Codex Montfortianus

New Testament manuscript

Minuscule 61
New Testament manuscript
Comma Johanneum
Name	Codex Montfortianus
Text	New Testament
Date	c. 1520
Script	Greek
Now at	Trinity College, Dublin
Size	15.8 cm by 12 cm
Type	mixed, Byzantine text-type (Gospels, Acts)
Category	III, V
Note	marginalia

Codex Montfortianus, also known as Minuscule 61, is a Greek minuscule manuscript of the New Testament written on paper. It is designated by 61 in the Gregory-Aland numbering of New Testament manuscripts, and δ 603 in the von Soden numbering of New Testament manuscripts. Biblical scholar Erasmus named it Codex Britannicus. Its completion is dated on the basis of its textual affinities to no earlier than the second decade of the 16th century, though a 15th-century date is possible on palaeographic grounds.

The manuscript is famous for including a unique version of the Comma Johanneum. It has marginal notes.

Description

The manuscript is a codex (precursor to the modern book), containing the entire text of the New Testament made of 455 paper leaves (15.8 cm by 12 cm). The text is written in one column per page, 21 lines per page. The text is divided according to the chapters (known as κεφαλαια / kephalaia), whose numbers are given in the margin, and their titles (known as τιτλοι / titloi) written at the top of the pages in red ink. There is also another division according to the smaller Ammonian Sections, with references to the Eusebian Canons (both early divisions of the New Testament gospels into sections). It contains prolegomena, the tables of contents (also known as κεφαλαια) before each book, and subscriptions at the end of each book, with numbers of lines in each gospel (known as στιχοι / stichoi).

Book Order

Gospels
Pauline Epistles
Acts
General Epistles

(James, Jude, 1 Peter, 2 Peter, 1 John, 2 John, 3 John)

Revelation.

Text

The Greek text of the Gospels and Acts of this codex is considered a representative of the Byzantine text-type. Biblical scholar Kurt Aland placed it in Category V of his New Testament manuscripts classification system. In the Pauline epistles and General epistles its text is mixed, and Aland placed it in Category III. Category III manuscripts are described as having "a small but not a negligible proportion of early readings, with a considerable encroachment of readings, and significant readings from other sources as yet unidentified." In the Book of Revelation its text belongs to the Byzantine text-type but with a large number of unique textual variants, in a close relationship to Uncial 046, and Minuscule 69. In the Gospels it is close to the manuscripts 56, 58, and in the Acts and Epistles to 326. Marginal readings in the first hand of Revelation are clearly derived from the 1516 edition of Erasmus. It was not examined by the Claremont Profile Method.

In 1 John 5:6 it has textual variant δι' ὕδατος καὶ αἵματος καὶ πνεύματος ἁγίου (through water and blood and the Holy Spirit) together with the manuscripts: 39, 326, 1837. Biblical scholar Bart D. Ehrman identified this reading as an Orthodox corrupt reading.

It contains a late-Vulgate-based version of the Comma Johanneum as an integral part of the text. An engraved facsimile of the relevant page can be seen in Thomas Hartwell Horne, An Introduction to the Critical Study and Knowledge of the Holy Scriptures (London: Cadell and Davies, 1818), vol. 2.2, p. 118.

History

It was the first Greek manuscript discovered to contain any version of the Comma Johanneum in 1 John chapter 5. It was copied from an earlier manuscript that did not have the Comma. The Comma was translated from the Latin. Its earliest known owner was Froy, a Franciscan friar, then Thomas Clement (died 1569), then William Chark (died 1582), then Thomas Montfort (from whom it derives its present name), then Archbishop Ussher, who caused the collation to be made which appears in Bishop Brian Walton's Polyglott (Matthew 1:1; Acts 22:29; Romans 1), and presented the manuscript to Trinity College.

Erasmus cited this manuscript (called by him as Codex Britannicus) as his source for his (slightly modified) Comma in his third edition of Novum Testamentum (1522). Despite this being a commonly accepted fact in modern scholarship, some people in the past such as Thomas Burgess (1756 – 19 February 1837) have disputed the identification of Erasmus' "Codex Britannicus" as the same manuscript as the Codex Montfortianus, instead proposing that it is a now lost Greek manuscript.

The manuscript was described by textual critic Johann Jakob Wettstein, and Orlando Dobbin. Biblical scholar Caspar René Gregory saw it in 1883. The codex now is located at Trinity College (shelf number Ms. 30) in Dublin.

Notes

The order of General epistles is the same as in Minuscule 326.
For other variants of this verse see: Textual variants in the First Epistle of John.

References

Gregory, Caspar René (1908). Die griechischen Handschriften des Neuen Testament. Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs. p. 50.
^ McDonald, Grantley (2011). Raising the Ghost of Arius: Erasmus, the Johannine Comma and Religious Difference in Early Modern Europe. Brussels: Leiden University doctoral dissertation. pp. 282, 319.
^ Scrivener, Frederick Henry Ambrose (1894). A Plain Introduction to the Criticism of the New Testament. Vol. 1. Edward Miller (4 ed.). London: George Bell & Sons. p. 200.
^ Aland, Kurt; Welte, M.; Köster, B.; Junack, K. (1994). Kurzgefasste Liste der griechischen Handschriften des Neues Testaments. New York: Walter de Gruyter. p. 50.
^ Gregory, Caspar René (1900). Textkritik des Neuen Testamentes. Vol. 1. Leipzig: Hinrichs. pp. 142–143.
^ Aland, Kurt; Aland, Barbara (1995). The Text of the New Testament: An Introduction to the Critical Editions and to the Theory and Practice of Modern Textual Criticism. Erroll F. Rhodes (trans.). Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company. p. 129. ISBN 978-0-8028-4098-1.
^ Metzger, Bruce Manning; Ehrman, Bart D. (2005). The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption and Restoration (4th ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 86. ISBN 0-19-516667-1.
Wisse, Frederik (1982). The Profile Method for the Classification and Evaluation of Manuscript Evidence, as Applied to the Continuous Greek Text of the Gospel of Luke. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company. p. 54. ISBN 0-8028-1918-4.
Aland, Kurt; Black, Matthew; Martini, Carlo Maria; Metzger, Bruce Manning; Wikgren, Allen, eds. (1983). The Greek New Testament (3rd ed.). Stuttgart: United Bible Societies. p. 826. ISBN 9783438051103. (UBS3)
Ehrman, Bart D. (1993). The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 60.
Tregelles, Samuel Prideaux (1856). An Introduction to the Critical Study and Knowledge of the Holy Scriptures. London: A. & R. Spottiswoode. pp. 213–14.
Burgess, Thomas; Beynon, Thomas (1829). A letter to the Reverend Thomas Beynon, Archdeacon of Cardigan : in reply to A vindication of the literary character of Professor Porson by Crito Cantabrigiensis; and in further proof of the authenticity of 1 John, v. 7. Saint Mary's College of California. Salisbury: Brodie and Dowding.
Wettstein, Johann Jakob (1751). Novum Testamentum Graecum Editionis Receptae cum Lectionibus Variantibus Codicum Manuscripts. Amsterdam: Ex Officina Dommeriana. p. 52.

External links

R. Waltz, Codex Montfortianus at the Encyclopedia of Textual Criticism (2007)
Digital images of the manuscript online at Trinity College Dublin.

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