Introducing Codex Vaticanus

Abstract

This chapter introduces various scribal features of Codex Vaticanus. By describing their individual characteristics, it establishes that there were two scribes (Scribes A and B) who, in alternating sections, penned the text of the codex, and one supervising scribe who also contributed corrections. It catalogues the methods of internal division used by the scribes (ekthesis and paragraphos), and the various attempts to restore and ‘re-capitulate’ the text by later hands. Chapter 3 finishes with a discussion of the quality of Vaticanus’s text in both the Old and New Testaments.