The Last Twelve Verses of the Gospel According to S. Mark

by John William Burgon

A Greek copy of the Gospels, therefore, having its margin furnished with the Eusebian Sectional notation, may be considered to correspond generally with an English copy merely divided into Chapters and Verses. The addition of the Eusebian Canons at the beginning, with numerical references thereto inserted in the margin throughout, does but superadd something analogous to the convenience of our Marginal References,—and may just as reasonably (or just as unreasonably) be dispensed with.

I think it not improbable, in fact, that in the preparation of a Codex, it will have been sometimes judged commercially [pg 304] expedient to leave its purchaser to decide whether he would or would not submit to the additional expense (which in the case of illuminated MSS. must have been very considerable) of having the Eusebian Tables inserted at the commencement of his Book,[553]—without which the References thereto would confessedly have been of no manner of avail. In this way it will have come to pass, (as Mr. Scrivener points out,) that “not a few ancient MSS. contain the Sections but omit the Canons.” Whether, however, the omission of References to the Canons in Copies which retain in the margin the sectional numbers, is to be explained in this way, or not,—Ammonius, at all events, will have had no more to do with either the one or the other, than with our modern division into Chapters and Verses. It is, in short, nothing else but a “vulgar error” to designate the Eusebian Sections as the “Sections of Ammonius.” The expression cannot be too soon banished from our critical terminology. Whether banished or retained, to reason about the lost work of Ammonius from the Sections of Eusebius (as Tischendorf and the rest habitually do) is an offence against historical Truth which no one who values his critical reputation will probably hereafter venture to commit.

IV. This subject may not be dismissed until a circumstance of considerable interest has been explained which has already attracted some notice, but which evidently is not yet understood by Biblical Critics.[554]

As already remarked, the necessity of resorting to the Eusebian Tables of Canons in order to make any use of a marginal reference, is a tedious and a cumbersome process; for which, men must have early sought to devise a remedy. They were not slow in perceiving that a far simpler expedient would be to note at the foot of every page of a Gospel the numbers of the Sections of that Gospel contained in extenso on the same page; and, parallel with those numbers, to exhibit the numbers of the corresponding Sections in the [pg 305] other Gospels. Many Codices, furnished with such an apparatus at the foot of the page, are known to exist.[555] For instance, in Cod. 262 (= Reg. 53, at Paris), which is written in double columns, at foot of the first page (fol. 111) of S. Mark, is found as follows:—

The meaning of this, every one will see who,—(remembering what is signified by the monograms ΜΡ, ΛΟ, ΙΩ, ΜΘ,[556])—will turn successively to the IInd, the Ist, the VIth, and the Ist of the Eusebian Canons. Translated into expressions more familiar to English readers, it evidently amounts to this: that we are referred,

(§ 1) From S. Mark i. 1, 2,—to S. Matth. xi. 10: S. Luke vii. 27.
(§ 2) From S. Mark i. 3,—to S. Matth. iii. 3: S. Luke iii. 3-6.
(§ 3) From S. Mark i. 4, 5, 6,—to S. Matth. iii. 4-6.
(§ 4) From S. Mark i. 7, 8,—to S. Matth. iii. 11: S. Luke iii. 16: S. John i. 15, 26-27, 30-1: iii. 28.

(I venture to add that any one who will compare the above with the margin of S. Mark's Gospel in a common English “reference Bible,” will obtain a very fair notion of the convenience, and of the inconveniences of the Eusebian system. But to proceed with our remarks on the apparatus at the foot of Cod. 262.)

The owner of such a MS. was able to refer to parallel passages, (as above,) by merely turning over the pages of his book. E.g. The parallel places to S. Mark's § 1 (Α) being § 70 of [pg 306] S. Luke (Ο) and § 103 of S. Matthew (ΡΓ),—it was just as easy for him to find those two places as it is for us to turn to S. Luke vii. 27 and S. Matth. xi. 10: perhaps easier.

V. I suspect that this peculiar method of exhibiting the Eusebian references (Canons as well as Sections) at a glance, was derived to the Greek Church from the Syrian Christians. What is certain, a precisely similar expedient for enabling readers to discover Parallel Passages prevails extensively in the oldest Syriac Evangelia extant. There are in the British Museum about twelve Syriac Evangelia furnished with such an apparatus of reference;[557] of which a specimen is subjoined,—derived however (because it was near at hand) from a MS. in the Bodleian,[558] of the viith or viiith century.