THE EARLIER HISTORY OF THE MS.

Caesarea is not absolutely demonstrative: it is possible that the MS. Manuscript of Pamphilus had been taken to some other place, and of course the view that all the C correctors belong to much the same place and time is a point on which it is possible that other opinions will be held when the facsimile of the Old Testament completes the presentation of the evidence. It is therefore all the more satisfactory that there is some indirect evidence for connecting another of the C group—Cᵃ—with the use of a MS. of Pamphilus in the Pauline epistles.

It will be noted that the colophons Inscriptions at the end of a book containing facts about its production at the ends of Ezra and Esther only refer to MSS. of a comparatively small part of the Old Testament, and there are no other notes elsewhere. It is, however, well known that in the Pauline epistles critics¹ have long been struck by the resemblance between the text of the corrector Cᵃ and that of cod. Hᵖᵃᵘˡ. Now, cod. Hᵖᵃᵘˡ has at the end of the Pauline epistles a long colophon, beginning with the name Evagrios², and ending with the statement:—

This book was compared
against the copy in Caesarea
of the library
of the holy Pamphilus;
written by [his] hand.
original Greek: ἀντεβλήθη δὲ ἡ βίβλος· πρὸς τὸ ἐν Καισαρίᾳ ἀντίγραφον· τῆς βιβλιοθήκης τοῦ ἁγίου Παμφίλου· χειρὶ γεγραμμένον [αὐτοῦ]

Considering the close textual relationship between cod. Hᵖᵃᵘˡ and the corrector Cᵃ of the Codex Sinaiticus One of the oldest and most important Greek manuscripts of the Bible, it is legitimate to regard this evidence as increasing the probability that during the time that the corrector Cᵃ was working the Codex Sinaiticus was in the library at Caesarea, in which there were certainly many MSS. of Pamphilus, rather than in some other library to which a MS. of Pamphilus might have been brought.

The date which must be assigned to the time when the Codex was in Caesarea depends entirely on that which palaeography The study of ancient handwriting gives to the writing of the C correctors, and especially of course to that of the scribe who wrote the notes at the end of Ezra and Esther. On this point opinions are likely to differ. The latest date suggested is the seventh century; the earliest is the fifth. Dr. F. G. Kenyon and Dr. A. S. Hunt agree in regarding the sixth century as possible, but the former is inclined to accept the seventh as equally possible, while the latter is more disposed to prefer an earlier date.

THE HISTORY OF THE MS. AFTER IT WAS IN CAESAREA

How or when the MS. passed from Caesarea to Sinai is absolutely unknown. There is not a trace of evidence. The monastery of St. Catherine’s on Mt. Sinai was one of the foundations of Justinian, and from the sixth century it became one of the strongholds of the Greek Church and the Malkite Syrians. Caesarea, on the other hand, was taken by the Arabs in 638. It is therefore a plausible guess that the MS. was taken to Sinai by refugees from Caesarea. But this is merely a guess: it may have been taken to many places after leaving Caesarea and have reached Sinai many years or centuries later.

THE ORIGINAL PROVENANCE AND DATE OF THE MS.

The only points in the pre-Caesarean history of the MS. which repay discussion are concerned with the place and time of its original writing, for from the day that it passed out of the scriptorium A room in a monastery or library set apart for writing until the time that it was revised at Caesarea there is no other evidence of any kind to throw light on its history. It is of course true that the correctors B¹, B, and possibly A³, A⁴, and A⁵, may have done their work outside the scriptorium, but there is nothing in their scripts to justify any suggestion that they belonged to one locality rather than another, and they are (see p. xxiii), if not contemporary with the original scribes, at least extremely close to them in age.

The earliest possible date original Latin: terminus a quo, from which the date of the MS. must be reckoned, is provided by the fact that the Eusebian apparatus A system of cross-references for the Gospels created by Eusebius of Caesarea was added to it before it was issued from the scriptorium (see p. xix). It is unfortunate that we do not know the exact date when Eusebius made his apparatus, but it is

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¹ See especially W. Bousset, Textual-Critical Studies on the New Testament (Texts and Investigations, xi. 4), pp. 45-73.
² The word is erased. It is possible, perhaps even probable, that it is really of Evargios rather than Evagrios.
³ "his" original Greek: αὐτοῦ is not now legible in the MS., but in the time of Montfaucon the final letter was still visible.