The Changing Fortunes of Codex Vaticanus

Among those precious treasures kept in the Vatican Library is a fourth-century manuscript of the Greek Bible, with the shelf-mark Vaticanus Graecus 1209. For many, this ancient manuscript is known as the “Codex Vaticanus.” Among biblical scholars, its standard reference is the Roman capital letter B or the two digits 03 (or a combination of these two). This manuscript is generally regarded as one of the pillar witnesses for reconstructing the Greek New Testament. Thanks to the digital era and the generosity and effort of the Vatican Library staff, since 2015, anyone can simply search online and see this elegant manuscript without leaving home.

Historically, however, these aspects were not taken for granted. In fact, this manuscript for a long time was not seen as an important witness, its dating was uncertain, its access was limited, and its name was not “Codex Vaticanus.” How can these changes be accounted for? In what follows, I will highlight several of the more interesting aspects of Vaticanus’s changing fortunes over the centuries.

From corrupted witness to crowned pillar

This manuscript was brought to the scholarly world’s attention by the famous Dutch humanist Desiderius Erasmus (1466–1536). In 1521, he received a letter from his close friend in Rome, Paolo Bombace (1476–1527). He informed Erasmus that a Greek manuscript in the papal library, written in very ancient characters, did not contain the Comma Johanneum (the trinitarian passage at 1 John 5:7). Years later, Erasmus encountered the Spanish scholar Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda (1490–1573), who became one of his many opponents. Sepúlveda wrote against Erasmus’s project of the Greek New Testament by referring to an ancient manuscript in the Vatican Library that has hundreds of differences from Erasmus’s editions. We know today that he was referring to Codex Vaticanus.

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Sepúlveda also pointed out that Vaticanus’s text is similar to the underlying Greek text of the Latin Vulgate, thereby supporting the authenticity of the Latin textual tradition against Erasmus’s new and controversial Latin translation that he had based on other Greek manuscripts. In response, Erasmus insisted that the Greek and Latin texts he edited were superior to the texts found in Vaticanus and the Vulgate. In defending his preferred text, Erasmus further came up with a hypothesis that Vaticanus, together with other witnesses like it, must have been corrected according to the Vulgate text, thus making it of little use for his edition.

Known as the “Latinization theory,” Erasmus’s proposal would become dominant in the coming two centuries. Consequently, Codex Vaticanus was dismissed by the majority of scholars following Erasmus. Despite its antiquity, it was seen as a “Latinized” and corrupted witness.

Such a label was retained all the way until the second half of the eighteenth century. Because of the developments in scholarship, especially the paradigm shift in terms of the way manuscripts were assessed, scholars started looking at this manuscript from another perspective. The German classicist Karl Lachmann (1793–1851) and his Greek New Testament, published in 1831, can be seen as a watershed in text-critical studies. Lachmann highly valued Codex Vaticanus and considered its similarity with the Latin tradition not as the result of corruption but as an indication of a commonly shared, ancient source. Combined with other insights from his contemporaries, Lachmann’s observation became the basis of modern critical scholarship.

As a result, subsequent editions of the Greek New Testament were prepared by making heavy use of Vaticanus’s text. Notably, the Cambridge textual critics Brooke Foss Westcott (1825–1901) and Fenton John Anthony Hort (1828–1892) published their influential The New Testament in the Original Greek in 1881, in which they were confident that our manuscript should be seen as the best witness among all the retainable sources. Through Westcott and Hort’s text, Codex Vaticanus bears a lasting impact on many contemporary vernacular New Testament translations.

From filtered data to full access

Erasmus’s Latinization theory was not the sole factor that caused subsequent scholars to be persuaded. Inaccessibility also played a decisive role. Before the internet and digitization became the norm, examining manuscripts was laborious and luxurious. One had to travel to where a certain manuscript was held, usually in a library or monastery, and stay there to study the manuscript. This came with various challenges, sometimes including a refusal to consult the material. The study of Codex Vaticanus was not an exception.

For a long time, Vaticanus was only seen by a few privileged individuals who could obtain the grant from the Vatican authorities. Under such restrictions, scholars outside Rome hardly knew of any readings from this manuscript. Particularly in the seventeenth and the first half of the eighteenth centuries, they usually had to rely on a 1580 publication by Franciscus Lucas Brugensis (1548/9–1619), where some twenty notes about the manuscript’s New Testament text are found.

However, the information was not always precise, and more importantly, the data were selective. Lucas Brugensis aimed to illustrate the reliability of the Latin Vulgate, so his references to our manuscript mainly concerned those cases where they support the Latin rendering. His data certainly reflected this. They were chosen based on his particular interest in the resemblance between Codex Vaticanus and the Latin tradition.

As a result, even what was accessible to scholars from Vaticanus was a “filtered” dataset. By its nature, this filtered data only confirmed the hypothesis proposed by Erasmus that the manuscript was a poorly Latinized witness.

Between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, there were many attempts to produce collations of this manuscript, but the goal was seldom achieved. Fortunately, Andreas Birch (1758–1829) found success in examining the manuscript closely during his stay in Rome. He then published an elegant Greek New Testament edition of the Gospels, Quatuor Evangelia Graece, in 1788. Based on personal examination, it contained the first published collection of textual variants of Codex Vaticanus, alongside a lengthy introduction to the manuscript’s characteristics.

Birch’s contribution was significant to the critical study of the New Testament, as it allowed scholars to employ one of the ancient manuscripts known to the text-critical world. Moreover, he was the very first critic who made the public audience aware of the absence of the traditional Markan ending in the manuscript: Codex Vaticanus ended the Gospel of Mark at 16:8 (“for they [the women] were afraid”), followed by a subscription signifying the closure of the book.

Until that point, scholars had no hard evidence to support the patristic evidence that some manuscripts ended Mark at 16:8.

Until that point, scholars had no hard evidence from any Greek manuscript to support the patristic evidence that some manuscripts ended Mark at 16:8 (e.g., Eusebius, to Marinus 1). This abrupt ending would later be accepted as the critical text, thereby substantially changing our understanding of this Gospel’s narrative. But until Birch’s day, only very few scholars outside the Vatican Library knew about this important fourth-century witness to this ending, let alone considering it being the ending of this Gospel.

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From uncertain identity to the ‘Vatican manuscript’

The third and last aspect I want to address is the name “Codex Vaticanus” itself. Nowadays, it is regularly applied to this great Greek Bible manuscript. However, just like the evaluation of its text, this name has changed over time. For instance, when John Mill (1645–1707) was preparing his Greek New Testament edition, his references to our manuscript were not consistent. He variously called it “the Vatican manuscript,” “the Vatican Greek manuscript,” “the ancient manuscript,” or even “a certain manuscript in the Vatican Library.”

Since Mill had to depend on secondary sources, he was not entirely sure how many Vatican manuscripts he was referring to and was also uncertain whether only one single ancient manuscript was responsible for all the referenced data. In the era of inaccessibility, mistaken attributions were found here and there among scholarly works, which were hard to verify.

Later, knowledge about the manuscript gradually grew, and more and more pieces of information became available in the eighteenth century. In his 1751–1752 edition, Johann Jakob Wettstein (1693–1754) created a numbering system for all known Greek New Testament manuscripts. At that point, our manuscript was assigned the letter B, a convention that has lasted until today.

Wettstein’s designation also contributed to the formulation of this manuscript’s distinctness, making it the most famous codex of the Greek Bible in Rome. At the turn of the nineteenth century, the Latin term “Codex Vaticanus” (its literal translation would be “a Vatican manuscript”) seems to have become the consistent reference to our manuscript in English scholarly literature. The exclusive use of this term for the manuscript reveals scholarly awareness of its significance and superiority. As noted, this would become the standard name of the manuscript from then on. Alongside the high estimation of its value and the greater use of its text, Codex Vaticanus eventually became the manuscript par excellence among all the New Testament witnesses. Today, it still holds that place for many.

Conclusion

Such an investigation prevents us from judging previous scholarship too quickly.

What can we learn from this unique history? you may ask. Tracing how a particular manuscript was used and perceived over the centuries makes us more aware of the ground and root of our present-day position. It provides us with important historical contexts. Such an investigation also prevents us from judging previous scholarship too quickly without understanding the historical backgrounds and limitations the critics of the past had to face. In this case, it helps us understand why past scholars dismissed Codex Vaticanus as unimportant.

In a way, the changing perceptions of Codex Vaticanus showcase the developments in the discipline of New Testament textual criticism. The study of this multifaceted change also makes us aware of the privilege we have in the digital era. It is a great gift to have full and unrestricted access to this crowned witness, from everywhere, at any time.