Minuscule 444
Encyclopedia
Minuscule 444 δ 551 (in the Soden numbering), 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. Palaeographically
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 15th century.

Description

The codex contains the text 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....

 except Book of Revelation
Book of Revelation
The Book of Revelation is the final book of the New Testament. The title came into usage from the first word of the book in Koine Greek: apokalupsis, meaning "unveiling" or "revelation"...

 on 324 parchment leaves . The order of books: Gospels (ff. 1-154), Acts, Catholic epistles, and Pauline epistles.

The text is written in one column per page, in 25-30 lines per page.

The lists of the κεφαλαια (tables of contents) are placed before each book. It contains the τιτλοι (titles) at the top, lectionary equipment at the margin, subscriptions at the end of books, στιχοι
Stichometry
Stichometry is a term applied to the measurement of ancient texts by στίχοι or verses of a fixed standard length.It was the custom of the Greeks and Romans to estimate the length of their literary works by measured lines...

, Synaxarion, Menologion, and scholia.

Text

Kurt 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...

 the Greek text of the codex did not place in 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...

. Hermann von Soden classified it to the textual family Kr
Family Kr
Family Kr is a large group of the New Testament manuscripts. It belongs to the Byzantine text-type as one of the textual families of this group. It has no uncials, no early minuscules, it has only hundreds of minuscules.- Description :...

. According to the Claremont Profile Method it belongs to the textual cluster M1326, along with minuscule 191
Minuscule 191
Minuscule 191 , ε 224 , is a Greek minuscule manuscript of the New Testament, on parchment. Palaeographically it has been assigned to the 12th century. It has marginalia.- Description :...

, 1326, 1396, 2521. The cluster is related to the cluster M
Codex Campianus
Codex Campianus designated by M or 021 , ε 72 , is a Greek uncial manuscript of the New Testament, dated palaeographically to the 9th century...

106
Minuscule 106
Minuscule 106 , ε 1380 , is a Greek minuscule manuscript of the New Testament, on parchment leaves. Palaeographically it has been assigned to the 10th century.- Description :...

.

History

The manuscript came from the Athos (probably). It was bought in 1537 by one Greek man for 500 asper. Bernard Mould bought it in 1722 in Smyrna. It was bought for the University Library in 1775 for ₤20, at the celebrated book-sale of Anthony Askew. The manuscript was added to the list of New Testament manuscripts by Scholz (1794-1852).
It was examined by C. R. Gregory in 1883.

It is currently housed at the British Library
British Library
The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom, and is the world's largest library in terms of total number of items. The library is a major research library, holding over 150 million items from every country in the world, in virtually all known languages and in many formats,...

 (Harley 5796) in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

.

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

  • William H. P. Hatch
    William Hatch
    William Henry Paine Hatch, Ph.D., D.D. was an American theologian, born at Camden, N. J. He attended Harvard, graduating in 1898 . Afterward, he graduated at the Episcopal Theological Seminary in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and from the General Theological Seminary in New York City...

    , Facsimiles and Descriptions of Minuscule Manuscripts of the New Testament (Cambridge, MASS.: Harvard University Press, 1951), pl. lxxxviii.
  • Cyril Ernest Wright, Fontes Harleiani: A Study of the Sources of the Harleian Collection of Manuscripts in the British Museum (London: British Museum, 1972), pp. 246, 462.
  • Summary Catalogue of Greek Manuscripts (London: British Library, 1999- ), I, p. 196.

External links

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