What is a uncial?

A New Testament uncial is a portion of the New Testament in the form of a codex. A codex is an ancient hand-written bound book with writing on both sides of the page. The pages are made of parchment which is made from specially prepared animal skins, or vellum (calf skin). Earlier copies of the NT were made on papyrus. Uncials were written entirely in Greek or Latin majuscule script (capital letters). They date from between the fourth and ninth centuries AD. They use continuous writing, known as ‘scriptio continua’, containing almost no punctuation or even spaces between the words. They are from several centuries before the introduction of chapter and verse divisions.

There are over extant 320 uncials in the form of a codex, which are catalogued by the Institute for New Testament Textual Research (INTF). They were originally identified using Latin or Greek capital letters (sigla), and are now numbered with an initial zero. There are also many hundreds of surviving fragments.

The ‘Four Great Uncials’, or Great Uncial Codices

These are the four most ancient uncials which are especially important as they are the most comprehensive and vital witnesses to the text of the Greek NT, which are used the basis of modern translations. They use the Alexandrian text-type, which is regarded to represent the most ancient Biblical text, being the nearest to the original documents.

Another important codex is the Codex Bezae (D, or 05)

1. The Codex Sinaiticus (Aleph ℵ, or 01) (AD 320)

This is the earliest copy of the New Testament containing all 27 books in existence anywhere in the world. Before this, copies were made only of individual books, or small collections of books. It was the first large bound book to be produced. It is considered to be of high textual importance, written a clean Alexandrian text-type, and is used as the basis for most modern translations. It is referred to as Aleph (ℵ), the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet.

The manuscript was written in the fourth century, by three different scribes. Several scholars later made corrections to the text around the sixth century. It is written in Greek capital letters, without spaces between the words (uncial script), with four columns on each page.

Discovery at Sinai

It is called the Codex Sinaiticus because it was it was discovered at the Monastery of St. Catherine near the foot of Mount Sinai in 1844 by the German scholar Tischendorf. When visiting the monastery, he found the monks using pages from old documents to burn in the fire to keep warm. In a basket of old parchments he found pages from the Septuagint OT and was able to rescue it before it was totally consumed. The monks told him that they had already burnt two baskets full of old documents. At his first visit he secured forty-three leaves belonging to the OT, and presented them to his patron, King Frederick Augustus of Saxony, who placed them in the Court Library at Leipzig, where they still remain. They are known as the Codex Friderico-Augustanus or CFA quires.

On a second visit, he was presented with 199 more leaves of the Old Testament and the whole of the New Testament, which he took to St. Petersburg and presented it to Tsar Alexander II of Russia in 1869. It was purchased by Britain from the USSR in 1933 for £100,000, who did not want it. Stalin sold it to raise foreign capital. £50,000 was raised by the general public.

Parts of three more leaves were subsequently discovered in the bindings of other manuscripts in the library of Mount Sinai. These were also acquired for St. Petersburg, where they still remain.

In 1975 a few more pages and fragments were found inside the northern wall of St. Catherine’s Monastery. They are now preserved in their library.

Original contents

The original book had 1460 pages, containing the entire Septuagint translation of the OT, as well as the complete NT. It also included the Shepherd of Hermas and Epistle of Barnabas.

Half the original book still survives, being held in four different nations:
1. British Library, London, UK (694 pages) - the largest portion, includes all 27 books of the NT
2. Court Library, Leipzig, Germany (43 pages of OT)
3. National Library of Russia, St. Petersburg, Russia (3 pages)
4. St. Catherine’s Monastery, Sinai, Egypt (12-24 pages)

Fragments of Genesis, Numbers, Chronicles, Ezra, Esther, the minor prophets and wisdom books survive, together with some of the apocrypha.

It is interesting to note that the final verses of Mark’s Gospel are omitted. Instead a large space is left, as if the scribe was uncertain whether to include v9-20, and left a space for it. There are no other large spaces left in the manuscript.

A digital version of the complete codex is on-line, bringing together all the surviving pages from all four nations.

2. The Codex Vaticanus (B, or 03) (AD 325 - 350)

The Codex Vaticanus is held in the Vatican Library in Rome. It contains the whole Bible, written in the fourth century. Apart from the papyri, it is the oldest and generally the most accurate existing copy of the NT. Together with the Codex Sinaiticus, it is used as the primary foundation for modern NT textual criticism aiming to reconstruct the original text of the NT.

It is estimated that it originally contained 820 leaves of vellum, of which 759 survive. The leaves are square measuring 27 cm (10.5 inches). It is only one of the early uncials to have three columns of text. The poetical books of the OT have a two-column format.

The OT is the Greek Septuagint version which contains 617 pages and is almost complete, with only a few missing portions, including Gen 1:1 - 46:28 and 2 Sam 2:5-7. Most of the apocrypha is included. Due to damage over the centuries, the end of the NT is missing, cutting off mid-sentence at Heb 9:14. The Pastoral Letters (1 Tim, 2 Tim and Titus), Philemon and Revelation are completely missing. The general letters are placed before Paul’s letters.

There are debates over the origin of the Codex Vaticanus. Egypt, Rome or Asia Minor have been suggested. It has been catalogued from 1475 in the Vatican Library. It was stolen during the Napoleonic Wars, when it was taken to Paris as a war trophy. Following the Treaty of Tolentino in 1799, it was returned to Rome in 1815.

3. The Codex Alexandrinus (A, or 02) (AD 420)

This codex was given this name as it was found in Alexandria, Egypt. It is written in capitals (uncial script) in two columns on each page, made in the 5th century. It is referenced by the letter A. It the first of the great uncials to be used for textual criticism and is especially valued as an early witness to the Book of Revelation.

It contains the complete NT in Greek, but about forty pages are missing (25 pages of Matthew, two pages of Jn 6-8, and three pages of 2 Cor 4-12). It also includes the letters of 1 and 2 Clement. It also includes portions of the OT and most of the apocrypha. In the New Testament the order of the books is Gospels, Acts, Catholic Epistles, Pauline Epistles, Apocalypse, with Hebrews placed before the Pastoral Epistles.

It was acquired by the bishop of Alexandria (Egypt) in 1608, and sent as a gift to James I of England (the James of the King James Version), and arrived in 1627, by which time James had died and Charles I was king. It was kept in the royal library until it was given to the nation by George II. It has been one of the chief treasures of the British Museum since its foundation, and is now displayed next to Sinaiticus in the British Library in London. It is a very important manuscript, but is considered not to be such an accurate text as Sinaiticus.

4. The Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus (C, or 04) (425 - 450)

This codex is a palimpsest, where the ink of an older parchment document is scraped off and over-written. The Lower Text (Scriptura Inferior) is the Greek translation of the Bible. In the twelfth century, the original biblical text was washed and scraped off. The Upper Text (Scriptura Superior) are Greek translations of 38 theological treatises and sermons written by Ephrem the Syrian, an influential 4th-century church father. The sheets of parchment were rotated and overwritten. In this process the original leaves were used in a random order so the underlying version of the Bible is fragmented.

It was originally written by three different scribes, probably in Egypt, two for OT, and one for NT, with later editions. It has a single column in a continuous script without spaces or punctuation. It is written on good vellum, on pages measuring 32 cm (12.3 inches) by 23 cm (9 inches).

A total of 209 leaves survive today. There are 63 leaves of the OT, containing fragments of Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon and Job. There are also portions of the Apocryphal books of the Wisdom of Solomon, and Sirach (Ecclesiasticus). There are 145 leaves of the NT containing portions of every book except 2 Thessalonians and 2 John. The text of the Gospel is classed as mixed, but the version of the Book of Revelation is considered to be one of the purest and best texts in existence.

After the fall of Constantinople in 1453 the codex was taken to Florence. In 1533, Catherine de' Medici brought it to France as part of her dowry. It is now kept in the National Library (Bibliothèque nationale de France) (Grec 9).

In the 1830's scholars treated the pages with potassium ferricyanide which temporarily reactivated the faded ink of the lower biblical text, but left dark stains. The lower text is very difficult to read, and in some places is complete illegible. It was transcribed by Constantin von Tischendorf, who published the NT layer in 1843, and the OT layer in 1845. He is the only scholar to have studied the manuscript in detail.

5. Codex Bezae (D, or 05) (fifth cent)

This is another famous codex, also known as the Codex Cantabrigiensis because it is held by the University of Cambridge in the UK (MS Nn.2.41).

It was written bilingually, in Greek and Latin. There is one column per page, with the Greek on the left, facing the Latin on the right. It represents the western text type, which has some omissions and additions to Luke and Acts. It only contains the four Gospels, but in an older western order with the apostolic authors first, Matthew, John, followed by Luke and Mark. It also includes a few verses of 3 John, followed by the Book of Acts. There some missing verses. Only Luke’s Gospel is complete.

The Codex Bezae is the oldest extant manuscript which includes the account of the woman caught in adultery (Jn 7:53 - 8:11). It is the oldest manuscript to contain the longer ending of Mark (16.9-20). The genealogy of Jesus in Luke's Gospel is arranged in reverse order so it conforms more closely with the version Matthew’s Gospel.

There is an addition to the account of the disciples eating grain on the Sabbath about a man Jesus saw working on the Sabbath, "On the same day, seeing one working on the Sabbath, He said to him: 'Man, if you know what you are doing, you are blessed; but if you do not know, you are cursed and a transgressor of the law.'" (after Luke 6:4).

The text of the Book of Acts is about ten percent longer than in the other codices, with additions to the narratives containing many extra details.

It is held by the University of Cambridge, who received it as a gift from Theodore Beza in 1851, the friend and successor of Calvin. Beza claimed that the manuscript came from the monastery of Irenaeus in Lyons in 1562, when it was probably looted by Huguenots. However there is evidence that the manuscript was in Italy in the 16th century. It probably originated in southern France in the fifth or sixth century, or in southern Italy, or northern Africa.