Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus

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Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus, at the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris

Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus (Paris, National Library Greek 9; Gregory-Aland no. C or 04) is an early 5th century Greek manuscript of the Bible, the last in the group of the four great uncial manuscripts of the Greek Bible (see Codex Sinaiticus, Codex Alexandrinus and Codex Vaticanus). It receives its name, as a codex in which the treatises of Ephraem the Syrian, in Greek translations, were written over ("rescriptus") a former text that had been washed off its vellum pages, thus forming a palimpsest. The later text was produced in the 12th century. The effacement of the original text was incomplete, fortunately, for beneath the text of Ephraem are the remains of what was once a complete Bible, containing both the Old Testament and the New. It forms one of the codices for textual criticism on which the Higher criticism is based.

After the fall of Constantinople in 1453, the Codex was brought to Florence by an emigré scholar. Catherine de' Medici brought it to France as part of her dowry, and from the Bourbon royal library it came to rest in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris.

The first complete collation of the New Testament was made by Wetstein (1716). Constantin von Tischendorf made his reputation an international one when he published the Greek New Testament text in 1843 and the Old Testament in 1845. The torn condition of many folios, the ghostly traces of the text overlaid by the later one made the decipherment an extremely difficult task. Even with modern aids like ultra-violet photography, not all the text is securely legible.

The codex (illustration, above right) measures 12 1/4 in/31.4-32.5 cm by 9 in/25.6-26.4 cm, with a single column to a page. Originally the whole Bible seems to have been contained in it.