The great uncial codices or four great uncials are the only remaining

uncial Uncial is a majuscule script (written entirely in capital letters) commonly used from the 4th to 8th centuries AD by Latin and Greek scribes. Uncial letters were used to write Greek and Latin, as well as Gothic, and are the current style for ...

codices 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 ...

that contain (or originally contained) the entire text of the

Bible The Bible is a collection of religious texts that are central to Christianity and Judaism, and esteemed in other Abrahamic religions such as Islam. The Bible is an anthology (a compilation of texts of a variety of forms) originally writt ...

( Old and

New Testament The New Testament (NT) is the second division of the Christian biblical canon. It discusses the teachings and person of Jesus in Christianity, Jesus, as well as events relating to Christianity in the 1st century, first-century Christianit ...

) 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 ...

. They are the

Codex Vaticanus The Codex Vaticanus ( The Vatican, Bibl. Vat., Vat. gr. 1209), is a manuscript of the Greek Bible, containing the majority of the Old Testament and the majority of the New Testament. It is designated by siglum B or 03 in the Gregory-Aland numb ...

in the

Vatican Library The Vatican Apostolic Library (, ), more commonly known as the Vatican Library or informally as the Vat, is the library of the Holy See, located in Vatican City, and is the city-state's national library. It was formally established in 1475, alth ...

, the

Codex Sinaiticus The Codex Sinaiticus (; Shelfmark: London, British Library, Add MS 43725), also called the Sinai Bible, is a fourth-century Christian manuscript of a Greek Bible, containing the majority of the Greek Old Testament, including the deuterocanonica ...

and the

Codex Alexandrinus The Codex Alexandrinus (London, British Library, Royal MS 1. D. V-VIII) is a manuscript of the Greek Bible,The Greek Bible in this context refers to the Bible used by Greek-speaking Christians who lived in Egypt and elsewhere during the early ...

in the

British Library The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom. Based in London, it is one of the largest libraries in the world, with an estimated collection of between 170 and 200 million items from multiple countries. As a legal deposit li ...

, and the

Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus The Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus (Paris, National Library of France, Greek 9) is a manuscript of the Greek Bible, written on parchment. It is designated by the siglum C or 04 in the Biblical manuscript#Gregory-Aland, Gregory-Aland numbering of New ...

in the

Bibliothèque nationale de France The (; BnF) is the national library of France, located in Paris on two main sites, ''Richelieu'' and ''François-Mitterrand''. It is the national repository of all that is published in France. Some of its extensive collections, including bo ...

in Paris.

Description

Only four great codices have survived to the present day:

(abbreviated: B),

(א),

(A), and

(C).Edward Ardron Hutton and Francis Crawford Burkitt, ''An atlas of textual criticism: being an attempt to show the mutual relationship of the authorities for the text of the New Testament up to about 1000 A.D.'', University Press, 1911. Although discovered at different times and places, they share many similarities. They are written in a certain

style of

calligraphy Calligraphy () is a visual art related to writing. It is the design and execution of lettering with a pen, ink brush, or other writing instruments. Contemporary calligraphic practice can be defined as "the art of giving form to signs in an e ...

using only majuscule letters, written in ''

scriptio continua (Latin for 'continuous script'), also known as or , is a style of writing without spaces or other marks between the words or sentences. The form also lacks punctuation, diacritics, or distinguished letter case. In the West, the oldest Greek ...

'' (meaning without regular gaps between words). Though not entirely absent, there are very few divisions between words in these manuscripts. Words do not necessarily end on the same line on which they start. All these

manuscript A manuscript (abbreviated MS for singular and MSS for plural) was, traditionally, any document written by hand or typewritten, as opposed to mechanically printed or reproduced in some indirect or automated way. More recently, the term has ...

s were made at great expense of material and labour, written on

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 ...

by professional

scribe A scribe is a person who serves as a professional copyist, especially one who made copies of manuscripts before the invention of Printing press, automatic printing. The work of scribes can involve copying manuscripts and other texts as well as ...

s. They seem to have been based on what were thought to be the most accurate texts of their time. All of the great uncials had the leaves arranged in

quarto Quarto (abbreviated Qto, 4to or 4º) is the format of a book or pamphlet produced from full sheets printed with eight pages of text, four to a side, then folded twice to produce four leaves. The leaves are then trimmed along the folds to produc ...

form. The size of the leaves is much larger than in papyrus codices: For online version se
here
at U Penn website. * B:

– ; c. 300–350 * א:

– ; c. 325–360 * A:

– ; c. 400–440 * C: Codex Ephraemi – ; c. 425-450 * D: In the 19th century, the Codex Bezae (c. ~400), was proposed to be the 5th great uncial, however in contrast to the original four; it has not been universally accepted due its lack of passages, textual variants, and having Western text type compared to the Alexandrian text type ( F. H. A. Scrivener,

Dean Burgon John William Burgon (21 August 1813 – 4 August 1888) was an English Anglican divine who became the Dean of Chichester Cathedral in 1876. He was known during his lifetime for his poetry and his defense of the historicity and Mosaic authorshi ...

). Codex Vaticanus uses the oldest system of textual division in the Gospels. Sinaiticus, Alexandrinus, and Ephraemi have the Ammonian Sections with references to the

Eusebian Canons Eusebian canons, Eusebian sections or Eusebian apparatus, 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 of the Bible, chapters ...

. Codex Alexandrinus and Ephraemi Rescriptus use also a division according to the larger sections – κεφάλαια (kephalaia, ''chapters''). Alexandrinus is the earliest manuscript which uses κεφάλαια. Vaticanus has a more archaic style of writing than the other manuscripts. There is no ornamentation or any larger initial letters in Vaticanus and Sinaiticus, but there is in Alexandrinus. Vaticanus has no introduction to the

Book of Psalms The Book of Psalms ( , ; ; ; ; , in Islam also called Zabur, ), also known as the Psalter, is the first book of the third section of the Tanakh (Hebrew Bible) called ('Writings'), and a book of the Old Testament. The book is an anthology of ...

, which became a standard after 325 AD, whereas Sinaiticus and Alexandrinus do. The orders of their books differ. According to Burgon, the peculiar wording in some passages of the five great uncials ( א A B C D) shows that they were the byproduct of heresy–a position strongly contested by Daniel B. Wallace. Alexandrinus was the first of the greater manuscripts to be made accessible to scholars. Ephraemi Rescriptus, a

palimpsest In textual studies, a palimpsest () is a manuscript page, either from a scroll or a book, from which the text has been scraped or washed off in preparation for reuse in the form of another document. Parchment was made of lamb, calf, or kid ski ...

, was deciphered by Tischendorf in 1840–1841 and published by him in 1843–1845. Codex Ephraemi has been the neglected member of the family of great uncials. Sinaiticus was discovered by Tischendorf in 1844 during his visit to

Saint Catherine's Monastery Saint Catherine's Monastery ( , ), officially the Sacred Autonomous Royal Monastery of Saint Catherine of the Holy and God-Trodden Mount Sinai, is a Christian monastery located in the Sinai Peninsula of Egypt. Located at the foot of Mount Sinai ...

in Sinai. The text of the codex was published in 1862. Vaticanus has been housed at the

at least since the 15th century, but it became widely available after a photographic facsimile of the entire manuscript was made and published by Giuseppe Cozza-Luzi in 1889–1890 (in three volumes). Eberhard Nestle and William Edie, "Introduction to the Textual Criticism of the Greek New Testament", London, Edinburg, Oxford, New York, 1901, p. 60. It has been speculated that Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus were part of a project ordered by Emperor

Constantine the Great Constantine I (27 February 27222 May 337), also known as Constantine the Great, was a Roman emperor from AD 306 to 337 and the first Roman emperor to convert to Christianity. He played a Constantine the Great and Christianity, pivotal ro ...

to produce 50 copies of the Bible.

References

External links

Great uncials
{{Webarchive, url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200216191955/http://legacy.owensboro.kctcs.edu/crunyon/e261c/09-NT-Augustine/NT/TH2-uncials.htm , date=2020-02-16 at the Owensboro Community and Technical College
Great Uncial Codices with photographs

Description

See also

References

External links