Codex Bezae 

New Testament manuscripts
papyri • uncials • minuscules • lectionaries
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, designed by Dea or 05 (in the Gregory-Aland numbering), δ 5 (Soden), is an important codex of the New Testament dating from the fifth-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. Written with one column per page it has 406 leaves (26 na 21,5 cm), out of perhaps an original 534, and the Greek pages on the left face Latin ones on the right.1

Contents

Description

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 people have corrected the manuscript between the sixth and twelfth centuries. The text is written colometrically and is full of hiatus. The Greek text of the codex has some copying errors, e.g., errors of metathesis: in John 1:3, ΕΓΕΝΕΤΟ was changed into ΕΝΕΓΕΤΟ; in Acts 1:9, ΥΠΕΛΑΒΕΝ into ΥΠΕΒΑΛΕΝ.

Codex contents

The manuscript presents the gospels in the Western 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 (in Latin) and contains part of Acts.

Lacunae:

Matt 1:1-20; 6:20 – 9:2; 27:2-12; John 1:16 – 3:26; Dz 8:29 – 10:14; 21:2-10.16-18; 22:10-20.29 – 28:31;
Matt 3:7-16; Mark 16:15-20; John 18:14 – 20:13 were supplemented by later hand.

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. Bezae is the principle Greek representative2 of the Western text-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

There is no consensus on the many problems the Greek text presents. Since the Latin, however, occasionally agrees with Codices Codex Bobiensis and Codex Veronensis, it is a witness to a text current no later than 250 CE and "preserves an ancient form of the Old Latin text."3 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. It contains addition after Matt. 20:28:

"But seek to increase from that which is small, and to become less from which is greater. When you enter into a house and are summoned to dine, do not sit down at the prominent places, lest perchance a man more honoralbe than you come in afterwards, and he who invited you come and say to you, "Go down lower"; and you shall be ashamed. But if you sit down in the inferior place, and one inferior to roy come in, then he that invited you will say to you, "Go up higher"; and this will be advantageos for you."4

History of the Codex

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).5

Frederick Henry Ambrose Scrivener edited the text of codex in 1864.

The importance of the Codex Bezae is such that a colloquium held at Lunel, Herault, in 27-30 June 1994 was entirely devoted to it6. 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.

See also

Further reading

References

  1. ^ Kurt Aland, and Barbara Aland, The Text of the New Testament: An Introduction to the Critical Editions and to the Theory and Practice of Modern Textual Criticism, (Grand Rapids, Michigan: 1995), pp. 109-110.
  2. ^ Bruce Metzger The Text of the New Testament 4th ed. p. 73.
  3. ^ Metzger, p. 103.
  4. ^ Bruce M. Metzger, B.D. Ehrman, The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption and Restoration, Oxford University Press, 2005, p. 71.
  5. ^ Bruce M. Metzger, B.D. Ehrman, The Text Of The New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption and Restoration, Oxford University Press, 2005, pp. 70-74.
  6. ^ 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

External links