Codex Boernerianus, designated by G, G or 012 (in the Gregory-Aland numbering of New Testament manuscripts), α 1028 (in the von Soden numbering of New Testament manuscripts), is a small New Testament manuscript made of parchment which contains the majority of the Pauline epistles. Using the study of comparative writing styles (

paleography Palaeography (American and British English spelling differences#ae and oe, UK) or paleography (American and British English spelling differences#ae and oe, US) (ultimately from , , 'old', and , , 'to write') is the study and academic disciplin ...

), the manuscript has been dated to the 9th century CE. The name of the codex derives from the theology professor Christian Frederick Boerner, to whom it once belonged. The manuscript has several gaps.

Description

The manuscript is a

codex The codex (: codices ) was the historical ancestor format of the modern book. Technically, the vast majority of modern books use the codex format of a stack of pages bound at one edge, along the side of the text. But the term ''codex'' is now r ...

(precursor to the modern

book A book is a structured presentation of recorded information, primarily verbal and graphical, through a medium. Originally physical, electronic books and audiobooks are now existent. Physical books are objects that contain printed material, ...

), containing the text of the

Pauline epistles The Pauline epistles, also known as Epistles of Paul or Letters of Paul, are the thirteen books of the New Testament attributed to Paul the Apostle, although the authorship of some is in dispute. Among these epistles are some of the earliest ext ...

(excluding

Hebrews The Hebrews (; ) were an ancient Semitic-speaking peoples, ancient Semitic-speaking people. Historians mostly consider the Hebrews as synonymous with the Israelites, with the term "Hebrew" denoting an Israelite from the nomadic era, which pre ...

). The text is written in one column per page, 20 lines per page (sized 25 x 18 cm) on 99

vellum Vellum is prepared animal skin or membrane, typically used as writing material. It is often distinguished from parchment, either by being made from calfskin (rather than the skin of other animals), or simply by being of a higher quality. Vellu ...

leaves. The main text is in

Greek Greek may refer to: Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...

with an interlinear

Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...

translation inserted above the Greek text, in the same manner as Codex Sangallensis 48 (Δ). The text of the codex contains six gaps ( Romans 1:1-4, 2:17-24, 1 Cor. 3:8-16, 6:7-14, Col. 2:1-8, Philem. 21-25). Quotations from the

Old Testament The Old Testament (OT) is the first division of the Christian biblical canon, which is based primarily upon the 24 books of the Hebrew Bible, or Tanakh, a collection of ancient religious Hebrew and occasionally Aramaic writings by the Isr ...

are marked in the left-hand margin by inverted commas (>; also known as a ''diplai''), and Latin notation identifies a quotation (f.e. ''Iesaia'' / ''Isaiah''). Capital letters follow regular in stichometric frequency. This means the codex was copied from a manuscript arranged in lines (known as στίχοι / ''stichoi''). The codex sometimes uses minuscule letters: α, κ, ρ (of the same size as the uncials). It does not include

rough breathing In the polytonic orthography of Ancient Greek, the rough breathing ( or ; ) character is a diacritical mark used to indicate the presence of an sound before a vowel, diphthong, or after rho. It remained in the polytonic orthography even af ...

smooth breathing The smooth breathing (; ''psilí''; ) is a diacritical mark used in polytonic orthography. In Ancient Greek, it marks the absence of the voiceless glottal fricative from the beginning of a word. Some authorities have interpreted it as repr ...

or accent markers (usually used to mark stress or pitch). The Latin text is written in minuscule letters. The shape of some of the Latin letters - r, s, and t - is characteristic of the

Anglo-Saxon The Anglo-Saxons, in some contexts simply called Saxons or the English, were a Cultural identity, cultural group who spoke Old English and inhabited much of what is now England and south-eastern Scotland in the Early Middle Ages. They traced t ...

alphabet. The codex does not include the phrase (''in Rome''), with Rom 1:7 employing (''in love'') in its stead (Latin text – / ''in charity and love''), and in 1:15 the phrase is omitted entirely in both the Greek and Latin lines. At the end of the codex, after the end of Philemon, stands the title , with the interlinear Latin reading (both mean ''To the Laodiceans; the beginning of the letter''). Below the title, the Latin text of the apocryphal Epistle to the Laodiceans is written - but there is no Greek interlinear text accompanying it.

Text

The Greek text of this

is considered a representative of the

Western text-type In textual criticism of the New Testament, the Western text-type is one of the main text types. It is the predominant form of the New Testament text witnessed in the Old Latin and Syriac translations from the Greek, and also in quotations from ...

. The text-types are groups of different New Testament manuscripts which share specific or generally related readings, which then differ from each other group, and thus the conflicting readings can separate out the groups. These are then used to determine the original text as published; there are three main groups with names: Alexandrian,

Western Western may refer to: Places *Western, Nebraska, a village in the US *Western, New York, a town in the US *Western Creek, Tasmania, a locality in Australia *Western Junction, Tasmania, a locality in Australia *Western world, countries that id ...

, and

Byzantine The Byzantine Empire, also known as the Eastern Roman Empire, was the continuation of the Roman Empire centred on Constantinople during late antiquity and the Middle Ages. Having survived the events that caused the fall of the Western Roman E ...

. Textual critic

Kurt Aland Kurt Aland (28 March 1915 – 13 April 1994) was a German theologian and Biblical studies, biblical scholar who specialized in New Testament textual criticism. He founded the ''Institute for New Testament Textual Research, Institut für neutest ...

placed it in Category III according to his New Testament manuscript text classification system. Category III manuscripts are described as having "a small but not a negligible proportion of early readings, with a considerable encroachment of yzantinereadings, and significant readings from other sources as yet unidentified". The section is placed after , as seen in other manuscripts considered to be of the Western text-type such as Claromontanus (D), Augiensis (F), Minuscule 88, it, and some manuscripts of the Latin Vulgate. (NA26) It also does not contain the ending of Romans (), but it has a blank space at for it which was never written. The Latin text has some affinity with the Latin lectionary manuscript (an edition of the New Testament written in the order according to the weekly readings throughout the Church calendar year, arranged by month), Liber Comicus (t), which is a Latin lectionary containing an Old Latin (

Vetus Latina The ''Vetus Latina'' ("Old Latin" in Latin), also known as ''Vetus Itala'' ("Old Italian"), ''Itala'' ("Italian") and Old Italic, and denoted by the siglum \mathfrak, are the Latin Bible translations, translations of biblical texts (both Old T ...

) text. ; Some notable readings : (''at the same time also as of the resurrection'') : G : (''certainly also of the resurrection'') : Majority of manuscripts : (''Jesus''): G B D 1739 1881 it sa bo eth : (''Jesus, not walking around according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit'') : Majority of manuscripts : (''season'') : G : (''Lord'') : Majority of manuscripts : (''gift I bear'') : G B D : (''gift'') : Majority of manuscripts : (''Junias''): G C : (''Julian''): Majority of manuscripts (UBS3) : (''plausible wisdom'') : G F : (''persuasive words of human wisdom'') : A C L P Ψ Majority of manuscripts : (''you shall fulfill'') : G B 1962 it vg sy sa bo goth eth : (''you will have fulfilled'') : Majority of manuscripts : (''let us mind the same thing, let us stand in line with the same'') : G F : (''let us conform to the same'') : Majority of manuscripts : (''bodies'') : G F : (''minds'') : Majority of manuscripts

The Old Irish Poem in the Codex Boernerianus

O
folio 23 verso
(the reverse side of the page) at the bottom is written a verse in

Old Irish Old Irish, also called Old Gaelic (, Ogham, Ogham script: ᚌᚑᚔᚇᚓᚂᚉ; ; ; or ), is the oldest form of the Goidelic languages, Goidelic/Gaelic language for which there are extensive written texts. It was used from 600 to 900. The ...

which refers to making a pilgrimage to Rome: Téicht doróim mór saido · becc · torbai · INrí chondaigi hifoss · manimbera latt nífogbái · Mór báis mor baile mór coll ceille mor mire olais airchenn teicht dó ecaib · beith fo étoil · maíc · maire · Stokes and Strachan's translation:

Bruce M. Metzger Bruce Manning Metzger (February 9, 1914 – February 13, 2007) was an American biblical scholar, Bible translator and textual critic who was a longtime professor at Princeton Theological Seminary and Bible editor who served on the board of the ...

in his book ''Manuscripts of the Greek Bible'' quotes this poem, which seems to have been written by a disappointed pilgrim.

History

The codex was probably written by an Irish monk in the Abbey of St. Gall,

Switzerland Switzerland, officially the Swiss Confederation, is a landlocked country located in west-central Europe. It is bordered by Italy to the south, France to the west, Germany to the north, and Austria and Liechtenstein to the east. Switzerland ...

between 850-900 A.D. Scholar Ludolph Kuster was the first to recognize the 9th century date of Codex Boernerianus. The evidence for this date includes the style of the script, the smaller uncial letters in Greek, the Latin interlinear written in Anglo-Saxon minuscule, and the separation of words. In 1670 it was in the hands of P. Junius at

Leiden Leiden ( ; ; in English language, English and Archaism, archaic Dutch language, Dutch also Leyden) is a List of cities in the Netherlands by province, city and List of municipalities of the Netherlands, municipality in the Provinces of the Nethe ...

. The codex got its name from its first German owner,

University of Leipzig Leipzig University (), in Leipzig in Saxony, Germany, is one of the world's oldest universities and the second-oldest university (by consecutive years of existence) in Germany. The university was founded on 2 December 1409 by Frederick I, Electo ...

professor Christian Frederick Boerner, who bought it in the

Dutch Republic The United Provinces of the Netherlands, commonly referred to in historiography as the Dutch Republic, was a confederation that existed from 1579 until the Batavian Revolution in 1795. It was a predecessor state of the present-day Netherlands ...

in the year 1705. It was collated by Kuster, described in the preface to his edition of Mill's Greek New Testament. The manuscript was designated by symbol G in the second part of Johann Jakob Wettstein's edition of the Greek New Testament. The text of the codex was published by

Christian Frederick Matthaei Christian Frederick Matthaei (4 March 1744 – 26 September 1811) was a German palaeographer, classical philologist, and professor at the universities of Wittenberg and Moscow. Life Matthaei was born in 1744 in the Saxon village of Gröst, we ...

, at Meissen, in Saxony, in 1791, and supposed by him to have been written between the 8th and 12th centuries. Rettig thought that Codex Sangallensis is a part of the same book as the Codex Boernerianus, which some other scholars also believe. During

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

, the codex suffered severely from water damage. Thus the facsimile as published in 1909 provides the most legible text. The manuscript is housed now in the Saxon State Library (A 145b),

Dresden Dresden (; ; Upper Saxon German, Upper Saxon: ''Dräsdn''; , ) is the capital city of the States of Germany, German state of Saxony and its second most populous city after Leipzig. It is the List of cities in Germany by population, 12th most p ...

, in

Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...

, while Δ (037) is at Saint Gallen in

References

External links

Codex Boernerianus G (012)
at the CSNTM (images of the 1909 facsimile edition)
Codex Boernerianus G (012)
recently made photos at SLUB Dresden Digitale Bibliothek
Codex Boernerianus
recently made photos at SLUB Dresden Digitale Bibliothek (PDF)

at the ''Encyclopedia of Textual Criticism'' {{DEFAULTSORT:Boernerianus Greek New Testament uncials Vetus Latina New Testament manuscripts 9th-century biblical manuscripts