Lectionary 300, designated by

siglum Scribal abbreviations, or sigla (singular: siglum), are abbreviations used by ancient and medieval scribes writing in various languages, including Latin, Greek, Old English and Old Norse. In modern manuscript editing (substantive and mecha ...

ℓ ''300'' (in the Gregory-Aland numbering) is a

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 ...

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 ...

of the

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 ...

, written on parchment. It has been palaeographically assigned to the 11th century. The manuscript is written in gold ink and contains Gospel lessons for selected days. It was named as "Gospel of Theodosius".

Description

The codex contains lessons from the

Gospel of John The Gospel of John () is the fourth of the New Testament's four canonical Gospels. It contains a highly schematic account of the ministry of Jesus, with seven "Book of Signs, signs" culminating in the raising of Lazarus (foreshadowing the ...

, Matthew, and Luke (''Evangelistarium'') on 204 parchment leaves (). The text is written in large golden letters described by at least one observer as beautiful. It contains

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 ...

, accents, and some images. The text is divided into verses as in modern editions of the Bible. The text is written in Greek

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 ...

letters in two columns per page, 16 lines per page. The manuscript contains lessons for selected days, opening with the Gospel lessons for the first five days of

Easter Easter, also called Pascha ( Aramaic: פַּסְחָא , ''paskha''; Greek: πάσχα, ''páskha'') or Resurrection Sunday, is a Christian festival and cultural holiday commemorating the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, described in t ...

week and followed by 65 more lessons from other parts of the yearly services.

History

According to tradition it was supposedly written by the

Emperor Theodosius Theodosius I ( ; 11 January 347 – 17 January 395), also known as Theodosius the Great, was Roman emperor from 379 to 395. He won two civil wars and was instrumental in establishing the Nicene Creed as the orthodox doctrine for Nicene ...

(† 395). However in 1864, J. Dury Geden called this absurd and suggested that Theodosius III (716) was probably intended. Today, it is now dated on palaeographical grounds as much later still. Scrivener dated the manuscript to the 9th-11th century, Gardthausen and

C. R. Gregory C. or c. may refer to: * Century, sometimes abbreviated as ''c.'' or ''C.'', a period of 100 years * Letter C, the third letter in the alphabet. * Cent (currency), abbreviated ''c.'' or ''¢'', a monetary unit that equals of the basic unit of man ...

dated it to the 10th or 11th century. It is presently assigned by the

INTF The Institute for New Testament Textual Research ( — INTF) at the University of Münster, Westphalia, Germany, is to research the textual history of the New Testament and to reconstruct its Greek initial text on the basis of the entire manuscri ...

to the 11th century. The manuscript was probably seen in 1761 by the Italian traveller, Vitaliano Donati, when he visited the

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. His diary, published in 1879, notes:

"In questo monastero ritrovai una quantità grandissima di codici membranacei... ve ne sono alcuni che mi sembravano anteriori al settimo secolo, ed in ispecie una Bibbia in membrane bellissime, assai grandi, sottili, e quadre, scritta in carattere rotondo e belissimo; conservano poi in chiesa un Evangelistario greco in caractere d'oro rotondo, che dovrebbe pur essere assai antico".

''In this monastery I found a great number of parchment codices ... there are some which seemed to be written before the seventh century, and especially a Bible (made) of beautiful, very large, thin and square parchments, written in round and very beautiful letters; moreover there are also in the church a Greek Evangelistarium in gold and round letters, it should be very old.''

The "Bible on beautiful vellum" noted above is probably 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 gold evangelistarium is likely Lectionary 300. Others who saw it later include

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 ...

(1862), M. E. Young, J. Dury Geden (1864), and Victor Gardthausen. Victor Gardthausen
''Catalogus codicum Graecorum Sinaiticorum''
(1886), pp. 40–41. (Source is in Greek and Latin) The manuscript was added to the list of New Testament manuscripts by Caspar René Gregory as number 300^e. Frederick Scrivener catalogued the manuscript as 286^e on his list. The manuscript is not cited in the critical editions of the Greek New Testament (UBS3, UBS4 (UBS4).). The codex is currently housed at the Saint Catherine's Monastery (Gr. 204) in

Sinai Peninsula The Sinai Peninsula, or simply Sinai ( ; ; ; ), is a peninsula in Egypt, and the only part of the country located in Asia. It is between the Mediterranean Sea to the north and the Red Sea to the south, and is a land bridge between Asia and Afri ...

Notes and references

Bibliography

* * * Victor Gardthausen
''Catalogus codicum Graecorum Sinaiticorum''
(Oxonii e typographeo Clarendoniano, 1886), pp. 40–41.

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Lectionary 0300 Greek New Testament lectionaries 11th-century biblical manuscripts Gospel Books

Description

History

See also

Notes and references

Bibliography

External links