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.
its kindred and contemporaneous Epistle to the Ephesians, but postpones
that to the Hebrews to Philemon, as in our present Bibles: an arrangement
which at first, no doubt, originated in the early scruples prevailing in
the Western Church, with respect to the authorship and canonical authority
of that divine epistle.
13. We must now describe the _Lectionaries_ or Service-books of the Greek
Church, in which the portions of Scripture publicly read throughout the
year are set down in chronological order, without regard to their actual
places in the sacred volume. In length and general arrangement they
resemble not so much the Lessons as the Epistles and Gospels in our
English Book of Common Prayer, only that every day in the year has its own
proper portion, and the numerous Saints’ days independent services of
their own. These Lectionaries consist either of lessons from the Gospels,
and are then called _Evangelistaria_ or _Evangeliaria_
(εὐαγγελιστάρια)(93); or from the Acts and Epistles; termed
_Praxapostolos_ (πραξαπόστολος) or _Apostolos_(94): the general name of
Lectionary is often, though incorrectly, confined to the latter class. A
few books called ἀποστολοευαγγέλια have lessons taken both from the
Gospels and the Apostolic writings. In _Euchologies_, or Books of Offices,
wherein both the _Apostolos_ and the _Gospels_ are found, the former
always precede in each Office, just as the Epistle precedes the Gospel in
the Service-books of Western Christendom. The peculiar arrangement of
Lectionaries renders them very unfit for the hasty, partial, cursory
collation which has befallen too many manuscripts of the other class, and
this circumstance, joined with the irksomeness of using Service-books
never familiar to the habits even of scholars in this part of Europe, has
caused these documents to be so little consulted, that the contents of the
very best and oldest among them have until recently been little known.
Matthaei, of whose elaborate and important edition of the Greek Testament
(12 tom. Riga 1782-88) we shall give an account hereafter, has done
excellent service in this department; two of his best copies, the uncials
B and H (Nos. 47, 50), being Evangelistaria. The present writer also has
collated three noble uncials of the same rank, Arundel 547 being of the
ninth century, Parham 18 bearing date A.D. 980, Harleian 5598, A.D. 995.
Not a few other uncial Lectionaries remain quite neglected, for though
none of them perhaps are older than the eighth century, the ancient
character was retained for these costly and splendid Service-books till
about the eleventh century (Montfaucon, Palaeogr. Graec. p. 260), before
which time the cursive hand was generally used in other Biblical
manuscripts. There is, of course, no place in a Lectionary for divisions
by κεφάλαια, for the so-called Ammonian sections, or for the canons of
Eusebius.
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