Claromontanus and To The Hebrews

Erik de Boer in 2014 commented upon "Tertullian on “Barnabas’ Letter to the Hebrews” in De pudicitia 20.1-5", bringing additional evidence. Among his evidence is speculation upon "western" bilingual Codex Claromontanus D/06.

D/06 is, presently, a Paul-ter. It is often abbreviated D^p against D^ea/05 which is the very-different Bezae. Apparently Claromont was designed a D^pcr: it promised in a table-of-contents a "Barnabas" to come after Jude just prior to the Revelation. At first Claromont didn't extend to Hebrews either (leaving aside "Barnabas"); later someone stuck a late translation of Hebrews at the end of the D/06 Pauline corpus. Claromont in both editions contrasts with "Alexandrine" Vaticanus which put Hebrews in pride-of-place at the forefront of the second Pauline scroll (somewhat undercutting, meanwhile, that claim that this text-type was Eunomian).

Our Barnabas is longer than Hebrews. The Claromont codex lacks the room for Barnabas; Hebrews would fit.

I must quibble: our Barnabas appends a lengthy coda upon the Two Ways. This coda is absent from the Latin copy "St Petersburg, Q.v.I.39". (Another truncation, Vaticanus graecus 859, postpends a broken Polycarp; a simple mistake, likely far postdating Claromont.) Claromont may have included the St Petersburg truncation in, indeed, Latin. Also our Barnabas where a New Testament does include it, like Sinaiticus, tends to come at the end.

But if I may buttress de Boer: Tertullian shares readings with Claromont elsewhere. Given that a predecessor to Claromont was Tertullian's Bible in Latin (for Paul), it requires less pleading to allow that this urtext listed Hebrews by Barnabas' name than to assume it had some short version of our Barnabas; Tertullian being unaware of any "Barnabas" as was not Hebrews.