(1) The Gothic Version (Goth.). The history of the Goths, who from the wilds of Scandinavia overran the fairest regions of Europe, has been traced by the master-hand of Gibbon (Decline and Fall, Chapters x, xxvi, xxxi, &c.), and needs not here be repeated. While the nation was yet seated in Moesia, Ulphilas or Wulfilas [318-388], a Cappadocian, who succeeded their first Bishop Theophilus in A.D. 348, though himself an Arian and a teacher of that subtil heresy to his adopted countrymen, became their benefactor, by translating both the Old(118) and New Testament into the Gothic, a dialect of the great Teutonic stock of languages, having previously invented or adapted an alphabet expressly for their use. There can be no question, from internal evidence, that the Old Testament was rendered from the Septuagint, the New from the Greek original(119): but the existing manuscripts testify to some corruption from Latin sources, very naturally arising during the occupation of Italy by the Goths in the fifth century. These venerable documents are principally three, or rather may be treated under two MSS. and one group. 1. CODEX ARGENTEUS, the most precious treasure of the University of Upsal, in the mother-country of the Gothic tribes. It appears to be the same copy as Ant. Morillon saw at Werden in Westphalia towards the end of the sixteenth century, and was taken by the Swedes at the siege of Prague in 1648. Queen Christina gave it to her librarian, Isaac Vossius, and from him it was very rightly purchased about 1662 by the Swedish nation and deposited at Upsal. This superb codex contains fragments of the Gospels (in the Western order, Matthew, John, Luke, Mark) on 187 leaves, 4to (out of 330), of purple vellum; the bold, uncial, Gothic letters being in silver, sometimes in gold, of course much faded, and so regular that some have imagined, though erroneously, that they were impressed with a stamp. The date assigned to it is the fifth or early in the sixth century, although the several words are divided, and some various readings stand in the margin _primâ manu_. 2. Codex Carolinus, described above for Codd. PQ, and for the Old Latin _gue_, contains in Gothic about forty verses of the Epistle to the Romans, first published by Knittel, 1762.