Bibliorum Codex Sinaiticus. 



237 



amid the death-like stillness of the night, to be echoed by 

 the everlasting mountains around. About the convent of 

 Sinai, there is truly a grand combination of the wild and 

 magnificent in nature mingled with the mystery and awe 

 inspired by sacred associations. 



In our narration of this story of the Sinai manuscript we 

 have had frequently to allude to those two old and cele- 

 brated codices the " Alexandrinus" and the " Vaticanus." 

 The codex Alexandrinus was sent in the year 1628 as a 

 present to Charles 1st, the king of England, by Cyrillus 

 Lucaris, a native of Crete, then patriarch of Constantinople 

 and previously of Alexandria, sent through the hands of 

 Sir Thomas Roe, the English ambassador at Stamboul 

 the court of the sultan. Of its previous history very little 

 is known. It received the name Alexandrinus, because of 

 its having been brought by Cyrillus from Alexandria to 

 Constantinople. It bears upon it an Arabic superscription 

 mentioning that the manuscript was said to have been 

 written by Thecla the martyr. 



Besides the LXX version of the Old Testament (defective 

 in part of the Psalms), the Alexandrinus contains all the 

 books of the New Testament in which though there are a 

 few chasms. The mauscript is on thin vellum ; the wait- 

 ing on each page being divided into two columns. The 

 letters are round, and possess the characteristics of other 

 documents of the oldest class. They are larger than those 

 of the Vaticanus. The number of lines is about 50 in each 

 page. There is no division of words, and of interpunction 

 only occasional and faint traces. 



This was the first manuscript of great importance and 

 antiquity of which any extensive use was made by textual 

 critics. Its actual age was often discussed, and it was 

 variously estimated according to the desire of those using it, 

 either to establish or to oppose its authority and value. 



[Trans, v.] 31 



