Codex Bezae

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New Testament manuscripts
papyri • uncials • minuscules
Uncial 05
Name Bezae
Sign Dea
Text Gospels and Acts of Apostles
Date c. 400
Script Greek-Latin diglot
Now at University of Cambridge
Size 26 x 21,5 cm
Type Western text-type
Category IV


The Codex Bezae Cantabrigensis (Gregory-Aland no. Dea or 05) is an important codex of the New Testament dating from the fifth- or sixth-century. It is written in an uncial hand on vellum and contains, in both Greek and Latin, most of the four Gospels and Acts, with a small fragment of the Third Epistle of John.

Contents

[edit] Codex contents

The manuscript presents the gospels in the unusual order Matthew, John, Luke and Mark, of which only Luke is complete; after some missing pages the MS picks up with the Third Epistle of John and contains part of Acts. Written with one column per page it has 406 leaves, out of perhaps an original 534, and the Greek pages on the left face Latin ones on the right. The first three lines of each book are in red letters, and black and red ink alternate lines towards the end of books. As many as nine correctors have worked on the manuscript between the sixth and twelfth century.

[edit] Text type

The Greek text is unique, with many interpolations found nowhere else, with a few remarkable omissions, and a capricious tendency to rephrase sentences. Aside from this one Greek manuscript it is found in Old Latin (pre-Vulgate) versions — as seen in the Latin here — and in Syriac, and Armenian versions. It is one type of the Western text-type, and it is the only Greek witness of the Western type. The manuscript demonstrates the latitude in the manuscript tradition that could still be found in the 5th and 6th centuries, the date of this codex.

A sample of the Greek text from the Codex Bezae
A sample of the Greek text from the Codex Bezae

The relation of the Latin text to the Greek text is not straightforward and has occasioned much disagreement among critics. The modern consensus is that the Greek descended from an early offshoot of the mainstream manuscript tradition. Most writers consider that this Greek text developed independently, while the Latin text is seen as originating in a clumsy attempt to translate the Greek, which then was amended in its turn, to conform to the Latin. Issues of conformity have dogged the usage of the Codex Bezae in biblical scholarship too. In general the Greek text is treated as an unreliable witness and treated as "an important corroborating witness wherever it agrees with other early manuscripts" as one of the links below freely admits.

Some of the outstanding features: Matthew 16:2f is present and not marked as doubtful or spurious. One of the longer endings of Mark is given. Luke 22:43f and Pericope de adultera are present and not marked as spurious or doubtful. John 5:4 is omitted, and the text of Acts is nearly one-tenth longer than the generally received text.

[edit] History of the Codex

A sample of the Latin text from the Codex Bezae
A sample of the Latin text from the Codex Bezae

The manuscript is believed to have been repaired at Lyon in the Ninth Century as revealed by a distinctive ink used for supplementary pages. It was closely guarded for many centuries in the monastic library of St Irenaeus at Lyon. The manuscript was consulted, perhaps in Italy, for disputed readings at the Council of Trent, and was at about the same time collated for Stephanus's edition of the Greek New Testament. During the upheavals of the Wars of Religion in the 16th century, when textual analysis had a new urgency among the Reformation's Protestants, the manuscript was taken from Lyon in 1562 and delivered to the Protestant scholar Theodore Beza, the friend and successor of Calvin, who gave it to the University of Cambridge, in the comparative security of England, in 1581, which accounts for its double name. It remains in the Cambridge University Library (Nn. II 41).

The importance of the Codex Bezae is such that a colloquium held at Lunel, Herault, in 27-30 June 1994 was entirely devoted to it[1]. Papers discussed the many questions it poses to our understanding of the use of the Gospels and Acts in early Christianity, and of the text of the New Testament.

[edit] See also

[edit] Further reading

  • J.R. Harris, Codex Bezae. A Study of the so-called Western Text of the New Testament, At the University Press, Cambridge 1891.
  • M.-É. Boismard – A. Lamouille, Le texte occidental des Actes des Apôtres. Reconstitution et réhabilitation, 2 vol., Paris 1984.
  • W.A. Strange, The Problem of the Text of Acts, (SNTS MS, 71), Cambridge 1992.
  • D.C. Parker, Codex Bezae: An Early Christian Manuscript and its Text, Cambridge University Press, 1992.
  • Codex Bezae. Studies from the Lunel Colloquium, June 1994, ed. D.C. Parker & C.-B. Amphoux, Leiden: Brill, 1996.
  • F.H. Chase, The Old Syriac Element in the Text of Codex Bezae, Gorgias Press, 2004.

[edit] External links

[edit] References

  1. ^ The story of the colloquium has been chronicled by one of the participants: J.-M. Auwers, "Le colloque international sur le Codex Bezae", Revue Théologique de Louvain 26 (1995), 405-412. See also: Codex Bezae, Studies from the Lunel Colloquium, ed. D.C. Parker & C.-B. Amphoux