(1) The Gothic Version (Goth.).
The history of the Goths, who from the wilds of Scandinavia overran the fairest regions of Europe, has been traced by the master-hand of Gibbon (Decline and Fall, Chapters x, xxvi, xxxi, &c.), and needs not here be repeated. While the nation was yet seated in Moesia, Ulphilas or Wulfilas [318-388], [pg 146] a Cappadocian, who succeeded their first Bishop Theophilus in a.d. 348, though himself an Arian and a teacher of that subtil heresy to his adopted countrymen, became their benefactor, by translating both the Old[118] and New Testament into the Gothic, a dialect of the great Teutonic stock of languages, having previously invented or adapted an alphabet expressly for their use. There can be no question, from internal evidence, that the Old Testament was rendered from the Septuagint, the New from the Greek original[119]: but the existing manuscripts testify to some corruption from Latin sources, very naturally arising during the occupation of Italy by the Goths in the fifth century. These venerable documents are principally three, or rather may be treated under two MSS. and one group.
1. Codex Argenteus, the most precious treasure of the University of Upsal, in the mother-country of the Gothic tribes. It appears to be the same copy as Ant. Morillon saw at Werden in Westphalia towards the end of the sixteenth century, and was taken by the Swedes at the siege of Prague in 1648. Queen Christina gave it to her librarian, Isaac Vossius, and from him it was very rightly purchased about 1662 by the Swedish nation and deposited at Upsal. This superb codex contains fragments of the Gospels (in the Western order, Matthew, John, Luke, Mark) on 187 leaves, 4to (out of 330), of purple vellum; the bold, uncial, Gothic letters being in silver, sometimes in gold, of course much faded, and so regular that some have imagined, though erroneously, that they were impressed with a stamp. The date assigned to it is the fifth or early in the sixth century, although the several words are divided, and some various readings stand in the margin primâ manu.
2. Codex Carolinus, described above for Codd. PQ, and for the Old Latin gue, contains in Gothic about forty verses of the Epistle to the Romans, first published by Knittel, 1762.
3. Codices Ambrosiani, or palimpsest fragments of five manuscripts, apparently like Cod. Carolinus, from Bobbio, and of about the same date, discovered by Mai in 1817 in the Ambrosian Library at Milan, and published by him and Count C. O. Castiglione (Ulphilæ Partium Ineditarum ... Specimen, in five parts, Milan, 1819, 1820, 1834, 1835, 1839). The last-named manuscripts are minutely described and illustrated by a rude facsimile in Horne's “Introduction,” and after him in Tregelles' “Horne,” vol. iv. [pg 147] pp. 304-7. They consist of (1) a portion of St. Paul's Epistles, under Homilies of Gregory the Great (viii); (2) portions of St. Paul, under Jerome on Isaiah (viii or ix); (3) parts of the Old Testament, under Plautus and part of Seneca; (4) under four pages of St. John in Latin part of St. Matt. xxvi, xxvii. The fifth fragment consists of Acts of the Council of Chalcedon with no extracts from the Bible. Mai refers some of the Gothic writing to the sixth century and some as far back as the fourth or beginning of the fifth. Unlike the Codex Argenteus (at least if we trust Dr. E. D. Clarke's facsimile of the latter), the words in Mai's palimpsests are continuous: they contain parts of Esther, Nehemiah (apparently no portion of the books of Kings), a few passages of the Gospels, and much of St. Paul[120]. H. F. Massmann (Ulfilas, Stuttgart, 1855-57) also added from an exposition a few verses of St. John, and there are fragments at Vienna and Rome[121].
These fragments (for such they still must be called)[122], in spite of the influence of the Latin, approach nearer to the received text, in respect of their readings, than the Egyptian or one or two other versions of about the same age; and from their similarity in language to the Teutonic have been much studied in Germany. The fullest and best edition of the whole collected, with a grammar and lexicon, is by H. C. von der Gabelentz and J. Loebe (Ulfilas Vet. et N. Testamenti versionis Gothicae fragmenta quae supersunt, Leipsic, 1836-46, viz. vol. i. Text, 1836; Pars ii. Glossarium, 1843; Pars ii. Grammatik, 1846), and of the Codex Argenteus singly that of And. Uppstrom (with a good facsimile), Upsal, 1854. This scholar published separately in 1857 ten leaves of the manuscript which had been stolen between 1821 and 1834, and were restored through him by the penitent thief on his death-bed. The Gothic Gospels, however, had been cited as early as 1675 in Fell's N. T., and more fully in Mill's, through Francis Junius' edition (with Marshall's critical notes), which was printed at Dort in 1665, from Derrer's accurate [pg 148] transcript of the Upsal manuscript, made in or about 1655, when it was in Isaac Vossius' possession. Other editions of the Codex Argenteus were published by G. Stiernhielm in 1671 for the College of Antiquaries at Stockholm; by E. Lye at the Clarendon Press in 1750 from the revision of Eric Benzel, Archbishop of Upsal; and (with the addition of the fragments in the Codex Carolinus) by Jo. Ihre in 1763, and by J. C. Zahn in 1805. And also the Gothic and Anglo-Saxon Gospels in parallel columns with the Versions of Wycliffe and Tyndale, London, 1865, and Ulfila, oder die Gotische Bibel (N. T.), E. Bernhardt, Halle, 1875, and St. Mark with a grammatical commentary, R. Müller and H. Hoeppe, 1881, and Skeat, Gospel of St. Mark in Gothic, Clarendon Press, 1882.