the measure of the column.  The order of the books is:  (1) the gospels; (2) the Acts of the Apostles; (3) the Catholic epistles; (4) the epistles of Paul, with that to the Hebrews between 2 Thessalonians and 1 Timothy; (5) the Apocalypse.  In the gospels, the Ammonian sections with the Eusebian canons are indicated, and at the top of the pages the larger sections or titles.  In the Old Testament it is defective in part of the Psalms.  In the New it wants all of Matthew as far as chap. 25:6; also from John 6:50 to 8:52; and from 2 Cor. 4:13 to 12:6.  It has appended at the end the genuine letter of Clement of Rome to the Corinthians, and a fragment of a second spurious letter.  To these apocryphal additions we owe the preservation of the Apocalypse in an entire state.  Until the discovery of the Sinai codex, the Alexandrine exhibited the text of the New Testament in far the most entire state of all the uncial manuscripts. See No. (2), PLATE I.

(4) The fourth manuscript of this group is the celebrated palimpsest called Codex Ephraemi, Ephraem manuscript, preserved in the Imperial library of Paris, and marked in the list of uncials with the letter C. Originally it contained the whole of the New Testament, and apparently the Old also, elegantly written on thin vellum, with a single column to a page.  The writing is continuous, without accents or breathings, and the letters are rather larger than in the Alexandrian manuscript, the first letter of each section being of larger size than the rest, and standing, as in that manuscript, a little to the left of the column.  The Ammonian sections stand in the margin, but without the Eusebian canons.  The gospels were preceded by the list of titles, or larger sections, of which those of Luke and John alone are preserved.  The titles and subscriptions are short and simple.  The date of the manuscript is supposed to be the first half of the fifth century.  It has undergone corrections at the hand of at least two persons, possibly a third.  These can be readily distinguished from the original writing.  The critical authority of this codex is very high.  Tregelles (in Horne, vol. 4, chap. 13) places it next to the Vatican manuscript.

A few words on its history.  About the thirteenth century, being regarded as a worn-out and obsolete manuscript, the vellum on which it was written was taken for a new purpose, that of receiving the Greek works of Ephraem the Syrian saint, a celebrated theologian of the old Syrian church, who flourished in the fourth century.  “For this purpose the leaves were taken promiscuously, without any regard to their proper original order, and sewed together at hap-hazard, sometimes top end down, and front side behind, just as if they had been mere blanks, the sermons of Ephraem being the only matter regarded in the book.”  Stowe, Hist. of the Books of the Bible, p. 75.  In the latter part of the seventeenth century, Allix first observed the older