rendered it is doubtful whether the book would ever have seen the light. Its dimensions have been carefully limited by avoiding the useless insertion of various readings in the texts employed which promised faithfully to lead nowhere, and by the removal of some matters which would have been interesting if they could have been compressed within a reasonable space. For example, my first intention was to combine the fragments of Josephus with my Philo Collection, and I had also done some work upon the problem (not wholly an unimportant one) of the genealogical relations of the various MSS. and Collections of Parallels. Upon second thoughts all of this has been removed. Finally, whatever of excellence or accuracy is to be found in the following pages is largely due to the co-operative criticism of friends whose sympathy and encouragement I highly prize, though I have been ashamed to carve their scholarly names upon so slight a sapling. J. R. H. CLARE COLLEGE, June, 1886. INTRODUCTION. ON COD. REG. 923 OF THE NATIONAL LIBRARY AT PARIS. THE a volume like the Codex Ru to which dorf and HE manuscript described in the following pages drew my attention The MS. is in the summer of 1884 when I was occupied in the examination of of "Paralsome of the treasures of the National Library at Paris. It was exposed to lels" view in one of the upright cases (armoire XVII.) of the Galerie Mazarine, adjacent, if I remember rightly, to the celebrated Codex Ephraemi Syri, the Codex Claromontanus of S. Paul and the Coislin Octateuch. The ticket attached to it intimated that it was a volume of Sentences des Saints Pères." As the book was in uncial Greek characters of the ninth century, and adorned with interesting marginal pictures, and was apparently unpublished, I determined to examine it carefully. The first somewhat impression upon my mind was that this was the Codex Rupefucaldinus of the Parallela Sacra of S. John Damascene, a manuscript of which Tischendorf pefucaldi had given a notice in the preface to the eighth edition of his New Testament, Tischenciting it under the form Dam. par. cod. If this were the case the manuscript would have been interesting not only on account of its rich collection of refer, biblical and patristic excerpts, but as being of such antiquity that, as Scrivener remarks in his Introduction to the Criticism of the New Testament (p. 420), it could be referred to the same century as the father whose work it contains. An examination however of the text of S. John Damascene's Parallels, as edited by Lequien, shewed that this supposition could not be verified'. Lequien's text (which has been reproduced in Migne Patrologia Græca XCV. XCVI.) is based upon a MS. in the Vatican Library, to which he has appended a few readings and foot-notes from the Codex Rupefucaldinus. Finding the diversity between these two texts to be remarkable, he reprinted a portion of the additional Patristic matter of the latter MS. under the title Parallela Rupefucaldina. What was interesting and even It will be shewn later on that it must, however, be the MS. of which Tischendorf speaks, though he has confounded it with the Cod. Rup. which is a totally different book. Lequien more like which text. often con able extracts the MS. in the examination of Lequien's text by the side of the Paris manuscript formed the was the obvious diversity of the latter from either of Lequien's copies. It basis of approached however more nearly to the Vatican copy than to the other. Lequien's I determined therefore to read the MS. through with the printed text, Such MSS. and especially to note any additional matter that might be found in it. tain valu- Some of the results of this collation, especially as regards the text of Philo, are contained in the following pages. An exact edition of S. John from lost Damascene's Parallels is however not a matter of such request as to make or import- it worth while to print variants collected from nearly 800 pages of uncial Greek; still it seems to me that although the general interest in Patristic texts is but slight in the present century, the extracts which the volume contains of sub-apostolic writings and a few of the biblical variants might be acceptable to those who are engaged in editing the Septuagint, the New Testament, and the Ante-Nicene Fathers. ant texts, and there are many of them yet unex amined. It is proper to state that Lequien seems to have been perfectly aware of the existence of other copies, since he notes in the preface "In Bibliotheca etiam Medicea perinde exstat Parallelorum codex ordine alphabetico digestus, Vaticano non in totum absimilis; sed in quo Patrum sententiæ media parte truncatæ, non integræ nec ad longum referuntur. Adduntur insuper hinc inde e scriptoribus profanis symbolæ, contra quam sibi Ioannes Damascenus proposuerat." This MS. is fully described and the most important conclusions deduced from it with regard to early gnomologies in Curt Wachsmuth's Griechische Florilegien. Lequien also notes that readings from a MS. of Parallels preserved at Venice were communicated to him by Banduri, and that this MS. was older than his own Vatican copy. This MS. must be the one described by Montfaucon in his Italian Diary (p. 36 Eng. Trans.). "We spent the afternoon in viewing the Grecian Archbishop of Philadelphia's MSS. I took notice among his MSS. . . . a vellum book of an excellent character and the eleventh century, St John Damascene's Parallels and other pieces of his." I suppose this copy now to be in the Nanian Library. And there must be many copies of this collection of quotations in the different European libraries, which would repay an examination. 1 Migne 95, col. 1037. 2 E. g. in M. Omont's Catalogue des Manuscrits Grecs de Bruxelles, p. 15: "32 (11836) S. Joannis Damasceni Sententiæ.... XIIIe siècle Bombycin, 171 feuillets, 165 sur 112 millim.... (Jacobins de St Honoré, de Paris)." Several other copies will be found described in the following pages. In the same connexion it should be added that in Cod. Coislin. 20 there are at the beginning two leaves written in sloping uncials of the ninth. century which evidently belonged at one time to a Volume of Parallels. My attention was drawn to these by Dr Hort. They seem to have been first noticed by Dr Burgon, who however described them wrongly as fragments of the Septuagint. (His note is 'Bound up with it (Coislin. 20) are some leaves of the LXX. of about the VIIIth century.' Last Twelve Verses p. 229 n.) Chelten The question arises here as to what has become of the Codex Rupe- The Codex Rupefufucaldinus to which Tischendorf and Lequien refer'. Its name indicates that caldinus it once belonged to Cardinal Rochefoucauld; and Lequien affirms that the is now at copy was presented by him to the library of the Jesuit fathers in Paris. It must then have disappeared at the dispersion of that library, which brought many MSS. into English collections; after some labour and enquiry, in which I had the invaluable assistance of the ever-courteous M. Omont of the National Library, I received information that the book had passed into Sir Thomas Phillips' library at Middle-Hill and was now to be found in the possession of his son-in-law, Mr Fenwick of Cheltenham. The number of this MS. in the Phillips Collection is 1450 Meerman 94; a charge of one pound per diem is made to all persons who collate in this library, and this renders prolonged or careful study impossible for the majority of scholars; one can hardly say that it makes the books accessible to any. = This identification being made, we must remove the confusion which arises from a statement made by Pitra to the effect that the MS. was to be found at Oxford. For this MS. is the Codex Claromontanus from which Halloix edited a long passage from Justin De Resurrectione in his life of Justin, and a collection of fragments of Irenæus in his life of that father. Lequien expressly states, p. 730, that Halloix edited these fragments "quæ cum ejusdem S. Martyris operibus edita non sunt, sed seorsim a Petrol Halloixio, cum hæc accepisset ex eodem Codice Rupefucaldino": while Grabe, on the other hand, Spicilegium II. 167, refers the passages to Cod. Claromontanus. It is, therefore, unfortunate that Pitra should speak in Anal. Sac. ii. XXI. as if the Codex were at Oxford "Visus est (sc. Cod. Coislin. 276) 1 There seems to be a general opinion that it is lost for example, in a recent number of the Theologische Literaturzeitung (Oct. 31, 1885, col. 534), Neumann remarks (reviewing Zahn's Supplementum Clementinum) "Den wich H. tigsten cod. Rupef. der Sacr. Parall. auf dessen 2 Cf. Halloix. Script. Eccles. Or. ii. 299. These "Parallels" are eadem continere quam Damasceni Parallela ex codice Claromontano, nunc The following is the description given of Cod. Rupef. in the Catal. Cod. "No. 150. Codex membranaceus in fol. majori constans foliis 300, XI The identity of the Claromontane and Rupefucald Parallels is suspected by Lightfoot in his recent edition of the Ignatian Letters, vol. I. p. 210 'Claromontanus, a MS. which seems closely to resemble the Rupefucal dinus." So much having been premised with regard to the different copies, a few remarks must be made with regard to the general subject of Parallels. We may I think dismiss the idea from our minds that these collections commonly are due solely to S. John Damascene. referred to John of but with If no other evidence were forthcoming, the extreme unlikeliness of our Damascus finding so many early copies (some of which themselves shew traces of being little show taken from earlier manuscripts) of the work of an eighth century father, would of reason. be noted at once. But there is other testimony: Lequien draws attention to the Scholia in the text of the Codex Rup., which fix the date of digestion of the book in the reign of the Emperor Heraclius'. There is one for instance (ed. Leq. p. 749) which comments on a passage in Ezekiel in the following manner: Σχόλιον· τοῦτο καὶ ἡμῖν ἐκ τῶν ἡμετέ- Βενετοπράσινον ὄνομα ὃ ἐπεθήκαμεν ἑαυτοῖς The writer is evidently alluding to the carrying off of the Cross of Helena into Persia by Chosroes, and he writes before the time when the sacred symbol had been recovered by the successful wars of Heraclius (that is, more than a century before the time of John of Damascus); reference is 1 Hilgenfeld seems to assume that the MS. was actually written at this time: "Cod. Rupefucaldinus vel Claromontanus imperante Heraclio I. (610-641) conscriptus." Ev. sec. |