Codex Sinaiticus: Old Testament (Facsimile)

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The link to Caesarea is not absolutely proven; it is possible that the manuscript of Pamphilus Pamphilus: a 3rd-century Christian scholar and martyr who founded the famous library at Caesarea had been taken to some other place. Of course, the view that all the "C" correctors correctors: scribes who edited and updated the text after it was first written belong to roughly the same place and time is a point on which other opinions may be held once the facsimile of the Old Testament has been studied. It is, therefore, all the more satisfactory that there is some indirect evidence connecting another of the C group—Cᵃ—with the use of a manuscript of Pamphilus in the letters of Paul.

It will be noted that the colophons colophon: a note at the end of a manuscript providing details about its production or history at the ends of Ezra and Esther only refer to manuscripts of a comparatively small part of the Old Testament, and there are no other notes elsewhere. It is, however, well known that in the letters of Paul, critics¹ have long been struck by the resemblance between the text of the corrector Cᵃ and that of Codex H (Pauline). Now, Codex H (Pauline) has a long colophon at the end of the letters of Paul, beginning with the name Evagrios,² and ending with the statement:

Considering the close textual relationship between Codex H (Pauline) and the corrector Cᵃ of the Codex Sinaiticus, it is reasonable to regard this evidence as increasing the probability that during the time the corrector Cᵃ was working, the Codex Sinaiticus was in the library at Caesarea. That library certainly contained many manuscripts by Pamphilus, making it a more likely location than some other library to which a single manuscript of Pamphilus might have been brought.

The date that must be assigned to the time when the Codex was in Caesarea depends entirely on the date that palaeography palaeography: the study of ancient writing systems to date historical manuscripts 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

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to differ. The latest date suggested is the seventh century; the earliest is the fifth. Sir Frederic Kenyon and Professor 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.

How or when the manuscript passed from Caesarea to Sinai is absolutely unknown. There is not a trace of evidence. The monastery of Saint Catherine’s on Mount Sinai was one of the foundations of the Emperor Justinian, and from the sixth century, it became one of the strongholds of the Greek Church and the Melkite original: Malkite Syrians. Caesarea, on the other hand, was taken by the Arabs in the year 638. It is, therefore, a plausible guess that the manuscript 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 may have reached Sinai many years or centuries later.

The only points in the history of the manuscript before it reached Caesarea that are worth discussing concern the place and time of its original writing. From the day it left the scriptorium scriptorium: a room in a monastery or library where manuscripts were copied until the time it was revised at Caesarea, there is no other evidence of any kind to shed light on its history. It is, of course, true that the correctors Bᵃ, B, and possibly A³, A⁴, and A⁵, may have done their work outside the scriptorium, but there is nothing in their handwriting to justify any suggestion that they belonged to one locality rather than another. These scribes (see page xxii) are—if not contemporary with the original scribes—at least extremely close to them in age.

The earliest possible date original: terminus a quo from which the date of the manuscript must be reckoned is provided by the fact that the Eusebian apparatus Eusebian apparatus: a system of cross-references for the Gospels developed by Eusebius of Caesarea (died c. 339) in the Gospels was added to it before it was issued from the scriptorium (see page xix of the Introduction to the Facsimile of the New Testament). It is unfortunate that we

¹ See especially W. Bousset, Text-Critical Studies on the New Testament (Texte und Untersuchungen, xi. 4), pages 45–73.
² The word is erased. It is possible, perhaps even probable, that it is really "to Evagrios" original Greek: Εὐαγρίῳ rather than "Evagrios" original Greek: Εὐαγρίος.
³ The word "his own" original: αὐτοῦ is not now legible in the manuscript, but in the time of the scholar Montfaucon, the final letter "u" original: ῦ was still visible.