66 66 66 Inclytae modisque omnibus celebratissimae ACADEMIAE CANTABRIGIENSI Gratiam et pacem a Deo patre ac Domino nostro Jesu Christo. Quatuor Evangeliorum et Actorum Apostolicorum graeco latinum exemplar ex S. Irenaei caenobio "lugdunensi ante aliquot annos nactus, mutilum quidem illud, et neque satis emendatè ab initio ubique "descriptum, neque ita ut oportuit habitum, sicut ex paginis quibusdá diverso charactere insertis, et indocti cujuspiam graeci Calogeri1 barbaris adscriptis alicubi notis apparet, Vestrae potissimum academiae, ut inter verè Christianas vetustissimae, plurimisque nominibus celeberrimae, dicandum existimavi, Reverendi Domini et patres, in cujus sacrario tantum hoc venerandae, nisi forte fallor, vetustatis monimentum collocetur. "Etsi verò nulli melius quàm vos ipsi, quae sit huic exemplari fides habenda, estimarint, hac de re tamen "vos admonendos duxi, tantam à me in lucae praesertim Evangelio repertam esse inter hunc codicem et "caeteros quátúvis veteres discrepantiam, ut vitandae quorundam offensioni, asservandum potius quàm "publicandum existimem. In hac tamen non sententiarum sed vocum diversitate, nihil profecto comperi [ex "eras.] unde suspicari potuerim à veteribus illis haereticis fuisse depravatum. Imo multa mihi videor 'deprehendisse magna observatione digna: quaedam etiam sic à recepta scriptura discrepantia, ut tamen cum veterum quorúda et Graecorum et latinorum patrum scriptis consentiant: non pauca denique, quibus "vetusta latina editio corroboratur: quae omnia pro ingenii meï modulo inter se comparata, et cum Syra et Arabica editione collata, in majores meas annotationes à me nuper emendatas et brevi, Deo favente, prodituras congessi. Sed age, res haec tota vestri, sicuti par est, judicii esto. Tantum a vobis peto, Reverendi "Domini et patres, ut hoc qualecúque súmae in vestram amplitudinem observantiae meae [vestr...eras.] veluti monimentum, ab homine vestri studiosissimo profectum, aequi bonique consulatis. 66 66 66 66 "D. Jesus servator noster, et universe vobis omnibus, et privatim singulis, totique adeo Christianissimae Anglorum genti magis ac magis pro bonitate singulari sua benedicat. 66 "GENEVAE. VIII Idus Dec. anno Domini CIO IO LXXXI. "Vestrae totius inclytae academiae dignitati addictissimus THEODORUS BEZA." "Ornatissimo viro et in omni literarum genere excellentissimo THEODORO BEZAE primario pastori Genevensi. "Accepimus literas tuas (Ornatissime Beza) plenas humanitatis, tresque praeterea libros academicae "librariae consecratos, quorum duo quinque Mosis volumina hebraicè scripta complectuntur, multis doctis"simorum hominum commentariis illustrata, tertius vero manuscriptus quatuor evangelistas graeco latinos "continet cum actis apostolorum. E quibus omnibus facile existimari potest quam honorifice de Academia Cantabrigiensi sentias quamque vehementer cupias sempiternum apud nos nominis ac memoriae tuae "monumentum conservari. Gaudemus hercle (Gravissime Beza) sic esse res nostras ut a te tristi ac directo Theologo sic lautissimis verbis efferantur, sed quod illud in votis habeas ut aliquo collato beneficio de "Academia nostra bene mereare, id vero serio triumphamus. 66 66 "Quanquam (si vere loqui volumus) insignes lucubrationes tuae theologicae, quae quotidie vigent apud nos, et in omnium ore ac sermone volitant tales sunt tamque divinis rebus accommodatae ut vel eo tantum nomine nunquam tibi satis debere posse videamur. Nam hoc scito post unicae scripturae sacratissimam cognitionem, nullos unquam ex omni memoria temporum scriptores extitisse quos memorabili viro Johanni "Calvino tibique praeferamus, ut vel hac sola beneficentia contentus majorem gratificandi modum non. "desideres. Sed quoniam nullum finem statuis bonitati tuae, nec tibi satisfacis dum illa tua scripta ad nos perveniunt quae cum ceteris quoque gentibus communicata sunt nisi quorundam etiam librorum privatam "accessionem adjungas: publicis tuis scriptis pro communibus utemur, haec vero nuper privata eademque germana dona literatissimi viri multo arctius amplectemur. Nam si magnorum hominum liberalitatem qui "nos possessionibus locupletarunt in summa laude ponamus, quo tandem studio prosequemur eos, qui curarunt ut omni salutari literatura abundemus. Ac licet hanc animi tui gratuitam propensionem quam "simillimo munere remunerare difficile sit: quantum tamen amore et industria perficere possimus, enitemur "ut intelligas te nobis esse charissimum, nihilque hoc tuo postremo beneficio gratius unquam accidisse. Deus opt. max. fidelissimi ministerii tui uberrimum fructum concedat teque ipsum post multos exant"latos labores imortali gloria coronet. Calogeri: Monachi, praesertim senio et aetate venerandi (kaλoyńpws)." Ducange Glossar. ad Script. Med. Latin. 2sic (cum erased in MS.) 4 amplectemur (amplectuntur erased in MS.) 3 accommodatae (aptissimae erased in MS.) at abundemus a full stop in the MS. It should be a (?) INTRODUCTION. THE Greek and Latin manuscript of the Four Gospels and Acts of the Apostles, generally known as the Codex Bezae or Codex D, may seem somewhat less ancient than three or four other extant copies of the New Testament, but in respect to the modification of the inspired text which it exhibits is perhaps more interesting and remarkable than any other document of its class. It is now the property of the University of Cambridge, in whose public Library the open volume is conspicuous to visitors (Nn. II. 41); and the Syndics of the University Press have liberally contributed to defray the cost of the present work, in which the parallel lines of the Greek original and its Latin version (which in Codex Bezae itself are written on separate pages in uncial characters) are represented on the same page in cursive or ordinary letters (pp. 1-415), precisely as they were left by the first scribe, nine leaves supplied by later hands being banished to an Appendix, and printed in smaller type (pp. 417-428). To this edition of the text (which it is hoped will be found as exact as anxious care could make it) is annexed a Commentary or body of notes, wherein the many changes brought into its primitive readings by subsequent correctors (pp. 429-448), all liturgical marks (pp. 448-450) and other foreign matter (pp. 451-2) scattered throughout the margin of the book, are diligently recorded, and their respective dates, so far as may be, ascertained. The three facsimile pages in lithograph are designed to illustrate this Introduction, whose purpose is to discuss, briefly yet not too superficially, (1) the recent history of the manuscript and the several collations of it already executed: (2) its palaeographical appearance, probable origin, and age: (3) the character of its Latin translation, and (4) of its Greek text, as critically examined, and compared with other monuments of sacred antiquity, whether manuscripts, versions, or citations of Scripture by early Fathers of the Church. CHAPTER I. ON THE RECENT HISTORY OF CODEX BEZAE. THE letter of Theodore Beza (dated 6 December, 1581) which accompanied the manuscript, his munificent gift to the University of Cambridge, and the reply of the Vice-Chancellor and Senate (dated 18 May, 1582, but not yet received by Beza as late as October 1582, if ever) are reprinted on the opposite page'. The language of the latter, extravagant as it is, only too faithfully expresses the veneration of that learned body for the donor and his master Calvin, which already boded so ill for the peace of the English Church. To the French Reformer's meagre account of his manuscript, that he had gotten it some years before from the Monastery of S. Irenaeus at Lyons, must be added a more 1 The former from the original, the latter from the copy in the keeping of the Public Orator, the Rev. W. G. Clark, who kindly consulted it at my request. explicit statement prefixed to the book (perhaps at an earlier period) in his own cramped hand, and still preserved there together with his original letter: "Est hoc exemplar venerandae vetustatis ex Graecia, ut apparet ex barbaris graecis qbusdam ad marginem adscriptis, olim exportatum, et in Sancti Irenaei monasterio, Lugduni, ad [ad eras.] ita ut hìc cernitur, mutilatum, postq" ibi in pulvere diu jacuisset, repertum oriente ibi Civili bello, anno Domini 1562." In the face of this statement, withheld in his public letter yet by no means studiously concealed, it evinces strange ignorance both of the man and of his evil times to suppose that Beza received this most precious document as a present from the hands of the Lyonese monks, under circumstances which would have enabled him to learn whatever they might know of its history'. Certainly his own words "nactus," "repertum," and "erutum" (N. T., 1582, Praef.), suggest no idea of a gift, and the last object the brotherhood of S. Irenaeus would have selected for such doubtful liberality would have been the ablest champion of their enemies in the Colloquy at Poissy (Sept. 1561), who was then actually serving as Chaplain and Counsellor of the Huguenot army in the campaign which ended with the battle of Dreux (19 December, 1562). Lyons, it must be remembered, was sacked in this very year 1562, "oriente ibi Civili bello," by the infamous Des Adrets, whom it suited for a while to espouse the cause of the Reformed; and though his exploit there was marked by less than his usual cruelty, yet his followers expended their zeal in profaning the holy places, and have left tokens of their presence yet visible in the Church of S. Irenaeus itself. It can hardly be doubted that some one who shared in the plunder of the Abbey conveyed this portion of it to Beza, who might naturally assume that of which he could have no direct information, that it had long lain there neglected in the dust. Yet there is good reason for believing that his codex was in Italy only a few years before the sack of Lyons. William a Prato, Bishop of the city of Clermont in the adjoining province of Auvergne, produced to the Council of Trent in 1546 "a very ancient Greek manuscript," confirming the Latin reading "sic eum volo" in John xxi. 22, which Cod. D, alone of all known authorities, might appear to do; when his end was served, the Bishop would of course restore it to his neighbours, the monks of S. Irenaeus, from whom he had borrowed it. This view is strongly confirmed by the fact that about the year 1546, when Robert Stephens was collecting materials for his critical editions of the Greek Testament, numerous extracts from a document (by him called B') which we shall soon prove to have been none other than Codex Bezae, were sent to him from Italy by some friend who had collated it in his behalf. 1 "Anne omninò credibile est omissurum Bezam ex monachis sciscitari, tantae vetustatis Keunλov sibi in manus tradentibus [!], Unde? Cujus olim? Quo casu? et caetera ejusmodi? Nemone autem praestò tunc adfuit monachus qui ei narraret (si ita quidem res fuerit) codicem mstum nostrum adeò non Lugduni mansisse ab Irenaei paenè temporibus ad illum usque diem, ut nuperrimè migrâsset ab Italiâ?" Kipling, Cod. Bezae Praef. p. xx. 2 See his character and career sketched by Brantome, Des Hommes, 1. III. c. 4. 3Ils s'emparèrent des portes et de tous les lieux forts, sans aucun meutre que de deux ou trois personnes, mais non pas sans leurs impietés et barbaries accoutumées envers les choses saintes" (Mézeray, Hist. de France, T. III. p. 87, 1685). Accordingly travellers are shewn the bones of unclean animals which the Huguenots, in wanton mockery, then mingled with the presumed remains of S. Irenaeus and the martyrs of Lyons. Marianus Victorius in his notes on S. Jerome, cited by 5 τὸ δὲ β' ἐστὶ τὸ ἐν Ἰταλίᾳ ὑπὸ τῶν ἡμετέρων ἀντιBλnoèv pilav (Ep. to the Reader, N. T. 1550): scarcely therefore by his son Henry, who at the age of 18, in or about the year 1546, collated for his father his other 15 authorities. The whole story of Beza's manuscript would now be clear, but for one difficulty. In the latest edition of his Annotations (1598) he nowhere calls it Codex Lugdunensis, as in 1581-2, but Claromontanus (notes on Luke xix. 26; Acts xx. 3): for though one may very well suppose that Beza at eighty years of age, and after so long an interval, might confound the Lyons copy with his own Codex Claromontanus of St Paul's Epistles obtained from Clermont near Beauvais, yet the circumstance that it had once been in the hands of the Bishop of Clermont in the Auvergne is a remarkable coincidence, though (as we believe notwithstanding) quite accidental. It is now time to enumerate the instances in which Codex Bezae has been employed by scholars for critical purposes. (1) We hesitate not to assign the first place on the list to Robert Stephens and his third edition of the Greek New Testament, 1550. The identity of Codex Bezae with B' in Stephens' margin ought never to have been doubted by any one who had availed himself of the means at our disposal for testing that editor's accuracy. His principal authority a' was the Complutensian Polyglott, a printed book in high repute and readily accessible. After deducting mere errata, itacisms, and such like, out of the 2300 places wherein it differs from his own printed text, Stephens cites a correctly only 554 times, and falsely 56 times, so that more than one case in ten involves a mistake, while three variations out of four are utterly neglected. It is not likely that his representation of a document he had not seen, and only heard of from the report of another, would be more exact than that of a well-known published volume: yet after comparing both his a' and ' with their respective prototypes, we are enabled to declare that the readings of Cod. D, as being very striking and peculiar, are much the more faithfully rendered of the two. Except that Stephens cites B' in Matth. xxvii. 3 Tapadovo (where nearly the whole leaf has perished), in manifest error for his nor Codex L (Paris, 62); again in John xix. 6, where, though Cod. D is defective in the original hand, the later scribe who supplied the hiatus actually has the reading imputed to B' (oravрwσоν σтаνрwσоν аvтov); and again. in Acts ix. 31, also wanting in Cod. D, where the whole reading belongs to his &' (Cod. Act. 5, Paris, 106) which is correctly alleged for η μεν ουν εκκλησια, although the sequel είχεν ειρηνην οικοδομούμενη... TOPEVOμEN... ETTλnovvero is wrongly referred to B':-with these slight exceptions Stephens never employs his authority B' in those many passages wherein the leaves of Cod. D have been lost, though he perpetually quotes it up to the very place where the hiatus begins, and recurs to it immediately after the text by the first hand is resumed. After a careful analysis of all the variations imputed to B', we are enabled to state that (excluding itacisms and the like, which early collators always neglected) they amount to 389 in all the parts written by the original scribe of Codex Bezae2: whereof 309 are alleged by Stephens quite correctly; 47 a little loosely, after the manner of the times, especially where B' is joined with others in support of a reading; 8 in which corrected readings are imputed in error to the first hand (Matth. v. 48; xiv. 34 nearly; Mark vi. 21; 31; John v. 32; vii. 39; Acts vi. 10; xx. 18); while B' quite differs from Cod. D in 25 places, or less than one in fifteen, whereas we have seen that Stephens' a' varied from its printed original once in ten times". Most of these 25 passages have been previously examined by Wetstein (N. T. Proleg. I. pp. 36-38), and, regard being paid to Stephens' notorious inexactness, seem very fairly accounted for. Two involve but slight inaccuracies, Matth. xi. 21 (χοροζαϊμ); 23 (μη έως του ουρανου ὑψωθηση; έως ᾅδου κ.τ.λ.); two others, ibid. x. 4 (kavavalos B. n); Luke xxiii. 20 (πроσeдwvησev auTois B. n), are just as trifling, and strictly true for n (Cod. L). In fact where several copies vouch for a reading, absolute resemblance n' to any of them seems to have satisfied the collator: see Matth. x. 8, where veкp. eyep. is simply misplaced in Cod. D, but omitted in n (Cod. L) and others. In the following cases B' has crept through νεκρ. which caused such hesitation in stating his conclusions as we could not otherwise explain. 3 Add to this that B' or Cod. D alone can be referred to by Stephens, Luke x. I, γραι κ ἑβδομήκοντα δύο. On the other hand it is useless to reckon 81 places in which T. or év Tâσ is cited by him for the united readings of all his authorities, as regards Cod. D 41 times correctly, 40 loosely or falsely: nor do I notice Luke v. 35, where Beza, who had access to Stephens' collations, erroneously states that ẞ omits kai before orav. b inadvertence into a list of several copies where it has no place: Matth. x. 10; xii. 32; xix. 29; xxvii. 46; Mark i. 19; 35; iv. 31; vi. 52; Luke ii. 21; Acts iii. 1; xii. 6. been misplaced, Matth. v. 3 eσTat, instead of v. 10; Mark iii. 3 έnpav, for v. 1. eλeßovẞ) B' is a manifest misprint for a: also B' for Twice a reference has In Matth. x. 25 (BeMatth. v. 25 (Bλnons'); ix. 20 (exovoa ev in aoleveia added to ern); John xiii. 2 (yuvoμevov). Three other passages still remain, Luke iii. 19 erotet, ασθενεια ετη); (γινομενου). for which there is no authority except Erasmus' editions (which Stephens may have here meant by B', the Complutensian being a') and a few which followed him; Acts xiii. 1 μavan, with the Peshito Syriac only; and the more notable addition in Luke viii. 18 kat Teρioσevonσeraι added to Sono eraι avтw, a gloss from Matth. xiii. 12, very much in the manner of Cod. D, but for which no other evidence has yet been cited than Hensler's Lectionary 44 (Havniens. 3), and Cureton's Syriac in part. It is probable that a search among Stephens' manuscripts in the Imperial Library at Paris would shew for what other letter B' has been substituted in this and a few other instances. Against these rare and inconsiderable exceptions must be set the many singular readings and arbitrary additions to the sacred text, known to exist in no copy save Beza's, for which B' is vouched in Stephens' margin. Some of them are of considerable length (e. g. Luke vi. 4; John vi. 56; Acts v. 15; vi. 10; xvi. 35; 38, 39), and very faithfully represented. Yet Stephens' is as far as possible from being a complete and formal collation: the readings given in SS. Matthew and Mark are much the most numerous; for twelve whole pages of S. Luke (as Marsh observes) the letter B' does not occur at all: even such large interpolations as follow Matth. xx. 28, and the wide variations that abound in Luke iii. 24-38; John vii. 53-viii. 11 are passed over in complete silence3. Collations or copies of Codex Bezae, made subsequently to 1562, may be dismissed with much less notice. (1) In the several editions of his Greek Testament published 1582, 1589, 1598, Beza made some occasional references to the readings of his manuscript, which he professed to value very highly; but his skill as a critic may be estimated by the wisdom of his suggestion to the University of Cambridge, that to avoid giving offence through its extensive deviations from all other documents, however old, it was more fit to be stored up than published (supra p. vi). I know not whether this shortsighted policy was acceptable to his English admirers. Before the Codex had been here a year (March 1583), Archbishop John Whitgift, who in 1677 had left the Mastership of Trinity College, Cambridge, for the see of Worcester, caused a transcript of it to be made on vellum, which with several of his other books he bequeathed to the College, into whose possession it came on his death in 1604*. This volume (Trin. Coll. B. x. 3) contains the Greek Text only, very neatly written between lines ruled in red ink, but as every alternate page is left blank, it must have been intended to receive the Latin version also. It is executed in ordinary Greek characters, with breathings, accents, and modern stops: the lines and pages of the original are disregarded, the changes introduced by later hands. constantly, and (so far as I observe) invariably substituted for those of the original scribe, and where the manuscript is torn, the copyist wrote on as if no hiatus had occurred. After avrov Acts xxii. 29, 1 n' (Cod. L) has precisely ẞneo. Kipling thinks that e was subsequently added by the first scribe to Bλnono in Cod. D, in which case Stephens would give the primitive reading: but the final e is not more faint than the letters at the end of 12 b. 1. 32, and I believe it was there from the first. 20200040 "et addetur ei," is hardly rendered adequately by Tregelles "et abundabit." 3 The foregoing examination will serve to shew that Semler's hypothesis of B' being a transcript of Cod. D rather than that manuscript itself is as needless as it is destitute of all external evidence. It is barely reconcileable with those instances, mentioned p. ix, wherein p' gives the readings not of the first but of a second hand in D. Look too at such cases as μadeyada of p', Mark viii. 10, where the third letter A is so closely like A in Cod. Bezae, that I nearly fell into the same error as Stephens' collator. 4 It is set down in the Memoriale, or Lodge Book of Trinity College. |