Minuscule 251
Encyclopedia
Minuscule 251 ε 192 (Soden), is a Greek
Greek language
Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...

 minuscule manuscript
Manuscript
A manuscript or handwrite is written information that has been manually created by someone or some people, such as a hand-written letter, as opposed to being printed or reproduced some other way...

 of the New Testament
New Testament
The New Testament is the second major division of the Christian biblical canon, the first such division being the much longer Old Testament....

, on parchment. Paleographically
Palaeography
Palaeography, also spelt paleography is the study of ancient writing. Included in the discipline is the practice of deciphering, reading, and dating historical manuscripts, and the cultural context of writing, including the methods with which writing and books were produced, and the history of...

 it has been assigned to the 12th century.
The manuscript has complex contents.

Description

The codex contains a complete text of the four Gospel
Gospel
A gospel is an account, often written, that describes the life of Jesus of Nazareth. In a more general sense the term "gospel" may refer to the good news message of the New Testament. It is primarily used in reference to the four canonical gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John...

s on 270 parchment leaves . The text is written in one column per page and 31 lines per page.

The text is divided according to the small Ammonian sections
Ammonian Sections
Eusebian canons or Eusebian sections, also known as Ammonian Sections, are the system of dividing the four Gospels used between late Antiquity and the Middle Ages. The divisions into chapters and verses used in modern texts date only from the 13th and 16th centuries, respectively...

, whose numbers are given at the margin, but without references to the Eusebian Canons.

It contains the Epistula ad Carpianum
Epistula ad Carpianum
The Epistula ad Carpianum is the title traditionally given to a letter from Eusebius of Caesarea to a Christian named Carpianus....

, the Eusebian Canon tables, lists of the (tables of contents) before each Gospel. It has pictures.

The text has some affinities with codex 59
Minuscule 59
Minuscule 59 , ε 272 , is a Greek minuscule manuscript of the New Testament, on parchment leaves. Palaeographically it has been assigned to the 13th century. It has complex contents and some marginalia....

.

Text

The Greek text of the codex has some the Byzantine
Byzantine text-type
The Byzantine text-type is one of several text-types used in textual criticism to describe the textual character of Greek New Testament manuscripts. It is the form found in the largest number of surviving manuscripts, though not in the oldest...

 readings, but it is not pure the Byzantine text. Hermann von Soden lists as II. Aland
Kurt Aland
Kurt Aland was a German Theologian and Professor of New Testament Research and Church History. He founded the Institut für neutestamentliche Textforschung in Münster and served as its first director for many years...

 did not assign it to any Category
Categories of New Testament manuscripts
New Testament manuscripts in Greek are categorized into five groups, according to a scheme introduced in 1981 by Kurt and Barbara Aland in Der Text des Neuen Testaments. The categories are based on how each manuscript relates to the various text-types. Generally speaking, earlier Alexandrian...

.

According to the Claremont Profile Method it belongs to the textual cluster 1229.

Textually it is close to the Codex Tischendorfianus IV
Codex Tischendorfianus IV
Codex Tischendorfianus IV – designated by Γ or 036 , ε 70 – is a Greek uncial manuscript of the Gospels, dated palaeographically to the 10th century...

.

History

The manuscript once belonged to Auxentius. Theophilus Zagoloras sent it to one of the monasteries at Athos
Mount Athos
Mount Athos is a mountain and peninsula in Macedonia, Greece. A World Heritage Site, it is home to 20 Eastern Orthodox monasteries and forms a self-governed monastic state within the sovereignty of the Hellenic Republic. Spiritually, Mount Athos comes under the direct jurisdiction of the...

 peninsula in A.D. 1400. It was brought to Moscow in 1655, by the monk Arsenius, on the suggestion of the Patriarch Nikon
Patriarch Nikon
Nikon , born Nikita Minin , was the seventh patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church...

, in the reign of Alexei Mikhailovich Romanov (1645-1676). The manuscript was collated by C. F. Matthaei
Christian Frederick Matthaei
Christian Frederick Matthaei , a Thuringian, palaeographer, classical philolog, professor first at Wittenberg and then at Moscow.- Life :...

. It was examined by Matthaei and Franz Delitzsch
Franz Delitzsch
Franz Delitzsch was a German Lutheran theologian and Hebraist. Born in Leipzig, he held the professorship of theology at the University of Rostock from 1846 to 1850, at the University of Erlangen until 1867, and after that at the University of Leipzig until his death...

.

The manuscript is currently housed at the Russian State Library
Russian State Library
The Russian State Library is the national library of Russia, located in Moscow. It is the largest in the country and the third largest in the world for its collection of books . It was named the V. I...

 (F. 181. 9 (Gr. 9)) in Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...

.

See also

  • List of New Testament minuscules
  • Biblical manuscript
    Biblical manuscript
    A biblical manuscript is any handwritten copy of a portion of the text of the Bible. The word Bible comes from the Greek biblia ; manuscript comes from Latin manu and scriptum...

  • Textual criticism
    Textual criticism
    Textual criticism is a branch of literary criticism that is concerned with the identification and removal of transcription errors in the texts of manuscripts...


Further reading

  • C. F. Matthei, Novum Testamentum Graece et Latine, (Riga, 1782-1788).
  • Kurt Treu
    Kurt Treu
    Kurt Treu , German classical philologist, was a son of a German parson on the island Saaremaa, the largest island of Estonia. In 1940, because of World War II, the Treu family was forced to leave their homeland. Kurt Treu studied in a Gymnasium in Hohensalza. AS levels were studied by him after the...

    , Die Griechischen Handschriften des Neuen Testaments in der UdSSR; eine systematische Auswertung des Texthandschriften in Leningrad, Moskau, Kiev, Odessa, Tbilisi und Erevan, T & U 90 (Berlin, 1966), pp. 311-313.

External links

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