As I'm looking at the first instances of standard New Testaments, I'm seeing a gradation. It's generally going "Western" (meaning, wild) > Alexandrine > Antiochene-gone-Byzantine. I'm interested here in the pattern where a NT which preserves both Gospels and Epistles is Alexandrine except for the Gospels which are Byzantine.
In this group is "A" itself, a text literally from Alexandria; also, the Vulgate as we have it. I'm flagging the Vulgate as most important because we know who did its Gospels: Jerome. Which means we know when: the reign of Theodosius I and then the minority of Theodosius II (Honorius, in the West).
Theodosius I had the strength to impose a single text upon Egypt and Italy. So did Theodosius II more-or-less. I am not seeing this for Arcadius or Aelia Pulcheria in between. The Gospels, in particular, look like something Christians didn't replace lightly, given the Western diehards ℵ and W.
If Theodosius replaced the Gospels but not the rest of the NT, as we see in "A" and the Vulgate, that means Theodosius did not (yet) own a new text for the rest of the NT. He just had Alexandria. So that's what stayed in "A" and went into those parts of the Vulgate.
No comments:
Post a Comment