1018 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1896. 



Sinai. It was transferred to Cairo, then to Leipsic, and later to St. 

 Petersburg, where it is preserved iu the Imperial Library. His text 

 was printed in Leipsic from tyi)es especially cast iu imitation of the 

 original and published at St. Petersburg at the expense of Czar 

 Alexander II. The original is on parchment, written in uncial char- 

 acters, tour columns to a page, and forty eight lines on a page. It 

 dates from the middle of the fourth century. It contains the greater 

 part of the Old Testament and the whole of the New Testament. Four 

 different scribes were employed in its writing. 



Codex Alexandrinus. Printed in type to represent the original 

 manuscript. London, 181G. — This facsimile version of the Alexandrian 

 or Egyptian text of the Bible appeared in 1816 in four volumes. Vol- 

 umes I-III containing the Old Testament and Volume IV the New Tes- 

 tament. It contains the whole Bible, with the exception of a few parts. 

 The original manuscript was presented to King Charles I by Sir Thomas 

 Eoe, from Cyril Lucar Patriarch, of Constantinople. It was transferred 

 to the British Museum in 1753. It is written on parchment in uncials, 

 without division of chapters, verses, or words. Tradition i)laces the 

 writing of this manuscript in the fourth century, but it is now generally 

 assumed to date from the tifth century. 



The Vulgate or Latin Bible. — The Vulgate goes back to a 

 Latin translation made from the Septuagint, in North Africa, in the 

 second century, and known as the Yettis Latina or ^^ (J\d Latin." A 

 revised form of this translation was current in Italy toward the end 

 of the fourth century, and was known as the Itala or "Italic." The 

 present version, however, is due to St. Jerome (Hieronymus), and was 

 made by him in Bethlehem between 383 and 404 A. D. It was for 

 a long time the Bible of the Western Church and of a large part 

 of the Easter u Church. St. Jerome began the revision of the Old 

 Testament with the book of Psalms, of which he produced three 

 copies known as the Boman, Galilean, and Hebrew Psalters. But 

 of the rest of the Old Testament he made a new translation from the 

 original Hebrew, with which he was well acquainted. The translation 

 is commonly called the Vulgate, a name which was originally given to 

 the Septuagint. It is still in use by the Roman Catholic Church. It 

 was printed by Gutenberg between 1450 and 1455, being the first 

 important si)ecimen of printing with movable types. 



Syriac Old Testament. Edited by S. Lee and printed at London, 

 1823. — The oldest Syriac version of the Bible is the Peshitta ("correct" 

 or "simple"), the most accurate of the ancient translations. It is 

 referred to in the Commentaries of Ephraim the Syrian, in the fourth 

 century, and was already at that time an old book. 



The whole translation was made from the Hebrew, but the translators 

 were free in their renderings, and seem also to have been acquainted 

 with the Septuagint. 



Syriac New Testament. — Printed at Hamburg, 1664. 



