Askew Codex

The Codex Askewianus, also called Askew Codex is a manuscript sahidisches several original Greek Gnostic writings. The manuscript collection includes several works, including a text that was released under the name Pistis Sophia.

The Codex takes its name from its former owner, Dr. Anthony Askew, a physician and book collector. It was bought in 1785 by the British Museum by his heirs, bears the signature of MS. Add. 5114 and is now in the British Library. As can be seen from letters from his environment, Askew apparently bought the manuscript from a London bookseller, on the other origin is not known, but all indications point to an Egyptian origin of the manuscript.

The Codex in Quart size of 21 x 16.5 cm is written on parchment and contains 178 sheets and thus 356 pages, described in two columns of 30 to 34 lines. Overall, the manuscript in exceptionally good condition, but missing pages 337-344. Located in the work changes the manuscript. The first hand shows a fine, meticulous old uncial script, the second hand, a careless, clumsy writing with signs of tremors, which could indicate an old man as a writer. Both writers used different inks and different methods of pagination and the corrections and had more features. Both writers were probably contemporaries.

Structure

Carl Schmidt is divided into four main parts, the first three members of a work and the gaps between the parts was later filled with material of other origin. The fourth principal part is a separate work.

After George Robert Stow Mead, several main parts result:

Content

This is a summary of an extensive literature. According to Mead, " the second book of Pisits Sophia " was the title of the whole of Scripture to the name wrong, but in retrospect can no longer be changed. Better would be " the book of the Saviour " or "parts from the book of the Saviour ". Whether the title is also true for the rear part, is still an open question. It is in this document, a conglomerate of various writings and not a copy of a single plant. This summary should already have been submitted to the writers in this form.

The font comes originally from the Greek, which can be seen in a large number of loanwords. Not only names, but also nouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs and conjunctions even remain untranslated. This applies to both quotations from the Old Testament and the New Testament, as well as on the rest of the text. In some places, the text follows slavishly the Greek sentence structure and forms long periods, which are not common in Coptic syntax. One of the similar documents in the Berlin Codex was Irenaeus before in Greek, which corroborated this assumption.

Although much is uncertain, there seems to be a consensus that the text and the underlying writings have emerged in Egyptian environment over put over gnopstische content that come from outside of Egypt, from Syria.

Dating

The dating of the composition is related to the question of which sect of this book is to be attributed. Under discussion are Valentinus or one of his students, Barbelo - Gnostics with their various sub-groups: the Nicolaitans, Ophites, Cainites, Sethians, then the Archontiker. Not, however, come libertine Gnostic groups in question. Accordingly, the dating spectrum of 3 extends to the 7th century.

Importance

This Code was one of the few coherent Gnostic texts that were passed down not by the Church Fathers, and thus from a negative attitude out. Besides this, there was the Codex Brucianus and the Berlin Codex Berolinensis Gnosticus 8502nd These three writings were in addition to the quotations in the Fathers since the late 18th to early 20th century, the basis for the Gnosis. Only with the discovery of the Nag Hammadi writings the sources was significantly better. One problem is still that there are Egyptian translations and revisions of the Greek writings that have gone missing in the original.