Minuscule 33

Colbert's Manuscript

It is Grec 14 in the Bibliothèque nationale de France, and C. R. Gregory records its earlier home: it was number 2844 in the library of Jean-Baptiste Colbert, Louis XIV's minister. The library's own record describes it as parchment, 143 leaves, large format, ninth century, in ancient Greek; the whole thing has been photographed and is free to look at, page by page, under a public-domain rights statement. C. R. Gregory measured it at 37.8 by 24.8 centimetres, one column, 48 lines to the page in the Gospels and 51 or 52 elsewhere, and worked out that two hands wrote it — one for the Old Testament portion and the Gospels, and a second, a century later, for Acts, the Catholic Epistles and the Pauline Epistles.

What it contains is unusual on both ends. In front there are portions of the prophets; after them comes the New Testament entire except for Revelation, with three gaps in the Gospels where leaves are gone. And the books are in the wrong order. Gregory worked out why, and the answer is mundane and rather cheering: a binder shuffled the sections in the thirteenth or fourteenth century, before anything had yet been lost, which is how J. G. Eichhorn came to describe a manuscript that begins with the Pauline Epistles and ends with the Gospels. Eichhorn had already suspected as much, adding to his own description of the order the qualification that this was so if it did not in fact come from the binder.

Why a Late Manuscript Can Matter

Minuscules — Greek manuscripts in the small connected script that replaced capitals from the ninth century — number in the thousands, and the great majority carry the Byzantine form of the text, the one that stands behind the Textus Receptus and the King James Version. That is why they are usually treated in bulk. Minuscule 33 is the standing exception, and it has been recognised as one for two hundred years. Eichhorn's description of it in 1827 runs, in translation: the text "is the Alexandrian or Hesychian, full of the most excellent and oldest readings." What he wrote was "Der Text ist der Alexandrinische oder Hesychische, voll der vortrefflichsten und ältesten Lesarten"; the English is this article's own rendering, as with the epithet two sentences below. F. H. A. Scrivener put the same judgement in comparative terms: "in text it resembles Codd. BDL more than any other cursive manuscript" — that is, Vaticanus, Bezae and Regius, which is company no ordinary minuscule keeps.

The nickname comes from that same page of Eichhorn, and it is worth getting right because it is usually quoted without a source and in a form he did not write. Gregory's Textkritik of 1900 gives the reference: "Eichhorn nannte diese Handschrift: 'Die Königin unter den Cursiv geschriebenen Handschriften', Einl. in das N. T. Leipzig 1827, Bd. 5, S. 217." Eichhorn's German is "the queen among the manuscripts written in cursive"; the familiar English "queen of the cursives" is a later compression of it. Two further honesties belong with the epithet. It is not in Gregory's better-known Canon and Text of 1907, which describes neither this manuscript nor the phrase, so anyone citing that book for it has the wrong volume. And Eichhorn awarded the crown on the same page on which he reported J. J. Griesbach's estimate that the book was of the eleventh century or the beginning of the twelfth — he thought it a very good late manuscript, not a ninth-century one.

A Manuscript You Can Hardly Read

The honest limit here is not a dispute about what the manuscript means. It is that a good deal of it can barely be read, and every reading attributed to it in a critical apparatus rests on somebody's decision about a mark on a page. Scrivener describes the condition without softening it: "the ends of the leaves are much damaged, and greatly misplaced by the binder; so that the Gospels now stand last … the ink too, by reason of the damp, has often left its proper page blank, so that the writing can only be read set off on the opposite page, especially in the Acts." He quotes S. P. Tregelles, who collated it, saying that of all the manuscripts he had worked on "none has ever been so wearisome to the eyes, and exhaustive of every faculty of attention." Gregory's independent description agrees on the substance while using a drier word — the leaves are damaged, and Tregelles read a good deal from the offset traces on the facing page — so the word "damp" specifically comes from Scrivener.

The date is not agreed either, and the disagreement is still live in the reference works rather than merely historical. The Bibliothèque nationale assigns the ninth century, and so does the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts. Gregory wrote "ninth or tenth century", noting that Scholz and Martin had said eleventh. Scrivener printed an eleventh-century judgement with Gregory's ninth or tenth beside it in brackets. Eichhorn, reporting Griesbach, was later still. The article's answer is the ninth century because that is what the holding library says, with the range noted rather than hidden.

None of that makes the manuscript less valuable, and it is worth being clear about what it is valuable for. Minuscule 33 does not contain readings that overturn anything; it is not the source of a disputed verse, and no doctrine hangs on it. What it does is show that the good early text did not disappear when the Byzantine text became standard — that a scribe in the ninth century, copying with an old exemplar in front of him, could produce a book that reads like Vaticanus. That is a fact about transmission rather than about doctrine, and it is the kind of fact that only accumulates when somebody is willing to sit down with a manuscript that is exhaustive of every faculty of attention.

Scripture references

• Mark 9:31 — The start of one of three gaps in the Gospels, running to Mark 11:11
• Luke 21:38 — The start of another, running to Luke 23:26
• Revelation 1:1 — The one New Testament book this manuscript never contained
• Romans 1:1 — Romans stands last of the epistles as the codex is now bound, at folio 95v, immediately before the Gospels — the rest of Paul begins the New Testament back at folio 51, because a medieval binder shuffled the sections

Sources

• Holding institutionBibliothèque nationale de France: Département des Manuscrits, Grec 14 — Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris · The holding library's own digitisation on Gallica: the whole codex, 150 images, published as public domain. The shelfmark, the ninth-century date (the library's record gives 0801-0900), the parchment, the 143 leaves and the contents list showing the prophets before the New Testament were read from the library's IIIF manifest and OAI record. That folio list is also what settles the order of the shuffled sections: Paul begins at folio 51 with 1 Corinthians, Acts stands at 76v and the Catholic Epistles at 90, Romans alone sits at 95v, and the Gospels begin at 101, because Gallica's viewer refuses scripted requests and has to be opened in a browserSupports: The shelfmark, the date, the extent, and that the manuscript can be looked at
• Primary textC. R. Gregory, Textkritik des Neuen Testamentes, volume 1 — Caspar René Gregory · Leipzig, 1900; public domain at the Internet Archive. Source of the measurements, the line counts, the two hands, the binder's rearrangement in the thirteenth or fourteenth century, the "ninth or tenth century" dating with Scholz and Martin's eleventh beside it, and — the reason this volume rather than his later one is cited — the exact reference for Eichhorn's epithet, quoted here in Gregory's own GermanSupports: The physical description, the dating range, and the source of the nickname
• Primary textJ. G. Eichhorn, Einleitung in das Neue Testament, volume 5 — Johann Gottfried Eichhorn · Leipzig, 1827; public domain, digitised by the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek. Page 217 carries both the description of the text — "Der Text ist der Alexandrinische oder Hesychische, voll der vortrefflichsten und ältesten Lesarten", which this article renders into English and says so — and the phrase Gregory quotes. The German is "die Königin unter den Cursiv geschriebenen" manuscripts; the English "queen of the cursives" is a later rendering and is not what he wroteSupports: The epithet, at its source, and what Eichhorn actually said
• Primary textF. H. A. Scrivener, A Plain Introduction to the Criticism of the New Testament, 4th edition — Frederick Henry Ambrose Scrivener · 1894; public domain at the Internet Archive. Source of the quoted description of the damp damage and the misplaced leaves, of the comparison with Codices B, D and L, of the list of gospel lacunae, and of the quotation from S. P. Tregelles's own account of collating itSupports: The condition of the manuscript, its text type, and its lacunae
• Holding institutionCenter for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts: GA 33 — Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts · Its record gives "Gr. 14", the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, the ninth century, parchment, 143 leaves, a single column of 48 to 52 lines, and contents covering the Gospels, the Pauline Epistles, Acts and the Catholic Epistles. Cited here as an independent institutional confirmation of the ninth-century date, since the Münster institute's own record is inconsistent on that pointSupports: The ninth-century date and the physical description, from a second institution
• EncyclopediaWikipedia: Minuscule 33

Further reading

• Bibliothèque nationale de France: Grec 14, digitised on Gallica
• C. R. Gregory, Textkritik des Neuen Testamentes, volume 1 (1900)
• F. H. A. Scrivener, A Plain Introduction to the Criticism of the New Testament, 4th edition

Reflect

Tregelles called this book wearisome to the eyes and exhausting to every faculty of attention, and read it anyway, and we are still using what he found. What are you avoiding because it is going to be dull rather than because it is going to be hard?