Minuscule 2344 is a Greek

Greek language

Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...

 minuscule manuscript

Manuscript

A manuscript or handwrite is written information that has been manually created by someone or some people, such as a hand-written letter, as opposed to being printed or reproduced some other way...

 of the New Testament

New Testament

The New Testament is the second major division of the Christian biblical canon, the first such division being the much longer Old Testament....

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Description

The codex contains the text of the Acts

Acts of the Apostles

The Acts of the Apostles , usually referred to simply as Acts, is the fifth book of the New Testament; Acts outlines the history of the Apostolic Age...

, CE

General epistles

General epistles are books in the New Testament in the form of letters. They are termed "general" because for the most part their intended audience seems to be Christians in general rather than individual persons or congregations as is the case with the Pauline epistles...

, Paul

Pauline epistles

The Pauline epistles, Epistles of Paul, or Letters of Paul, are the thirteen New Testament books which have the name Paul as the first word, hence claiming authorship by Paul the Apostle. Among these letters are some of the earliest extant Christian documents...

, Rev

Book of Revelation

The Book of Revelation is the final book of the New Testament. The title came into usage from the first word of the book in Koine Greek: apokalupsis, meaning "unveiling" or "revelation"...

, on 61 parchment leaves (36.9 by 28 cm). Paleographically

Palaeography

Palaeography, also spelt paleography is the study of ancient writing. Included in the discipline is the practice of deciphering, reading, and dating historical manuscripts, and the cultural context of writing, including the methods with which writing and books were produced, and the history of...

 it has been assigned to the 11th century, with some lacunae

Lacuna (manuscripts)

A lacunaPlural lacunae. From Latin lacūna , diminutive form of lacus . is a gap in a manuscript, inscription, text, painting, or a musical work...

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Text

The Greek text of the codex is a representative of the Alexandrian text-type

Alexandrian text-type

The Alexandrian text-type , associated with Alexandria, is one of several text-types used in New Testament textual criticism to describe and group the textual character of biblical manuscripts...

 in the Catholic epistles and in the Book of Revelation. In the Book of Revelation it agrees frequently with Minuscule 2053

Minuscule 2053

Minuscule 2053 , Oα31 , is a Greek minuscule manuscript of the New Testament, on 138 parchment leaves . Paleografically it has been assigned to the 13th century.- Description :...

. It contains also parts of Old Testament

Old Testament

The Old Testament, of which Christians hold different views, is a Christian term for the religious writings of ancient Israel held sacred and inspired by Christians which overlaps with the 24-book canon of the Masoretic Text of Judaism...

. Aland

Kurt Aland

Kurt Aland was a German Theologian and Professor of New Testament Research and Church History. He founded the Institut für neutestamentliche Textforschung in Münster and served as its first director for many years...

 placed it in Category I

Categories of New Testament manuscripts

New Testament manuscripts in Greek are categorized into five groups, according to a scheme introduced in 1981 by Kurt and Barbara Aland in Der Text des Neuen Testaments. The categories are based on how each manuscript relates to the various text-types. Generally speaking, earlier Alexandrian...

. The text of the Acts and Pauline epistles Aland placed in Category III.

In Revelation textual value of the codex is comparable with codices Alexandrinus

Codex Alexandrinus

The Codex Alexandrinus is a 5th century manuscript of the Greek Bible,The Greek Bible in this context refers to the Bible used by Greek-speaking Christians who lived in Egypt and elsewhere during the early history of Christianity...

 and Ephraemi

Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus

Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus is an early 5th century Greek manuscript of the Bible, the last in the group of the four great uncial manuscripts...

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History

In Revelation 13:18 it contains unique textual variant "its number is six hundred sixty-five".

The text was collated by J. Schmid. New collation gave M. Davies.

It is currently housed at the Bibliothèque nationale de France

Bibliothèque nationale de France

The is the National Library of France, located in Paris. It is intended to be the repository of all that is published in France. The current president of the library is Bruno Racine.-History:...

 (Coislin Gr. 18, fol. 170-230) at Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

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See also

• List of New Testament minuscules (2001–)
• Biblical manuscript
  Biblical manuscript
  A biblical manuscript is any handwritten copy of a portion of the text of the Bible. The word Bible comes from the Greek biblia ; manuscript comes from Latin manu and scriptum...
  
  
• Textual criticism
  Textual criticism
  Textual criticism is a branch of literary criticism that is concerned with the identification and removal of transcription errors in the texts of manuscripts...
  
  

Further reading

• J. Schmid, "Unbeachtete Apokalypse-Handschriften", Th Q 120 (Tübingen, 1939), pp. 154-187.
• M. Davies, The Text of the Pauline Epistles in Manuscript 2344 and its Relationship to the Text of other Known Manuscripts in Particular to 330, 436 and 462, S & D XXXVIII (Salt Lake City, 1968).