Vetus Testamentum Graecum: Septuagint with Latin Translation

"which almost nowhere fail to exhibit the readings of this copy."

Many highly learned men have followed this edition, especially Morinus, Brian Walton, Lambert Bos, Van Ess, etc.

Finally, a fourth edition arose from the Alexandrian codex. Patriarch Cyril brought this truly ancient and most excellent codex from Alexandria to Constantinople, and gave it as a gift to Charles I, King of England, through his ambassador to the Emperor of the Turks. It is written on parchment, like the Vatican codex, in large and ancient characters, without distinction of words, verses, or chapters, and without marks for accents or breathings, which are certain documents of venerable antiquity. Ernest Grabe published a part of this codex in Oxford in 1707 and 1709; others brought it to completion in the years 1719 and 1720. Everything was expressed faithfully, word for word, and as far as possible, literally. Only where a copy seemed to labor under a fault or defect were corrections and supplements—which were mostly printed in smaller characters from the Vatican codex—added; they placed the corrupted reading, or what they believed to be corrupted, in the margin. Breitinger reprinted this edition in Zurich in 1730, and in these most recent times, Holmes and Parsons in Oxford (1798 and 1818) used ancient characters similar to the codex, with infinite variant readings. Much more advisable was H. H. Baber, who, with the greatest care and immense labor, printed this entire codex in 1820 with its own ancient characters, preserving both the same order of columns and lines and the same structure of letters and words, so that it may truly be called a fac-simile: a truly golden work, which preserves this codex safe forever. Would that the same labor might be undertaken for the preservation of the Vatican codex, which is crumbling day by day!

These two codices, namely the Vatican and the Alexandrian, both most ancient and excellent, and written already before the times of St. Jerome as everyone agrees, seem to have been reserved by some divine providence. They agree admirably in almost all things; yet they differ in some, but generally speaking, one supports and supplements the other.