Codex Alexandrinus

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A most valuable Greekmanuscript of theOld andNew Testaments, so named because it was brought toEurope from Alexandria and had been theproperty of the patriarch of thatsee. For the sake of brevity, Walton, in his polyglot Bible, indicated it by the letter A and thus set the fashion of designating Biblicalmanuscripts by such symbols. Codex A was the first of the great uncials to become known to the learned world. When Cyril Lucar,Patriarch ofAlexandria, was transferred in 1621 to the Patriarchate of Constantinople, he is believed to have brought the codex with him. Later he sent it as a present to King James I ofEngland; James died before the gift was presented, and Charles I, in 1627, accepted it in his stead. It is now the chief glory of the British Museum in itsmanuscript department and is on exhibition there. [Editor's Note: The British Museum and the British Library split in 1973, and the Codex is now kept in the latter.]

Codex A contains theBible of theCatholic Canon, including therefore the deuterocanonical books and portions of books belonging to theOld Testament. Moreover, it joins to the canonical books of Machabees, theapocryphal III and IV Machabees, of very late origin. To theNew Testament are added the Epistle of St. Clement ofRome and thehomily which passed under the title ofSecond Epistle of Clement — the only copies then known to exist. These are included in the list ofNew Testament books which is prefixed and seem to have been regarded by the scribe as part of theNew Testament. The same list shows that the Psalms of Solomon, now missing, were originally contained in the volume, but the space which separates this book from the others on the list indicates that it was not ranked amongNew Testament books. An "Epistle to Marcellinus" ascribed toSt. Athanasius is inserted as a preface to thePsalter, together withEusebius's summary of the Psalms; Psalm 151 and certain selected canticles of theOld Testament are affixed, andliturgical uses of the psalms indicated. Not all the books are complete. In theOld Testament there is to be noted particularly the lacuna of thirty psalms, from 5:20, to 80:11; moreover, of Genesis 14:14-17; 15:1-5, 16-19; 16:6-9;1 Samuel 12:20-14:9. TheNew Testament has lost the first twenty-five leaves of the Gospel of St. Matthew, as far as25:6, likewise the two leaves running fromJohn 6:50, to8:52 (which, however, as the amount of space shows, omitted the formerly much disputed passage about the adulterouswoman), and three leaves containing2 Corinthians 4:13-12:6. One leaf is missing fromI Clement and probably two at the end ofII Clement. Codex A supports the SixtineVulgate in regard to the conclusion of St. Mark andJohn 5:4, but, like all Greekmanuscripts before the fourteenth century, omits the text of the three heavenly witnesses,1 John 5:7. The order of theOld Testament books is peculiar. In theNew Testament the order is Gospels, Acts,Catholic Epistles, Pauline Epistles, Apocalypse, with Hebrews placed before the Pastoral Epistles. Originally one large volume, the codex is now bound in four volumes, bearing on their covers the arms of Charles I. Three volumes contain theOld Testament, and the remaining volume theNew Testament with Clement. The leaves, of thin vellum, 12 3/4 inches high by 10 inches broad, number at present 773, but were originally 822, according to the ordinary reckoning. Each page has two columns of 49 to 51 lines.

The codex is the first to contain the major chapters with their titles, the Ammonian Sections and the Eusebian Canons complete (Scrivener). A new paragraph is indicated by a large capital and frequently by spacing, not by beginning a new line; the enlarged capital is placed in the margin of the next line, though, curiously, it may not correspond to the beginning of the paragraph or even of a word. Themanuscript is written in uncial characters in a hand at once firm, elegant, simple; the greater part of Volume III is ascribed by Gregory to a different hand from that of the others; two hands are discerned in theNew Testament by Woide, three by Sir E. Maunde Thompson and Kenyon — experts differ on these points. The handwriting is generally judged to belong to the beginning or middle of the fifth century or possibly to the late fourth. An Arabic note states that it was written by Thecla themartyr; and Cyril Lucar the Patriarch adds in his note that tradition says she was a nobleEgyptianwoman and wrote the codex shortly after the Nicene Council. But nothing is known of such amartyr at thatdate, and the value of this testimony is weakened by the presence of the Eusebian Canons (d. 340) and destroyed by the insertion of the letter ofAthanasius (d. 373). On the other hand, the absence of the Euthalian divisions is regarded by Scrivener asproof that it can hardly be later than 450. This is not decisive, and Gregory would bring it down even to the second half of the fifth century. The character of the letters and the history of themanuscript point toEgypt as its place of origin.

The text of Codex A is considered one of the most valuable witnesses to theSeptuagint. It is found, however, to bear a great affinity to the text embodied inOrigen'sHexapla and to have been corrected in numberless passages according to the Hebrew. The text of theSeptuagintcodices is in too chaotic a condition, and criticism of it too little advanced, to permit of a sure judgment on the textual value of the greatmanuscripts. The text of theNew Testament here is of a mixed character. In the Gospels, we have the best example of the so-called Syrian type of text, the ancestor of the traditional and less pure form found in thetextus receptus. The Syrian text, however, is rejected by the great majority of scholars in favour of the "neutral" type, best represented in theCodex Vaticanus. In the Acts andCatholic Epistles, and still more inSt. Paul'sEpistles and the Apocalypse, Codex A approaches nearer, or belongs, to the neutral type. This admixture of textual types is explained on the theory that A or its prototype was not copied from a singlemanuscript, but from severalmanuscripts of varying value and diverse origin. Copyist'serrors in this codex are rather frequent.

Codex Alexandrinus played an important part in developing the textual criticism of theBible, particularly of theNew Testament. Grabe edited theOld Testament at Oxford in 1707-20, and this edition was reproduced atZurich 1730-32, and atLeipzig, 1750-51, and again atOxford, by Field, in 1859; Woide published theNew Testament in 1786, which B. H. Cowper reproduced in 1860. The readings of Codex A were noted in Walton's Polyglot, 1657, and in every important collation since made. Baber published an edition of theOld Testament in facsimile type in 1816-28; but all previous editions were superseded by the magnificent photographic facsimile of bothOld andNew Testaments produced by the care of Sir E. Maunde Thompson (theNew Testament in 1879, theOld Testament in 1881-83), with an introduction in which the editor gives the best obtainable description of the codex (London, 1879-80).

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