A Plain Introduction to the Criticism of the New Testament, Vol. I.Scrivener, Frederick Henry Ambrose
Religion
A Plain Introduction to the Criticism of the New Testament, Vol. I.
Scrivener, Frederick Henry Ambrose
Bible. New Testament -- Criticism, interpretation, etc.
F. COD. AUGIENSIS in the Library of Trinity College, Cambridge (B. xvii.
1), is another Greek-Latin manuscript on 136 leaves of good vellum 4to
(the _signatures_ proving that seven more are lost, _see_ p. 28), 9 inches
by 7-¼, with the two languages in parallel columns of twenty-eight lines
on each page, the Greek being always inside, the Latin next the edge of
the book. It is called from the monastery of Augia Dives or Major
(Reichenau, or _rich meadow_), on a fertile island in the lower part of
Lake Constance, to which it long appertained, and where it may even have
been written, a thousand years since. By notices at the beginning and end
we can trace it through the hands of G. M. Wepfer of Schaffhausen and of
L. Ch. Mieg, who covered many of its pages with Latin notes wretchedly
scrawled, but allowed Wetstein to examine it. In 1718 Bentley was induced
by Wetstein to buy it at Heidelberg for 250 Dutch florins, and both he and
Wetstein collated the Greek portion, the latter carelessly, but Bentley
somewhat more fully in the margin of a Greek Testament (Oxon. 1675) still
preserved in Trinity College (B. xvii. 8). Tischendorf in 1842, Tregelles
in 1845, re-examined the book (which had been placed where it now is on
the death of Bentley’s nephew in 1787), and drew attention to the Latin
version: in 1859 Scrivener published an edition of the Codex in common
type, with Prolegomena and a photograph of one page (1 Tim. iii. 14-iv.
5)(210). The Epistles of St. Paul are defective in Rom. i. 1-iii. 19; and
the Greek only in 1 Cor. iii. 8-16; vi. 7-14; Col. ii. 1-8; Philem. 21-25;
in which four places the Latin stands in its own column with no Greek over
against it. In the Epistle to the Hebrews, the Greek being quite lost, the
Latin occupies both columns: this Epistle alone has an Argument, almost
verbatim the same as we read in the great Cod. Amiatinus of the Vulgate.
At the end of the Epistle, and on the same page (fol. 139, _verso_),
commences a kind of Postscript (having little connexion with the sacred
text), the larger portion of which is met with under the title of Dicta
Abbatis Pinophi, in the works of Rabanus Maurus, Archbishop of Mayence,
who died in A.D. 856; from which circumstance the Cod. Augiensis has been
referred to the ninth century. Palaeographical arguments also would lead
us to the same conclusion. The Latin version (a modification of the
Vulgate in its purest form, though somewhat tampered with in parts to make
it suit the Greek text(211)) is written in the cursive minuscule character
common in the age of Charlemagne. The Greek must have been taken from an
archetype with the words continuously written; for not only are they
miserably ill divided by the unlearned German(212) scribe, but his design
(not always acted upon) was to put a single middle point at the end of
each word. The Latin is exquisitely written, the Greek uncials are neat,
but evidently the work of an unpractised hand, which soon changes from
weariness.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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