iv. From the above it follows, (1) That while Cod. א proves the absence from its exemplar of certain passages, its margin proves the presence of some of them in a contemporaneous exemplar; (2) that while on the one hand the Eusebian numbers, coeval with the text, show that the MS. cannot be dated before the time of Eusebius, on the other hand the form of the text, inasmuch as it is not arranged so as to suit them, and as it differs from the text implied in them, marks for it a date little, if at all, after his time—certainly many years earlier than A.
v. As regards the omission of the verses of St. Mark xvi. 9-20, it is not correct to assert that Cod. א betrays no sign of consciousness of their existence. For the last line of ver. 8, containing only the letters τογαρ, has the rest of the space (more than half the width of the column) filled up with a minute and elaborate “arabesque” executed with the pen in ink and vermilion, nothing like which occurs anywhere else in the whole MS. (O. T. or N. T.), such spaces being elsewhere invariably left blank. By this careful filling up of the blank, the scribe (who here is the diorthota “D”), distinctly shows that the omission is not a case of “non-interpolation,” but of deliberate excision. John Gwynn, May 21, 1883.
His reasons for regarding the Sinaitic manuscript as the younger (see p. [89], note 2) are valid enough so far as they go (Praef. p. vi): its initial letters stand out more from the line of the writing; abridgements of words are fewer and less simple; it contains the Ammonian sections and Eusebian canons instead of the antiquated divisions of its rival, and the text is broken up into smaller paragraphs. Tregelles, who had seen both copies, used to plead the fresher appearance of the Sinaitic, contrasted with the worn look of the Vatican MS.; but then its extensive hiatus proves that the latter had been less carefully preserved.
Eusebius sent to Constantine's new city (Euseb. Vit. Const. Lib. iv) πεντήκοντα σωμάτια ἐν διφθέραις (c. 36) ... ἐν πολυτελῶς ἠσκημένοις τεύχεσι τρισσὰ καὶ τετρασσά (c. 37): on which last words Valesius notes, “Codices enim membranacei ferè per quaterniones digerebantur, hoc est quatuor folia simul compacta, ut terniones tria sunt folia simul compacta. Et quaterniones quidem sedecim habebant paginas, terniones vero duodenas.” But now that we have come to know that Cod. B is arranged in quires of five sheets (see p. [105]), that manuscript will hardly answer to the description τρισσὰ καὶ τετρασσά (see p. [27], note 1) as Cod. א does. Indeed Canon Cook (Revised Version, &c., p. 162) objects to Valesius' explanation altogether, on the ground that his sense would rather require τριπλόα καὶ τετραπλόα, and that the rare words τρισσά (“three by three”) and τετρασσά (“four by four”) exactly describe the arrangement of three columns on a page in Cod. B, and four on a page in Cod. א. The Canon has since observed that the same view is maintained by O. von Gebhardt (“Bibel-text” in Herzog's Real-Encyklopädie, Leipsic 1878, second edition). On the other hand Archdeacon Palmer, in an obliging communication made to me, comparing the words πεντήκοντα σωμάτια ἐν διφθέραις ἐγκατασκεύοις (c. 36) with ἐν πολυτελῶς ἠσκημένοις τεύχεσιν τρισσὰ καὶ τετρασσὰ διαπεμψάντων ἡμῶν, and interpreting Eusebius' compliance (c. 37) by means of Constantine's directions (c. 36), is inclined to refer τρισσὰ καὶ τετρασσά to σωμάτια, as if it were “we sent abroad the collections [of writings] in richly adorned cases, three or four in a case.” It will probably be thought that the expression is on the whole too obscure to be depended on for any controversial purposes. It is safer to argue that if the sections and canons extant in Cod. א be by a contemporary hand (see p. [93], and Dean Gwynn's Memoranda in our Addenda for that page), that circumstance, the great antiquity of the manuscript considered, will confirm the probability of Eusebius' connexion with it. Eusebius agrees also with א in omitting ἡ πύλη, Matt. vii. 13, and knew of copies, not however the best or with his approval, which inserted ἡσαΐου before τοῦ προφήτου in Matt. xiii. 35: א being the only uncial which exhibits that reading. So again Eusebius after Origen maintains the impossible number ἑκατὸν ἑξήκοντα of א and a few others in Luke xxiv. 13. Dr. C. R. Gregory, Prolegomena, pp. 347, 348, inclines to the belief that B and א were among the fifty MSS. sent by Eusebius to Constantino about a.d. 331-2. Canon Cook's entire argument (Revised Version of the First Three Gospels (1882), pp. 160-165) should be consulted.
By John O'Donovan, Editor of Irish Annals. I have been favoured with corrections by the late Dr. Todd, of Trinity College, Dublin, and recently by the Rev. Robert King of Ballymena, whose version I have ventured to adopt.
Téicht do róim [téicht do róim]: To come to Rome, to come to Rome,
Mór saido becic torbai: Much of trouble, little of profit,
Inrí chondaigi hifoss: The thing thou seekest here,
Manimbera latt ni fog bai: If thou bring not with thee, thou findest not.
Mór báis mór baile: Great folly, great madness,
Mór coll ceille mór mire: Great ruin of sense, great insanity,
Olais airchenn teicht dóecaib: Since thou hast set out for death,
Beith fó étoil maic Maire.: That thou shouldest be in disobedience to the Son of Mary.
The second stanza intimates that as the pilgrimage to Rome is at the risk of life, it is folly not to be at peace with Christ before we set out. The opening words “To come to Rome” imply that the verses were written there by some disappointed pilgrim. Since the handwriting resembles that of the interlinear Latin, Mr. King suggests that both may have been the work of the Scottish Bishop Marcus, or of his nephew Moengal (Rettig, Cod. Δ, Prolegomena, p. xx), who called at St. Gall on their return from Rome, whence Marcus went homewards, leaving his books and Moengal behind him.
(Wetstein.) The Velesian readings. The Jesuit de la Cerda in his “Adversaria Sacra,” cap. xci (Lyons, 1626), a collection of various readings, written in vermilion in the margin of a Greek Testament (which from its misprint in 1 Pet. iii. 11 we know to be R. Stephen's of 1550) by Petro Faxardo, Marquis of Velez, a Spaniard, who had taken them from sixteen manuscripts, eight of which were in the king's library, in the Escurial. It is never stated what codices or how many support each variation. De la Cerda had received the readings from Mariana, the great Jesuit historian of Spain, then lately dead, and appears to have inadvertently added to Mariana's account of their origin, that the sixteen manuscripts were in Greek. These Velesian readings, though suspected from the first even by Mariana by reason of their strange resemblance to the Latin Vulgate and the manuscripts of the Old Latin, were repeated as critical authorities in Walton's Polyglott, 1657, and (contrary to his own better judgement) were retained by Mill in 1707. Wetstein, however (N. T. Proleg. vol. i. pp. 59-61), and after him Michaelis and Bp. Marsh, have abundantly proved that the various readings must have been collected by Velez from Latin manuscripts, and by him translated into Greek, very foolishly perhaps, but not of necessity with a fraudulent design. Certainly, any little weight the Velesian readings may have, must be referred to the Latin, not to the Greek text. Among the various proofs of their Latin origin urged by Wetstein and others, the following establish the fact beyond the possibility of doubt:
(For each of these, there is the reference, the Greek Text, the Vulgate Text, the Vulgate various reading, and the Velesian reading.)