Minuscule 697
Encyclopedia
Minuscule 697 ε1389 (von Soden), is a Greek
Greek language
Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...

 minuscule manuscript
Manuscript
A manuscript or handwrite is written information that has been manually created by someone or some people, such as a hand-written letter, as opposed to being printed or reproduced some other way...

 of the New Testament
New Testament
The New Testament is the second major division of the Christian biblical canon, the first such division being the much longer Old Testament....

, on parchment. Palaeographically
Palaeography
Palaeography, also spelt paleography is the study of ancient writing. Included in the discipline is the practice of deciphering, reading, and dating historical manuscripts, and the cultural context of writing, including the methods with which writing and books were produced, and the history of...

 it has been assigned to the 13th century. The manuscript has complex contents. Scrivener
Frederick Henry Ambrose Scrivener
The Reverend Frederick Henry Ambrose Scrivener, LL.D. was an important text critic of the New Testament and a member of the English New Testament Revision Committee which produced the Revised Version of the Bible...

 labelled it as 601e.

Description

The codex contains the text of the four Gospel
Gospel
A gospel is an account, often written, that describes the life of Jesus of Nazareth. In a more general sense the term "gospel" may refer to the good news message of the New Testament. It is primarily used in reference to the four canonical gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John...

s on 350 parchment leaves (size ). The text is written in one column per page, 25 lines per page.

The text is divided according to the (chapters), the numbers appearing at the margin; the (titles) are given at the top. There is also a division according to the Ammonian Sections
Ammonian Sections
Eusebian canons or Eusebian sections, 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 used in modern texts date only from the 13th and 16th centuries, respectively...

 (in gold), but there are no references to the Eusebian Canons. It contains a portrait of John, the Evangelist.

According to Scrivener it is "beautifully written in very black ink, the first page of each Gospel being in gold".

Text

Kurt Aland
Kurt Aland
Kurt Aland was a German Theologian and Professor of New Testament Research and Church History. He founded the Institut für neutestamentliche Textforschung in Münster and served as its first director for many years...

 the Greek text of the codex did not place in any Category
Categories of New Testament manuscripts
New Testament manuscripts in Greek are categorized into five groups, according to a scheme introduced in 1981 by Kurt and Barbara Aland in Der Text des Neuen Testaments. The categories are based on how each manuscript relates to the various text-types. Generally speaking, earlier Alexandrian...

.

According to the Claremont Profile Method it represents textual group 22a
Minuscule 22
Minuscule 22 , ε 288 , known also as Codex Colbertinus 2467. It is a Greek minuscule manuscript of the New Testament, written on vellum. Palaeographically it has been assigned to the 12th century. Formerly it was assigned to the 11th century...

 in Luke 1, Luke 10, and Luke 20.

History

Scrivener dated the manuscript to the 14th century. Gregory dated it to the 13th or 14th century. Currently the manuscript is dated by the INTF
Institute for New Testament Textual Research
The Institute for New Testament Textual Research at the University of Münster, Westphalia, Germany, is an institute for the investigation of the text of the New Testament. The INTF was founded in Münster in 1959 by Professor Kurt Aland , the first director of the Institute...

 to the 13th century.

The manuscript was found in a village near Corinth
Corinth
Corinth is a city and former municipality in Corinthia, Peloponnese, Greece. Since the 2011 local government reform it is part of the municipality Corinth, of which it is the seat and a municipal unit...

, and bought by C. L. Merlin, British vice-consul in Athens, in 1865.

It was added to the list of New Testament manuscripts by Scrivener (his 601) and Gregory (his 697). It was examined and described by S. T. Bloomfield
Samuel Thomas Bloomfield
Samuel Thomas Bloomfield was an English clergyman and Biblical textual critic. His Greek New Testament was widely used, in England and the United States.-Life:His surname was also spelled Blomfield or Blumfield...

, and Dean Burgon. Gregory saw the manuscript in 1883.

At present the manuscript is housed at the British Library
British Library
The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom, and is the world's largest library in terms of total number of items. The library is a major research library, holding over 150 million items from every country in the world, in virtually all known languages and in many formats,...

 (Add. 26103), London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

.

See also

  • List of New Testament minuscules
  • Biblical manuscript
    Biblical manuscript
    A biblical manuscript is any handwritten copy of a portion of the text of the Bible. The word Bible comes from the Greek biblia ; manuscript comes from Latin manu and scriptum...

  • Textual criticism
    Textual criticism
    Textual criticism is a branch of literary criticism that is concerned with the identification and removal of transcription errors in the texts of manuscripts...


Further reading

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