BY BRUCE M. METZGER
The Scheide Library has recently
acquired an early Coptic manuscript containing the complete text of the Gospel
according to Matthew in the Middle Egyptian dialect. Dated by palaeographers to
the fourth or fifth century (see below for de tails), it is one of the four
oldest copies of the entire text of Matthew. Of the other three, codex
Vaticanus and codex Sinaiticus belong to the fourth century, and codex
Washingtonianus is dated to the fourth or fifth century (codices Alexandrinus
and Ephraemi of the fifth century are incomplete in Matthew, and the several
Greek and Coptic papyri that antedate the sixth century preserve only scraps of
the text of Matthew). The Scheide manu script likewise contains the text, in
Greek and in Coptic, of the Greater Doxology or Gloria in excelsis Deo
("Angelic Hymn"). The oldest manuscript evidence hitherto known of
the Greek text of the Gloria is found in the Old Testament volume of codex
Alexandrinus (fol. 569). The oldest evidence hitherto known of the Gloria in
Coptic is the Sahidic text in a tenth-century parchment leaf in Berlin.
Furthermore, the Scheide Matthew is one of the oldest manuscripts which
preserve their original binding. It can be appreciated, therefore, that in
several respects the Scheide manuscript is of more than ordinary importance.
The Scheide Matthew contains 238
leaves of good (but not first quality) parchment, each measuring about 12.5 by
10.5 cm. (about 5 by 4 1/8 in.). There are 30 quires; 1-29 have each eight
leaves, while quire 30 has 6 leaves. The first two leaves at the beginning of
the codex are blank, as are the last three at the end. Here and there the edges
of the leaves have been eaten by insects, but none of the text has been
damaged. The manuscript is written in a single column throughout, with 14 lines
per page for the Gospel (pages 1-455) and 13 lines per page for the Greater
Doxology in Greek and Coptic (pages 1-11, according to another series of pagination
at the end of the manuscript).
The original binding of the
manuscript, as was mentioned above, has been preserved (see Plate 4). This is
made of wooden boards, bevelled at the edges, with four holes along the binding
edge of each board, two holes at the top edge of each board, and three holes
along the front edge of the top board. Portions of leather thongs remain in
most of the holes, but the back strip, presumably made also of leather, is
gone. Small portions of the leather strips to which the signatures were sewn
are still present. Among other specimens of ancient bindings, besides the
Scheide Matthew, mention may be made of two Coptic manuscripts in the Chester
Beatty collection. These codices, which date from the late sixth century and
were preserved in an earthenware jar found at a site near Sakkara, Egypt, have
wooden boards and stamped leather backs. Codex A contains the text of the
Pauline Epistles and the Gospel of John, and codex B contains the Acts of the
Apostles and the Gospel of John.1 Another Coptic codex, the Glazier manuscript
of Acts of about the same age as the Scheide Gospel of Matthew, is bound in
leather and boards that remain in a good state of preservation.2 Still other
Coptic manuscripts with leather bindings include the fourth century copy of
Deuteronomy, Jonah, and Acts, now in the British Museum (Or. 7594), the fourth
century copy of I Clement (Berlin Or. fol. 3065), and the fourth or fifth
century Martyrdom of St. Peter and St. Paul, now in the Moscow Museum of Fine
Arts.
The presence of an occasional
hole in the parchment (which the scribe avoided as he wrote) and the small size
of the page suggest that the Scheide Matthew was not written for liturgical
purposes, but for private use. At the same time, the general appearance of the
codex gives the impression that it was produced by a professional scribe
trained in making fine copies of literary works for the book trade.
The handwriting of the codex is
decidedly a "book hand," the letters being square capitals with
relatively heavy vertical lines and much thinner horizontal and transverse
lines. The style re minds one of the uncial script of the great vellum biblical
codices of the fourth and fifth centuries (codex Vaticanus, codex Sinaiti cus,
codex Alexandrinus). The characters are written with some degree of regularity
and even a touch of ornamentation. The latter appears in the delta, epsilon,
and particularly the tau, in which the decorative stroke at the left end of the
crossbar is markedly longer and more emphatic than that on the right. The
scribe has often compressed the script at the end of a line in order to avoid
breaking a word. Beginnings of paragraphs are indicated in the manuscript by a
slight projection of the first letter into the left margin, but without any
enlargement of the letter into an "initial." In this respect it
resembles codices Vaticanus and Sinaiticus of the fourth century, whereas codex
Alexandrinus of the fifth century has enlarged initials. Page and quire
numerals follow the regular Greek system, namely letters of the Greek alphabet
identified as numerals by a supra line stroke.
Photographs of the script of the
codex have been examined by several palaeographers. In the opinion of T. C.
Skeat the codex be longs to the fifth century, "since the script in
general looks rather noticeably later than that of the codex Sinaiticus, which
itself must have been written circ. 340" (letter, dated 21 July 1961, to
Hans P. Kraus, the well known rare book dealer of New York City, who was the
owner of the manuscript at that time). According to C. H. Roberts, while
"a date in the late fourth century could not be excluded," one
slightly later is probably to be preferred, for "in some respects the hand
is like that of the Freer Joshua in Washington (e.g. theta, omikron, and tau),
but the latter has the short upsilon not found in this codex, the hand of which
in general is less heavy, and certainly earlier. The Joshua is generally
assigned to the sixth century" (letter, dated 10 August 1961, to H. P.
Kraus). Among Coptic scholars who have examined photographs of the manuscript,
Theodore C. Petersen and Elinor E. Husselman date it to the fourth century,
while Julius Assfalg, though not eliminating the possibility of the end of the
fourth century, prefers as more probable the beginning of the fifth century.
The problem of dating Coptic
manuscripts arises from the paucity of dated (or indisputably datable)
specimens surviving from the earlier centuries. There is also the methodological
question how far it is legitimate to judge Coptic hands in terms of the
development of Greek uncial script. According to the opinion of the late Walter
Till, there has been a tendency among Greek palaeographers to judge Coptic
manuscripts to be somewhat earlier than they really are. In Till's experience,
however, Coptic manuscripts that exhibit the same palaeographic characteristics
as Greek manuscripts appear to be of a slightly later date than the Greek ones.
Especially is this true in the case of "sacred books," for which the
Coptic scribe often had a tendency to imitate an earlier form of script.4 On
the basis of these considerations, therefore, it appears that the Scheide codex
should be assigned to about the fifth century. The text of the Gospel is
divided into 170 sections; these remind one of the 170 sections in codex
Vaticanus, without however corresponding to those divisions. The beginning of
the several sections is designated by a paragraph mark (coronis5), drawn in
different forms with red ink. Most are quite simple pen flourishes; others are
more elaborate. There are nine instances of the Christus-monogram, and six
instances of the Egyptian crux ansata ("cross with handle"), an
adaptation of the ancient Egyptian ankh hieroglyph. The artistic motif of the
crux ansata came into Christian use late in the fourth century and is seen
frequently thereafter in Coptic textiles and stone sculpture.
At the close of the text of the
Gospel (p. 455) stands a colophon, with rows of leaf-ornament in red and black
running across the page. Between the rows is the title of the work, "The
Gospel Ac cording to Matthew. In Peace," followed by the numeral 1518.7 In
this connection, C. H. Roberts remarks:
"This numeral certainly gives the total of 'standard lines' for
the whole Gospel. A standard line was commonly estimated at 16 (occasionally at
15 or 18) syllables, and represented the basis on which the scribe was paid for
his work. The Chester Beatty codex of the four Gospels and Acts consists of
approximately 8580 lines, so that a standard length of this figure for one
Gospel is not surprising" (letter, dated 10 August 1961, to H. P.
Kraus).
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