ana translation

INTRODUCTION
xliii
presented some thirty years later to the monastery of the Theotokos,
in the Nitrian Desert. It bears date A. Gr. 1 134 (A.D. 823), being thus
older by at least three centuries than any of our other MSS which can
be dated with certainty. Its age thus gives weight to its textual
authority : while, on the other hand, we are to remember that it is
later, also by three centuries, than the time of Philoxenus ;
an interval
long enough for the entrance of many
errors into the text had it been
transmitted to our scribe by less competent or careful copyists. It is
on vellum, palimpsest, written in a clear, cursive script, and in good
preservation. This MS, and Codd. 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, belong to the great
Nitrian collection acquired by the Museum in 1839-47.
Cod. 2. (Br. M., Add. 14473(2), Catal. cxxxn.)
An undated MS of which the age cannot be determined with confidence.
Dr. Wright's opinion is, "of about the xith century." But its
script
gives no trustworthy evidence in the matter, for it is evidently
not the normal handwriting of the scribe, but a somewhat clumsy
attempt to imitate the fine estrangela character of the MS (see Catal.
cxxvi) to which it is appended, a copy of the Acts and Three Epistles
(Peshitta). It consists of nine leaves of vellum, supplying our Four.
Its text agrees closely with Cod. 1 in most of the crucial passages, and
even in its most notable misreadings, as noted above (2 Pet. iii. 2, 4,
and 7, in the second of which 1 and 2 stand alone), and also in the
remarkable double aberrant reading in Jud. 24.
It avoids, however, in
2 Pet. ii. 13 the .OOuAwJ of Cod. 1, yet inconsistently adopts
it in
the parallel, Jud. 12 (correcting it, however, in the margin). Yet its
agreement with Cod. 1 is so much less strong in 2 and 3 John* than
in 2 Pet. or Jude, as to suggest the suspicion that in 2 and 3 John
the text follows a different exemplar. But on the whole, while there
is
enough of divergence between Codd.l and 2 to preclude the supposition
that 2 was copied from 1, their internal evidence proves them to
represent a common archetype.
Hence follows the important inference,
that the readings common to 1 and 2 (which, as we shall see, are the
readings for the most part which characterize group A)
were not
originated by the scribe or editor of 1, but represent an earlier
authority how much earlier we cannot tell.
* See notes infr. on Syr. text, 2 Job. 1, 5, 8, 13 ;
3 Job. 4, 6, 7, 9.