Codex Sinaiticus: Old Testament (Facsimile)

Column 1

We do not know the exact date when Eusebius created his apparatus apparatus: a system of cross-references used to find parallel passages in the four Gospels, but it is at least plain that the first quarter of the fourth century is the earliest date that has any reasonable probability. The latest possible date original: terminus ad quem cannot be so easily fixed. We are entirely dependent on palaeographical considerations palaeographical: relating to the study of ancient handwriting styles to determine the age and origin of a document, and on comparing the writing with that of papyri.

The earliest vellum vellum: high-quality parchment made from calfskin manuscript whose date can be approximately fixed is the Vienna Codex of Dioscorides, which cannot be far removed from the year 500. No one doubts that the Codex Sinaiticus and various other manuscripts are earlier than this; but the history of writing shows that the development of handwriting is by no means regular, and decisive dating is usually very difficult. Nevertheless, a comparison with papyri suggests that the Codex Sinaiticus is more likely to belong to the fourth than to the fifth century. Professor Hunt, indeed, expressed the view that if it had not been for the evidence of the Eusebian apparatus, he would not have regarded the third century as an impossible date.

This view of the date of the manuscript is based on the assumption that its provenance provenance: the place of origin or earliest known history of an object is the same as that of the papyri—Egyptian. However, an element of doubt cannot be excluded on this point, and it is clear that if the assumption is baseless, the date is proportionately less certain. Fortunately, the assumption is not baseless: as will be shown, an Egyptian origin is actually the most probable for the Codex Sinaiticus. But it is not certain, and there have been competent scholars who have been inclined to think that Caesarea was not only the resting place of the manuscript in the sixth century, but also has the best claim to be regarded as its original home.

Of the various arguments, partly historical and partly palaeographical, bearing on this point, those which are purely palaeographical are likely to seem rather unsatisfactory to those who are acquainted with the splendid results reached by Latin scholars in fixing the date and origin of their manuscripts. It is, however, a regrettable fact that this line of research is much less fruitful in Greek than in Latin documents. We do not have enough specimens of confirmed dates and diverse origins to justify any certainty of judgment. The literary handwriting in papyri, which provides our only guide in this matter, is an excessively fixed type. Those who are constantly engaged in papyrological research are the least prepared to date it with exactness, and since the papyri all

Column 2

come from the same country, they provide little or no evidence regarding local peculiarities of script. It is indeed now possible to state with a certainty that was previously unattainable that this or that type of letter was common in Egyptian papyri; but it is not possible to say that it was characteristic, in the sense that it was absent in other schools of calligraphy calligraphy: the art of producing decorative or formal handwriting. We are almost ignorant of the history of literary handwriting, as distinct from private handwriting, outside of Egypt.

Moreover, we do not know with any precision what changes professional scribes may have introduced when they moved from writing on papyrus to the somewhat different surface of vellum. The only analogy we can study—the revival of minuscule minuscule: a script using smaller, lower-case letters, which became popular in the 9th century in the ninth century—is different in kind and distant in date. In that century, professional scribes writing on vellum began to abandon the uncial uncial: a script written entirely in capital letters character, which they had adopted from the literary hand of the papyri, in favor of a cursive cursive: handwriting with joined-up or flowing characters hand modeled on earlier private handwriting. Obviously, it is impossible to argue from this great revolution to the smaller change of moving from papyrus to vellum; but it is perhaps acceptable to point out that since the changes made in the ninth century from the private cursive hand were comparatively small, they were even more likely original: a fortiori to be smaller in the fourth century.

With these serious qualifications, comparison with papyri provides the only palaeographical clue to the origin of the Codex Sinaiticus. It tends to suggest that the papyri and the Codex come from the same place. There are no letters in the Codex Sinaiticus that cannot be matched in papyri of the fourth or earlier centuries. The three forms that attract attention in the Codex Sinaiticus are the so-called Coptic Mu Mu: the Greek letter 'M', the curiously shaped Omega Omega: the last letter of the Greek alphabet with a long central line, and an occasional use of the cursive Xi Xi: the Greek letter representing the 'x' sound.

The Coptic Mu is common in papyri; it is called Coptic because it happens to be the form that was adopted into the Coptic alphabet, but there is no evidence to show that it was rare outside of Egypt. The long Omega is much rarer: it is found in Papyrus Rylands 28, a papyrus probably from the fourth century, but Dr. Hunt was not able to cite any other instance of its use in papyri, nor is it common in vellum manuscripts. I only know of it in the Codex Vaticanus, and here too it is comparatively rare. The use of the cursive Xi in uncial script is also rare; it is found in the additions made by the corrector A² in the Codex Sinaiticus.