The Third-most-important Manuscript in the Vatican Library

          At the Vatican Library, a project is underway to digitize thousands of Greek manuscripts.  The most important Biblical manuscript at the Vatican Libary – Codex Vaticanus (B, 03), an incomplete uncial manuscript produced around 325 – is already online.  Papyrus 75 is also at the Vatican Library (although complete page-views are not yet available at the Vatican Library’s website).  The third-most important Greek manuscript housed at the Vatican Library is also online:   minuscule 157, listed in the library-catalog as MS Urbinate Gr. 2.  Let’s take a look at this very important Gospels-codex.  

Frontispiece of 157:
Chris blessing Byzantine
Emperor John II Comnenus
and his son Alexius.

          Codex 157 is a minuscule copy of the Gospels that was produced, according to a secondary note in the manuscript, in 1122.  Even if this note had not been included in the manuscript, an approximate production-date could be deduced from the full-page illustration that appears before the Gospels-text:  Jesus Christ is pictured on His heavenly throne, accompanied by personifications of mercy and righteousness, with one hand on Emperor John II Comnenus (b. 1087, r. 1118-1143) and the other hand on Alexius, the son of John II Comnenus.   It is similar to a mosaic of Byzantine Emperor John Comnenus II and Empress Irene (previously a Hungarian princess) in Hagia Sophia (in Istanbul); the inscription that accompanies John Comnenus II in the illustration in minuscule 157 is the same as the one that accompanies him in the mosaic in Hagia Sophia.        

          In 1912-1913, in the Journal of Theological Studies, the researcher H. C. Hoskier released a full collation of 157 which is available at Archive.org.  Hoskier took note of the interesting text of this manuscript, particularly in the Gospel of Luke and the Gospel of John.  He also reported some of its history:  for some time it was housed at Urbino (the birthplace of the artist Raphael) in Italy, and eventually came into the possession of Clement VII (1523-1534).  It has been in the Vatican Library since that time.  Reuben Swanson cited 157 exhaustively in the Gospels-volumes of his Greek New Testament Manuscripts book-series.  

          In this manuscript, the portraits of the evangelists are combined with elaborate headpieces, heavily embellished with gold, that precede the beginning of each Gospel.  Each Gospel is accompanied by a full-page illustration closely resembling an icon:  Christ’s birth, Christ’s baptism, the birth of John the Baptist, and Christ’s resurrection are all depicted.

          Marginalia is plentiful:  chapter-numbers and chapter-titles are provided at the tops of pages, and chapter-numbers also appear in the side-margins.  Section-numbers (but not canon-numbers) are in the side-margins.  The names of various feast-days and some calendar-days also accompany the passage assigned to them in the lectionary.  In addition, the text is peppered with gold dots, apparently intended to indicate where one should pause when reading aloud.  

          While the artistic and calligraphical skills displayed in 157 are impressive, its chief value emanates from its text.  Hoskier noted that while 157 frequently corresponds to the Textus Receptus for large segments (sometimes for over 30 verses), it has a strong non-Byzantine element as well.  Hoskier listed hundreds of non-standard readings in 157, and noted many particularly interesting ones, including variants in Matthew 21:46, Mark 5:23, Luke 5:18, and John 12:20.  At the end of Mark, verses 9-20 are present – verse 9 begins on the same line in which verse 8 ends.  The story of the adulteress (John 7:53-8:11) is completely absent; John 8:12 follows 7:52 with no gap.  The copyist was a careful worker but nevertheless he made occasional mistakes, perhaps the worst of which is in John 14:6, where he omitted the clause, “and the truth.”  This mistake was never corrected, which suggests that 157 did not receive a lot of regular use.

          At the end of the Gospel of Matthew, 157 features the intriguing note known as the Jerusalem Colophon:  “The Gospel according to Matthew:  written and double-checked using the old copies in Jerusalem, stored on the holy mountain.”  This is blended with a note about the amount of text written by the copyist:  “2,484 sense-lines and three hundred and fifty-seven chapters.”  Colophons which follow the conclusions of Mark, Luke, and John also state that their text has been written and double-checked using the same copies – the “ancient copies at Jerusalem” mentioned in the colophon after the end of the Gospel of Matthew – before listing the number of sense-lines and chapters (or, technically, sections) in each Gospel.  
          Minuscule 157 is thus a member of an elite group of 37 manuscripts that contain this note, or similar notes.  Among the fellow-members of the group of manuscripts that contain the Jerusalem Colophon (in one form or another) are 039, 20, 164, 215, 300, 376, 565 (an important manuscript written on purple parchment), 686, 748, 829, 899, and 1071.  The relationship of these manuscripts to one another is not yet resolved, but it seems sufficiently clear that when a consensus of the members of this group is in agreement, it bear witness to a transmission-line that is more ancient and weightier than any single member of the group.  It may be worth mentioning that several members of this group share a similar note about John 7:53-8:11.  (See, for details, the excursus in Tommy Wasserman’s 2009 essay, The Greek New Testament Manuscripts in Sweden with an Excursus on the Jerusalem Colophon.)
          In the event that readers may wish to consult images of 157 directly, I have prepared the following index.  Verse-references indicate the passage where the first line of the page on the left is found.  (Please bear in mind that the digital images at the Vatican Library are under copyright.)

PREFATORY MATERIAL
Front Cover.
Latin text of Jerome’s Letter to Damasus (probably included as an explanation of the Eusebian Canons.)

Beginning of Ad Carpianus (within a quatrefoil border).

End of Ad Carpianus (cruciform) and first Canon-table.

Final Canon-table and beginning of chapter-list for Matthew:

12v/13r:  Kephalaia (chapter-list) for Matthew.

13v/14r:  End of kephalaia for Matthew.  Beginning of Chronikon, by Eusebius of Caesarea, written in red.

14v/15r:  End of Eusebius’ Chronicon; beginning of Hippolytus of Thebes’ Chronicle, extracted from Book 3 of his writings. 

15v/16r:  End of the extract from Hippolytus of Thebes.  Beginning of extracts from John Chrysostom’s Preface to the Gospel of Matthew (First Homily on Matthew). 

16v/17r:  

Continuation of the extracts from John Chrysostom’s First Homily on the Gospel according to Matthew.  

17v/18r:  Further extract from Chrysostom’s First Homily on Matthew.  (“For this reason, then, Matthew, writing to Hebrews, sought to show nothing more than that Jesus was from Abraham and David. . . .”).  Additional comment on the four Gospels, extracted from Origen, followed by a list of Greek rhetoricians and other writers, closing with a reference to Paul of Tarsus.

18v/19r:  Epigrams of the Gospel of Matthew, and an extract from Nicetas (?). 

19v:  Gold-background picture:  Christ Blessing John II Comnenus and Prince Alexius.

20v:  Pasted-down full-page icon-page:  the birth of Christ.  Combined scenes:  heavenly saints and angels look down upon Mary and the Christ-child; Shepherds visit; adoration of the magi.  Ox and donkey are peeking over the manger.  Mary is seated on a white couch with red and blue stripes.  Below:  a fourth scene – Joseph looks at two sheep while the midwives Salome and Zelemi bathe the Christ-child.

THE GOSPEL OF MATTHEW

Empress Irene (from a
mosaic at Hagia Sophia)

21r:  headpiece with portrait of Matthew, and the beginning of the text of the Gospel of Matthew below the headpiece-illustration.  Within a square blue floral border on gold ground, Matthew is seated on a throne-like chair, writing a scroll; writing-tools including a compass are on his desk.   The design of the initial B is a woman holding a branch; this woman is probably intended to represent Empress Irene.  A note written to the left of the initial in small red letters may identify this person as Irene but it is not easy to read, inasmuch as the entire page is pasted down and part of the note was cut away in production.

26v/27r:  Matthew 3:11.  

33v/34r:  Matthew 6:6.  The Lord’s Prayer begins on 33v, in line 9. Notice the unusual expansion in the doxology, on the last line of 33v and the first line of 34r.

34v/35r:  Matthew 6:19.

36v/37r:  Matthew 7:10.   

46v/47r:  Matthew 10:32. 

56v/57r:  Matthew 13:33.

66v/67r:  Matthew 16:28. 

76v/77r:  Matthew 20:25.

86v/87r:  Matthew  23:30.

96v/97r:  Matthew 26:34.

105v/106r:  Matthew 28:17.  The Gospel of Matthew concludes on 105v; the text is formatted in a vortex-pattern.  The final “Amen” (with the letters arranged N-W-E-S) is followed by the Jerusalem Colophon written in gold ink.

106v/107r:  conclusion of hypothesis of Mark on 106v; beginning of kephalaia-list on 107r.

THE GOSPEL OF MARK

109v/110r:  full-page illustration on 109v:  The Baptism.  On 110, an elaborate square headpiece with a portrait of Saint Mark in the center, writing his Gospel, fills the upper half of the page.  In the lower half of the page, the beginning of the Gospel of Mark has a large initial A, detailed in red and blue. 

116v/117r:  Mark 3:4.   

126v/127r:  Mark 6:17. 

146v/137r:  Mark 9:8.

146v/147r:  Mark 11:32. 

156v/157r:  Mark 14:43. 

161v/162r:  Mark 15:46.  On 162r, on line 12, Mark 16:8 ends with efobounto gar.  This is followed by an arch symbol (denoting the start of a lection), which is followed by the beginning of Mark 16:9 on the same line.  In the margin, a note identifies 16:9 as the beginning of the fourth Gospel-lection in the Heothinon-series (although it is the third such lection).  A section-number also identifies Mark 16:9 as the beginning of section #234.

162v/163r:  Mark 16:12.  The Gospel of Mark concludes on 163r, followed by the Jerusalem Colophon, followed by Epigrams of Saint Mark, followed by the beginning of the Hypothesis (Summary) of the Gospel of Luke.  

  

166v/167r:  Lines about Luke and his Gospel-account.  167r is blank.

THE GOSPEL OF LUKE

167v/168r:  167v is an icon-page, depicting the birth of the Prodromos (that is, the Forerunner, John the Baptist).  Elizabeth sits on a white bed with red and blue stripes.  The midwives Florus and Laurus accompany her, standing.  Below the main scenes is a scene with the infant being given a bath by the midwives.  On 168r, the entire page – headpiece and text – is pasted onto the main parchment.  An elaborate square headpiece fills the upper half of the page; a portrait of Luke is in its center on gold ground.  The Gospel of Luke begins with a large E. 

176v/177r:  Luke 2:39.  

186v.187r:  Luke 5:30.

196v/197r:  Luke 8:9.   

206v/207r:  Luke 10:3.

216v/217r:  Luke 12:27.

226v/227r:  Luke  15:24.  

236v/237r:  Luke 19:19.

246v/247r:  Luke 22:30.  On 247r, Luke 22:43 begins in line 17. 

256v/257r:  Luke 24:47.  The text of the Gospel of Luke ends near the bottom of 256v, followed by the Jerusalem Colophon.  On 257r, there are Epigrams on Saint Luke, in five lines, followed by “the end of the Gospel of Luke” (as if the Gospel ended there, instead of on the previous page), a decorative line, which is followed by the Preface to the Gospel of John.  The Jerusalem Colophon is written in heavier ink than the other text on the page.

259v/260r:  259v contains the kephalaia-list for the Gospel of John.  260r is blank.

THE GOSPEL OF JOHN 

260v/261r:  260v is an icon-page, depicting the Resurrection.  (The details of the picture are similar to the representation of the “Harrowing of Hell” in the Psalter of Queen Melisende.)  261r has an elaborately decorated square headpiece for the Gospel of John, filling the upper half of the page, with a picture of John dictating his Gospel to Prochorus in the center.  The text of the Gospel of John begins with an elaborately decorated large initial E.  The entire page containing the headpiece and the text is pasted onto the parchment. 

266v/267r:  John 2:25.
272v/273r:  John 4:50.  On line 3 of 273r, John 4:5 follows 4:3, without verses 3b and 4.

276v/277r:  John 6:5. 

284v/285r:  John 7:44.  In the second and third lines of 285r, John 7:52 is followed by 8:12 without the pericope adulterae.

286v/287r:  John 8:30.

296v/297r:  John 11:29.

304v/305r:  John 13:33.  On line 10 of 305r, the copyist skipped the words “and the truth” in John 14:6.     

305v/306r:  John 14:10.   

306v/307r:  John 14:24.   

316v/317r:  John 18:38.

324v/325r:  John 21:22.  The text of the Gospel of John ends on 324v.  Three crosses are below the final verse, and a single cross, centered, is below the three crosses.  325r contains the Jerusalem Colophon, and Epigrams for John the Evangelist and Theologian.  This is followed by a note written in a different color of ink. 

325v/326r:  the end of the note that beganon the previous page, followed by a colophon, followed by a benediction.  326r is blank.

          May this manuscript, prepared for the family of the Byzantine Emperor (perhaps on the beginning of Alexius’ reign as co-emperor), continue to bless the kingdom of God. 

Blood Moons, Signs of the End, and Two Small Textual Variants

          This coming weekend, a lunar eclipse will occur, bringing to an end (I hope) the speculation that a recent series of four lunar eclipses, of which this one will be the fourth, has a special significance as a sign of the end-times.  The view that these particular lunar eclipses may be portents of the end of the world was developed by Mark Biltz, who recently expressed his ideas in a book, Blood Moons: Decoding the Imminent Heavenly Signs.  Biltz’s theory was expanded and popularized by John Hagee, a preacher in Texas, in his book, Four Blood Moons: Something Is About To Change.  In my view, both Biltz (who seems to be affiliated with the highly problematic "Hebrew Roots Movement") and Hagee should apologize to their readers for severely overstating the importance of these lunar eclipses.  (For a lucid review of Hagee’s views about the “blood moons” see the brief two-part article prepared by Christian astrophysicist Hugh Ross.)

          There is little that textual criticism can offer to discourage poorly grounded theories about signs of the end-times – but little is more than nothing, so let’s take a look at two passages from two prophecies in the New Testament that involve both the moon and the end of the world:  Matthew 24 (paralleled in Mark 13 and Luke 21) and Revelation 6.  Both of these prophetic chapters involve scenes which bring to mind the wording of Joel 3:15:  “The sun and moon will grow dark, and the stars will diminish their brightness.”  And in their descriptions of signs of the end of the world, they both contain small textual variants.

          In Matthew 24:7, after famines are mentioned, almost all of the Greek manuscripts include the words “and pestilences,” or “and plagues.”  However, in most of the newer translations – the ESV, NIV and NLT – there is no reference to pestilences or plagues at all in Matthew 24:7.  The HCSB does not mention them in the text either, but a footnote says, “Other manuscripts add epidemics.”  This gives readers a very one-sided and incomplete impression of how strongly the Greek manuscript-evidence favors the inclusion of και λοιμοι (“and pestilences”).
          In the apparatus of the fourth edition of the UBS Greek New Testament, only five manuscripts are cited as support for the non-inclusion of λοιμοι:  Sinaiticus (À), Vaticanus (B), Bezae (D), Basiliensis (E), and the minuscule 892.  However, only two of those manuscripts (E and 892) have precisely the text that is in UBS4:  Bezae has a spelling-variation, Vaticanus has a spelling-variation, and Sinaiticus puts earthquakes before famines (besides having two spelling-variations).  Furthermore, in Codex E, the short text has been corrected; the words και λοιμοι are written in uncial-script in the margin, and a mark shows where they should be placed in the text (after λιμοι).

          As an alternative to the position that the exact form of the text of Matthew 24:7 is preserved in no uncials except E (in which the absent και λοιμοι is in the margin, apparently added by the copyist himself), and in no minuscules except 892, I propose that και λοιμοι is part of the original text, and that it was accidentally lost when an early copyist’s line of sight drifted from the final letters of λοιμοι to the final letters of λιμοι.  The similarity of the words λοιμοι and λιμοι and the recurrence of –αι at the end of εσονται and at the end of και in this verse also contributed to the omission.

          Besides exhibiting how the Alexandrian Text was shortened by early scribes (not, in this case, due to any mischievousness, but because of negligence), this little variant illustrates – contrary to the claims of some researchers – that the translators of the KJV paid close attention to the Greek text instead of just reproducing the work of Tyndale and other earlier translators.  

          In Tyndale’s 1534 English New Testament, this verse refers to “pestilence, honger and erth quakes.”  Likewise in the 1557 Geneva Bible, Jesus stated in Matthew 24:7, “There shal be “pestilence, honger, and earthquakes,” that is, λοιμοι και λιμοι και σεισμοι instead of λιμοι και λοιμοι και σεισμοι.  This word-order is supported by the Vulgate, and by Codex W (which was unknown to modern researchers until the early 1900’s) and by Codex L (which was cited in the notes of Stephanus’ 1550 edition of the Textus Receptus).  Erasmus' 1516 text read the Greek equivalent of "famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes."  So did the text compiled by Theodore Beza.  The King James Version’s translators made their English translation fit the Greek text of Matthew 24:7 precisely, adjusting the word-order and expressing the conjunctions. 

          So when looking for signs of the end, remember Jesus’ words of caution first:  “Take heed that no man deceive you.”  In and of themselves, the arrivals of false prophets and false teachers and false messiahs are nothing special.  In and of themselves, wars do not signal the end-times.  Nor do famines and pestilences and earthquakes in various places.  These things come and go.
          Now let’s look into Revelation 6:12, where John describes the vision of the sixth seal:  “I looked when he opened the sixth seal, and behold, there was a great earthquake, and the sun became black like sackcloth made of hair, and the whole moon became like blood.”
          When Erasmus initially compiled the book of Revelation, he had one manuscript, which had been entrusted to his temporary care by Johann Reuchlin, a fellow scholar (who was also the uncle of Philip Melanchthon, a very influential Reformer).  This manuscript used to be known as 1^r (not to be confused with 1, an important Gospels-manuscript).  For some time its location was unknown.  When it resurfaced in 1861, researcher Franz Delitzsch realized that it was the same manuscript that Erasmus had used.  As Erasmus had stated in his annotations on the text, this manuscript had undergone some damage, and for that reason, it was missing the last six verses of the final chapter.

          Reuchlin’s manuscript has been given a new identification-number:  2814.  It was produced in the 1100’s, and contains not only the Greek text of Revelation but also the commentary on Revelation written by Andrew of Caesarea (the Caesarea in Cappadocia, not the one in Israel) in the year 610.  Like 82 other Greek copies of Revelation, it contains not only the text of Revelation but also the text of Andrew of Caesarea’s commentary.  (Fifteen other manuscripts of Revelation, while lacking the full commentary, feature extracts from Andrew’s work.)

          In the Majority Text compiled by Hodges and Farstad, and in the Byzantine Text compiled by Robinson and Pierpont, the Greek word ολη (“whole”) follows the Greek word σεληνη (“moon”).  Apparently a copyist skipped this word when his line of sight drifted from the final letter of σεληνη to the final letter of ολη.  Not only does the majority-text of Revelation include the word ολη here, but so does Codex A, and so does the Nestle-Aland compilation.  If one considers this combination of testimony to be trustworthy, then one may conclude that the original text of Revelation 6:12 included a small emphasis – not just the moon turned to blood, but the whole moon – which was lacking in the Textus Receptus.  The effect of this difference is, however, extremely small. 

          Those wishing to investigate such details further may consult Herman Hoskier’s 1929 book Concerning the Text of the Apocalypse, in which he collated every Greek manuscript of Revelation that was known to him, and also separated the manuscripts into groups and sub-groups according to shared distinctive readings.   

(It should be noted, as a point of caution, that on page XXXVIII of his introduction, Hoskier stated that “for what it may be worth,” he had included in the apparatus a reading (in Rev. 21:4) that was claimed to have been obtained via a séance-like spirit-channeling-session in 1856.  The basis for this appears to have been nothing more than a book written by Baron Guldenstubbe in French in 1857.  I suspect that Hoskier regarded this as merely a curiosity, but included it in his apparatus in order to maintain with absolute veracity his claim to have collated every Greek manuscript that testified about the text of Revelation.)

          One additional little thought occurs to me when thinking about eclipses.  The technical term for what happens when the sun, earth, and moon align (either in a solar eclipse, or in a lunar eclipse) is “syzygy,” which has a Greek root.  A similar word occurs in Philippians 4:3, where Paul refers to his true “yoke-fellow” – Συζυγε.  Some commentators (and the creators of a few English paraphrases) have theorized that this might not be an adjective, but a proper name, Syzygus (otherwise unknown).  May we all be yoke-fellows of one another, and of Christ – ready to serve Him, and ready to meet Him, as He said in Matthew 24:44:  “Therefore you also be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.”