Southeastern seminary acquires Greek manuscript

WAKE FOREST, N.C. — The library at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary is now one of 13 libraries in the world to own a reproduction of Codex Vaticanus, placing the seminary alongside Harvard, Princeton, Brandeis and Stanford. Codex Vaticanus, also known by its textual apparatus symbol B, is considered one of the oldest surviving Greek manuscripts of the Bible. Scholars date the original manuscript to the fourth century. The original, located at the Vatican, has been reproduced into 450 copies. Each is numbered and signed by Pope John Paul II. Vaticanus is one of the few manuscripts that contain all of the Greek Bible. Missing from the original text are parts of Genesis, 2 Kings, Psalms and Hebrews as well as the entirety of the pastoral epistles Philemon and Revelation. The missing sections were replaced by cursive script centuries later.