from the black Jews in Malabar1, who, (there is strong reason to believe) are a part of the remains of the first dispersion of that nation by Nebuchadnezzar. The date of this manuscript cannot now be ascertained; but its text is supposed to be derived from those copies which their ancestors brought with them into India. Those Jews, on being interrogated, could give no precise account of it: some replied, that it came originally from Senna in Arabia; others of them said, it was brought from Cashmir. The Cabul Jews, who travel annually into the interior of China, remarked, that in some synagogues the Law is still found written on a roll of leather; not on vellum, but on a soft flexible leather, made of goat-skins, and dyed red. It is evident that the Jews, in the time of Moses, had the art of preparing and dying skins; for rams' skins dyed red, made a part of the covering for the tabernacle; (Exod. xxvi. 14.); and it is not improbable, that the very autography of the Law, written by the hand of Moses, was written on skins so prepared. The antient rules prescribed to the Jewish scribes direct, that the Law be so written, provided it be done on the skins of clean animals, such as sheep, goat, or calf-skins: therefore this MS. and many others in the hands of the Jews, agree in the same as an antient practice. The Cabul Jews, above noticed, shew that copies of the Law, written on leather skins, are to be found among their people in India and China; and hence we have no doubt, that such are copies of very antient MSS.2 The Cambridge Roll, or Indian copy of the Pentateuch, which may also be denominated Malabaric, is written on a roll of goat-skins dyed red, and was discovered by Dr. Buchanan in the record chest of a synagogue of the black Jews, in the interior of Malayala, in the year 1806. It measures forty-eight feet in length, and in breadth about twenty-two inches, or a Jewish cubit. The book of Leviticus and the greater part of the book of Deuteronomy are wanting. It appears, from calculation, that the original length of the roll was not less than ninety English feet. In its present condition it consists of thirty-seven skins; contains one hundred and seventeen columns of writing perfectly clear and legible; and exhibits (as the subjoined fac-simile of Deut. iv. 1, 2. will shew) a noble specimen of the manner and form of the most antient Hebrew manuscripts among the Jews.

1 See an account of these Jews in Dr. Buchanan's "Christian Researches," pp. 224. et seq. 4th edit.

2 Dr. Kennicott quotes from Wolfius, that a certain Jew, named Moses Fereyra, affirmed, he had found MS. copies of the Hebrew text in Malabar; for that the Jews, having escaped froin Titus, betook themselves through Persia to the Malabar coast, and arrived there safe in number about eighty persons. Whence Wolfius concludes, that great fidelity is to be attached to the Malabar MSS. The Buchanan MS. may fairly be denominated a Malabar copy, as having been brought from those parts. "Refert Moses Pereyra, se invenisse Manuscripta Exemplaria (Hebræi Textus) Malabarica. Tradit Judæos, a Tito fugientes, per Persiam se ad oras Malabaricas contulisse, ibique cum octoginta animis salvos advenisse. Unde constat, MStis Malabaricis multum fidei tribuendum esse." Wolf. 4, 97. See Dr. Kennicott's Dissertation the Second, p. 532. Oxford, 1759.

על ישראל שמעאלהחקיסואל ומשפטים אשר אנכי מלמד אתכם לעשות למעותתיו ובאתם וירשתם את הארץ אשר יהוה אלהי אבתיכס כלכס לא תקפו על הלכלאשר אנלי מינות אתכם ולא תגרעו ממנולשמר

The columns are a palm or four inches in breadth, and contain from forty to fifty lines each, which are written without vowel points, and in all other respects according to the rules prescribed to the Jewish scribes or copyists. As some of the skins appear more decayed than others, and the text is evidently not all written by the same hand, Mr. Yeates (from whose collation of this MS. the present account is abridged, and to whom the author is indebted for the preceding fac-simile,) is of opinion, that the roll itself comprises the fragments of at least three different rolls, of one common material, viz. dyed goat-skin, and exhibits three different specimens of writing. The old skins have been strengthened by patches of parchment on the back; and in one place four words have been renewed by the same supply. The text is written in the square character, and without the vowel points and accents; and the margin of the columns is every where plain, and free from writing of any sort. He has diligently examined and collated this manuscript with the printed text of Vander Hooght's edition of the Hebrew Bible: and the result of his investigation is, that the amount of variations in the whole does not exceed forty, and that none of them are found to differ from the common reading as to the sense and interpretation of the text, but are merely additions or omissions of a jod or vau letter, expressing such words full or deficient, according to the known usage of the Hebrew tongue. But even this small number of readings was considerably reduced, when compared with the text of Athias's edition, printed at Amsterdam in 1661; so that the integrity of the Hebrew text is confirmed by this valuable manuscript so far as it goes, and its testimony is unquestionably important. Four readings are peculiar to this copy, which are not to be found in Dr. Kennicott's edition of the Hebrew Bible ; and many minute Masoretical distinctions, chiefly relative to the formation of the letters in certain words, show that the Masora of the eastern Jews has its peculiarities not common with that of the western Jews:

whence it is certainly determined that the present roll is not a copy from any exemplar of the Jews in Europe; for no other synagogue rolls known in Europe are observed to have the same characteristics, at least as far as appears from any description of Hebrew manuscripts that is extant.1

"With respect to the several sorts of skins and hand-writing, the answer of some Indian Jews, when interrogated concerning this MS., is worthy of remark. By one account, it was brought from Senna in Arabia; and by another account, it came from Čashmir: which two accounts are cleared up on an examination of the MS., since part of it being composed of brown skins, and the writing very similar to that seen in rolls of Arabian and African extraction, there is a possibility that such part is the fragment of an Arabian or African MS., as those Jews relate: and the other account, viz. that it was brought from Cashmir, may also be equally true; since that part consisting of red skins so well corresponds with their own description of copies found in the synagogues of the Eastern Jews. The consideration of this point attaches still greater consequence to the roll itself, which, as it is found to consist of fragments of copies purely Oriental, and seemingly unconnected with the Western Jewish copies, we may now conclude the same to be ample specimens of copies in those parts of the world. It is true, indeed, that a great part of the text is wanting, and the whole book of Leviticus; yet, notwithstanding the large deficiencies of the MS., it ought to be a satisfaction to know, that herein are ample specimens of at least three antient copies of the Pentateuch, whose testimony is found to unite in the integrity and pure conservation of the Sacred Text, acknowledged by Christians and Jews in these parts of the world."

The following testimony of Bishop Marsh to the value of the Codex Malabaricus is too valuable to be omitted. "A manuscript Roll of the Hebrew Pentateuch, apparently of some antiquity, and found among the black Jews in the interior of India, must be regarded at least as a literary curiosity, deserving the attention of the learned in general. And as this manuscript appears, on comparison, to have no important deviation from our common printed Hebrew text, it is of still greater value to a theologian, as it affords an additional argument for the integrity of the Pentateuch. The Hebrew manuscripts of the Pentateuch, preserved in the West of Europe, though equally derived, with the Hebrew manuscripts preserved in India, from the autograph of Moses, must have descended from it through very different channels; and therefore the close agreement of the former with the latter is a proof, that they have preserved the original text in great

I See Mr. Thomas Yeates's" Collation of an Indian copy of the Pentateuch, with preliminary remarks, containing an exact description of the manuscript, and a notice of some others, Hebrew and Syriac, collected by the Rev. C. Buchanan, D. D. in the year 1806, and now deposited in the Public Library, Cambridge. Also a collation and description of a manuscript roll of the Book of Esther, and the Megillah of Ahasuerus, from the Hebrew copy, originally extant in brazen tablets at Goa; with an English Translation.” pp. 2, 3, 6, 7. Cambridge, 1812. 4to.

2 Ibid. p. 8.

purity, since the circumstances, under which the MS. was found, forbid the explanation of that agreement on the principle of any immediate connexion. It is true that, as this Manuscript (or rather the three fragments of which this manuscript is composed) was probably written much later than the time when the Masoretic text was established by the learned Jews of Tiberias, it may have been wholly derived from that Masoretic text; and in this case it would afford only an argument, that the Masoretic text had preserved its integrity, and would not affect the question, whether the Masoretic text itself were an accurate representative of the Mosaic autograph. But, on the other hand, as the very peculiar circumstances, under which the manuscript was found, render it at least possible, that the influence of the Masora, which was extended to the African and European Hebrew manuscripts by the settlement of the most distinguished Oriental Jews in Africa and Spain, never reached the mountainous district in the South of India; as it is possible, that the text of the manuscript in question was derived from manuscripts anterior to the establishment of the Masora, manuscripts even, which might have regulated the learned Jews of Tiberias in the formation of their own text, the manuscript appears for these reasons to merit particular attention." Such being the value of this precious manuscript, Mr. Yeates has conferred a great service on the biblical student by publishing his collation, of which future editors of the Hebrew Bible will doubtless avail themselves.

In the seventh and following volumes of the Classical Journal there is a catalogue of the biblical, biblico-oriental, and classical manuscripts at present existing in the various public libraries in Great Britain.

1 See Yeates's Collation of an Indian copy of the Pentateuch, &c. pp. 40, 41.

SECTION II.

ON THE MANUSCRIPTS OF THE GREEK SCRIPTURES.

1. GENERAL OBSERVATIONS ON GREEK MANUSCRIPTS.

I. On what materials written. II. Form of letters. - III. Abbreviations.-IV. Codices Palimpsesti or Rescripti.-V. Account of the different Families, Recensions, or Editions of Manuscripts of the New Testament. 1. The system of Dr. Griesbach and Michaelis. 3. Of M. Matthæi.-4. Of Mr. Nolan. -VI. On the Fœdus cum Græcis, or coincidence between many Greek Manuscripts and the Vulgate Latin Version.

-2. Of Dr. Scholz.

I. THE Greek manuscripts which have descended to our time, are written either on vellum or on paper; and their external form and condition vary, like the manuscripts of other antient authors. The vellum is either purple-coloured or of its natural hue, and is either thick or thin. Manuscripts on very thin vellum were always held in the highest esteem. The paper also is either made of cotton, or the common sort manufactured from linen, and is either glazed, or laid (as it is technically termed), that is, of the ordinary roughness. Not more than six manuscript fragments on purple vellum are known to be extant; they are described in the following sections of this chapter. The Codex Claromontanus, of which a brief notice is also given in a subsequent page, is written on very thin vellum. All manuscripts on paper are of much later date; those on cotton paper being posterior to the ninth century, and those on linen subsequent to the twelfth century; and if the paper be of a very ordinary quality, Wetstein pronounces them to have been written in Italy, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

II. The letters are either capital (which in the time of Jerome were called uncial, i. e. initial) or cursive, i. e. small; the capital letters, again, are of two kinds, either unadorned and simple, and made with straight thin strokes, or thicker, uneven, and angular. Some of them are supported on a sort of base, while others are decorated, or rather burthened with various tops. As letters of the first kind are generally seen on antient Greek monuments, while those of the last resemble the paintings of semibarbarous times, manuscripts written with the former are generally supposed to be as old as the fifth century, and those written with the latter are supposed to be posterior to the ninth century. Greek manuscripts were usually written in capital letters till the seventh century, and mostly without any divisions of words: and capitals were in general use until the eighth century, and some even so late as the ninth; but there is a striking difference in the forms of the letters after the seventh century. Great alterations took place in the eighth, ninth, and tenth centuries: the Greek letters in the manuscripts copied by the Latins in the ninth century, are by no means regular; the a, e, and 7, being inflected like the a, e, and y, of the Latin alphabet. Towards the close of the tenth century, small or cursive letters were generally adopted;