C or 04 in the Gregory-Aland list.
Originally copied c. 450 CE. Overwritten in the 12th century.
Palimpsest: Greek biblical text beneath Syriac sermons.
Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris (Grec 9).
The upper layer of Ephrem's sermons was written at right angles over the partly erased Greek biblical text.
I. What Is a Palimpsest?
A palimpsest is a manuscript whose original writing has been scraped or washed away so the parchment can be reused. The word comes from Greek palímpsēstos, "scraped again." In an age when parchment was costly, recycling old books was an economic necessity, even when the underlying text was sacred. Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus is the most famous Greek Bible palimpsest: a fifth-century Greek codex of the Bible that was partly erased in the twelfth century to receive a Latin translation of Ephrem the Syrian's Syriac sermons.
Not every biblical page was obliterated. Some leaves escaped reuse. On others the original ink survived in the parchment fibers. Modern scholars recover these lower texts with ultraviolet photography, multispectral imaging, and chemical reagents. The discipline requires patience, because the upper text and the lower text were written at right angles to one another, turning each page into a puzzle of two scripts and two languages.
"The importance of Codex Ephraemi lies in the fact that it is one of the four great uncials of the Greek Bible.", Bruce M. Metzger, The Text of the Greek Bible
II. History of the Manuscript
The Greek codex was probably copied in Egypt during the middle of the fifth century. Its original scope was large: the surviving portions contain parts of both the Old and Greek Bibles. In the twelfth century, perhaps in a Frankish Greek or Italian monastery, the book was dismantled. The leaves were washed, cut, and stacked so that new writing could run perpendicular to the old. A Latin version of thirty-eight sermons attributed to Ephrem the Syrian was then copied onto the prepared sheets.
By the sixteenth century the volume had reached France, where it entered the library of Catherine de' Medici. In 1834 the biblical scholar Constantin von Tischendorf, already famous for his work on Codex Sinaiticus, recognized traces of the older Greek text. Between 1834 and 1845 he labored to decipher every recoverable letter, publishing the Greek Bible portion in 1843 and the Hebrew Bible in 1845. His achievement is all the more impressive because the upper text of Ephrem had to be read through, around, and sometimes beneath the biblical lines.
III. Contents and Extent
Codex C survives as a collection of 145 leaves. Roughly one-third of the Greek Bible is preserved, including portions of every book except 2 Thessalonians and 2 John. The Hebrew Bible portion is more fragmentary but includes parts of Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, Wisdom, Sirach, and the prophets. Because the leaves were reused haphazardly, the surviving sequence is not continuous. Scholars must reconstruct the original order from the physical evidence of the parchment and the biblical text itself.
| Testament | Books Extant | Condition |
|---|---|---|
| Hebrew Bible | Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song, Wisdom, Sirach, Prophets | Fragmentary |
| Greek Bible | All books except 2 Thessalonians and 2 John | About one-third preserved |
| Upper text | Latin translation of Ephrem's Syriac sermons | Complete enough to identify |
IV. Textual Character and Value
The Greek Bible text of Ephraemi is predominantly Alexandrian, though with a noticeable mixture of Byzantine readings. In the Gospels it often agrees with Codex Vaticanus and the early papyri. In the Pauline letters it supports the shorter, harder readings prized by modern critics. This mixed profile confirms that the Alexandrian text-type was not a uniform stream but a family of related texts circulating in Egypt and beyond.
Because the manuscript was reused so early, its witness is independent of the great medieval Byzantine majority. Every recovered line therefore carries weight. As Philip W. Comfort notes in his surveys of early manuscripts, Codex C is a reminder that the ancient congregation sometimes treated its own biblical books as reusable material, yet providence preserved enough of the lower text to keep the witness alive for modern scholarship.
Ephraemi Rescriptus is valuable twice over. As a palimpsest, it illustrates medieval book production and the economic pressures that shaped libraries. As a biblical codex, it preserves a fifth-century Alexandrian text that would otherwise have been lost. Its survival is an argument for both human carelessness and divine preservation.
V. Significance and Modern Access
Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus holds a secure place among the four great uncial codices of the Greek Bible, alongside Sinaiticus, Vaticanus, and Alexandrinus. Its palimpsest condition makes it unique. No other major Greek Bible codex has been so thoroughly transformed and then recovered. The manuscript is now BnF Grec 9 in the Bibliothèque nationale de France, and digitized images are accessible through Gallica.