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Basilian Manuscript

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(CODEX BASILIANUS), an uncial copy of the whole Apocalypse (of which it is usually designated as B), found among ancient homilies of Basil and Gregory of Nyssa,. and valuable from the scarcity of early MSS. of the Revelation. It derives its name from having formerly belonged to the Basilian monastery at Rome (then designated as No. 105), but it is now deposited in the Vatican library (where it is known as 2066). It was first known from a notice and facsimile by Blanchini (Evangelariarum Quadruplex. 1748, 2:525). Wetstein requested a collation of it from Cardinal Quirini, but the extracts sent came too late for publication in his N.T., and proved very loose and defective. When Tischendorf was at Rome in 1843, although forbidden to collate it anew, he was permitted to make a few extracts, and improved the privilege so well as to compare the whole text with a Greek Test. He published the result in his Monumenta Sacra Inedita (1846, p. 407-432), which Tregelles, who was allowed to make a partial examination of the codex in 1845, has since somewhat corrected. Card. Mai has published it, in order to supply the text of the Apocrypha in his edition of the Cod, Vaticanus, but the work is very imperfectly done. In form this MS. is rather an octavo than a folio or quarto. The letters are of a peculiar kind, simple and unornamented, leaning a little to the right; they hold a sort of middle place between the square and the oblong character. Several of them indicate that they belong to the latest uncial fashion. The breathings and accents are by the first hand, and pretty correct. It probably belongs to the beginning of the 8th century. — Tregelles, in Horne's Introd., new ed. 4:206 sq.; Scrivener, Introduction, p. 140 sq. (See MANUSCRIPTS, BIBLICAL).