The Times of Tuesday publishes a detailed account of the
new manuscript of the Gospels discovered in Egypt some six years ago and purchased by Mr. C. L. Freer, an enlightened and munificent American collector. The manu- script, which has now been published in facsimile by the University of Michigan, probably dates from the fifth century. It is not homogeneous : the text of St. Matthew agrees with the later or Byzantine text, but the text of St. John is mainly of Egyptian origin and agrees substantially with the Codex Vaticanus and the Codex Sinaiticus. The text of St. Luke and St. Mark fluctuates between the Egyptian and the Byzantine texts, but in the latter gospel it contains several readings in which it stands alone, or almost alone, notably in the appendix—classed among the rejected readings in the recension of Westcott and Hort—to the 16th chapter of St. Mark. Here, after verse 14, in which it is said that Jesus upbraided His disciples for their unbelief, there follow some verses which occur in no other manuscript of the New Testament, though they were known to St. Jerome, who quotes part of them :—
" And they excused themselves, saying that this age of lawless- ness and unbelief is under Satan, who, through the agency of unclean spirits, suffers not the true power of God to be appre- hended. For this cause, said they unto Christ, reveal now at once Thy righteousness. And Christ said unto them, The limit of the years of the power of Satan is (not) fulfilled, but it draweth near [the text, here and elsewhere, is corrupt] : for the sake of those that have sinned was I given up unto death, that they may return unto the truth and sin no more, but nay inherit the spiritual and incorruptible glory of righteousness in heaven. But go ye, &c."
The new saying is not equal in importance to the recently discovered Logia, and its context relegates it to the category of apocryphal utterances, but the manuscript is regarded as belonging to the first class of authorities for the text of the Gospels.
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