Separate co<lices of the Goajjcls rarely occur in which St. John precedes the Synoptists ; but in the library of M. Enf&ljans in "fillis there is a very old Bpeeiraen of such a codex. The order of the rest of the NT books in the oldest MS at Venice, written A.I). 1220, is as follows: Acta, Catholic Epistles, Revelation of John the Apostle, Epistles of Paul, at the end of which is added the letter of the Corinthians to Paul. The Ep. to the Hebrews
•At .MoKcow In an Ev»n(roll»r ,d»t«<i 887. At Vrnlc* In the Ban [.Azziiro Library are two, liauxl HC^ and 1006 res]>e€tivelv. At EUiu-hniiatzin, two of 080, lOSS. In Erzcroum, one of 086. In St. Anlhony'i convent in C'onMUntlnople, one of 060. In the Sevan mona.«tten" in Kntwlan Annenia, one of 066. In the HiT>lioth6qiie Nationale, In the Hritiiih MiiAeum, and in private oollc<:tionfl, are many more very ancient copies.
precedes those to Tim. and follows Thess. lu a 13th cent. MS of the Brit. Mus. (Add. 19,730, Saec. xiii.), the order of books is this: Apocalypse, Epistles of Paul, Acts, Cath. Epistles. In this and in other codices the apocryphal rest of St. John usually follows St. John's Gospel.
The Gospels invariably have the Canons of 'Amnionius added in the margin, and are preceded by Eusebius' letter to Carpianus, with the tables of the Canons. The Acts and Epistles of St. Paul are preceded by the prefaces, summaries, lists of Testimonia and Colophons of Euthalius, whose marginal chaptering and subdivisions and calcula- tions of stichi in the text are also added in the older MSS. In these we also find a division of Acts and Cath. Epistles each into forty-nine chap- ters ; and in the case of Acts, this rather artificial system presupposes that of Euthalius.
A collation of the Arm. text of the OT is given in the Septuagint of Holmes and Parson (Oxon. 1798-1827). A collation of the Arm. NT was first published by Tregelles, and the same is given in Tiscliendorf's later edd. Moses of Chorene asserts that the NT, like the OT, was first rendered from Syr., and that this first version was, about A.D. 430, revised from more exact Gr. texts from Constantinople. This tradition is certainly correct, for Prof. Armitage Robinson (Euthaliana, Cambridge, 1895) shows that the Arm. NT bears traces of having been made from an ancient form of the Syr. text, such as that which Mrs. Lewis recently discovered at Mount Sinai. This earlier version from Syr. may be the ' First translation ' of the Gospels to which Theodoros Chrhthenavor (Contra Majrafjoumatzi) refers in the 7th cent. as having contained the disputed verses Lk 22**- **.
These references are so important that I translate them from the Venice ed. p. 148: 'TliL-y {i.e. the phontaaiai^tie) say, It was not hy weakness, but by strength, that He (i.e. Clirist) over- came the enemy. So do ills own words testify. The house of the giant is not plundered, unless first the stronif man is bound.' • And if this be true, it is plain, they say, that the h\riit transla- tion is not to be acceptea, which in the (episode of Hie) praying relates the ' Illoody Sweat' of the almignty 'Word of God, and that He was encouraged by the angel.'
Ibid. p. 154: 'The letter of the Gospel spoke of the iweftt allegorically, as It were of blood ; but not (as) a welliog-oiit of blood from a wound made with a weapon.'
In the same context we read that the heretics In auMtlon con- tended that the ' old edition oj the Gogpel is not to De accept«d ' because Gregory the Illuminator, in his homitetic exposition of all the Oos_pel oracles which announced the economical passibiiity of the Di\nne Word, yet made no special mention of the ' Uloody Sweat' passage.
The answer of Theodore to this argument Is that neither di<l the Nicene Fathers nor the new recension of the Scriptures reco^'- nise more than fourteen Epistles of Paul ; yet that Gregory htul cited and so testified to the Third Epistle of the Corinthians to Haul, which the said Fathers had passe<l over in silence, and which wa3 * not adde<l in the new translations.' Tlie verve cited by
Gregory is 3 Co II ; 'The lawless prince when he desired to be Oo-J bound all men under sin.' 'This' (i.e. ? f^-^^ ""- t*.....-
tiut I
8 Co), aayi Theo- dore, * was contained in the ancisnt trxt^ but not in the nev ed. ( = evyyfa;n). If, however, because of Its omission from the text of the nru>lt/ issued translations you reject the older Gospel as not true, you. In doing so, calumniate even the great sage Gregory, though you make a show of praising him. But If the truthful Gregory did not in com|X)sing (his work) follow the chapters in liielr order of the entire Gospel, but wrote with peculiar simplicily to suit those who were weak in trnderstandin^ what they hcani, merely propounding testimnnies in a summary way to satisfy Immediate neefU, and oonHrming (the Oosim'I statements) by the uropbeciefl, then why do you make a stalking hone of himT'
The above passages warrant two inferences, one certain, the other probable.
(1) The Armenians had a first or early version of N'T which contained the verses Lk 23*'-** and also 3 Corinthians.