Even in the age of printing, and with all the security afforded by that invention, it is not always easy or even possible to exhibit or restore the literary productions of a great mind in their original form. One has but to think of the obscurity in which the works of Shakespeare and their early editions are enveloped, or the questions raised over the Weimar edition of Luther’s works. And even when the author’s original manuscript is still preserved, but the proof-sheets, as is usual, destroyed, we cannot always be certain whether occasional discrepancies between the print and the manuscript are intentional or not. Nay, even when the two agree, there is still the possibility that what the author wrote and allowed to be printed was not what he thought or intended to be read. Did Lessing, e.g., mean us to read in Nathan ii. 5, 493, “the great man requires always plenty of room,” or “the great tree” does so? Various writers, in speaking of this or that artist’s talents or dexterity, have used the words “haud impigre.” To take them at their word, the object of their praise had no such endowment beyond the common. We may be certain that what they meant to convey was the very opposite of what they actually wrote, viz. “haud pigre” or “impigre.” As a rule, however, the purchaser of a modern classic may rely upon reading it in the form in which the author intended it to be circulated. It is quite different in the case of those works which were composed at a time when their multiplication was only possible by means of copying, and specially so in the case of those that are older by a thousand years than the invention of printing. For then every fresh copy was a fresh source of errors, even when the copyist was as painfully exact as it was possible for him to be. It is simply astonishing, in view of all the perils to which literary works have been exposed, to find how much has been preserved, and, on the whole, how faithfully.
The matter is, of course, quite a simple one, when by good fortune the author’s own manuscript, his autograph, is extant. The abstract possibility of this being so in the case of the New Testament writings cannot be denied. Thanks to the dryness of the climate of Egypt and the excellence of ancient writing material, we have documents more than twice the age that the New Testament autographs would be to-day did we possess them. Now and again we find a report circulated in the newspapers that such an original document has been found,—of Peter, e.g., or some other Apostle. About the year 489 it was asserted that the original copy of Matthew had been discovered in the grave of Barnabas in Cyprus. And to the eyes of the devout there are still exhibited not only the Inscription from the Cross, but works from the artist hand of Luke. In reality, however, we have no longer the autograph of a single New Testament book. Their disappearance is readily understood when we consider that the greater portion of the New Testament, viz. the Epistles, are occasional writings never intended for publication, while others were meant to have only a limited circulation. Even in the early ages of the Christian Church, when there must have been frequent occasion to appeal to them, the autographs were no longer in existence.
Tertullian (De Praescriptione Haereticorum, 36) mentions Thessalonica among the cities in which he believed the letters of the Apostles that were addressed there were still read from autograph copies.[18] “Percurre ecclesias apostolicas, apud quas ipsae adhuc cathedrae apostolorum suis locis praesident, apud quas ipsae authenticae literae eorum recitantur, sonantes vocem et repraesentantes faciem uniuscuiusque.” But when the same author, in his De Monogamia, speaks of “Graecum authenticum,” he refers not to the autograph, but to the original text as distinguished from a version.
On the copy of Matthew’s Gospel found in the grave of Barnabas in Cyprus, vide Theodorus Lector (Migne, 86, 189); Severus of Antioch in Assemani, Bibliotheca Orientalis, ii. 81; Vitae omnium 13 Apostolorum: Βαρνάβας ὁ καὶ Ἰωσῆς ... οὗτος τὸ κατὰ Ματθαῖον εὐαγγέλιον οἰκειοχείρως γράψας ἐν τῇ τῆς Κύπρου νήσῳ τελειοῦται.[19] In the Imperial Court Chapel the lessons were read from this copy on Holy Thursday of every year. Vide Fabricius, Evv. Apocr., 341.
On the supposed autograph of Mark in Venice see Jos. Dobrowsky, Fragmentum Pragense Ev. S. Marci, vulgo autographi, Prague, 1778. It is really a fragment of a Latin manuscript of the Vulgate, dating from the seventh century, of which other fragments exist in Prague.
In the Chronicon Paschale there is a note on the reading τρίτη for ἕκτη in John xix. 14, to the following effect:—καθὼς τὰ ἀκριβῆ βιβλία περιέχει αὐτό τε τὸ ἰδιόχειρον τοῦ εὐαγγελιστοῦ, ὅπερ μέχρι τοῦ νῦν πεφύλακται χάριτι θεοῦ ἐν τῇ Ἐφεσίων ἁγιωτάτῃ ἐκκλησίᾳ καὶ ὑπὸ τῶν πιστῶν ἐκεῖσε προσκυνεῖται. Bengel himself said on 1 John v. 7:—“Et tamen etiam atque etiam sperare licet, si non autographum Johanneum, at alios vetustissimos codices graecos, qui hanc periocham habeant, in occultis providentiae divinae forulis adhuc latentes, suo tempore productum iri.” (N.T. 420, 602, 770.)
In disproof of an alleged autograph of Peter, see Lagarde, Aus dem deutschen Gelehrtenleben, Göttingen, 1880, p. 117 f. On legends of this sort among the Polish Jews, on the autograph copy of the Proverbs that Solomon sent to the Queen of Sheba, and now in the possession of the Queen of England, etc., vide S. Schechter, Die Hebraica in der Bibliothek des Britischen Museums, in the Jüdisches Literatur-Blatt for 1888, No. 46.
At the Sixth Ecumenical Council of 680-1, which Harnack (DG. ii. 408) says might be called the “Council of Antiquaries and Palaeographers”, investigations were instituted in this department with some success.
J. G. Berger, De Autographis Veterum, Vitenb., 1723. 4o.
J. R. Harris, New Testament Autographs (Supplement to the American Journal of Philology, No. 12), Baltimore, 1882. With three plates.
In this connection reference might be made to the falsifications of Constantine Simonides: Facsimiles of certain portions of the Gospel of St. Matthew, and of the Epistles of St. James and St. Jude, written on papyrus of the first century. London, 1862. Fol.
Seeing, then, that the autographs of the New Testament books have all perished, we have to do as in the case of the Greek and Latin classics, viz. apply to later copies of them, the so-called manuscripts of which frequent mention has already been made. But while in the case of most literary products of antiquity these manuscript copies are the only sources whence we may derive our knowledge of them, we are happily more fortunate in regard to the New Testament.
The new faith very early and very rapidly spread to distant peoples speaking other languages than that in which the Gospel was first preached. Indeed, even in its native land of Palestine, several languages were in use at the same time. Accordingly, at a very early date, as early as the second, and perhaps, in the case of fragments, even in the first century, there arose in the East, and in the South, and in the West, versions of the Christian books very soon after their composition. At first only separate portions would be translated, but as time went on versions of the entire New Testament made their appearance. Manifestly, the value for our purpose of these versions depends on their age and accuracy. It is impossible, without further knowledge, to be certain whether a Greek copyist of later centuries followed his original quite faithfully or not. But a Latin version of the New Testament which dates from the second century, e.g., will represent with tolerable certainty the second century Greek manuscript from which it is derived, even supposing that our present copy of that version is not earlier than the sixth century or even later. But these versions confer yet another advantage. In the case of most, and certainly of the oldest Greek manuscripts, we do not know in what country they originated. But it is quite certain that a Latin version could not have originated in Egypt, or a Coptic version in Gaul. In this way we may learn from the versions how the text of the Bible read at a particular time and in a particular region. Lastly, if it should happen that several versions originating in quite isolated regions, in the Latin West, and in the Syrian East, and in the Egyptian South, agree, then we may be certain that what is common to them all must go back to the earliest times and to their common original.
In addition to the Greek manuscripts and the versions, we have still a third and by no means unimportant class of material that we can employ in reconstructing our text of the New Testament. We possess an uncommonly rich Christian literature, which gathers volume from the second half, or, at all events, from the last quarter of the first century onwards. Now, what an early Church teacher, or, for that matter, what any early writer quotes from the New Testament will have for us its own very peculiar importance, under certain conditions. Because, as a rule, we know precisely where and when he lived. So that by means of these patristic quotations we are enabled to locate our ancient manuscripts of the Bible even more exactly, and trace their history further than we are able to do with the help of the versions. Here, of course, we must make sure that our author has quoted accurately and not loosely from memory, and also that the quotations in his book have been accurately preserved and not accommodated to the current text of their time by later copyists or even by editors of printed editions, as has actually been done even in the nineteenth century. We shall now proceed to describe these three classes of auxiliaries.
Literature.—W. Wattenbach, Anleitung zur griechischen Palaeographie, 2nd ed., Leipzig, 1877; V. Gardthausen, Griechische Palaeographie, Leipzig, 1879; Fr. Blass, Palaeographie, Bücherwesen, und Handschriftenkunde, in I. v. Müller’s Handbuch der klassischen Alterthumswissenschaft, 2nd ed., vol. i., Munich, 1892; E. M. Thompson, Handbook of Greek and Latin Palaeography, London, 1891; T. Birt, Das antike Buchwesen, Berlin, 1882; W. A. Copinger, The Bible and its Transmission; F. G. Kenyon, Our Bible and the ancient Manuscripts, London, third edition, 1897; F. H. A. Scrivener, Six Lectures on the Text of the N.T. and the ancient Manuscripts which contain it, Cambridge and London, 1875; A Collation of about 20 Manuscripts of the Holy Gospels, London, 1853; Adversaria critica sacra, Cambridge, 1893; Hoskier; Urt., pp. 16, 54; O. Weise, Schrift- und Buchwesen in alter und neuer Zeit, Leipzig (Teubner), 1899 (with Facsimiles: a popular work); F. G. Kenyon, The Palaeography of Greek Papyri, Oxford, 1899 (with 20 Facsimiles and a Table of Alphabets, pp. viii., 160); Ulr. Wilcken, Tafeln zur älteren griechischen Palaeographie, Nach Originalen des Berliner K. Museums, Berlin and Leipzig, 1891 (with 20 photographs); G. Vitelli e C. Paoli, Collezione Fiorentina di facsimili paleografici greci e latini, Firenze, 1884-1897 (with 50 Greek Plates and 50 Latin, Folio); Charles F. Sitterly, Praxis in Manuscripts of the Greek Testament; the mechanical and literary processes involved in their writing and preservation (with table of Manuscripts and 13 Facsimile Plates), New York and Cincinnati, 1898, second enlarged edition, 1900; F. Carta, C. Cipolla e C. Frati, Monumenta Palaeographica sacra: Atlante paleografico-artistico composto sui manuscritti, Turin, 1899; Karl Dziatzko, Untersuchungen über ausgewählte Kapitel des antiken Buchwesens. Mit Text, Uebersetzung und Erklärung von Plinii Histor. Nat., lib. xiii. § 68, 69, Leipzig, Teubner, 1900.
For no literary production of antiquity is there such a wealth of manuscripts as for the New Testament. Our classical scholars would rejoice were they as fortunate with Homer or Sophocles, Plato or Aristotle, Cicero or Tacitus, as Bible students are with their New Testament. The oldest complete manuscript of Homer that we have dates from the thirteenth century, and only separate papyrus fragments go back to the Alexandrian age. All that is extant of Sophocles we owe to a single manuscript dating from the eighth or ninth century in the Laurentian Library at Florence. But of the New Testament, 3829 manuscripts have been catalogued up till the present. A systematic search in the libraries of Europe might add still more to the list; a search in those of Asia and Egypt would certainly do so. Gregory believes that there are probably some two or three thousand manuscripts which have not yet been collated, and every year additional manuscripts are brought to light. Most of these are, of course, late, and contain only separate portions, some of them mere fragments, of the New Testament.[20] Not a few, however, go much further back than our manuscripts of the Hebrew Old Testament and most of the Greek and Latin Classics. Only in the case of the Mohammedan sacred books is the condition of things more favourable. These came into existence in the seventh century, and the variations between separate manuscripts are a vanishing quantity, because the text of the Koran was officially fixed at a very early date and regarded as inviolably sacred. Fortunately, one might almost say, it is quite different with the New Testament, which was put together in a totally different way. In its case the very greatest freedom prevailed for at least a century and a half.
The manuscripts of the New Testament being so numerous, it becomes necessary to arrange them. One of the most important considerations hitherto has been that of age, and therefore manuscripts have been divided into Uncials (or Majuscules) and Cursives (or Minuscules), according to the style of writing in use at earlier or later times.
In early times, as at the present day, inscriptions on monuments and public buildings were engraved in capital letters. This form of writing was also employed for books, especially those containing valuable or sacred writing. The letters were not joined together, but set down side by side.[21] They were called litterae majusculae, capitales, unciales, i.e. “inch-high,” as Jerome says with ridicule—uncialibus ut vulgo aiunt litteris onera magis exarata quam codices. Alongside of this there arose, even previous to the Christian era, a smaller Cursive form (Minusculae), for use in common life, in which the letters were joined.[22] This running hand found its way into manuscripts of the Bible in the course of the ninth century. In some cases, in Codex Λ e.g., both styles are found alongside or following each other.[23]
The oldest Cursive manuscript of the New Testament, the exact date of which is known, is 481evv.; it bears the date 835. The great majority of New Testament manuscripts belong to this later date, seeing that out of the 3829 manuscripts there are only 127 Uncials to 3702 Minuscules. Greek copyists not being accustomed to date their manuscripts exactly, it becomes the task of palæography to settle the criteria by which the date and place of a manuscript’s origin may be determined. These are the style of writing—whether angular or round, upright or sloping, the punctuation—whether simple or elaborate, and the different material and form of the book. These distinctions, however, are often very misleading. The following table will show the distribution of the manuscripts according to the centuries in which they were written, as given by Vollert, Scrivener, and von Gebhardt[24]:—
| Vollert. | Scrivener. | v. Gebhardt. | |
| IVth Century, | 5 | ... | 2 |
| Vth “ | 4 | 10 | 15 |
| VIth ” | 18 | 22 | 24 |
| VIIth “ | 6 | 9 | 17 |
| VIIIth ” | 8 | 8 | 19 |
| IXth “ | 23 | ... | 31 |
| Xth ” | 4 | ... | 6 |
Manuscripts are distinguished according to the material on which they are written, which may be either parchment or paper.
Parchment derives its name from Pergamum, where it was introduced in the reign of King Eumenes (197-159 B.C.). But prior to the use of parchment, and to a certain extent alongside of it, papyrus was used, especially in Egypt, down to the time of the Mohammedan Conquest. Papyrus books were originally in the form of rolls (volumina). Only a few fragments of the New Testament on papyrus remain. The use of parchment gave rise to the book or Codex form. In the case of parchment codices, a further distinction is drawn between those made of vellum manufactured from the skins of very young calves, and those made of common parchment from the skins of sheep, goats, and antelopes.
As early as the eighth century (not the ninth), the so-called cotton paper (charta bombycina) was introduced from the East. This, however, never consisted of pure cotton, but rather of flax and hemp. It had been in use for a long time in China and the centre of Eastern Asia, but seems to have been unknown in Syria and Egypt till after the fall of Samarcand in 704. From the thirteenth century onwards, paper made of linen was employed.
In the New Testament, both papyrus and parchment are referred to. In 2 Tim. iv. 13, Paul asks that the φελόνης he had left at Troas might be brought to him, and τὰ βιβλία, but specially τὰς μεμβράνας. Here, φελόνης means cloak rather than satchel; τὰ βιβλία are the papyrus books, possibly his Old Testament, while τὰς μεμβράνας are clean sheets of parchment. In 2 John 12 the word χάρτης is used of papyrus. There, and in 3 John 13, τὸ μέλαν is the ink, and the κάλαμος (lat. canna) is the reed pen, still used for writing in the East. The quill pen, strange to say, is not mentioned prior to the time of Theodoric the Ostrogoth in the sixth century. The size of a sheet of writing paper may be inferred from the passages in 2nd and 3rd John alluded to above.
In order to economize space, the writing was continuous, with no break between the words (scriptio continua), breathings and accents being also omitted. This is a frequent source of ambiguity and misunderstanding. In Matt. ix. 18, e.g., ΕΙΣΕΛΘΩΝ may be either εἷς ἐλθὼν or εἰσελθὼν. In Mark x. 40, ΑΛΛΟΙΣΗΤΟΙΜΑΣΤΑΙ was rendered “aliis praeparatum,” ἄλλοις being read instead of ἀλλ’ οἷς. In Matt. xvi. 23, ΑΛΛΑ may be taken either as ἀλλὰ or ἀλλ’ ἃ. In 1 Cor. xii. 28, again, the Ethiopic translator read οὖς instead of οὓς. The Palestinian-Syriac Lectionary translates 1 Tim. iii. 16 as though it were ὁμολογοῦμεν ὡς μέγα ἐστίν. There is something to be said for this, but Naber’s proposed reading of Gal. ii. 11, ὅτι κατέγνωμεν ὃς ἦν, cannot be accepted.
Most manuscripts show two columns to the page. The Sinaitic, however, has four, while the Vatican has three. Columns vary considerably in width. They may be the width of a few letters only, or of an average hexameter line of sixteen to eighteen syllables or about thirty-six letters. Such a line is called a στίχος, and as the scribe was paid according to the number of στίχοι, we find at the end of several books a note giving the total number of στίχοι contained in them. In carefully written manuscripts, every hundredth, sometimes every fiftieth στίχος is indicated in the margin. These stichometric additions were afterwards adopted for the entire Bible. Their value in many respects will be obvious.
As the church increased in wealth and prestige, New Testament manuscripts acquired a more sumptuous form, either from the luxury of the rich or the pious devotion of kings and churches.
Parchment, however, grew more and more expensive, and so the practice arose of using an old manuscript a second time. The original writing was erased by means of a sponge or pumice stone or a knife, and the sheets were then employed to receive other matter, or it might even be the same matter over again. And so we have Codices Rescripti or Palimpsesti as they were called, a term known to Cicero, who says, though of a wax tablet, “quod in palimpsesto, laudo parsimoniam” (ad Diversos vii. 18). Some manuscripts were used as often as three times for distinct works in three different languages e.g. Greek, Syriac, and Iberian. Codex Ib is one of these thrice used manuscripts, being written first in Greek and then twice in Syriac.
Marks of punctuation are hardly to be found in the earliest times. It was frequently, therefore, a question with church teachers whether a sentence was to be taken interrogatively or indicatively, or how the sentences were to be divided, as in the case of John i. 3 and 4. In the general absence of punctuation, the appearance of quotation marks in some of the oldest manuscripts, like Codex Vaticanus e.g., to indicate citations from the Old Testament, is remarkable.
The size of a manuscript varies from a large folio, which in the case of a parchment codex must have been very expensive, to a small octavo. In regions inhabited by a mixed population we find bilingual manuscripts, Greek-Latin, Greek-Coptic, Greek-Armenian, and such like. If the manuscript was designed for use in church, the two languages were written in parallel columns, the Greek frequently occupying the left column or reverse side of the sheet, being the place of honour. In manuscripts intended for use in schools, the translation was written between the lines. Codex Δ is an example of a manuscript with an interlinear version of this sort.
Of more importance is the distinction of manuscripts according to their contents. Of all our recorded Uncials, only one contains the whole of the New Testament complete. That is the Codex Sinaiticus discovered by Tischendorf in 1859. A few others, like Codices Vaticanus, Alexandrinus, Ephraemi, were once complete, but are no longer so. Of the later Minuscules, some twenty-five alone contain the entire New Testament. Of the English Minuscules, five are complete. The fragmentary nature of our manuscripts is intelligible on two grounds. One is that a New Testament codex written in uncial characters is a very bulky and ponderous volume running to about 150 sheets. Comparatively few would be in a position to procure such a costly work all at once. The other reason is that the New Testament itself is not a single book, but a series of different collections, which at first, and even afterwards, were circulated separately. To the same reason is due the great variety in the order of the several parts of the New Testament found in the manuscripts, and still, to a certain extent, in our printed editions. It is not exactly known who it was that first collected and inscribed in one volume the books and the parts that now make up the New Testament. Such a single volume of the entire New Testament was afterwards known as a πανδέκτης, and in Latin, bibliotheca. The parts into which the New Testament is divided are—
1. The four Gospels.
2. (a) The Acts of the Apostles. (b) The so-called Catholic Epistles, i.e. those not addressed to any particular church or individual, viz., James, 1 and 2 Peter, 1, 2, and 3 John, Jude.
3. The thirteen Pauline Epistles, or, including Hebrews, fourteen.
4. The Apocalypse.
Among these incomplete manuscripts of the New Testament may be classed the so-called lectionaries—i.e. manuscripts containing only those portions read at church services. Following the custom of the Synagogue, in which portions of the Law and the Prophets were read at divine service each Sabbath day, the practice was early adopted in the Christian Church of reading passages from the New Testament books at services. A definite selection of such extracts was formed at an early date from the Gospels and Epistles, and the custom arose of arranging these according to the order of Sundays and Holy days, for greater convenience in use. A collection of selected passages from the Gospels was called a Εὐαγγέλιον, and in Latin Evangeliarium,[25] in distinction to the books containing the continuous text, which were called Τετραευαγγέλιον, while the selections from the Epistles were known as Ἀπόστολος or Πραξαπόστολος. These lectionaries, though mostly of later origin, are nevertheless important as indicating the official text of the various provinces of the Church. They show, moreover, how sundry slight alterations found their way into the text of the New Testament.
We can easily understand why it is that manuscripts of the Gospels are by far the most numerous, while those of the last book of the New Testament are the fewest. Among the Uncials, 73 contain the Gospels, and only 7 have the Apocalypse. Of these 73 Uncials, again, only 6, viz. א B K M S U, or, if we include Ω, only 7 are quite complete; 9 are almost so; 11 exhibit the greater part of the Gospels, while the remainder contain only fragments. Of the 20 Uncials of the Pauline Epistles, only 1 is entirely complete—viz., א; 2 are nearly complete, D G; 8 have the greater part. It is plain that our resources are not so great, after all, as the number of manuscripts given above would lead us to expect. Here also there are πολλοὶ κλητοί, ὀλίγοι ἐκλεκτοί.
The manufacture of parchment is perhaps older than that of papyrus. It is said to owe both its name and wide circulation as writing material to the encouragement given to its manufacture by Eumenes II. of Pergamum (197-159 B.C.). Pliny’s story,[26] which he gives on the authority of Varro, is that Eumenes wished to found a library which should, as far as possible, excel that of Alexandria. To frustrate this intention Ptolemy Epiphanes prohibited the exportation of papyrus to Asia Minor. (In the list of principal exports of Alexandria, Lumbroso[27] mentions βίβλος and χάρτη in the second place after ὑέλια, and βιβλία in the seventh.) Eumenes was accordingly obliged to prepare parchment at Pergamum, and hence its name, περγαμηνή. The name first occurs in Diocletian’s Price-list,[28] and in Jerome. The word used in earlier times was διφθέραι,[29] or δέρρεις,[30] or μεμβράναι as in 2 Tim. iv. 13, which last was taken from the Latin. At first parchment was less valuable than papyrus, and was used more for domestic and school purposes than for the making of books, as the writing was easier erased from the skin. But it gradually supplanted papyrus, and with its employment came also the change from the roll to the “codex” form of book. If papyrus was the vehicle of Pagan Greek literature, parchment was the means whereby the literature of the new faith became known to mankind, and the remnant of the ancient culture at the same time preserved. Origen’s library, which still consisted for the most part of papyrus rolls, was re-written in parchment volumes (σωμάτιον, corpus) by two priests shortly before the time of Jerome. Our principal manuscripts of Philo are derived from one of these codices.[31] When Constantine ordered Eusebius to provide a certain number of Bibles for presentation to the churches of his Empire, he sent him, not rolls, but codices, πεντήκοντα σωμάτια ἐν διφθέραις.
Parchment was prepared from the skins of goats, sheep, calves, asses, swine, and antelopes. Our oldest manuscripts of the Bible exhibit the finest and whitest parchment. The Codex Sinaiticus, e.g., displays the very finest prepared antelope skin, and is of such a size that only two sheets could be obtained from one skin. As a rule, four sheets were folded into a quire (quaternio), the separate sheets having been previously ruled on the grain side. They were laid with the flesh side to the flesh side, and the grain side to the grain side, beginning with the flesh side outermost, so that in each quaternio, pages 1, 4, 5, 8, 9, 12, 13, 16 were white and smooth with the lines showing in relief, while the others, 2, 3, 6, 7, 10, 11, 14, 15 were darker and rough, with indented lines.[32]
For writing on papyrus, ink made of soot was employed. Three parts of lamp-black were mixed with one part of gum and diluted with water. This ink, however, was easily washed off, and did not stick well to parchment, and therefore recourse was had to ink made of gall nuts. Sulphate of iron was afterwards added to it, with the result that the writing material is frequently corroded with the ink. From its having been boiled the mixture was also called ἔγκαυστον, hence our word “ink” (encre). Many old recipes for making ink are still preserved.[33] Even in early Egyptian writing, coloured inks, especially red, were used. One of the most beautiful manuscripts extant is a Syriac Codex in the British Museum, of date 411, in which the red, blue, green, and yellow inks are still quite fresh. Eusebius used cinnabar for numbering the paragraphs, and Jerome makes mention of minium or vermilion. In times of great wealth parchments were dyed purple and inscribed with gold and silver letters.
Among ancient writers, Pliny gives the fullest description of the preparation of papyrus, in his Historia Naturalis, xiii. 11.[34] The sheets were prepared, not from the bark, but from the pith of the plant. This was cut into strips (σχίδας) as thin and broad, and, according to some, as long as possible. These were laid side by side as firmly as might be, to form the first layer (σχέδα). On this a second layer was laid crosswise and fastened to the lower with moisture or gum. The two layers were then compressed to form the writing sheet (σελίς), which was carefully dried and polished with ivory or a smooth shell. The roll (τόμος, κύλινδρος) consisted of a number of σελίδες joined together to make one long strip—sometimes as much as 20 or 40 feet long, or even longer. The upper side, the side used for writing on, was the one in which the fibres ran in a horizontal direction parallel to the edge of the roll.[35] The under or outer side was only used in cases of necessity.[36] The first sheet (πρωτόκολλον) was made stronger than the rest, and its inner edge was glued to a wooden roller (ὄμφαλος), with a knob at the end (κέρας). The margin of the roll, what corresponds to the edge of our books, was frequently glazed and coloured, while the back was protected against worms and moths by being rubbed with cedar oil. The title was inscribed on a separate label of parchment (σίττυβος or σίλλυβος). The separate rolls were enclosed in a leather case (διφθέρα or φαινόλης, see 2 Tim. iv. 13), and a number of them kept in a chest (κιβωτός or κίστη).
On the literature cf. also Paul Krüger, Ueber die Verwendung von Papyrus und Pergament für die juristische Litteratur der Römer, Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte. Roman section, viii. pp. 76-85 (1887). Wilcken, Archiv für Papyrus-Forschung und verwandte Gebiete, Leipzig, Teubner. F. G. Kenyon, Palaeography of Greek Papyri. C. Haeberlin, Griechische Papyri, Leipzig, 1897: “Nearly 150 years have fled since 432 complete Rolls and 1806 Papyrus Fragments were discovered in the year 1752 at Herculaneum, in the Villa of L. Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus, the pupil and friend of the Epicurean philosopher Philodemus. Then twenty-five years later the soil of Egypt, that home and nursery of literature, opened for the first time to vouchsafe to us a Greek Papyrus Roll, destined to be the forerunner of a series of discoveries often interrupted but never ceasing altogether. It was, perchance, not the only one of its kind; but out of the fifty rolls accidentally discovered in the year 1778 by Arabian peasants in the neighbourhood of Memphis, it alone had the fortune to come into the possession of Cardinal Stefano Borgia. The rest were burned by their unsuspecting discoverers, who found a peculiar pleasure in the resinous odour that arose from their smoking pyre.”
The collection of manuscripts brought from the East by the Archduke Rainer gave a stimulus to the study of the early history of paper-making, and at the same time supplied the materials for a more exact investigation of the subject than had previously been possible. Earlier works, therefore, like that of G. Meerman, De Chartae vulgaris seu lineae Origine, ed. J. v. Vaassen, Hagae Comitum, 1767, have been superseded. The manufacture of paper seems to have been introduced into Europe by the Moors in Spain, where it went by the name of pergameno de panno to distinguish it from the pergameno de cuero. In the Byzantine Empire it was called ξυλοχάρτιον or ξυλότευκτον, as being a vegetable product. It came afterwards to be known as χάρτης Δαμασκηνός, from its chief place of manufacture. The Arabs introduced it into Sicily, whence it passed into Italy. After 1235, we find paper mentioned as one of the exports of Genoa. European paper is distinguished from that of Eastern manufacture chiefly by the use of water marks, such as ox-heads, e.g., which were unknown in the East. Older sorts of paper bear a great resemblance to parchment. The Benedictine monks, who owned the fragments of Mark’s Gospel preserved in Venice, asserted that they were written on bark. Montfaucon declared the material to be papyrus. Massei said it was cotton paper. But the microscope shows it to be parchment. In many manuscripts a mixture of parchment and paper is found. This is so in the Leicester Codex, in which the leaves are regularly arranged in such a way that the outer and inner sheets of a quire are of parchment, while the three intermediate sheets are of paper. See J. R. Harris, The origin of the Leicester Codex of the New Testament, 1887, p. 14 ff.
Lead was also employed in early times for writing on. Budde sees a reference to this practice in the well-known passage, Job xix. 24. He holds that the lead there mentioned is not to be supposed as run into letters cut out in the rock, which would be a very unlikely thing to do, and a practice for which there is no evidence. He would therefore correct the text so as to read “with an iron pen on lead.” Hesiod’s Ἔργα, e.g., was preserved on lead in the temple of the Muses on Helicon.[37] A leaden tablet from Hadrumet contains an incantation showing strong traces of O.T. influence.[38] At Rhodes there was recently discovered a roll of lead inscribed with the 80th Psalm, which was used as a charm to protect a vineyard.[39]
Clay and brick were also used as writing material, a fact which Strack has omitted to mention in his article on Writing in the Realencyklopädie (see Ezek. iv. 1). So far, however, no traces of N.T. writing have been discovered in the Ostraca literature of which we have now a considerable quantity. We have tiles of this sort dating from a period of over a thousand years from the time of Ptolemy Philadelphus onwards, inscribed with ink and a reed pen. Several of these contain portions of literary works such as those of Euripides.[40]