Codex Alexandrinus
The Codex Alexandrinus is a manuscript of the Greek Bible, written on parchment. It is designated by the siglum A or 02 in the Gregory-Aland numbering of New Testament manuscripts, and δ 4 in the von Soden numbering of New Testament manuscripts. It contains the majority of the Greek Old Testament and the Greek New Testament. It is one of the four Great uncial codices. Along with Codex Sinaiticus and Vaticanus, it is one of the earliest and most complete manuscripts of the Bible. Using the study of comparative writing styles, it has been dated to the fifth century.
It derives its name from the city of Alexandria, where it resided for a number of years before it was brought by the Eastern Orthodox Patriarch Cyril Lucaris from Alexandria to Constantinople. It was then given to Charles I of England in the 17th century. Bishop Brian Walton assigned Alexandrinus the capital Latin letter A in the Polyglot Bible of 1657. This designation was maintained when the New Testament manuscript list system was standardized by Swiss theologian and textual critic Johann J. Wettstein in 1751. Thus Alexandrinus held the first position in the manuscript list.
Until the later purchase of Codex Sinaiticus, biblical scholar and textual critic Frederick H. A. Scrivener described it as the best manuscript of the Greek Bible deposited in Britain. Today, it rests along with Codex Sinaiticus in one of the showcases in the Sir John Ritblat Gallery of the British Library in London, U.K. A full photographic reproduction of the New Testament volume is available on the British Library's website.
Description
The manuscript is a codex made from 773 vellum folios measuring, bound in quarto format, which now comprise four volumes. Most of the folios were originally gathered into quires of eight leaves each. Scholar B. H. Cowper describes the vellum as "thin, fine, and very beautiful". In modern times it was rebound into sets of six leaves each. Cowper's further description of the pages note they are "often discoloured at the edges", which have been damaged by age and more so through "the ignorance or carelessness of the modern binder, who has not always spared the text, especially at the upper inner margin". Scrivener noted that "he vellum has fallen into holes in many places, and since the ink peels off for every age whensoever a leaf is touched a little roughly, no one is allowed to handle the manuscript except for good reasons." Three volumes contain the Septuagint, of which the total count of folios for each volume is 279, 238, and 118 with ten leaves lost. The fourth volume contains the New Testament in the remaining 144 folios, with 31 leaves lost. In the fourth volume, 1 and 2 Clement are also missing leaves, perhaps 3.The text in the codex is written in two columns in uncial script, with between 49 and 51 lines per column, and 20 to 25 letters per line. The beginning lines of each book are written in red ink, and sections within the book are marked by a larger letter set into the margin. The text is written continuously, with no division of words, but some pauses are observed in places in which a dot should be between two words. There are no accents or breathing marks, except a few added by a later hand. The punctuation was written by the first hand. The poetical books of the Old Testament are written stichometrically. The Old Testament quotations in the text of New Testament are marked in the margin by the sign 〉.
The only decorations in the codex are tail-pieces at the end of each book, and it also shows a tendency to increase the size of the first letter of each sentence. The larger letters at the beginning of the sections stand out in the margin as in codices Ephraemi and Basilensis. Codex Alexandrinus is the oldest manuscript to use larger letters to indicate new sections.
Iotacistic errors occur in the text: αὶ is exchanged for ε, εὶ for ὶ and η for ὶ. This is, however, no more than seen in other manuscripts of the same date. The letters Ν and Μ are occasionally confused, and the cluster ΓΓ is substituted with ΝΓ. This may be an argument which points to Egypt as where the codex was produced, but it is not universally accepted.
The handwriting from the beginning of Luke to 1 Corinthians 10:8 differs from that in the rest of the manuscript. Some letters have Coptic shapes, Μ, Δ, and Π ). The letters are more widely spaced and are a little larger than elsewhere. Δ has extended base and Π has extended cross-stroke. Numerals are not expressed by letters except in Revelation 7:4; 21:17. In the past the codex had been judged to have been carelessly written, with many errors of transcription, but not so many as in Codex Sinaiticus, and no more than Codex Vaticanus.
The majuscule letters have elegant shape, but a little less simple than those in Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus. At the end of a line, these letters are often very small, and much of the writing is very pale and faint. Punctuation is more frequent, usually on a level with the top of the preceding letter, while a vacant space, proportionate to the break in the sense, follows the end of a paragraph. At the end of each book the colophon is ornamented by pretty volutes from the initial copyist. The Ammonian Sections with references to the Eusebian Canons stand in the margin of the Gospels. It contains divisions into larger sections, the headings of these sections stand at the top of the pages. The places at which sections start are indicated throughout the Gospels, and in Luke and John their numbers are placed in the margin of each column. To all the Gospels is prefixed by a table of contents.
The various Euthalian Apparatus sections into which the Acts, Epistles, and Apocalypse were divided are not indicated in this manuscript. A cross appears occasionally as a separation in the Book of Acts. A larger letter in the margin throughout the New Testament marks the beginning of a paragraph.
The number of scribes who worked on the codex has been disputed. According to biblical and classical scholar Frederic Kenyon there were five scribes, two scribes in the Old Testament and three in the New. Subsequently, textual critics Theodore Skeat and Milne argued there were only two or possibly three scribes, a view widely accepted by 20th-21st century scholars.
Many corrections have been made to the manuscript, some of them by the original scribe, but the majority of them by later hands. The corrected form of the text agrees with that seen in Codex Bezae, Codex Petropolitanus Purpureus, Codex Monacensis, Codex Macedoniensis, Codex Tischendorfianus IV, Codex Koridethi, Codex Petropolitanus, Codex Rossanensis, Codex Beratinus and the majority of minuscule manuscripts. Kenyon observed that Codex Alexandrinus had been "extensively corrected, though much more in some books than in others". In the Pentateuch, whole sentences were erased and a new text substituted. Kings was the least corrected of the books. In the Book of Revelation only 1 of its 84 singular readings was corrected, the rest remained uncorrected. This is in stark contrast with Codex Sinaiticus, in which 120 of the Apocalypse's 201 singular readings were corrected in the 7th century.
Each leaf has Arabic numeration, set in the verso of the lower margin. The first surviving leaf of Matthew has number 26. The 25 leaves now lost must have been extant when that note was written.
Contents
The codex contains a nearly complete copy of the LXX, including the deuterocanonical books 3 and 4 Maccabees, Psalm 151 and the 14 Odes. The Epistle to Marcellinus and the Eusebian summary of the Psalms are inserted before the Book of Psalms. It also contains all of the books of the common modern 27-book New Testament, however the pages containing Matthew 1:1–25:5 are not extant. The codex also contains 1 Clement and the homily known as 2 Clement. The books of the Old Testament are thus distributed: Genesis – 2 Chronicles, Hosea – 4 Maccabees, Psalms – Sirach. The New Testament books are in the order: Gospels, Acts of the Apostles, General epistles, Pauline epistles, Book of Revelation.There is an appendix marked in the index, which lists the Psalms of Solomon and probably contained more apocryphal/pseudepigraphical books, but it has been torn off and the pages containing these books have also been lost.
Due to damage and lost folios, various passages are missing or have defects:
- Lacking: 1 Sam 12:17–14:9 ; Ps 49:20–79:11 ; Matt 1:1-25:6 ; John 6:50-8:52 ; 2 Cor 4:13-12:6 ; 1 Clement 57:7-63 and 2 Clement 12:5a-fin. ;
- Damaged: Gen 14:14–17, 15:1–5, 15:16–19, 16:6–9 ;
- Defects due to torn leaves: Genesis 1:20–25, 1:29–2:3, Lev 8:6,7,16; Sirach 50:21f, 51:5;
- Lacunae on the edges of almost every page of the Apocalypse.
- The ornamented colophon of the Epistle to Philemon has been cut out.
Textual features
;Text of the Gospels
The Byzantine text of the Gospels has a number of Alexandrian features, with some affinities to the textual Family Π. Biblical scholar and textual critic Hermann von Soden associated the text of the gospels with Family Π, though it is not a pure member of this family. According to biblical scholar and textual critic Burnett Streeter, it is the earliest Greek manuscript which gives us approximately the text of Lucian the Martyr, but a small proportion of the readings seem to be earlier.
; Text of the rest of the codex
Alexandrinus follows the Alexandrian readings through the rest of the New Testament; however, the text goes from closely resembling Codex Sinaiticus in the Pauline epistles to more closely resembling the text of a number of papyri. The text of Acts frequently agrees with the biblical quotations made by the 4th century Christian writer Athanasius of Alexandria. In the Pauline Epistles its text is closer to Codex Sinaiticus than to Codex Vaticanus. In the General Epistles it represents a different subtype than Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus. In Revelation it agrees with Codex Ephraemi and against Codex Sinaiticus and. According to Metzger, in Revelation and in several books of the Old Testament it has the best text of all manuscripts. In the Old Testament its text often agrees with Codex Sinaiticus.