Codex Petropolitanus Purpureus


The Codex Petropolitanus Purpureus, designated by N or 022, ε19, is a Greek New Testament codex containing the four Gospels written on parchment. Using the study of comparative writing styles, it has been assigned to the 6th century CE.
Codex Petropolitanus Purpureus, along with the manuscripts Codex Beratinus (Φ), Sinope Gospels (O), and Rossano Gospels (Σ), belongs to the group of the Purple Uncials. The manuscript has many gaps.

Description

The manuscript is a codex, containing the text of the four Gospels on 231 parchment leaves, with the text written in two columns, 16 lines per page, 12 letters in line, in large uncial letters. The lettering is in silver ink on vellum that has been dyed purple, with gold ink used for the nomina sacra. It has errors of iotacisms, such as the change of ι with ει, and αι with ε. It has been calculated the original codex contained 462 leaves.
The tables of contents are placed before each Gospel. The text is divided according to the chapters, whose numbers are given at the margin, with the titles of the chapters written at the top of the pages. The Ammonian sections and the Eusebian Canons are presented in the margin.

Missing portions

1:1-24, 2:7-20, 3:4-6:24, 7:15-8:1, 8:24-31, 10:28-11:3, 12:40-13:4, 13:33-41, 14:6-22, 15:14-31, 16:7-18:5, 18:26-19:6, 19:13-20:6, 21:19-26:57, 26:65-27:26, 27:34-end;
Gospel of Mark
1:1-5:20. 7:4-20, 8:32-9:1, 10:43-11:7, 12:19-14:25, 15:23-33, 15:42-16:20;
Gospel of Luke
1:1-2:23, 4:3-19, 4:26-35, 4:42-5:12, 5:33-9:7, 9:21-28, 9:36-58, 10:4-12, 10:35-11:14, 11:23-12:12, 12:21-29, 18:32-19:17, 20:30-21:22, 22:49-57, 23:41-24:13, 24:21-39, 24:49-end;
Gospel of John
1:1-21, 1:39-2:6, 3:30-4:5, 5:3-10, 5:19-26, 6:49-57, 9:33-14:2, 14:11-15:14, 15:22-16:15, 20:23-25, 20:28-30, 21:20-end.

Text

The text of the codex is considered to be a representative of the Byzantine text-type, with numerous pre-Byzantine readings. According to 19th century biblical scholar Frederick H. A. Scrivener, "it exhibits strong Alexandrian forms."
According to biblical scholar Burnett Hillman Streeter, in parts it has some Caesarean readings. Biblical scholar Kurt Aland placed it in Categories of [New Testament manuscripts|Category V] of his New Testament manuscripts classification system, and it is certain that it is more Byzantine than anything else.
The texts of Luke 22:43-44, and John 7:53–8:11 are omitted.
In John 1:27 it has the addition εκεινος υμας Βαπτιζει εν πνευματι αγιω και πυρι.

History

It is understood that the manuscript originated in the imperial scriptorium of Constantinople and was dismembered by crusaders in the 12th century. In 1896 Nicholas II of Russia commissioned Fyodor Uspensky's Russian [Archaeological Institute of Constantinople] to buy the greater part of it for the Imperial Public Library in St. Petersburg.
The codex was examined by scholar Peter Lambeck, Bernard de Montfaucon, Hermann Treschow, Francis Alter, Hartel, Wickholf, Giuseppe Bianchini, Harry S. Cronin, and Louis Duchesne.
Textual critic Johann Jakob Wettstein examined 4 leaves housed at London in 1715, and marked them by I. Wettstein cited only 5 of its readings. According to Scrivener it has 57 variant readings.
Bianchini described portions housed at the Vatican Library. The same portions were examined and collated for textual critic Johann M. Augustin Scholz by Gaetano Luigi Marini.
The Vienna fragments of Codex Vindobonensis were examined by Wettstein, who marked them by the siglum N. Treschow in 1773 and Alter in 1787 had given imperfect collations of the Vienna fragments. Lambeck gave the wrong suggestion that the Vienna fragments and the Vienna Genesis manuscript originally belonged to the same codex.
Textual critic Constantin von Tischendorf published fragments of this manuscript in 1846 in his Monumenta sacra et profana. Tischendorf considered it as a fragment of the same codex as 6 leaves from the Vatican, and 2 leaves from Vienna.
Louis Duchesne described the Patmos portions. The Athens and New York portions were edited by Stanley Rypins in 1956.
A facsimile of all the manuscript's fragments was published in 2002 in Athens.
Biblical scholar Elijah Hixson published a monograph in 2019 entitled, Scribal Habits in Sixth-Century Greek Purple Codices. In it, Hixson has a transcription for all of the extant portions of Matthew. The monograph was highly praised by Thomas Kraus, Hixson's own summary of his dissertation, and his interview with James Snapp on the purple codices.

Present location

The 231 extant leaves of the manuscript are kept in different libraries: