Family 13

List of Family 13 manuscripts
Minuscule 13 Minuscule 69
Minuscule 124 Minuscule 346
Minuscule 543 Minuscule 788
Minuscule 826 Minuscule 828
Minuscule 983 Minuscule 1689

Family 13, also known as the Ferrar Group (ƒ13, von Soden calls the group Ii), is a group of Greek Gospel manuscripts, dating from the 11th to the 15th centuries, which share a distinctive pattern of variant readings. All are thought to derive from a lost majuscule Gospel manuscript, probably from the 7th century. The group takes its name from minuscule 13, now in Paris.

The common characteristics of Family 13 were initially identified in a group of four witnesses (minuscules 13, 69, 124, and 346); but the category has subsequently been extended, and some authorities list thirteen family members. The most obvious characteristic of the group is that these manuscripts place John 7:53-8:11 after Luke 21:38, or elsewhere in Luke's Gospel, with the text of Luke 22:43-44 placed after Matt 26:39, and the text of Matthew 16:2b–3 being absent. Using the study of comparative writing styles (palaeography), most of the manuscripts in the family (with the exception of Minuscule 69) appear to have been written by scribes trained in Southern Italy.

The group also has an affinity with Syriac manuscripts, of which a notable example is Matthew 1:16, where the Ferrar group has the same reading as Curetonian Syriac.[1]

  1. ^ Kenyon, Frederic George (1912). Handbook to the Textual Criticism of the New Testament. London: Macmillan & Co. p. 132.