Description
The manuscript is in quarto volume, arranged in quires of five sheets or ten leaves each, similar to the Codex Marchalianus or Codex Rossanensis; but unlike the Codex Sinaiticus which has an arrangement of four or three sheets. The number of the quires is often found in the margin. Originally it must have been composed of 830 parchment leaves, but it appears that 71 leaves have been lost. Currently, the Old Testament consists of 617 sheets and the New Testament of 142 sheets. The parchment is fine and thin. The actual size of the pages is 27 cm by 27 cm; although the original was bigger. The codex is written in three columns per page, with 40–44 lines per page, and 16–18 letters per line. In the poetical books of the Old Testament (OT) there are only two columns to a page. In Pentateuch, Joshua, Judges, Ruth, and 1 Kings 1:1–19:11 there are 44 lines in a column; in 2 Chronicles 10:16–26:13 there are 40 lines in a column; and in the New Testament always 42. The manuscript is one of the very few New Testament manuscripts to be written with three columns per page. The other two Greek codices written in that way are Uncial 048 and Uncial 053. Codex Vaticanus comprises a single quarto volume containing 759 thin and delicate vellum leaves.
The lettering in the Codex is small and neat, without ornamentation or capitals. The Greek is written continuously in small neat writing; all the letters are equidistant from each other; no word is separated from the other; each line appears to be one long word. Punctuation is rare (accents and breathings have been added by a later hand) except for some blank spaces, diaeresis on initial iotas and upsilons, abbreviations of the nomina sacra and markings of OT citations. The OT citations were marked by an inverted comma (>), as was done in Alexandrinus. There are no enlarged initials; no stops or accents; no divisions into chapters or sections such as are found in later manuscripts.
The text of the Gospels is not divided according to the Ammonian Sections with a references to the Eusebian Canons, but divided into peculiar numbered sections: Matthew has 170, Mark 61, Luke 152, and John 80. This system is found only in two other manuscripts, in Codex Zacynthius and in codex 579. There are two system divisions in the Acts and the Catholic Epistles that differ from the Euthalian Apparatus. In the Acts these sections are 36 (the same system as Codex Sinaiticus, Codex Amiatinus, and Codex Fuldensis) and according to the other system 69 sections. 2 Peter has no numeration, leading to the conclusion that the system of divisions dates prior to the time the Epistle came to be commonly regarded as canonical. The chapters in the Pauline epistles are numbered continuously as the Epistles were regarded as comprising one book.
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