Theodore Beza donates 'Codex Bezae' to Cambridge with warning about textual corruption

Steven Avery

Administrator
Jan Krans is a good source here on the factual matters:

9.4 The use of ‘Codex Bezae’

Another point at which Beza’s editorial activity and critical acumen can be evaluated is his use of the new material in his third edition. For the 1582 edition, Beza had two old uncials at his disposal, manuscripts now known as the Codex Bezae Cantabrigiensis (D (05)) and the Codex Claromontanus (D (06) 60. Especially the former deserves attention, not only because of its prominent role in subsequent New Testament textual criticism, but also because it is now known that the manuscript mentioned by Stephanus under siglum P' is actually D (05) itself.61 This means that by a quirk of history, Beza knew numerous readings of D (05) before actually acquiring the manuscript.62

Notes 60-67 and the intermediary material here is largely about an erroneous position of Wettstein accusing Beza on the ms. There is a bit of geek stuff about the use of the ms. by Stephanus before Bezae that would be good to extract.

Beza’s explicit statements on the manuscript, besides the citation of its readings, are scarce. The most important source of information is the letter that accompanied the gift of the manuscript to the University of Cambridge.68 Beza writes:

Some years ago I acquired a Greek-Latin manuscript (copy) of the four Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles from the monastery of St Irenaeus in Lyons; it is somewhat incomplete, and not very correctly copied from beginning to end, nor kept with sufficient care, as can be seen from some inserted pages in different characters69 and from strange remarks that have been added occasionally by some ignorant elder Greek monk.70 ... Though no one will estimate better than you yourselves how much faith can be had in this manuscript (copy), I thought it well to draw your attention to the following matter: especially in Luke’s Gospel I have found such a great discrepancy between this manuscript and any others however old that I would think that it is better to store it than to publish it, in order not to raise offense. However in this divergence—which concerns the choice of words, not the meaning—I have actually found nothing which could make me suspect that it has been corrupted by those old heretics. On the contrary it seems to me that I have discovered many [readings] worthy of great attention; also some which differ from the received Scripture but in such a way that they agree with the writings of some old fathers, both Greek and Latin, and finally not a few through which the old Latin edition [the Vulgate] is confirmed. All of these I have compared according to the measure of my intelligence, and collated with the Syriac and Arabic edition; I have brought them together in my major annotations which I recently corrected and which will be published shortly, with God’s favour.71
68 See also the short preface ‘to the Christian reader’ in his 1582 edition.
69 Beza indicates the existence of lacunae and of supplements in a later hand (cf. NA2 , appendix I).
70 Beza refers to the lectionary notes, (Grk( (summaries) and Sortes (hermenaiai or magical formulae) which occur in the manuscript (see Scrivener, Bezae Codex, pp. xxvii-xxxi and Parker, Codex Bezae, pp. 43-44).
71 (The Latin text of Beza, of the English above, is given here.)

Beza’s general impression of great discrepancy between D and the usual text is of course correct. It is interesting to see that he concentrates on Luke’s Gospel, despite the fact that there are considerable differences in the other Gospels as well, let alone Acts. His remark may have been influenced by the many particular readings in Luke 6 and 22 and the large number of harmonising readings in Luke, which often concern only a few words but also the remarkable form of Jesus’ genealogy in Luke 3:23-38. Beza apparently links scribal corruption and heretical ideas, at least at the level of a possibility.

-- Beyond What is Written, p. 229-230, Jan Krans, 2206

Note the magical formula in the manuscript. This connects well with the idea that the Christian heritage of the ms. is tainted by gnosticism, and thus there was a less reverent approach to the text as scripture, allowing the many dubious additions. Overall, Theodore Beza handled the question of the manuscript with a combination of textual skill and Biblical caution.

Jan Krans continues here to p. 236.
 
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Steven Avery

Administrator
From Will Kinney, utilizing some of my earlier study

Another Mind Blower - Mark 1:41 and the NIV 2010
https://brandplucked.webs.com/luke24sciencetextcr.htm

Before I get into this example, I want to mention that Brother Steven Avery did some research on Manuscript D and provided us with the following information. Theodore Beza himself, in his letter to Cambridge, comments as follows:

"Some years ago I acquired a Greek-Latin manuscript (copy) of the four Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles from the monastery of St Irenaeus in Lyons; it is somewhat incomplete, and not very correctly copied from beginning to end, nor kept with sufficient care ... I have found such a great discrepancy between this manuscript and any others however old that I would think that it is better to store it than to publish it ..." -- Beyond What is Written, p. 229, Jan Krans, 2206

The corruption of this manuscript is well known. Even while Fenton Hort lifted up this manuscript in his confused theories, he referred to the

"prodigious amount of error which D contains"

The New Testament in the Original Greek (1881)
Westcott and Hort
http://books.google.com/books?id=gZ4HAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA149

And Dean John Burgon did an entire study on this very corrupt manuscript, proving it to be one of the absolute worst in existence.

Codex D (Bezae) - abject textual and scribal corruption in one package 08-29-2010
(no longer available - forum defunct, I will see what I can come up with)

Thus, with a little study, you can easily see how worthless this manuscript is for any sensible textual theory.

The John William Burgon material is mostly in Revision Revised and Traditional Text, it was a part of the forum post no longer visible, and I will plan on extracting some of it at a future time.


 
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Steven Avery

Administrator
Basil Hall on the Theodore Beza scholarship

The Cambridge History of the Bible: Volume 3, The West from the Reformation to the Present Day (1975)
II Biblical Scholarship: editions and commentaries
by Basil Hall, (1914-1995)
Lecturer in Ecclesiastical History in the University of Cambridge
https://books.google.com/books?id=IDFBru3-C8MC&pg=PA83

Beza's annotations to his Greek and Latin New Testament showed great erudition and carried further the tentative suggestions of Erasmus about the critical use of variant readings in the manuscripts— although he was afraid to follow up the implications of the readings which alarmed him in Codex D. His grammatical competence in Greek combined with theological insight gave greater value to his annotations than had been attained by any previous scholar. But his theological interpretation was occasionally too particular, notably on the doctrines of election and predestination. Selections from Beza’s notes also appeared with his Latin version in the Bible prepared by Tremellius and Junius in 1575, and accompanied by their own annotations. These were frequently terse but unattractive in style; they showed wide learning and narrow judgments; and because of their provenance and practical brevity obtained a wide circulation among ministers of the Reformed Churches and English Puritans.
Basil Hall was a fine scholar.
 
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