Codex Hierosolymitanus

Codex Hierosolymitanus (also called the Bryennios manuscript or the Jerusalem Codex, often designated simply "H" in scholarly discourse) is an 11th-century Greek manuscript. It contains copies of a number of early Christian texts including the only complete edition of the Didache. It was written by an otherwise unknown scribe named Leo, who dated it 1056.

First lines of H54 (54th page of Codex Hierosolymitanus), showing the beginning of the Didache, and the Greek text transcribed below.

The codex contains the Didache, the Epistle of Barnabas, the First Epistle of Clement and the Second Epistle of Clement, the long version of the letters of Ignatius of Antioch and a list of books of the Hebrew Bible.

It was discovered in 1873 by Philotheos Bryennios, the metropolitan of Nicomedia, in the collection of the Jerusalem Monastery of the Most Holy Sepulchre in Constantinople. He published the texts of the two familiar Epistles of Clement in 1875, overlooking the Didache, which he found when he returned to the manuscript.

The Codex's list of books of the Hebrew Bible has often been taken for the first written Canon of the Old Testament, dating from the early second century. However, Luke J Stevens argues that the list has notable parallels in spelling of the books and in its section title to the eighth-century Doctrina Patrum, which is itself dependent on Eusebius.

Adolf Hilgenfeld used Codex Hierosolymitanus for his first printed edition of the previously almost unknown Didache in 1877.

References

• Milavec, A. (2003). The Didache: Faith, Hope, & Life of the Earliest Christian Communities, 50-70 C.E. The Newman Press significant scholarly studies. Newman Press. p. 54. ISBN 978-0-8091-0537-3. Retrieved 2021-05-22.

External links

• Panagios Taphos 54. John Chrysostom: Synopsis of the Testaments; Apostolic Fathers. 1056 A.D. 120 f. Pg. 16 ft. Complete set of digital images
• Jerusalem, Patriarchikê bibliothêkê, Panaghiou Taphou 054 Description, List of Contents
• The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge Bryennios, Philotheos