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An Early Coptic Manuscript of the Gospel According to Matthew

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An Early Coptic Manuscript of the Gospel According to Matthew CHAPTER SIX AN EARLY COPTIC MANUSCRIPT OF THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO MATTHEW The Scheide Library of Princeton, New Jersey, has recently acquired an early Coptic manuscript containing the complete text of the Gospel according to Matthew in the Middle Egyptian dialect. Dated by palae­ ographers to the fourth or fifth century (see below for details), it is one of the four oldest copies of the entire text of Matthew (of the three others, codex Vaticanus and codex Sinaiticus belong to the fourth century, and codex Washingtonianus is dated to the fourth or fifth century; codices Alexandrinus and Ephraemi of the fifth century are incomplete in Matthew, and the several Greek papyri that antedate the sixth century preserve only scraps of the text of Matthew). In addi­ tion, the Scheide manuscript contains the text, in Greek and in Coptic, of the Greater Doxology (Gloria in excelsis Deo, or "Angelic Hymn"). The oldest manuscript evidence hitherto known of the Greek text of the Gloria is found in the Old Testament volume of codex Alexandrinus (fol. 569). The oldest evidence hitherto known of the Gloria in Coptic is the Sahidic text in a tenth-century parchment leaf in Berlin. It can be appreciated, therefore, that in more than one respect the Scheide manuscript is of more than ordinary importance. DESCRIPTION OF THE MANUSCRIPT • The Scheide manuscript contains 238 leaves of good (but not first quality) parchment, each measuring about 12.5 by 10.5 cm. (about 5 by 4 1/8 in.). There are 30 quires; 1-29 have each eight leaves, while quire 30 has six. The first two leaves at the beginning of the codex are blank, as are the last three at the end. The manuscript is written in a single column throughout, with 14 lines per page for the Gospel (pages 1-455) and 13 lines per page for the Greater Doxology in Greek and Coptic (pages 1-11, according to another series of pagination at the end of the manuscript). The original binding of wooden boards, bevelled at the edges, remains, but the leather of the back strip is entirely gone. A portion of the leather 94 A COPTIC MANUSCRIPT OF THE GOSPEL OF MATTHEW [302] strips to which the signatures were sewn is still present. Here and there the edges of the leaves have been eaten by insects, but none of the text has been damaged. Only fragmentary remains survive of wrapping bands of leather that once held the codex tightly closed. The presence of an occasional hole in the parchment (which the scribe avoided as he wrote) and the small size of the page suggest that the manuscript was not written for liturgical purposes, but for private use. At the same time, the general appearance of the codex gives the impression that it was produced by a professional scribe trained in making fine copies of literary works for the book trade. PALAEOGRAPHIC FEATURES AND APPROXIMATE DATE OF THE MANUSCRIPT The handwriting of the codex is decidedly a "book hand", the letters being square capitals with relatively heavy vertical lines and much thinner horizontal and transverse lines. The style reminds one of the uncial script of the great vellum Biblical codices of the fourth and fifth centuries (codex Vaticanus, codex Sinaiticus, codex Alexandrinus). The characters are written with some degree of regularity and even a touch of ornamentation. The latter appears in the delta, epsilon, and particularly the tau, in which the decorative stroke at the left end of the crossbar is markedly longer and more emphatic then that on the right. The scribe has often compressed the script at the end of a line in order to avoid breaking a word. Beginnings of paragraphs are indicated in the manuscript by a slight projection of the first letter into the left margin, but without any enlargement of the letter into an "initial". In this respect it re­ sembles codices Vaticanus and Sinaiticus of the fourth century, whereas codex Alexandrinus of the fifth century has enlarged initials. Page and quire numerals follow the regular Greek system, namely letters of the Greek alphabet identified as numerals by a supralinear stroke. Photographs of the script of the codex have been examined by several palaeographers. In the opinion of T. C. Skeat the codex belongs to the fifth century, "since the script in general looks rather noticeably later than that of the codex Sinaiticus, which itself must have been written circ. 340" (letter, dated 21 July 1961, to Hans P. Kraus, the well known rare book dealer of New York City, who was the owner of the manuscript at that time). .
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