Apart from this incidental use of the parchment on which it is written, all who have studied the MS. are of opinion that it is the work of more than one scribe. Uncial letters are used throughout, and for the first score or so of pages are so carefully and elegantly formed as to compare not unfavourably with those of the calligraphically perfect _Codex Alexandrinus_, also on exhibition in the British Museum. According to Mr. Crum, whose acquaintance with nearly every Coptic MS. yet brought to light is unrivalled, the second hand begins at the twenty-second page, after which the writing not only becomes more careless and the letters less well formed, but the method of correction for misspelt or omitted words alters. This second hand continues, according to the same authority, up to p. 210, when the first hand resumes and continues up to p. 386, but Mr. Crum says nothing as to the writing of the few remaining pages. Dr. Carl Schmidt of Berlin, whose work in connection with the MS. will be noticed at length later, agrees in the main with this, and would apparently put the termination of the second scribe’s task at p. 195 of the manuscript, and he says that the first scribe here resumes and continues to the end. A note, however, taken by the present writer on his first inspection of the MS. thirty years ago, records that while the writing of the Second Document, which begins at p. 125, on the whole resembles the writing of the preceding pages, yet a change takes place on the _verso_ of p. 210 which indicates yet a third hand, and this is confirmed by his later scrutiny for the purpose of this edition.[5] Save for this, there is no serious doubt as to the number of hands which have worked on the MS.; and Mr. Crum, in confirming Dr. Schmidt’s view that the alternative work of the scribes shows that the whole of the MS. must have been written at one time, adds that the corrections of the work of the second scribe seem to be in the hand-writing of the first.[6] This is of importance when we come to consider the purpose with which the MS. was made. The date at which the MS. was written is the subject of a much greater difference of opinion. Woide, who was the first to call attention to it, thought that this was at latest the fourth century, the Abbé Hyvernat the seventh,[7] Amélineau—whose work upon it will presently be noticed—the ninth or tenth, and Dr. Schmidt the fifth. All these conclusions were apparently arrived at on paleographic grounds and I do not feel myself qualified to discuss them; but the dates of the different documents from which the MS. was copied will be dealt with later. Nearly all those who have studied it are of opinion that these documents were originally written in Greek, and that our MS. is therefore only a translation.[8]