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.
4. The Acts of the Apostles and the Epistles are also divided into
_chapters_ (κεφάλαια), in design precisely the same as the κεφάλαια or
τίτλοι of the Gospels, and nearly like them in length. Since there is no
trace of these chapters in the two great Codices Alexandrinus and
Ephraemi, of the fifth century (which yet exhibit the τίτλοι, the
sections, and one of them the canons), it seems reasonable to assume that
they are of later date. They are sometimes connected with the name of
Euthalius, deacon of Alexandria, afterwards Bishop of Sulci(75), whom we
have already spoken of as the reputed author of Scriptural stichometry
(_above_, p. 53). We learn, however, from Euthalius’ own Prologue to his
edition of St. Paul’s Epistles (A.D. 458,) that the “summary of the
chapters” (and consequently the numbers of the chapters themselves) was
taken from the work of “one of our wisest and pious fathers(76),” i.e.
some Bishop that he does not wish to particularize, whom Mill (Proleg. N.
T. § 907) conjectures to be Theodore of Mopsuestia, who lay under the
censure of the Church. Soon after(77) the publication of St. Paul’s
Epistles, on the suggestion of one Athanasius, then a priest and
afterwards Patriarch of Alexandria, Euthalius put forth a similar edition
of the Acts and Catholic Epistles(78), also divided into chapters, with a
summary of contents at the head of each chapter. Even these he is thought
to have derived (at least in the Acts) from the manuscript of Pamphilus
the Martyr [d. 308], to whom the same order of chapters is ascribed in a
document published by Montfaucon (Bibliotheca Coislin. p. 78); the rather
as Euthalius fairly professes to have compared his book in the Acts and
Catholic Epistles “with the copies in the library at Caesarea” which once
belonged to “Eusebius the friend of Pamphilus(79).” The Apocalypse still
remains. It was divided, about the end of the fifth century, by Andreas,
Archbishop of the Cappadocian Caesarea, into twenty-four _paragraphs_
(λόγοι), corresponding to the number of the elders about the throne (Apoc.
iv. 4); each paragraph being subdivided into three _chapters_
(κεφάλαια)(80). The summaries which Andreas wrote of his seventy-two
chapters are still reprinted in Mill’s and other large editions of the
Greek Testament.
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