Minuscule 338 ε 1006 (Soden), 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....

, on parchment. Palaeographically

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 10th century. The manuscript has complex contents.
It has marginalia

Marginalia

Marginalia are scribbles, comments, and illuminations in the margins of a book.- Biblical manuscripts :Biblical manuscripts have liturgical notes at the margin, for liturgical use. Numbers of texts' divisions are given at the margin...

.

Description

The codex contains a complete text of the four Gospel

Gospel

A gospel is an account, often written, that describes the life of Jesus of Nazareth. In a more general sense the term "gospel" may refer to the good news message of the New Testament. It is primarily used in reference to the four canonical gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John...

s on 365 parchment leaves . It is written in one column per page, in 18 lines per page.

The text is divided according to the (chapters), whose numbers are given at the margin, and their (titles of chapters) at the top of the pages. There is also a division according to the smaller Ammonian Sections

Ammonian Sections

Eusebian canons or Eusebian sections, also known as Ammonian Sections, are the system of dividing the four Gospels used between late Antiquity and the Middle Ages. The divisions into chapters and verses used in modern texts date only from the 13th and 16th centuries, respectively...

 (in Mark 233 Sections, the last in 16:8), with references to the Eusebian Canons (written below Ammonian Section numbers).

It contains the Epistula ad Carpianum

Epistula ad Carpianum

The Epistula ad Carpianum is the title traditionally given to a letter from Eusebius of Caesarea to a Christian named Carpianus....

, the Eusebian Canon tables, tables of the (tables of contents) before each Gospel, and pictures.

Text

Kurt 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...

 did not place the Greek text of the codex in any Category

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...

.
It was not examined by the Claremont Profile Method.

The texts of John 5:4 and John 7:53-8:11 are marked by an obelus

Obelus

An obelus is a symbol consisting of a short horizontal line with a dot above and below. It is mainly used to represent the mathematical operation of division. It is therefore commonly referred to as the division sign.- History :The word "obelus" comes from the Greek word for a sharpened stick,...

.

History

The manuscript was examined by Pasino, Scholz, and Burgon. It was added to the list of New Testament manuscripts by Scholz (1794-1852).
C. R. Gregory saw it in 1886.

The manuscript is currently housed at the Turin National University Library

Turin National University Library

The National University Library in Turin, Italy, is one of the country's main libraries.It was founded in 1720 as the Royal University Library by Victor Amadeus II, who unified collections from the library of the University of Turin and from the library of the Dukes of Savoy...

 (B. VII. 33) in Turin

Turin

Turin is a city and major business and cultural centre in northern Italy, capital of the Piedmont region, located mainly on the left bank of the Po River and surrounded by the Alpine arch. The population of the city proper is 909,193 while the population of the urban area is estimated by Eurostat...

. Three folios of the codex are housed in the same library but on the shelf number B. VI. 43.

See also

• List of New Testament minuscules
• 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

• Giuseppe Passino, Codices Manuscripti Bibliohecae Regii Taurinensis Athenaei, Turin 1742, vol. 2.
• W. Reader, Entdeckung von Fregmentem aus zwei zerstörten Minuskeln (338 und 612), Biblica 61, (1980), pp. 407-411.