Chapter XIII. Evangelistaries, Or Manuscript Service-Books Of The Gospels.

However grievously the great mass of cursive manuscripts of the New Testament has been neglected by Biblical critics, the Lectionaries of the Greek Church, partly for causes previously stated, have received even less attention at their hands. Yet no sound reason can be alleged for regarding the testimony of these Service-books as of slighter value than that of other witnesses of the same date and character. The necessary changes interpolated in the text at the commencement and sometimes at the end of lessons are so simple and obvious that the least experienced student can make allowance for them[282]: and if the same passage is often given in a different form when repeated in the same Lectionary, although the fact ought to be recorded and borne in mind, this occasional inconsistency must no more militate against the reception of the general evidence of the copy that exhibits it, than it excludes from our roll of critical authorities the works of Origen and other Fathers, in which the selfsame variation is even more the rule than the exception. Dividing, therefore, the Lectionaries that have been hitherto catalogued (which form indeed but a small portion of those known to exist in Eastern monasteries and Western libraries) into Evangelistaria, or Evangeliaria, containing extracts from the Gospels, and Praxapostoli or Apostoli comprising extracts from the Acts and Epistles; we purpose to mark with an asterisk the few that have been really collated, including them in the same list with the majority which have been examined superficially, or not at all. Uncial copies (some as late as the eleventh [pg 328] century) will be distinguished by [+]. The uncial codices of the Gospels amount to one hundred and six, those of the Acts and Epistles only to seven or eight, but probably to more in either case, since all is not known about some of the Codd. recorded here. Lectionaries are usually (yet see below, Evst. 111, 142, 178, 244, 249, 255, 256, 262, 266, 268, 275, Apost. 52, 69) written with two columns on a page, like the Codex Alexandrinus, FGI (1-6, 7) LMNbPQRTUXΘdΛ, 8, 184, 207, 360, 418, 422, 463, 509 of the Gospels, and Cod. M of St. Paul's Epistles.

[+]1. Par. Nat. Gr. 278 [x ? Omont xiv], 11-7/8 × 9-½, Unc., ff. 265, 2 cols., mut. (Wetstein, Scholz).