IMPORTANT DISCOVERY.

Temuka Leader, Issue 320, 23 November 1880, Page 2

IMPORTANT DISCOVERY.

The Edinborough Scotsman gives a somewhat detailed account of a literary discovery recently made which —if accurate as we suppose it to be—more than confirms certain' rumcurs which have been abroad. It is nothing less than the finding of a new early manuscript of the whole Gospel of Matthew, and the Gospel of Mark, with the exception of its last six and a-half verses —the final leaf, as we suppose, being, as it is so often, missing. Its appearance, the style of the letters in wjaicli it is written, and all the other criteria by which its age must be judged, assign it to a date ..not far from a.d. 500 j which exaults it to an antiquity exceeded by not more than three or four among surviving manuscripts of the new Testament. The discovery happened this wise. Two German scholars, Oscar V. Geb hardt and Adolph Harnach, known . as having successfully edited au edition of the " Apostolic Fathers"' went in March last to Southern Ital j and Sicily on a search for manuscripts. Hearing,, of a monaslry at Rossano, on the Gulf of Toronto, said to contain important manuscripts, they went thither, to find no traces of such a monastry now ex isting, but discovering in the palace of the archbishop this venerable copy of nearly the whole of the first two Gospels . Its leaves are of purple parchment, the writing being in silver, except the first three lines of each Gospel, • which are in gold. It contains 188 leaves, is written in uncial characters, two columns to the page, with no space between the words, no breathings nor accents, and only the slightest attempt at punctuation. The finders state that in general it bears a sciking resemblance to the other only known manuscript on purple parchment—four leaves of which are in London. —and that with some unique readings, it rather goes with the later manuscripts where the Smaitic and the Vatican manuscripts differ from them. Special interest attached to the manuscript from the fact that it contains a number of painted miniatures illustrative of scenes in the Jlfe of Christ, which must be among the very earliest of such works of art extantj and which are done with fair skill and much animation and I expression. ~ some being historically, suggestive, as that pourtiraying the distribution ot bread and wine at the Eucharist.