"The Benton Gospels"

(ca. 170x130 mm) on vellum, 270 leaves, highly incomplete, lacking 100 leaves at beginning, including nearly all of Matthew, and the beginnings of Luke and John (offset of headpiece present before John), as well as the original kephalia, collation: i1, ii-vii8, viii-x10, xi-xx8, xxi-xxiii6, xxiv-xxviii8, xxix8-1 (wanting vi), xxx-xxxiv8, xxxv5, 17 lines (c.105x73mm), ONE BALDACHIN HEADPIECE before the Gospel of Mark and a LARGE FOLIATE INITIAL ‘A’, paginated in Greek, marginalia includes kaphalia, titloi, Ammonian section and Eusebian canon numbers, lection guides in a later 15th-century Cretan(?) hand, keyed to rough lection tables in that same hand which occupy the final 21 leaves of the manuscript, inserted kephalia lists in an 11th-century hand precede Mark and Luke, the first leaf including Matthew 27:59 loose, the final 21 leaves of different, severely worm-eaten vellum; stitched but disbound, loose in straight-grained brown morocco gilt box (GAG 669; Gregory-Aland 669).

Rev. George Benton (d.1862), Episcopal missionary in Greece, who brought the manuscript in 1844 from Canea, Crete, to America — thence to his son Angelo Ames Benton (1836-1912) in 1862, and subsequently to — his grandchildren William Lane Hall Benton and Elizabeth Ames Benton, who presented it to — the General Theological Seminary, New York, in 1913; their sale at Christie’s, 1 October 1980, lot 137, bought for $9,500

Formatting the Word of God 1.2; K. Aland, Kurzgefasste Liste der griechischen Handschriften, 1963, p.96; K.W. Clark, A Descriptive Catalogue of Green New Testament Manuscripts in America, 1937, pp.83ff.; C.C. Edmunds and W.H.P. Hatch, The Gospel Manuscripts of the General Theological Seminary, 1918, pp.50ff.; de Ricci, Census, II, 1937, p.1284, no.1