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.
A. CODEX ALEXANDRINUS in the British Museum, where the open volume of the
New Testament is publicly shown in the Manuscript room. It was placed in
that Library on its formation in 1753, having previously belonged to the
king’s private collection from the year 1628, when Cyril Lucar, Patriarch
of Constantinople (whose crude attempts to reform the Eastern Church on
the model of Geneva ultimately provoked the untoward Synod of Bethlehem in
1672(123)), sent this most precious document by our Ambassador in Turkey,
Sir Thomas Roe, as a truly royal gift to Charles I. An Arabic inscription,
several centuries old, at the back of the Table of Contents on the first
leaf of the manuscript, and translated into Latin in another hand, which
Mr. W. Aldis Wright recognizes as Bentley’s (Academy, April 17, 1875),
states that it was written by the hand of Thecla the Martyr(124). A recent
Latin note on the first page of the first of two fly-leaves declares that
it was given to the Patriarchal Chamber in the year of the Martyrs, 814
[A.D. 1098]. Another, and apparently the earliest inscription, in an
obscure Moorish-Arabic scrawl, set at the foot of the first page of
Genesis, was thus translated for Baber by Professor Nicoll of Oxford,
“Dicatus est Cellae Patriarchae in urbe munitâ Alexandriâ. Qui eum ex eâ
extraxerit sit anathematizatus, vi avulsus. Athanasius humilis” (Cod.
Alex. V.T., Prolegomena, p. xxvi, note 92). That the book was brought from
Alexandria by Cyril (who had been Patriarch of that see from 1602 to 1621)
need not be disputed, although Wetstein, on the doubtful authority of
Matthew Muttis of Cyprus, Cyril’s deacon, concludes that he procured it
from Mount Athos. In the volume itself the Patriarch has written and
subscribed the following words: “Liber iste scripturae sacrae N. et V.
Testamenti, prout ex traditione habemus, est scriptus manu Theclae,
nobilis foeminae Aegyptiae, ante mile [sic] et trecentos annos circiter,
paulò post Concilium Nicenum. Nomen Theclae in fine libri erat exaratum,
sed extincto Christianismo in Aegypto a Mahometanis, et libri unà
Christianorum in similem sunt reducti conditionem. Extinctum ergo est
Theclae nomen et laceratum, sed memoria et traditio recens observat.”
Cyril seems to lean wholly on the Arabic inscription on the first leaf of
the volume: independent testimony he would appear to have received none.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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