Nitrian Manuscript

(CODEX NITRIENSIS, designated as R of the Gospels, No. 17,211 of the Additions in the British Museum) is a valuable palimpsest fragment of the N.T. in uncials not later than the 6th century, written over by a Syriac translation of the Monophysite treatise of Severus of Antioch against Grammaticus. It was brought home by Dr. Cureton from the Nitrian monastery of St. Mary in the desert northwest of Cairo. It contains only twenty-five portions of Luke's Gospel on forty-five leaves, in two columns of about twenty-five lines to a page. The ancient letters are very faint, but they have been deciphered and transcribed by Tischendorf and Tregelles, the former of whom has published an edition of them (in his Monumenta sacra Inedita, vol. ii). The letters are bold, and of the ancient form. The Ammonian sections stand in the margin; but the Eusebian canols if once there, are now effaced. See Tregelles, in Horne's lntrod. 4:183; Scrivener, Introd. p.,114. SEE MANUSCPIPTS, BIBLICAL.