Anderson, Amy S. The Textual Tradition of the Gospels: Family 1 in Matthew. Leiden: Brill, 2004. Pp. x + 222 + 32 plates. ISBN 90-04-013592-8. US $134; €94.

1. This book, a revised version of Amy Anderson's dissertation written under the guidance of David C. Parker, is mainly an investigation of the tenth century minuscule 1582, which leads to a new evaluation of Family 1 of the Gospels.

2. Chapter One gives a detailed physical description of the codex, which is preserved in the Vatopedi Monastery on Mt. Athos. Anderson discusses the contents of the codex (including devout colophons and later additions like ornate circulars, the Eusebian canon tables, etc.), the problem of missing pages, and the issue of the rebinding of the codex (the current binding seems to be from the nineteenth century, whereas several arguments speak in favour of a first rebinding during the twelfth century). Additional to the text itself, the manuscript preserves portraits of the four evangelists, which obviously did not belong to the original codex, but can be dated very early: "The four illuminations in Codex 1582 are of the simplest and earliest type. The portraits of the evangelists are in the classical style typical of tenth century Constantinople, and the backgrounds are plain, lacking the increasingly complex architectural arrangements of the following centuries" (13). Without question the headpieces were part of the original codex and can be attributed to tenth century Constantinople; the rulings can be ascribed to Kirsopp and Silva Lake's category I, 35a (see K. and S. Lake, Dated Greek Minuscule Manuscripts to the Year 1200 [Boston, 1934-39]).

3. Chapter Two is devoted to the scribe of codex 1582: its Gospel text has been written by the monk Ephraim, a professional scribe of the tenth century, whose name is well known from other manuscripts as well (for example manuscripts of Aristotle's Organon; Polybius, Books I-IV; and the New Testament minuscule 1739). Ephraim produced Codex 1582 in a scriptorium in Constantinople in the year 948. Anderson argues that this scriptorium must have had an excellent library with biblical texts that possibly originated in Caesarea (perhaps as early as in the fifth century). She also speculates about Ephraim's earlier life and education: quite probably Ephraim is addressed in four late ninth century or early tenth century letters of an unnamed scholar who had been Ephraim's former teacher. Interestingly, Ephraim did not produce only the manuscripts mentioned above; modern palaeography attributes several other codices to his hand. Very important is Anderson's observation that Ephraim was both intensely aware of the contents of his texts and very much concerned about the precise reproduction of his exemplars: "Ephraim's careful work, combined with his access to manuscripts that preserved ancient biblical textual traditions, means that the documents he produced have transmitted an accurate record of a textual tradition from a time much earlier than the tenth century" (46).

4. In Chapter Three, Anderson shows that in 167 instances a later hand (probably between 1100 and 1150 C.E.) corrected parts of the text, mainly according to the Byzantine ecclesiastical standard text.

5. Chapter Four is devoted to the marginalia of Codex 1582. These marginalia and/or the corresponding text in Codex 1582 witness rare and ancient variant readings, which are often supported by Origen. They were probably compiled by a scholar much earlier than Ephraim, who then just reproduced them from his Vorlage. Anderson collects data about the compiler of the archetype from which 1582 has descended. This person obviously had access to Gospel texts and early commentaries; his citations of several church fathers indicate a date in the second half of the fifth century. This evidence again points to the Caesarean library as a probable source of the archetype. The author wonders whether the compiler of 1582 is identical with that of codex 1739, whose archetype also seems to go back to the Caesarean library.

6. In Chapter Five, Anderson compares the text of Matthew in 1582 to Origen's text. After a careful collation of variants, she argues that the text of 1582 goes back to an archetype that is related to the text Origen used in his commentary but is not identical with it. Some of the differences can be attributed to the process of copying, but at least a few of them already existed in Origen's times. Both the archetype of 1582 and Origen seem to draw from a common source, a collection of biblical documents available in Caesarea in the early third century and containing distinctive readings (83).

7. Chapter Six compares the texts of Codex 1582 and Codex 1. After having collated the text of the Gospel of Matthew, Anderson concludes that codices 1 and 1582 independently witness a common archetype:

Codex 1582 is a nearly exact reproduction of an intermediate exemplar (A-1) that retained the marginalia (perhaps not in full), but that may also have had a few corrections to the developing Byzantine standard. Codex 1, along with 118 205 209, is a descendent of this same intermediate exemplar by way of an additional intervening copy (X) that did not preserve the marginalia and that contained a number of scribal mistakes, especially mistakes of omission. In the same way, Codex 1 itself contains a number of singular errors, mainly omissions (96).

8. Chapter Seven works out a new categorization of the manuscripts that have been seen as members of Family 1. Anderson gives physical descriptions of every document and discusses its text in relationship to the other manuscripts. She concludes that codices 1 and 1582 can be categorized as core members of Family 1; closely related to them, but with variation, are 118, 205, and 209. Manuscripts 22, 1192, and 1210 show significant relationship to Family 1, while 131, 872, 1278, and 2193 are Byzantine in textual complexion, but possibly have a Family 1 ancestor; 2542 is purely Byzantine.

9. The book closes with appendices on the agreements of Origen with codex 1582, on the results of the collation of the members of Family 1 in Mt 6:1-7:12, and a collation of Family 1 readings in Matthew. Four coloured and 27 high-quality black and white plates are very helpful for a verification of Anderson's descriptions.

10. Anderson has done a lot of painstaking work. She provides an important and detailed study of Codex 1582 and Family 1 of the Gospel of Matthew. Her detailed descriptions of the codex and her discussion of the background of its production are especially interesting. Even in the hypothetical reconstruction of the stemma, the author's argumentation is always cautious; she carefully reconstructs a convincing chain of evidence. An important study in the textual transmission of the Gospels!

Tobias Nicklas
University of Regensburg