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.
The division of the New Testament into Church-lessons was, however, of far
more remote antiquity than the employment of separate volumes to contain
them. Towards the end of the fourth century, that golden age of Patristic
theology, Chrysostom recognizes some stated order of the lessons as
familiar to all his hearers, for he exhorts them to peruse and mark
beforehand the passages (περικοπαί(95)) of the Gospels which were to be
publicly read to them the ensuing Sunday or Saturday(96). All the
information we can gather favours the notion that there was no great
difference between the calendar of Church-lessons in earlier and later
stages. Not only do they correspond in all cases where such agreement is
natural, as in the proper services for the great feasts and fasts, but in
such purely arbitrary arrangements as the reading of the book of Genesis,
instead of the Gospels, on the week days of Lent; of the Acts all the time
between Easter and Pentecost(97); and the selection of St. Matthew’s
history of the Passion alone at the Liturgy on Good Friday(98). The
earliest formal _Menologium_, or Table of proper lessons, now extant is
prefixed to the Codex Cyprius (K) of the eighth or ninth century; another
is found in the Codex Campianus (M), which is perhaps a little later; they
are more frequently found than the contrary in later manuscripts of every
kind; while there are comparatively few copies that have not been
accommodated to ecclesiastical use either by their original scribe or a
later hand, by means of noting the proper days for each lesson (often in
red ink) at the top or bottom or in the margin of the several pages. Not
only in the margin, but even in the text itself are perpetually
interpolated, mostly in vermilion or red ink, the beginning (ἀρχή or αρχ)
and ending (τέλος or τελ) of each lesson, and the several words to be
inserted or substituted in order to suit the purpose of public reading;
from which source (as we have stated above, p. 11) various readings have
almost unavoidably sprung: e.g. in Acts iii. 11 τοῦ ἰαθέντος χωλοῦ of the
Lectionaries ultimately displaced αὐτοῦ from the text itself.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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