly indicated by a marginal annota- tion. The suggestion has lately been put forward by Canon Streeter in his book, The Four Gospels, that it was taken to Palestine by St. Jerome, who visited Alexandria towards the end of the fourth century, and in his Com- mentary on Matthew made use of a text closely resembling that of the Sinaiticus. How or when the Codex was transferred to the monastery at Mt. Sinai is unknown. It is not, by the way, the only contribution of importance made by that foundation to the sources for the text of the New Testament, for in 1892 Mrs. Lewis and Mrs. Gibson, of Cambridge, brought to light there a palimpsest giving the Old Syriac version of the Gospels in a rather earlier form than was previously known. One of its notable peculiarities is the addition of Jesus to the nam.e Barabbas in Pilate's question (Mat. xxvii. 17) : "Whom will ye that I release unto you, Barabbas or Jesus whom they call Christ ? " This reading, which undoubtedly adds point to the alternative, was known to Origen, who discarded it on the untenable ground that the name Jesus—which occurs in documentary papyri as early as the first century B.C.—could not have been borne by a sinner.
In the British Museum the Codex Sinaiticus will join the third great manuscript of the Greek Bible, Codex Alexandrinus, which came to England as a present to Charles I from the Patriarch of Alexandria. This is of the fifth century, but is also of great value, both as an early representative of the type followed in the Textus Receptus and as a primary authority for those portions of the Septuagint where the two older manu- scripts are defective. A third British possession of the highest order is the Codex Bezae at Cambridge, a Grzeco- Latin manuscript of the Gospels and Acts, which is assigned to the fifth century more probably than the sixth. This is the chief exponent of the text miscalled Western, which differs markedly from that of the oldest uncials commonly distinguished by the name (also unfortunate) of " Neutral " and of which the authority has been, and is, a matter of acute controversy. This " Western " text had a wide vogue in early times, being supported by both the Old Latin and Old Syriac versions as well as by patristic citations, and some of its additions make a strong claim to authenticity, e.g., the well-known saying addressed to the man found working on the Sabbath, and added in Codex Bezae at Luke vi. 4. It is in that Gospel and the Acts that the variations are most prominent—so striking indeed that the theory, now discredited, was devised that the author of those books issued them in two editions.
Attention has recently been focused anew on the prob- lem by Professor A. C. Clark's edition of the Acts, pub- lished last year. Approaching it, like the late Prof. Blass, as a classical scholar, he has become a staunch upholder of the " Western " text in this particular book at any rate. He suggests that this codex was written in Egypt ; texts of the same type were certainly circulating there about the fourth century, as shown by two papyrus fragments, one from Oxyrhynchus, the other of unknown provenance. On the other hand the much more con- siderable remains of a codex of the Gospels and Acts just published by Sir Frederic Kenyon as a first instalment of the Chester Beatty biblical papyri and attributed to the third century, fail to show the more prominent variants characteristic of the " Western " type.
Perhaps the obscurity still surrounding the early history of the text of the New Testament may be illumined by new finds, and the gap of some two centuries that now divides the earliest fragments of the Gospels from the life which they describe may be yet further contracted. Ex oriente lux, and we may still look to Egypt, from which so many surprises have already come, for fresh enlighten- ment. Fortune will hardly resuscitate Q the postulated source, forming a supplement to Mark, of the Gospels of Matthew and Luke ; but such things as the Oxyrhynehus Sayings of Jesus,* fragments of apocryphal Gospels and Acts, and many ancient fragments of the canonical books hold out hopes of the recovery of other valuable remains of primitive Christianity. In 1906 a fifth-century codex of the Gospel, complete in its painted boards, was acquired by Mr. Freer of Detroit, along with some other biblical MSS., and is now at Washington. It is remarkable for the preservation of some verses near the end of Mark, partially known in Latin from a reference in Jerome, but found in no other Greek manuscript. It presents a mixed text, which, strangely enough, in Mark changes from the " Western " to the " Caesarean " type. In 1928 a large part of a copy of John in the Coptic version, probably of the fourth century, was unearthed near Assiut by a British excavator. More recently still there has come the sensational discovery of the Chester Beatty papyri• already alluded to, a group of early papyrus codices, * Discovered and edited by the writer of this article in conjunc. tion with Professor B. P. GrenfelL—En. The Spectator. including three representatives of the New Testament, and seven (not eight as originally stated, since those numbered by Sir F. Kenyon IX and X are in fact parts of a whole), of the Septuagint. One of these latter, containing portions of Numbers and Deuteronomy, seems to go -back even to the second century, and though possibly this originated in a Jewish circle, there is some reason for thinking that it was penned by a Christian.
There is thus no lack of new material for the critical study of the Greek Scriptures, a subject which is very much alive; and wherein this country is playing no mean part. Recently, moreover, such research has been much facilitated by the great editions still in progress at Cambridge and Oxford respectively of the Septuagint and Vulgate ; and happily another most urgent requisite, a re-edition of the Greek New Testament embodying con- veniently the new evidence, is now in an advanced state of preparation.
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