Codex Claromontanus
(D - Epistles)

Codex Claromontanus (named thus by Theodore Beza because he procured it in the city of Clermont-en-Beauvaisis in Northern France), is a Greek and Latin diglot manuscript of the Epistles of Paul, having the same format as Codex Bezae Cantabrigiensis. It is believed to have been written in the sixth century. Theodore Beza was the first scholar to examine it, and he included notes of some of its readings in his editions of the New Testament (see Beza 1565). A partial collation of it was published in the appendix of Walton's Polyglot (see Walton 1657), an English translation in Whiston 1745, and a full collation in the apparatus of Wettstein (see Wettstein 1751). Tischendorf 1852 was the first reproduction of its text. A later edition is Hansell 1864. Full collations are in the apparatus of Tischendorf 1869 and Tregelles 1857.

The Greek text of this codex is highly valued by critics as representing a supposed early "Western" form of the text, characterized by frequent interpolations and, to a lesser extent, interpretive revisions. Despite these features, and in fact partly because of them, Claromontanus is often employed as a sort of "outside mediator" between the more closely related codices Alexandrinus, Vaticanus, Sinaiticus, and Ephraemi Rescriptus, just as Codex Bezae Cantabrigiensis is used in the Gospels and Acts.