Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus

Introduction

Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus is a fifth-century manuscript of the Greek Bible that survives only because its parchment was reused. In the twelfth century its leaves were washed or scraped, and a new text was written over the old one: a Greek translation of treatises by Ephrem the Syrian, the fourth-century poet and teacher of Nisibis and Edessa. The biblical text beneath can still be read, though with great difficulty. A manuscript reused in this way is called a palimpsest, and the Latin word rescriptus, "written over," in the name of the codex refers to this reuse.¹

The codex is kept in the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris, where it is catalogued as Grec 9. In lists of New Testament manuscripts it is designated by the letter C or the number 04. It is one of the four great uncial codices of the Greek Bible, with Codex Sinaiticus, Codex Vaticanus and Codex Alexandrinus.²

Only part of the original Bible survives. There are 209 leaves: 64 from the Old Testament, chiefly the poetic and wisdom books, and 145 from the New Testament, with parts of every book except 2 Thessalonians and 2 John. The leaves are now out of their original order, because the scribe who reused them arranged them to suit the new text.³

This essay describes palimpsests and how they were made, the original Bible and its scribes, the reuse of the manuscript, its history in Florence and Paris, the efforts of scholars to read the lower text, from the first observations of the late seventeenth century to the chemical treatment of 1834 and the decipherment by Constantin von Tischendorf, and the character and value of its text. The history of the biblical canon and of textual criticism is treated on separate pages.

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Chapter 1. What Is a Palimpsest?

The word palimpsest comes from the Greek palímpsēstos, "scraped again." It refers to a writing surface from which an earlier text has been removed so that it can be used again. In antiquity the word was used of wax tablets and papyrus as well as parchment. In modern usage it usually refers to a parchment manuscript with a lower text partly erased and an upper text written over it.¹

Why parchment was reused

Parchment was expensive. It was made from the skins of calves, sheep or goats, which were soaked in lime, scraped, stretched and dried. A large Bible required the skins of many animals. When a manuscript was damaged, incomplete, or written in a language or script that was no longer read, its leaves could be reused. Monasteries and scribes reused old books for new texts, especially in times when new parchment was scarce.²

How the old text was removed

The usual method was to wash the leaves with water, milk or a mild acid to loosen the ink, and then to scrape the surface with a pumice stone or a knife. The leaves were then dried and prepared for the new text. Often they were cut down or folded differently, so that the new book had a different format from the old. Because the ink of the old text had penetrated the parchment, faint traces usually remained.³

The recovery of lower texts

Scholars have long tried to read the lower texts of palimpsests. In the nineteenth century chemical reagents were used to darken the traces of the old ink, often with damaging results. In the twentieth century ultraviolet light and photography were used. Today, multispectral imaging, which photographs the leaves under different wavelengths of light and combines the images by computer, can recover texts that were invisible to earlier readers.⁴

Famous palimpsests

Codex Ephraemi is one of many palimpsests that contain important texts. Others include the Archimedes Palimpsest, which preserved unknown works of the Greek mathematician beneath a prayer book, the Codex Zacynthius, a Gospel of Luke with commentary beneath a lectionary, and the Sinai palimpsests of the Syriac Gospels. The Cairo Genizah has also yielded Hebrew and Greek palimpsests.⁵

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Chapter 2. Ink, Parchment and the Survival of Traces

The survival of the biblical text beneath the treatises of Ephrem depends on the chemistry of ancient ink and parchment.¹

Iron gall ink

Most Greek manuscripts of late antiquity were written in iron gall ink. This ink was made from oak galls, which contain tannic and gallic acids, mixed with iron sulphate and a binder such as gum arabic. When applied to parchment, the ink reacts with the air and darkens. It also bites into the surface of the parchment. Even when the visible ink is washed or scraped away, traces of iron remain in the parchment and can still be detected.²

The parchment

Parchment is made from animal skin that has been soaked, scraped and dried under tension. It has two sides with different textures, the hair side and the flesh side. Ink adheres differently to the two sides, and the lower text of a palimpsest is often easier to read on one side than the other. In Codex Ephraemi, the condition of the lower text varies from leaf to leaf and from side to side.³

Why the lower text reappears

Over time, the traces of iron in the parchment may oxidize and become more visible. In many palimpsests, the lower text has become more legible over the centuries than it was when the leaves were first reused. This is why the lower text of Ephraemi was visible enough in the late seventeenth century to be noticed by Allix.⁴

Implications for decipherment

The chemistry of the ink explains both the success and the dangers of the nineteenth-century reagents. Chemicals that react with iron can darken the traces, making them visible, but they also react with the parchment and with the upper text, causing stains. Modern imaging detects the traces without chemical change.⁵

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Chapter 3. Date and Origin of the Bible

The original Bible was written in the fifth century. Its script is a biblical majuscule of a later type than that of Vaticanus and Sinaiticus, similar in date to Alexandrinus or slightly later. Most scholars place it in the middle of the century, about 450.¹

Place of origin

The place of origin is unknown. Egypt has been suggested because of similarities with Alexandrinus and because of certain features of spelling. Tischendorf suggested Egypt, and many scholars have accepted this. Others have proposed Palestine or Constantinople. The text of the codex, which is mixed, does not decide the question.²

Format

The original Bible was a large book, probably containing the whole Old and New Testaments. Unlike the other three great uncials, it was written in a single column per page, with 40 to 46 lines in a column. The leaves originally measured about 33 by 27 centimetres. The full-width column suggests that it was designed for reading and study rather than to imitate the layout of a scroll.³

Estimated size

By calculating how much text fits on a page, scholars have estimated that the New Testament originally filled about 238 leaves, of which 145 survive. The Old Testament must have been much larger, but only 64 leaves survive, so most of it is lost. Whether the codex originally contained a complete Bible or whether the Old and New Testaments were in separate volumes is unknown.⁴

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Chapter 4. Reconstructing the Original Codex

One of the tasks of scholars studying Codex Ephraemi has been to reconstruct the Bible as it was before its reuse. This is a form of detective work, using the evidence of the surviving leaves to infer what is missing.¹

The evidence

The surviving leaves preserve several kinds of evidence. The text on each leaf can be identified and located in the Bible. Quire numbers, where they survive, show where each quire stood in the original book. The ruling and pricking of the leaves show how they were prepared. The hair and flesh sides of the parchment, which have different textures, show how the sheets were arranged within each quire.²

Method

By counting the letters on surviving pages, scholars can estimate how many letters fitted on a page. They can then calculate how many pages were needed for the missing text between two surviving leaves. If the calculation shows that the missing leaves would have had more or less text than the standard text of that passage, it may indicate that the codex had a shorter or longer text than usual, as in the case of the woman taken in adultery.³

Results

Reconstructions suggest that the New Testament originally filled about 238 leaves. The Old Testament was much larger, but because so few of its leaves survive, its original extent is uncertain. If the codex contained the whole Old Testament, it would have been a very large book of perhaps 900 leaves or more. Some scholars think it is more likely that the Old and New Testaments were in separate volumes.⁴

What is lost

The reconstruction also shows how much has been lost: about three-eighths of the New Testament and most of the Old Testament. The lost leaves were presumably discarded by the twelfth-century scribe, used for other books, or destroyed. No other leaves of the original Bible have been identified in any other library.⁵

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Chapter 5. How the Biblical Hand Is Dated

None of the four great uncials bears a date. Their ages have been estimated from the style of their handwriting, the arrangement of their pages and the features of their texts. Codex Ephraemi offers a useful example of how such estimates are made.¹

The biblical majuscule

The script of Ephraemi belongs to the style that palaeographers call the biblical majuscule. It is a formal, upright, rounded hand in which the letters are written separately, with strong contrast between thick and thin strokes. Guglielmo Cavallo, in his study of this style published in 1967, traced its development from the second century to its decline in the fifth and sixth centuries. Vaticanus and Sinaiticus represent the style at its height, while Ephraemi and Alexandrinus show features that palaeographers regard as later.²

Signs of a later date

In Ephraemi the contrast between thick and thin strokes is more pronounced than in Vaticanus, and some letters show small ornamental serifs. The first letter of a new section is enlarged and placed in the margin, a practice not found in Vaticanus or Sinaiticus but common in Alexandrinus and later manuscripts. The presence of the Eusebian apparatus and the lists of chapters in the Gospels also points to a date after the fourth century.³

Comparison with dated manuscripts

Because so few Greek biblical manuscripts of late antiquity carry dates, palaeographers compare the biblical hands with dated documents and with literary papyri whose dates can be fixed by other means. Such comparisons give only an approximate date, often within a range of fifty years or more. The usual dating of Ephraemi to the middle of the fifth century reflects a broad consensus rather than a precise determination.⁴

Limits of the method

Palaeographical dating depends on the assumption that styles changed in a regular way over time. In practice, scribes could imitate older styles, and different centres developed at different rates. For these reasons, dates assigned on palaeographical grounds should be treated as estimates, and they are occasionally revised in the light of new evidence.⁵

Other evidence for the date

Palaeography is supported by other kinds of evidence. The text of Ephraemi contains readings that, in the judgment of textual critics, were not yet widespread in the fourth century but had become common by the fifth. The form of the chapter titles and the Eusebian section numbers corresponds to systems that were standard by the fifth century. None of these features gives a precise date, but together they are consistent with the date suggested by the script. The earliest corrector, usually placed in the sixth century, provides a further limit: the codex must have been written before his work began, and it had evidently been in use for some time when he corrected it.⁶

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Chapter 6. Contents of the Old Testament

The surviving leaves of the Old Testament are 64 in number. They contain parts of the following books: Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, the Song of Songs, Wisdom and Sirach. All are poetic or wisdom books.¹

Why these books?

The selection of books that survive is not the result of choice by the original makers of the Bible. It reflects the needs of the twelfth-century scribe who reused the leaves. He took the leaves he needed for his new book and discarded the rest, or used them for other purposes. Whatever the reason, the leaves that survived happen to come mostly from these books.²

Textual value

The Old Testament text of Ephraemi has been less studied than its New Testament text. It is used in the Göttingen edition of the Septuagint for the wisdom books, where it is a witness of some importance. In Sirach, a book whose text is particularly complicated, Ephraemi is one of the uncial witnesses with Vaticanus, Sinaiticus and Alexandrinus.³

Tischendorf's edition

Tischendorf published the Old Testament leaves in 1845, two years after his edition of the New Testament. The Old Testament leaves were harder to read in some places, and his edition has been corrected by later scholars.⁴

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Chapter 7. The Wisdom Books in the Codex

The Old Testament leaves of Codex Ephraemi contain portions of six books traditionally associated with Solomon or with the wisdom tradition. Each has its own place in the history of the Greek Bible.¹

Job

The Greek translation of Job is considerably shorter than the Hebrew text. Origen, in his Hexapla, supplied the missing passages from the version of Theodotion and marked them with asterisks. Most surviving manuscripts, including Ephraemi, contain the longer text with Origen's additions. Ephraemi preserves part of this text.²

Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and the Song of Songs

The Greek Proverbs differs from the Hebrew in the order of some chapters and in many additions. The Greek Ecclesiastes is a very literal translation, possibly by Aquila or a related translator. The Song of Songs is also translated literally. All three books are partly preserved in Ephraemi.³

Wisdom and Sirach

The Wisdom of Solomon was composed in Greek, probably in Alexandria in the first century BCE. Sirach was written in Hebrew by Jesus son of Sirach in the early second century BCE and translated into Greek by his grandson in Egypt. Both books are part of the Septuagint and are included in Catholic and Orthodox Bibles. Their status is discussed on the page on the canon.⁴

Significance

The survival of these leaves gives a glimpse of what the Old Testament of Ephraemi was like. It was a Septuagint of the usual fifth-century type, including the books that are part of the Greek but not the Hebrew canon.⁵

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Chapter 8. Contents of the New Testament

The 145 surviving New Testament leaves contain parts of every book except 2 Thessalonians and 2 John. Because the reuse of the parchment was selective, the surviving portions are scattered. About five-eighths of the original New Testament text is preserved.¹

The Gospels

Of the Gospels, Matthew is the best preserved, though it has gaps. Mark lacks its beginning and several passages. Luke and John are preserved in parts. The longer ending of Mark (16:9–20) is present.²

Acts and the Epistles

Acts is preserved in substantial parts. The Catholic Epistles survive in part, with 2 John wholly lost. The Pauline Epistles are represented by portions of every letter except 2 Thessalonians.³

Revelation

Revelation survives in about two-thirds of its text. As described below, Ephraemi is one of the most important witnesses to this book.⁴

Order

The original order of the books can be reconstructed from the surviving leaves and from the quire numbers that have survived in some places. The New Testament seems to have followed the usual Greek order: Gospels, Acts, Catholic Epistles, Pauline Epistles with Hebrews after 2 Thessalonians, and Revelation.⁵

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Chapter 9. The Scribes and Correctors

The original scribe

The original Bible appears to have been written by more than one scribe. Lyon, who re-examined the manuscript in the 1950s, identified at least two hands in the New Testament. The script is careful and regular, with some decoration at the ends of books. Paragraphs begin with enlarged letters in the margin, as in Alexandrinus. Nomina sacra are abbreviated in the usual way.¹

The correctors

Two main correctors worked on the manuscript before it was reused. They are designated C2 and C3. The first, C2 (sometimes called Cb), worked probably in the sixth century, possibly in Palestine. His corrections are of considerable value, because they reflect another early text. The second, C3 (or Cc), worked in the ninth century, probably in Constantinople. He added accents and breathings, lectionary notes and some liturgical directions, and he corrected the text toward the Byzantine form.²

Liturgical additions

C3's lectionary notes show that by the ninth century the manuscript was being used for reading in services. He marked the beginnings and ends of the readings and added rubrics. This use shows that the Bible was still valued as a working book three or four centuries after it was made.³

The importance of the corrections

Textual critics distinguish carefully between the original text and the corrections. Tischendorf was the first to make these distinctions systematically. Because the lower text is so faint, it is sometimes difficult to tell whether a letter belongs to the original hand or to a corrector. The work of identifying the hands continues with the help of modern imaging.⁴

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Chapter 10. Ephrem the Syrian and the Upper Text

Ephrem

Ephrem the Syrian (about 306–373) was a deacon, poet and teacher who lived first in Nisibis, in northern Mesopotamia, and later in Edessa. He wrote in Syriac, a dialect of Aramaic that was the literary language of Christians in Mesopotamia and Syria. His hymns, sermons and commentaries made him the most celebrated writer of the Syriac tradition. In the Syriac and Greek churches he was known as "the Harp of the Spirit."¹

The Greek Ephrem

A large body of writings attributed to Ephrem circulated in Greek, especially in monastic circles. Some of these writings are translations of genuine works of Ephrem from Syriac. Many others were composed in Greek and attributed to him. Scholars call this body of literature "Ephrem Graecus." The writings are mainly moral and ascetic treatises on repentance, humility, prayer, the last judgment and the monastic life. They were very popular in Byzantine monasteries and were translated into Latin, Slavonic, Georgian and other languages.²

The upper text of the codex

The upper text of Codex Ephraemi consists of thirty-eight treatises from this Greek Ephrem collection. They were written in the twelfth century in a minuscule script. The scribe arranged the leaves without regard for their original order, so that the surviving biblical pages are now scattered through the volume. In some places the upper and lower texts overlap closely, which makes the lower text very hard to read.³

Where the reuse took place

The reuse of the codex is usually placed in Constantinople or in a Greek monastery, in the twelfth century. The leaves that the scribe did not need were discarded or used for other purposes. The resulting book of Ephrem's treatises is the volume that later reached Italy and France.⁴

The name

The name Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus, "the rewritten codex of Ephrem," refers to the upper text, which was the content recognized by the librarians who first catalogued it. The biblical text, which is its real importance, is not mentioned in the name.⁵

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Chapter 11. The Ephrem Volume as a Byzantine Book

For the twelfth-century readers who used it, the volume that is now Codex Ephraemi was not a Bible but a book of spiritual instruction. Its treatises were read in a monastic setting, perhaps aloud at meals or in private devotion.¹

Contents of the treatises

The thirty-eight treatises deal with themes characteristic of the Greek Ephrem collection: the need for repentance, the vanity of worldly life, the coming judgment, the virtues of humility, patience and obedience, the dangers of pride and anger, and the right ordering of a monk's day. Some take the form of homilies addressed to a congregation, others of exhortations to monks. Their style is simple and direct, with frequent appeals to the reader's conscience.²

The scribe and his materials

The scribe who wrote the treatises used a careful minuscule hand. He chose to reuse an old Bible rather than buy new parchment. This choice may have been made because the old Bible was damaged or incomplete, because its uncial script was regarded as old-fashioned and hard to read, or simply because parchment was scarce. Reuse of biblical manuscripts was not unusual. The text of the Bible was available in many newer copies, and an old, worn copy could be regarded as expendable.³

Not an act of disrespect

It would be a mistake to see the reuse of the codex as a sign of disregard for the Bible. The new text was itself a work of devotion, and the scribe probably valued it highly. Medieval scribes regularly reused parchment from all kinds of books, including classical texts, legal works and Bibles. The practice preserved, by accident, texts that would otherwise have been lost entirely.⁴

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Chapter 12. The Greek Ephrem Collection

The treatises copied over the Bible belong to a large body of Greek writings transmitted under the name of Ephrem. Their history is a subject of study in its own right.¹

Ephrem in Greek

Ephrem the Syrian died at Edessa in 373 and wrote in Syriac. Within a few decades of his death, works under his name were circulating in Greek. Some are translations of genuine Syriac works, but many have no known Syriac original and appear to have been composed in Greek by later writers who used his name. Scholars refer to this body of material as the Greek Ephrem, or Ephraem Graecus.²

Its popularity

The Greek Ephrem became one of the most widely read collections of spiritual writing in the Byzantine world. Hundreds of manuscripts survive. Its themes of repentance and compunction made it particularly suited to monastic reading, and it was translated from Greek into Latin, Slavonic, Georgian and other languages.³

A modern edition

The Greek Ephrem was edited in Rome in the eighteenth century by Joseph Simonius Assemani as part of a six-volume edition of Ephrem's works in Greek, Syriac and Latin (1732–46). A modern edition of the Greek texts was published in Thessaloniki by Konstantinos Phrantzolas between 1988 and 1998. The treatises of the Paris palimpsest are among the texts included in these collections.⁴

The irony of survival

It is a striking irony that the popularity of the Greek Ephrem led to the partial destruction of an ancient Bible, and that the same reuse preserved what remains of it. The treatises that once covered the biblical text have, for modern scholars, become a secondary point of interest, while the faint letters beneath them have become the main one.⁵

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Chapter 13. From Uncial to Minuscule

The reuse of the Bible that lies beneath Codex Ephraemi took place in a period when the appearance of Greek books had changed fundamentally. That change helps to explain why an ancient uncial Bible could be regarded as expendable.¹

The minuscule reform

Until the ninth century, Greek literary books were written in majuscule letters, each formed separately. From the early ninth century, scribes in Constantinople began to use a smaller, faster script in which letters could be joined. This minuscule hand saved space and time, and within two centuries it had largely replaced the majuscule for books of every kind. The earliest dated Greek minuscule manuscript, the Uspensky Gospels in St Petersburg, was written in 835.²

The transliteration of texts

As the new script spread, older texts were copied from majuscule exemplars into minuscule. This process, known as transliteration, was decisive for the survival of Greek literature, because texts that were not transliterated were less likely to be copied again. Once a biblical text existed in many minuscule copies, an old majuscule manuscript was no longer necessary for reading.³

The value placed on old books

The majuscule script of the fifth century was difficult for a twelfth-century reader. The text lacked accents and breathings, words were not separated, and the letter forms were unfamiliar. The correctors who worked on Ephraemi in the ninth century had already added accents and other aids. By the twelfth century, the codex may have seemed old-fashioned, worn and incomplete.⁴

Consequences

The decision to reuse Ephraemi was therefore part of a larger pattern. Many majuscule manuscripts of the Bible and of classical literature were scraped and reused in the centuries after the minuscule reform. Some of these palimpsests now preserve texts that would otherwise be lost entirely. The page on medieval Byzantine transmission describes the wider history of copying in this period.⁵

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Chapter 14. Parchment and Reuse in Byzantine Monasteries

The scraping of an ancient Bible to receive a new text was an ordinary practice in the Byzantine world. Understanding the economics of parchment helps to place Codex Ephraemi in its setting.¹

The scarcity of writing material

Parchment was expensive throughout the Middle Ages. Paper, introduced into the Byzantine world from the Islamic lands, became common in Greek manuscripts only from the thirteenth century onwards. Before that time, a monastery that wished to copy a new book had either to acquire fresh parchment or to reuse leaves from an existing book. Reuse was the cheaper choice and required less labour than preparing new skins.²

Which books were reused

The books chosen for reuse were often those that were damaged, incomplete or no longer read. Manuscripts in an outdated script, texts in a language no longer understood locally, and works that had been superseded by newer copies were all candidates. Classical texts, biblical manuscripts and theological works were reused alike. The surviving Greek palimpsests include fragments of Euripides, Archimedes, Hippocrates and many biblical and liturgical books.³

The process

To reuse a leaf, the scribe washed or scraped away the old ink, often with pumice, and sometimes trimmed or refolded the leaf to suit the format of the new book. In Ephraemi the old leaves were gathered into new quires without regard to the order of the Bible, so that passages from different books now lie side by side. Leaves that were too damaged were discarded.⁴

A general pattern

The fate of Ephraemi was shared by many manuscripts. The Sinai palimpsests at Saint Catherine's Monastery include dozens of reused books, some with lower texts in languages that were no longer read at the monastery, such as Caucasian Albanian. The study of such manuscripts has become a field in its own right, and Ephraemi is one of its classic examples.⁵

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Chapter 15. From Constantinople to Florence and Paris

Andreas Lascaris

After the fall of Constantinople in 1453, many Greek manuscripts were brought to Italy by Greek scholars and by collectors. Codex Ephraemi appears to have been among the manuscripts acquired for the library of the Medici in Florence. It has been suggested that it was brought by Janus Lascaris, the Greek scholar who travelled in the Greek East in the 1490s to buy manuscripts for Lorenzo de' Medici. The evidence for this is circumstantial.¹

The Medici

The Medici family of Florence were the most famous collectors of Greek manuscripts in the Renaissance. Cosimo de' Medici and his grandson Lorenzo assembled a great library, and the Medici popes, Leo X and Clement VII, continued the tradition. The Ephrem manuscript entered this collection, valued for its upper text of the treatises of Ephrem rather than for the faint biblical text beneath.²

Catherine de' Medici

In 1533 Catherine de' Medici married Henri, son of King François I of France. She later became queen and, after her husband's death, regent of France. Catherine brought with her or later acquired many manuscripts from the Medici collections. Codex Ephraemi was among the books in her library. After her death in 1589, her library was claimed by her creditors, but it was eventually acquired for the Royal Library of France.³

The Royal Library

The Royal Library of France, the forerunner of the Bibliothèque nationale, was one of the largest libraries in Europe. Codex Ephraemi was catalogued there as a manuscript of Ephrem. It was given the shelfmark Regius 1905 and later Grec 9, which it still bears.⁴

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Chapter 16. Greek Manuscripts in Renaissance Italy

The movement of Codex Ephraemi from the Greek East to Florence was part of the transfer of Greek books to Italy in the fifteenth century. That transfer shaped the libraries of Europe and the study of the Greek Bible.¹

The Council of Florence

The Council of Ferrara and Florence (1438–39), at which representatives of the Greek and Latin churches sought to restore unity, brought many Greek scholars and churchmen to Italy. Some brought manuscripts with them, and the debates at the council stimulated Italian interest in Greek texts. Cardinal Bessarion, a Greek prelate who remained in Italy after the council, formed one of the largest collections of Greek manuscripts of his time and left it to the Republic of Venice in 1468.²

After 1453

The fall of Constantinople in 1453 accelerated the movement of books westward. Greek scholars who settled in Italy taught the language and worked as copyists and agents for collectors. The Medici in Florence employed such agents to acquire manuscripts in the Greek world. The Medici library became one of the richest collections of Greek texts in Europe, and it remains at Florence as the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana.³

The place of Ephraemi

Ephraemi probably reached Florence through one of these agents, perhaps Janus Lascaris, as noted in the previous chapter, and it later passed to Catherine de' Medici. In this period it was valued as a manuscript of Ephrem's works, not as a Bible. No one in Renaissance Florence appears to have noticed the older text beneath the treatises.⁴

The wider effect

The Greek manuscripts brought to Italy in the fifteenth century provided the materials for the first printed Greek texts, including the editions of Erasmus. Ironically, the oldest manuscripts, such as Vaticanus and Ephraemi, played no part in those editions. Erasmus relied on late minuscules available to him in Basel.⁵

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Chapter 17. The Discovery of the Lower Text

Pierre Allix

The biblical text under the treatises of Ephrem was first noticed in the late seventeenth century. The French Protestant scholar Pierre Allix is usually credited with the observation. Allix, who later left France for England after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, saw the traces of an older Greek script beneath the upper text and recognized that it was a biblical manuscript.¹

Boivin's collation

The first attempt to read the lower text systematically was made by Jean Boivin, a scholar of the Royal Library, in the 1690s and early 1700s. Boivin read portions of the New Testament and made extracts. His readings were used by Ludolph Kuster in his reprint of Mill's Greek New Testament, published at Amsterdam in 1710, which first made known the readings of Ephraemi to scholars generally.²

Wettstein's collation

In 1716 Johann Jakob Wettstein, then a young scholar, collated the New Testament of the codex at the request of Richard Bentley, who paid him for the work. Bentley wanted the readings of Ephraemi for his planned edition of the Greek New Testament. Wettstein's collation was more extensive than Boivin's, and he later used it in his own edition of 1751–52.³

The limits of these efforts

These early collations were incomplete and often inaccurate. The lower text was so faint that only parts of it could be read. The readers had no means of making it more visible, and their eyes tired quickly. In the eighteenth century the codex was therefore known as an important witness, but its text could not be fully used.⁴

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Chapter 18. Ephraemi in the Eighteenth-Century Editions

Through the collations of Boivin and Wettstein, the readings of Ephraemi entered the critical editions of the eighteenth century. Their use shows how scholars of the period dealt with the growing body of manuscript evidence.¹

Kuster's Mill

Ludolph Kuster's reprint of Mill's edition (Amsterdam, 1710) added the readings of twelve further manuscripts, including those of Ephraemi as reported by Boivin. It thus became the first printed edition to contain readings from the codex.²

Bentley's plans

Richard Bentley employed Wettstein in 1716 to collate the codex because he believed that the oldest Greek manuscripts, compared with the oldest manuscripts of the Latin Vulgate, would allow him to restore the text of the fourth century. Ephraemi was one of the few manuscripts old enough to serve his purpose. His edition was never published, and his collations remain at Trinity College, Cambridge.³

Wettstein's edition

Wettstein's own Greek New Testament, published at Amsterdam in 1751–52, included an extensive apparatus. It was there that he introduced the system of designating uncials by capital letters, giving Ephraemi the letter C. Ironically, Wettstein's theory that the oldest Greek manuscripts had been corrupted by the Latin led him to give their readings less weight than they deserved.⁴

Griesbach and the classification of texts

Griesbach used Ephraemi in his editions. He recognized it as a witness to the Alexandrian text in many places, though mixed with other elements. Later, Lachmann, who in 1831 published the first Greek New Testament based entirely on ancient evidence, used it as one of his principal witnesses. The page on Karl Lachmann gives an account of his work.⁵

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Chapter 19. The Chemical Treatment of 1834

In the early nineteenth century, scholars began to use chemical reagents to make the faded lower texts of palimpsests more visible. The most famous practitioner was Cardinal Angelo Mai, who discovered lost works of Cicero and other authors in palimpsests in Milan and Rome. The reagents used, such as gallic acid and the tincture of Giobert (potassium ferrocyanide followed by hydrochloric acid), reacted with the iron in the old ink and made the letters darker for a time.¹

The Paris treatment

In 1834 the librarians of the Royal Library in Paris treated the codex with the Giobertine tincture. The treatment made some parts of the lower text more legible, at least at first. But it also discoloured the parchment and the upper text, leaving dark blue, green and brown stains on many pages. In some places the stains have made the lower text even harder to read than before.²

The judgment of later scholars

Later scholars have generally regarded the chemical treatment as harmful. The damage caused by reagents in the nineteenth century is one reason why modern conservators avoid any treatment that changes the materials of a manuscript. Multispectral imaging has made such treatments unnecessary, since it reveals faint inks without touching the parchment.³

Fleck's attempt

Shortly after the treatment, the German scholar Ferdinand Florens Fleck attempted to edit the text. His readings, published in the years after 1834, were criticized as unreliable. The full recovery of the text awaited Tischendorf.⁴

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Chapter 20. The Ethics of Recovering Hidden Texts

The history of Codex Ephraemi raises questions that conservators and scholars continue to discuss: how far it is right to alter an object in order to read it, and how to balance the interests of present and future readers.¹

Damage for the sake of knowledge

The reagent applied in 1834 made parts of the lower text legible, but it also stained the parchment and in places obscured both texts. Similar treatments were applied to other palimpsests in the nineteenth century, sometimes with worse results. Angelo Mai, who discovered many classical texts in palimpsests at Milan and Rome, used chemicals that left permanent dark stains. The scholars who applied these treatments believed that the knowledge gained justified the risk.²

The principle of reversibility

Modern conservation is guided by the principle that treatments should, as far as possible, be reversible and should not alter the original material. Chemical reagents violate this principle, since their effects cannot be undone. The development of photographic and digital methods has made such treatments unnecessary in almost all cases.³

Respect for both texts

A palimpsest is not only a container for its lower text. The upper text is itself a historical document, with its own value for the history of the medieval book and of the works it contains. Modern scholars aim to record both layers and to avoid any procedure that would sacrifice one for the other. In the case of Ephraemi, the treatises of Ephrem are of interest for the history of the Greek Ephrem collection, and they too deserve careful preservation.⁴

Access and preservation

Digital images also address the tension between access and preservation. Before the age of photography, every reading of a manuscript involved handling it, and heavy use could damage fragile leaves. Today the Bibliothèque nationale de France makes complete images of the codex available through Gallica, so that scholars can study it without touching the original. The manuscript itself can be kept in stable conditions and consulted only when necessary.⁵

Lessons for future scholarship

The experience of the nineteenth century has also taught scholars humility about their own methods. Techniques that seem safe today may later be judged harmful, just as the reagents of the 1830s once seemed the best available means of reading a faded text. For this reason, modern projects favour non-invasive imaging, record every procedure carefully, and preserve the raw data so that future scholars can apply better methods to the same evidence. The images made of Ephraemi in the twenty-first century may one day be processed in ways not yet imagined, recovering letters that remain illegible today. In this sense, the history of the codex is not finished: each generation adds to what can be read, and each has an obligation to leave the manuscript in a condition that allows its successors to continue the work.⁶

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Chapter 21. Tischendorf's Decipherment

The young scholar in Paris

In 1840 Constantin von Tischendorf, then twenty-five years old, arrived in Paris. He had recently completed his studies at Leipzig and had published a first edition of the Greek New Testament. He was determined to make himself the master of the ancient manuscripts, and he chose Codex Ephraemi as his first great task. Other scholars considered it almost impossible to read.¹

Method

Tischendorf worked for about two years on the manuscript. He examined each leaf at different angles of light, used a magnifying glass, and compared the faint traces with his knowledge of the biblical text and of ancient scripts. Where the reagent of 1834 had darkened the letters, he took advantage of it. Where the stains obscured the text, he tried to read around them. He noted the readings of the original scribe and the correctors separately.²

The editions

In 1843 Tischendorf published the New Testament text of the codex in a single volume, Codex Ephraemi Syri rescriptus sive fragmenta Novi Testamenti, printed at Leipzig. The text was printed in type that imitated the uncial letters, line by line, with notes on the corrections. In 1845 he published the Old Testament leaves. The edition was received with admiration. It established his reputation and opened the way for his later work, including his journeys to Sinai and the discovery of Codex Sinaiticus.³

Accuracy

Tischendorf's edition was remarkably accurate for its time, but it was not perfect. He could not read everything, and he made some errors. Later scholars, especially Robert W. Lyon in the 1950s, checked his work against the manuscript and published corrections. Lyon found that Tischendorf's edition was reliable on the whole, but that there were many places where readings could be improved or where Tischendorf had not reported corrections.⁴

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Chapter 22. Lyon's Re-examination and Twentieth-Century Study

After Tischendorf, the codex was not studied in detail again for more than a century. Scholars relied on his edition. In the 1950s Robert W. Lyon, an American scholar working at the University of St Andrews, undertook a complete re-examination of the New Testament text for his doctoral thesis.¹

Lyon's work

Lyon studied the manuscript in Paris, using ultraviolet light as well as ordinary light. He compared every page with Tischendorf's edition and recorded the differences. He published a summary of his findings in New Testament Studies in 1959, with a list of corrections. Lyon found many places where Tischendorf had misread or failed to report a letter, a correction or a mark. But he concluded that Tischendorf's edition was, on the whole, a remarkable achievement.²

Codicology

Lyon also studied the physical structure of the manuscript. He reconstructed the original quires of the Bible from the surviving leaves and from traces of quire numbers, and he estimated the number of leaves that were lost. His reconstruction showed how the twelfth-century scribe had taken leaves from different parts of the Bible and combined them into his new book.³

The Editio Critica Maior

In the twenty-first century, the editors of the Editio Critica Maior at Münster have used Ephraemi as one of the principal witnesses in each book for which it survives. They have re-checked its readings using new images. The results are incorporated in the electronic transcriptions of the codex available through the INTF's New Testament Virtual Manuscript Room.⁴

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Chapter 23. From Paris to Sinai on Tischendorf's Path

The decipherment of Codex Ephraemi was the first great achievement of Tischendorf's career, and it shaped everything that followed. His life and work are described on his own page. Here it is enough to note how the Paris palimpsest led to his later discoveries.¹

A reputation made

The edition of 1843 made Tischendorf famous among scholars. It demonstrated his extraordinary skill in reading ancient scripts and his capacity for sustained, painstaking work. It brought him the support of patrons and governments, including the Saxon government, and it enabled him to undertake journeys to the libraries of Europe and the Near East.²

The search for manuscripts

In 1844, the year after his edition appeared, Tischendorf travelled to the Near East in search of ancient manuscripts. At Saint Catherine's Monastery at Sinai he found the first leaves of what became known as Codex Sinaiticus. His experience with Ephraemi had prepared him to recognize the antiquity of the script at once.³

His later editions

Tischendorf published eight editions of the Greek New Testament. In each he used Ephraemi, and his eighth edition (1869–72) gave its readings precisely, with the corrections distinguished. It remains a standard source for the evidence of the codex.⁴

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Chapter 24. The Codex in the Bibliothèque nationale de France

The codex has remained in Paris since the sixteenth century. The Royal Library became the National Library after the French Revolution and, after various changes of name, the Bibliothèque nationale de France. Its manuscripts are kept at the historic site on the rue de Richelieu, which reopened after extensive renovation in 2022.¹

The volume today

The manuscript is bound as a single volume. Its leaves show the stains of the 1834 reagent and the wear of centuries. It is rarely shown to readers. Its condition is monitored by the library's conservation department.²

Digitization

The library has digitized the codex and placed the images on its Gallica platform, where anyone can view them. The images show both the upper and lower texts, though the lower text is often hard to make out in ordinary photographs. Research projects using multispectral imaging have aimed to reveal more of the lower text. The codex is also included in the resources of the INTF in Münster.³

Other palimpsests in Paris

The Bibliothèque nationale holds many other Greek palimpsests. The study of these manuscripts has been an important area of research, and the techniques developed for one manuscript have been applied to others.⁴

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Chapter 25. The Character of the Text

The New Testament text of Codex Ephraemi is mixed. It does not belong wholly to any one text-type. In different books, and even within books, it agrees sometimes with the Alexandrian manuscripts, sometimes with the Byzantine, and occasionally with the Western.¹

Alexandrian and Byzantine elements

In the Gospels, the text of Ephraemi has many Alexandrian readings, but it also has many readings that agree with the Byzantine text. In Acts and the Epistles, it is closer to the Alexandrian text, often agreeing with Vaticanus, Sinaiticus and Alexandrinus. Kurt and Barbara Aland placed it in Category II, a group of manuscripts of special quality that are not purely Alexandrian.²

A witness to the fifth century

The mixed character of Ephraemi is itself significant. It shows that by the fifth century the different streams of the text were mixing. Scribes copied from exemplars of different types and corrected one against another. The result was a text that combined readings from different traditions. This process eventually led to the Byzantine text that dominated the later Middle Ages.³

Comparison with Alexandrinus

Ephraemi and Alexandrinus are of similar date. In the Gospels, Alexandrinus is more Byzantine and Ephraemi more Alexandrian. In Revelation, the two manuscripts are closely related and together represent the best text.⁴

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Chapter 26. Reading the Evidence of C in a Critical Apparatus

Most readers meet Codex Ephraemi not in Paris but in the footnotes of a printed Greek New Testament. Understanding how its evidence is reported helps to explain both its value and its limits.¹

The sigla

In the apparatus of the Nestle-Aland and United Bible Societies editions, the codex is cited as C or 04. The original reading of the first scribe is marked C*, and the corrections of the later hands are marked C¹, C² and C³. These correspond broadly to the correctors identified by Tischendorf: a corrector of the sixth century, often associated with Palestine; a second corrector of the ninth century, probably at Constantinople; and a third, less frequent hand.²

Gaps in the evidence

Because so much of the New Testament is missing from the codex, editors must note where it is not available. In many places the apparatus is silent about C simply because the relevant leaf does not survive. Some editions list the lacunae of each manuscript in an appendix. A reader who assumes that silence means agreement with the printed text may be misled.³

Uncertain readings

Even where a leaf survives, the lower text may be illegible in places. Editors sometimes mark such readings with a symbol indicating that the reading is uncertain, or report that the manuscript is "deficient" at a particular point. The modern multispectral images have allowed some uncertain readings to be confirmed and others to be corrected.⁴

Weight of the evidence

Textual critics do not count manuscripts but weigh them. Ephraemi is valued for its age, but its mixed text means that its testimony must be assessed case by case. Where it agrees with Sinaiticus and Vaticanus, it strengthens the case for an early reading. Where it agrees with the later Byzantine manuscripts, it shows that some Byzantine readings were already in circulation in the fifth century. The principles behind such judgments are explained on the page on textual criticism.⁵

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Chapter 27. Ephraemi in Acts and the Catholic Epistles

Although its leaves are scattered, Codex Ephraemi preserves substantial portions of Acts and of each of the Catholic Epistles except 2 John. Its evidence in these books has received renewed attention in the Editio Critica Maior.¹

Acts

In Acts, the text of Ephraemi generally belongs with the shorter form represented by Vaticanus, Sinaiticus and Alexandrinus, rather than the longer Western text found in Codex Bezae. It contains a number of readings shared with the later Byzantine manuscripts, but fewer than in the Gospels. Its corrections show that later readers adjusted the text towards the Byzantine form current in their own time.²

The Catholic Epistles

In the Catholic Epistles, the text of Ephraemi is close to that of Alexandrinus and of a group of minuscule manuscripts that preserve an early form of the text. The editors of the Editio Critica Maior have treated it as one of the principal witnesses, and it frequently supports the reading they adopt as the initial text. Its testimony is especially valuable in passages where Vaticanus and Sinaiticus divide.³

The effect of the lacunae

Because the surviving leaves of Ephraemi are scattered, its evidence is available for some passages and not for others. Editors must take care not to draw conclusions from its silence. In Acts, for example, large sections are missing, and the character of its text can only be judged from the portions that survive.⁴

A witness to the fifth century

Taken together, the evidence of Ephraemi in Acts and the Catholic Epistles confirms the picture given by its Gospels and Revelation. It is a fifth-century manuscript that preserves many early readings, mixed with readings that later became standard in the Byzantine tradition. Its value lies in showing the state of the text at a time of transition.⁵

The correctors in these books

The corrections in Acts and the Catholic Epistles are less numerous than in the Gospels, but they follow the same general pattern. Most bring the text closer to the form that later became standard in the Byzantine church, and they show that the codex continued to be read and adjusted for several centuries after it was copied.⁶

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Chapter 28. Ephraemi and the Text of Revelation

The book of Revelation has a textual history unlike that of the rest of the New Testament. It was accepted slowly in the Greek East, it was not read in the Byzantine liturgy, and it was copied less often than other books. Its manuscripts are fewer, and its text falls into distinct groups.¹

Schmid's analysis

Josef Schmid, whose study of the manuscripts of Revelation was published in 1955–56, classified the text into four groups. The first, and in his view the best, is represented by Alexandrinus (A) and Ephraemi (C), with a few minuscules and the commentary of Oecumenius. The second is represented by Sinaiticus and the papyrus P47. The third is associated with the commentary of Andrew of Caesarea, and the fourth is the Byzantine Koine text.²

The best witnesses

Schmid concluded that A and C, though copied in the fifth century, preserve a text of Revelation older and purer than that of Sinaiticus and P47, which are older manuscripts. This conclusion has been widely accepted. Modern critical editions of Revelation rely heavily on the agreement of A and C. Where they agree, their reading is usually adopted. Where they disagree, editors must weigh the evidence of the other groups.³

Value of Ephraemi

Because Ephraemi preserves only about two-thirds of Revelation, Alexandrinus is often the only representative of the best group. Where Ephraemi survives, it is of great value as a second witness. The importance of Ephraemi for Revelation is one of the main reasons why the long labour of deciphering it has been worthwhile.⁴

Recent work

More recent studies of the text of Revelation, including work on the Editio Critica Maior of Revelation at Münster and Wuppertal, have refined Schmid's classification. Scholars have questioned whether the groups are as distinct as he thought and have examined the relationships among individual manuscripts more closely. But the special value of A and C has been confirmed.⁵

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Chapter 29. Notable Readings

Because Codex Ephraemi is fragmentary, it is silent on many of the most famous textual problems. Where it survives, however, its evidence is often important.¹

The ending of Mark

Ephraemi contains the longer ending of Mark (16:9–20). In this it agrees with Alexandrinus and the later majority, and differs from Vaticanus and Sinaiticus. It is one of the oldest Greek manuscripts to contain the passage.²

The woman taken in adultery

The leaves that would have contained John 7:53–8:11 are lost. But by calculating the amount of text on the missing leaves, scholars have concluded that, as with Alexandrinus, there was not enough room for the passage. Ephraemi is therefore counted, with some reserve, among the witnesses that did not contain it.³

The angel at the pool

In John 5:3–4, many later manuscripts include an explanation of the movement of the water at the pool of Bethesda: an angel went down at certain seasons and stirred the water, and the first person to enter after the stirring was healed. The original text of Ephraemi lacks verse 4, though it was added by the corrector C3. This illustrates how correctors brought the text into line with the later majority.⁴

Acts

In Acts, the text of Ephraemi is mainly Alexandrian. It agrees often with Vaticanus and Sinaiticus against the Western text of Codex Bezae, which has many additional details in this book.⁵

Revelation 13:18

In the famous passage on the number of the beast, the great majority of manuscripts read 666. A few witnesses, including a fragment from Oxyrhynchus and some manuscripts known to Irenaeus in the second century, read 616. Codex Ephraemi is the most important Greek uncial to read 616. Most scholars think that 666 is the original reading, but the early evidence for 616 is substantial.⁶

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Chapter 30. Modern Imaging and the Future of the Palimpsest

Ultraviolet photography

In the twentieth century, ultraviolet light became the standard means of reading palimpsests. Under ultraviolet light, traces of iron gall ink that are invisible in ordinary light often fluoresce or appear dark against the parchment. Photographs taken under ultraviolet light allowed scholars to study palimpsests without handling them repeatedly.¹

Multispectral imaging

Since the early 2000s, multispectral imaging has transformed the study of palimpsests. A manuscript leaf is photographed under a series of narrow bands of light, from ultraviolet to infrared. Each band reveals different features. The images are then combined by computer processing, using methods such as principal component analysis, to separate the lower text from the upper text and from stains. The technique was developed and refined in the study of the Archimedes Palimpsest, and it has since been applied to the palimpsests of Saint Catherine's Monastery at Sinai, where hundreds of lower texts were recovered between 2011 and 2017.²

Ephraemi and new imaging

For Codex Ephraemi, multispectral imaging offers the possibility of reading passages that Tischendorf and Lyon could not read, of distinguishing the original hand from the correctors more precisely, and of seeing through some of the stains caused by the reagent of 1834. The stains present a particular challenge, because they alter the chemistry of the parchment and its response to light. Scholars working on the Editio Critica Maior have used new images to check the readings of the codex.³

Beyond the text

Modern imaging also reveals features beyond the text itself: ruling patterns, prickings, quire signatures, and traces of decoration. These features help reconstruct the original structure of the Bible, including the number of leaves and the arrangement of quires. Such codicological study is as important as textual study for understanding how the book was made and how it was later reused.⁴

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Chapter 31. Other Biblical Palimpsests

Codex Ephraemi is the most important of the Greek biblical palimpsests, but there are many others. Their study shows how much of the ancient biblical text survives only beneath later writing.¹

Codex Zacynthius

Codex Zacynthius, now in Cambridge University Library, contains a sixth- or seventh-century text of the Gospel of Luke with a commentary (catena) beneath a thirteenth-century Gospel lectionary. It was brought from the island of Zakynthos in 1821. It was reimaged with multispectral technology in 2017, and the new images revealed many readings that could not be seen before.²

The Syriac palimpsests of Sinai

In 1892 the twin sisters Agnes Smith Lewis and Margaret Dunlop Gibson discovered at Saint Catherine's Monastery a palimpsest containing an Old Syriac version of the Gospels beneath a collection of lives of female saints. The Sinaitic Syriac is one of the two oldest witnesses to the Old Syriac Gospels. The sisters' discovery was a turning point in the study of the early versions.³

Codex Nitriensis and others

Codex Nitriensis, in the British Library, contains a sixth-century Greek text of Luke beneath a Syriac treatise of Severus of Antioch. It was brought from a monastery in the Nitrian desert of Egypt in the 1840s. Other Greek New Testament palimpsests include Codex Guelferbytanus A and B at Wolfenbüttel, and numerous fragments in libraries in Europe and the Near East.⁴

Hebrew and Greek palimpsests from the Genizah

The Cairo Genizah has preserved palimpsests in which Greek biblical texts lie beneath Hebrew writing. Among them are fragments of the Greek translation of Aquila, a second-century Jewish revision of the Septuagint. These fragments were identified by Francis Crawford Burkitt and Charles Taylor in the 1890s.⁵

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Chapter 32. Ephraemi among the Great Uncials

Codex Ephraemi is often called one of the four great uncials, with Sinaiticus, Vaticanus and Alexandrinus. It differs from them in several ways, which are compared in a table on the Alexandrinus page.¹

Its fragmentary state

Unlike the other three, Ephraemi survives only in part. Its contents must be reconstructed from scattered leaves. Its original extent is uncertain, and its order has been disturbed.²

Its layout

It is written in one column per page, while the others have two, three or four. The single column became the common format of later Greek manuscripts of the New Testament, especially minuscules.³

Its text

It has a mixed text, while Vaticanus and Sinaiticus are Alexandrian and Alexandrinus is Byzantine in the Gospels and Alexandrian in the rest. In Revelation it belongs, with Alexandrinus, to the best group.⁴

Its history

It is the only one of the four whose biblical text was hidden for centuries and recovered by decipherment. Its history thus combines the stories of reuse, collecting and scientific recovery. While Sinaiticus was found in a monastery and Alexandrinus was presented to a king, Ephraemi was in plain sight in a royal library, but its biblical text had to be read beneath another.⁵

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Chapter 33. Significance

Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus is significant in several ways.¹

First, it is one of the oldest manuscripts of the Greek New Testament, preserving parts of every book except two. Its text, though mixed, contains many early readings. In Revelation it is, with Alexandrinus, among the best witnesses.²

Second, it is the most famous example of a biblical palimpsest. Its history shows how ancient texts could survive through reuse, and how much patient work is needed to recover them. The story of its decipherment, from Allix and Boivin to Tischendorf, Lyon and modern imaging, is a history of the techniques of reading damaged manuscripts.³

Third, its history connects the Greek East, Renaissance Florence and royal France. It passed from a Byzantine monastery to the Medici, to Catherine de' Medici, and to the French Royal Library. Each stage of its journey reflects the interests of collectors who valued it for different reasons: first for the treatises of Ephrem, and later for the Bible hidden beneath them.⁴

Fourth, the damage done to it by the reagent of 1834 is a lesson in the conservation of manuscripts. Modern conservators and scholars have learned from such episodes to avoid irreversible treatments.⁵

Finally, the codex launched the career of Tischendorf, whose later work, including the discovery of Sinaiticus, transformed the study of the New Testament. In this sense, the faint letters beneath the treatises of Ephrem stand at the beginning of one of the most remarkable chapters in the history of biblical scholarship.⁶

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Further Study

Facsimiles and digital images

• Gallica, Grec 9: complete images of the codex from the Bibliothèque nationale de France.
• INTF, Liste: GA 04: register entry, images and transcription.
• CSNTM, GA 04: data at the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts.

Books and articles

• Kurt Aland and Barbara Aland, The Text of the New Testament, 2nd ed. (Eerdmans, 1989).
• Sebastian Brock, The Luminous Eye (Cistercian Publications, 1992).
• Robert W. Lyon, "A Re-examination of Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus," New Testament Studies 5 (1959): 260–72.
• Bruce M. Metzger and Bart D. Ehrman, The Text of the New Testament, 4th ed. (Oxford University Press, 2005).
• Reviel Netz and William Noel, The Archimedes Codex (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2007).
• Josef Schmid, Studien zur Geschichte des griechischen Apokalypse-Textes (Karl Zink, 1955–56).
• Constantin von Tischendorf, Codex Ephraemi Syri rescriptus sive fragmenta Novi Testamenti (Tauchnitz, 1843) and … Veteris Testamenti (Tauchnitz, 1845).

Reference

• Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus
• Palimpsest

Related pages on this site

• Codex Sinaiticus, Codex Vaticanus and Codex Alexandrinus
• The biblical canon
• Constantin von Tischendorf
• Karl Lachmann

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