Codex Vaticanus: Novum Testamentum Graece

The editor of the manuscript through others, and obtained collationsA collation is a meticulous, word-for-word comparison of different versions of a text to identify every variation or error. from three different sources. The most complete of these was made by an Italian scholar by the name of Mico, and was published at Oxford in 1799. Another was made by Rulotta; the missing sheets of his work, preserved in the Library of Trinity College, Cambridge, were transcribed by Constantin von Tischendorf (1815–1874) was a preeminent German biblical scholar who spent his life tracking down the oldest surviving fragments of the Bible. Tischendorf. Both he and Tregelles have made use of them, though they represent only those passages in which the original writing has been altered. The third collation is that of Thomas Bentley, the nephew of the famous scholar Dr. Bentley. It extended only to three chapters and has never been used, nor is it known whether it still exists. Birch’s collation, published between 1788 and 1801, omits two of the Gospels. Bartolocci’s earlier collation is preserved as a manuscript in Paris and has been used by both Tischendorf and Tregelles. Lachmann’s readings from the Vatican CodexThe Codex Vaticanus is one of the oldest and most important manuscript copies of the Greek Bible, held in the Vatican Library since at least the 15th century. are taken entirely from Mico’s and Birch’s work; these form the basis for Buttmann’s recent edition of the Greek Testament. However, Buttmann himself claims no higher authority for them than that they were adopted by his predecessor, and Tischendorf strongly questions their value. As for Tischendorf’s own examination of the manuscript, his own words in his ProlegomenaThe formal introduction or preliminary remarks to a scholarly work. (page 143) show the speed with which it was conducted. He was allowed to have the Codex itself in his hands on two separate occasions for only six hours each. During that short window, he prepared four facsimiles for publication and also skimmed the entire work—“I had attentively run through the entire book,” original: "universum librum attente percurrissem" are his words. Without wishing to diminish the achievements of this extraordinary man, this fact is simply recorded here, leaving the reader to judge for themselves whether such a rapid examination should be trusted completely.