Codex Amiatinus

Portrait of Ezra, from folio 5r at the start of Old Testament is "the oldest English painting to which an absolute date can be assigned (i.e. not after 716)."[1]

The Codex Amiatinus (also known as the Jarrow Codex) is considered the best-preserved manuscript of the Latin Vulgate version[2] of the Christian Bible. It was produced around 700 in the northeast of England, at the Benedictine Monkwearmouth–Jarrow Abbey in the Kingdom of Northumbria, now South Tyneside, and taken to Italy as a gift for Pope Gregory II in 716. It was one of three giant single-volume Bibles then made at Monkwearmouth–Jarrow, and is the earliest complete one-volume Latin Bible to survive, only the León palimpsest being older. It is the oldest Bible where all the biblical canon present what would be their Vulgate texts.

It is named after the location in which it was found in modern times, Monte Amiata in Tuscany, at the Abbazia di San Salvatore and is now kept at Florence in the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana (Amiatino 1).[3]

Designated by siglum A, it is commonly considered to provide the most reliable surviving representation of Jerome's Vulgate text for the books of the New Testament, and most of the Old Testament. As was standard in all Vulgate Bibles until the ninth century,[4] the Book of Baruch is absent as is the Letter of Jeremiah, the text of the Book of Lamentations following the end of Jeremiah without a break.[5][3] Ezra–Nehemiah is presented as a single book, the texts of the canonical Book of Ezra and Book of Nehemiah being continuous. Similarly the books of Samuel, Kings and Chronicles are each presented as a single book.[6]

  1. ^ Cite error: The named reference :0 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  2. ^ Bruce M. Metzger, The Text of the New Testament (Oxford University Press 2005), p. 106.
  3. ^ a b  One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Fenlon, John Francis (1908). "Codex Amiatinus". In Herbermann, Charles (ed.). Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 4. New York: Robert Appleton Company.
  4. ^ Bogaert, Pierre-Maurice (2005). "Le livre de Baruch dans les manuscrits de la Bible latine. Disparition et réintégration". Revue Bénédictine. 115 (2): 286–342. doi:10.1484/J.RB.5.100598.
  5. ^ Biblia Sacra iuxta vulgatam versionem. Robert Weber, Roger Gryson (eds.) (5 ed.). Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft. 2007. ISBN 978-3-438-05303-9.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
  6. ^ The Biblical Canon Lists of Early Christianity. Edmon L. Gallagher, John. D. Meade. Oxford: OUP. 2017. p. 258.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link)