Caesarean text-type

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Caesarean text-type is the term proposed by certain scholars to denote a consistent pattern of variant readings that is claimed to be apparent in certain Greek witnesses to the four Gospels, but which is not found in any of the other commonly recognized New Testament text-types; the Byzantine text-type, the Western text-type and the Alexandrian text-type. In particular a common text-type has been proposed to be found: in the ninth/tenth century Codex Koridethi; in Minuscule 1 (a Greek manuscript of the Gospels used, sparingly, by Erasmus in his 1516 printed Greek New Testament); and in those Gospel quotations found in the third century works of Origen, which were written after he had settled in Caesarea. The early translations of the Gospels in Armenian and Georgian also appear to witness to many of the proposed characteristic Caesarean readings.

A particularly distinctive common reading of the proposed text-type is in Matthew 21: 16-17, where the bandit released by Pontius Pilate instead of Jesus is named as "Jesus Barabbas" rather than - with all other surviving witnesses - just "Barabbas". Origen notes particularly that the form "Jesus Barabbas" was common in manuscripts in Caesarea, whereas he had not found this reading in his previous residence in Alexandria. Otherwise the Caesarean readings have a mildly paraphrastic tendacy that seems to place them between the more concise Alexandrian, and the more expansive Western text-types. None of the surviving Caesarean manuscripts is claimed to witness a pure type of text, as all apppear to have been to some degree assimilated with readings from the Byzantine text-type.

Some writers have questioned the validity of this grouping, claiming that the classification is the result of poor research. In so far as the Caesarean text-type does exist, then it does so only in the Gospels, the proposed Caesarean witnesses do not appear to have any common distinctive readings in the rest of the New Testament.

Classified by:

Von Soden -- Iota (Jerusalem) (I), in part (most strong "Caesarean" witnesses are found in Soden's I^α group, with family 1 being his I^η and family 13 being I^ι.)

Kenyon -- Gamma (γ)

M. J. Lagrange -- C

Primary witnesses: Θ, family 1, family 13, 565, 700, arm, geo