The great uncial codices or four great uncials are the only remaining

uncial Uncial is a majuscule Glaister, Geoffrey Ashall. (1996) ''Encyclopedia of the Book''. 2nd edn. New Castle, DE, and London: Oak Knoll Press & The British Library The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom and is one ...

codices The codex (plural codices ) was the historical ancestor of the modern book. Instead of being composed of sheets of paper, it used sheets of vellum, papyrus, or other materials. The term ''codex'' is often used for ancient manuscript books, with ...

that contain (or originally contained) the entire text of the

Bible The Bible (from Koine Greek , , 'the books') is a collection of religious texts or scriptures that are held to be sacred in Christianity, Judaism, Samaritanism, and many other religions. The Bible is an anthologya compilation of texts of a ...

(

Old Old or OLD may refer to: Places *Old, Baranya, Hungary *Old, Northamptonshire, England *Old Street station, a railway and tube station in London (station code OLD) *OLD, IATA code for Old Town Municipal Airport and Seaplane Base, Old Town, Mai ...

and

New Testament The New Testament grc, Ἡ Καινὴ Διαθήκη, transl. ; la, Novum Testamentum. (NT) is the second division of the Christian biblical canon. It discusses the teachings and person of Jesus, as well as events in first-century Christ ...

) in

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

. They are the

Codex Vaticanus The Codex Vaticanus ( The Vatican, Bibl. Vat., Vat. gr. 1209), designated by siglum B or 03 (in the Gregory-Aland numbering), δ 1 ( von Soden), is a fourth-century Christian manuscript of a Greek Bible, containing the majority of the Greek Old ...

in the

Vatican Library The Vatican Apostolic Library ( la, Bibliotheca Apostolica Vaticana, it, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana), more commonly known as the Vatican Library or informally as the Vat, is the library of the Holy See, located in Vatican City. Formally es ...

, the

Codex Sinaiticus The Codex Sinaiticus (Shelfmark: London, British Library, Add MS 43725), designated by siglum [Aleph] or 01 (in the Gregory-Aland numbering of New Testament manuscripts), δ 2 (in the von Soden numbering of New Testament manuscripts) ...

and the

Codex Alexandrinus The Codex Alexandrinus (London, British Library, Royal MS 1. D. V-VIII), designated by the siglum A or 02 (in the Gregory-Aland numbering of New Testament manuscripts), δ 4 (in the von Soden numbering of New Testament manuscripts), is a manu ...

in the

British Library The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom and is one of the largest libraries in the world. It is estimated to contain between 170 and 200 million items from many countries. As a legal deposit library, the British ...

, and the

Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus The Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus (Paris, National Library of France, Greek 9) designated by the siglum C or 04 {in the Gregory-Aland numbering of New Testament manuscripts), δ 3 (in the von Soden numbering of New Testament manuscripts), is a ma ...

in the

Bibliothèque nationale de France The Bibliothèque nationale de France (, 'National Library of France'; BnF) is the national library of France, located in Paris on two main sites known respectively as ''Richelieu'' and ''François-Mitterrand''. It is the national repository ...

in Paris.

Description

Only four great codices have survived to the present day:

(abbreviated: B),

(ℵ),

(A), and

(C).Edward Ardron Hutton and

Francis Crawford Burkitt Francis Crawford Burkitt (3 September 1864 – 11 May 1935) was an English theologian. As Norris Professor of Divinity at the University of Cambridge from 1905 until shortly before his death, Burkitt was a sturdy critic of the notion of a dist ...

, ''An atlas of textual criticism: being an attempt to show the mutual relationship of the authorities for the text of the New Testament up to about 1000 A.D.'', University Press, 1911. Although discovered at different times and places, they share many similarities. They are written in a certain

style of

calligraphy Calligraphy (from el, link=y, καλλιγραφία) is a visual art related to writing. It is the design and execution of lettering with a pen, ink brush, or other writing instrument. Contemporary calligraphic practice can be defined as "t ...

using only majuscule letters, written in ''

scriptio continua ''Scriptio continua'' (Latin for "continuous script"), also known as ''scriptura continua'' or ''scripta continua'', is a style of writing without spaces or other marks between the words or sentences. The form also lacks punctuation, diacritic ...

'' (meaning without regular gaps between words). Though not entirely absent, there are very few divisions between words in these manuscripts. Words do not necessarily end on the same line on which they start. All these

manuscript A manuscript (abbreviated MS for singular and MSS for plural) was, traditionally, any document written by hand – or, once practical typewriters became available, typewritten – as opposed to mechanically printing, printed or repr ...

s were made at great expense of material and labour, written on

vellum Vellum is prepared animal skin or membrane, typically used as writing material. Parchment is another term for this material, from which vellum is sometimes distinguished, when it is made from calfskin, as opposed to that made from other anima ...

by professional

scribe A scribe is a person who serves as a professional copyist, especially one who made copies of manuscripts before the invention of automatic printing. The profession of the scribe, previously widespread across cultures, lost most of its promi ...

s. They seem to have been based on the most accurate texts in their time. All of the great uncials had the leaves arranged in

quarto Quarto (abbreviated Qto, 4to or 4º) is the format of a book or pamphlet produced from full sheets printed with eight pages of text, four to a side, then folded twice to produce four leaves. The leaves are then trimmed along the folds to produc ...

form. The size of the leaves is much larger than in papyrus codices: For online version se
here
at U Penn website. * B:

– ; c. 325–350 * ℵ:

– ; c. 330–360 * A:

– ; c. 400–440 * C:

Codex Ephraemi The Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus (Paris, National Library of France, Greek 9) designated by the siglum C or 04 {in the Gregory-Aland numbering of New Testament manuscripts), δ 3 (in the von Soden numbering of New Testament manuscripts), is a ma ...

– ; c. 450 * D: In the 19th century, the

Codex Bezae The Codex Bezae Cantabrigiensis, designated by siglum D or 05 (in the Gregory-Aland numbering of New Testament manuscripts), δ 5 (in the von Soden of New Testament manuscript), is a codex of the New Testament dating from the 5th century writ ...

was also included to the group of the great uncials (

F. H. A. Scrivener Frederick Henry Ambrose Scrivener (September 29, 1813, Bermondsey, Surrey – October 30, 1891, Hendon, Middlesex) was a New Testament textual critic and a member of the English New Testament Revision Committee which produced the Revised Version ...

Dean Burgon John William Burgon (21 August 18134 August 1888) was an English Anglican divine who became the Dean of Chichester Cathedral in 1876. He was known during his lifetime for his poetry and his defence of the historicity and Mosaic authorship of G ...

). Codex Vaticanus uses the oldest system of textual division in the Gospels. Sinaiticus, Alexandrinus, and Ephraemi have the Ammonian Sections with references to the

Eusebian Canons Eusebian canons, Eusebian sections or Eusebian apparatus, also known as Ammonian sections, are the system of dividing the four Gospels used between late Antiquity and the Middle Ages. The divisions into chapters and verses used in modern texts d ...

. Codex Alexandrinus and Ephraemi Rescriptus use also a division according to the larger sections – κεφάλαια (kephalaia, ''chapters''). Alexandrinus is the earliest manuscript which uses κεφάλαια. Vaticanus has a more archaic style of writing than the other manuscripts. There is no ornamentation or any larger initial letters in Vaticanus and Sinaiticus, but there is in Alexandrinus. Vaticanus has no introduction to the

Book of Psalms The Book of Psalms ( or ; he, תְּהִלִּים, , lit. "praises"), also known as the Psalms, or the Psalter, is the first book of the ("Writings"), the third section of the Tanakh, and a book of the Old Testament. The title is derived f ...

, which became a standard after 325 AD, whereas Sinaiticus and Alexandrinus do. The orders of their books differ. According to Burgon, the peculiar wording in some passages of the five great uncials ( ℵ A B C D) shows that they were the byproduct of heresy–a position strongly contested by

Daniel B. Wallace Daniel Baird Wallace (born June 5, 1952) is an American professor of New Testament Studies at Dallas Theological Seminary. He is also the founder and executive director of the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts, the purpose of whi ...

. Alexandrinus was the first of the greater manuscripts to be made accessible to scholars. Ephraemi Rescriptus, a

palimpsest In textual studies, a palimpsest () is a manuscript page, either from a scroll or a book, from which the text has been scraped or washed off so that the page can be reused for another document. Parchment was made of lamb, calf, or kid skin an ...

, was deciphered by

Tischendorf Tischendorf is a German surname Personal names in German-speaking Europe consist of one or several given names (''Vorname'', plural ''Vornamen'') and a surname (''Nachname, Familienname''). The ''Vorname'' is usually gender-specific. A name is usu ...

in 1840–1841 and published by him in 1843–1845. Codex Ephraemi has been the neglected member of the family of great uncials. Sinaiticus was discovered by Tischendorf in 1844 during his visit to

Saint Catherine's Monastery Saint Catherine's Monastery ( ar, دير القدّيسة كاترين; grc-gre, Μονὴ τῆς Ἁγίας Αἰκατερίνης), officially the Sacred Autonomous Royal Monastery of Saint Katherine of the Holy and God-Trodden Mount Sinai, ...

Sinai Sinai commonly refers to: * Sinai Peninsula, Egypt * Mount Sinai, a mountain in the Sinai Peninsula, Egypt * Biblical Mount Sinai, the site in the Bible where Moses received the Law of God Sinai may also refer to: * Sinai, South Dakota, a place ...

. The text of the codex was published in 1862. Vaticanus has been housed at the

at least since the 15th century, but it became widely available after a photographic facsimile of the entire manuscript was made and published by

Giuseppe Cozza-Luzi Giuseppe Cozza-Luzi (24 December 1837 – 1 June 1905) was an Italian savant and abbot of the Basilian monastery of Grottaferrata near Rome. Biography Cozza-Luzi was born in 1837 at Bolsena in the Province of Rome. In early youth he entered the anc ...

in 1889–1890 (in three volumes).

Eberhard Nestle Eberhard Nestle (1 May 1851, Stuttgart – 9 March 1913, Stuttgart) was a German biblical scholar, textual critic, orientalist, editor of the ''Novum Testamentum Graece'', and the father of Erwin Nestle. Life Nestle was a son of the upper trib ...

and William Edie, "Introduction to the Textual Criticism of the Greek New Testament", London, Edinburg, Oxford, New York, 1901, p. 60. It has been speculated that Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus were part of a project ordered by Emperor

Constantine the Great Constantine I ( , ; la, Flavius Valerius Constantinus, ; ; 27 February 22 May 337), also known as Constantine the Great, was Roman emperor from AD 306 to 337, the first one to Constantine the Great and Christianity, convert to Christiani ...

to produce 50 copies of the Bible.

References

{{Reflist

External links

Great uncials
at the

Owensboro Community and Technical College Owensboro Community and Technical College (OCTC) is a public community college in Owensboro, Kentucky. It is part of the Kentucky Community and Technical College System (KCTCS). Owensboro Community College (est. 1986) and Owensboro Technical Col ...

Great Uncial Codices with photographs

Description

See also

References

External links