Codex Complutensis I

The Codex Complutensis I, designated by C, is a 10th-century codex of the Christian Bible. It is written on vellum with Latin text mainly following the Vulgate. Parts of the Old Testament present an Old Latin version.[1]

Description

The Latin text of the Gospels is a representative of the Spanish type of Vulgate,[1] but with peculiar readings in the Epistles and Acts.[2] In some portions of the Old Testament it represents the Old Latin version (Book of Ruth, Book of Esther,[3] Book of Tobit,[4] Book of Judith, 1-2 Maccabees).[5]

It contains apocryphal 4 Book of Esdra.[6] It contains an Epistle to the Laodiceans, which follows after Epistle to the Hebrews, not Colossians as in other Spanish Bibles.

It contains the much debated texts of the Pericope Adultera (John 7:53-8:11) and Comma Johanneum (1 John 5:7).

History

According to the colophon the manuscript was written in 927.[1]

The manuscript was purchased by Cardinal Ximenes and used by him in editing the Complutensian Polyglot Bible. It was examined by Samuel Berger and Westcott.[2]

During the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) it was almost totally destroyed.[1] The little that still remains is in the Library of the Facultad de Filosofía y Letras (Centr. 31) in Madrid.[1] In 2010, a complete third-generation copy on microfilm was discovered in a library in Collegeville, Minnesota.[7]

The Pontifical Abbey of St Jerome-in-the-City in Rome housed a facsimile of the entire manuscript. Currently the manuscript is housed in the library of the Faculdad de Filosofia y Letras in Madrid (Bibl. Univ. Cent. 31).[1]

See also

• List of New Testament Latin manuscripts

References

1. Bruce M. Metzger, The Early Versions of the New Testament, Oxford University Press, 1977, p. 338.
2. Scrivener, Frederick Henry Ambrose; Edward Miller (1894). A Plain Introduction to the Criticism of the New Testament. 2 (4 ed.). London: George Bell & Sons. p. 73.
3. Lewis Bayles Paton, A critical and exegetical commentary on the book of Esther, p. 40.
4. Joseph A. Fitzmyer, The Dead Sea scrolls and Christian origins, p. 163.
5. J. K. Elliott, Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt (Walter de Gruyter, 1992), p. 242.
6. Samuel Berger, Notices et extraits de la Bibl. Nat., pp. 147-152 (1895).
7. Lost medieval bibles found in library’s basement

Further reading

• M. Revilla, La Biblia Polyglota de Alcalá (Madrid, 1917).
• A. Jülicher, Itala. Das Neue Testament in Altlateinischer Überlieferung, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin, New York, 1976.