While the Sinaitic and Vatican codices are generally regarded as being both the earliest and the most valuable of the New Testament manuscripts which have been preserved to this day practically in their entirety, the "Codex Alexandrinus" comes next in order of importance. Like the other two, it was originally a manuscript of the whole Bible written in Greek, and though the Old Testament portion is still almost complete, certain parts of the New Testament have, unfortunately, been lost, including twenty-five leaves from the Gospel of Matthew, two from that of John, and three from II Corinthians. One of the unique characteristics of this codex is that after the book of Revelation we find the first epistle of one Clement of Rome, a fact which reminds us that this letter was highly esteemed by the early church and came near to being accounted among the canonical, or sacred, Scriptures of the New Testament. This same manuscript also contains fragments of a second epistle of Clement, which is, however, considered of lesser importance. Another point of interest is that in the "Codex Alexandrinus" the epistles of Paul immediately precede the book of Revelation, instead of following the book of Acts.
The facts concerning the origin and early history of this famous manuscript are veiled in obscurity. In the year 1628, one Cyril Lucar, patriarch of Constantinople (now Istanbul), presented the codex to Charles I of Britain, and, shortly after the foundation of the library of the British Museum in 1753, it was placed there for safe keeping, and now rests beside the "Codex Sinaiticus" in the manuscript room. Now, Cyril had formerly been patriarch of Alexandria in Egypt, and there is good reason to suppose that it was there that he became possessor of this ancient codex, which for that reason is called the Alexandrian Manuscript—its brief designation, for purposes of reference, being the letter "A." On the flyleaf of the book, Cyril himself recorded the tradition then current concerning its preparation, to the effect that it was "written by the hand of Thecla, an Egyptian woman of noble birth... shortly after the council of Nicaea" (which took place in 325 a. d.). It is now the considered judgment of scholars that it must have been prepared about the middle of the fifth century a. d., rather than early in the fourth, as suggested by the patriarch.
A further interesting point concerning the "Codex Alexandrinus" is that it was the first of the great Greek Biblical manuscripts to receive any real study and recognition, for though the "Codex Vaticanus" had lain in the archives of the Vatican since about 1480, it was not until the early nineteenth century that its vital importance was recognized, while the discovery of the "Codex Sinaiticus" came several decades later still. Had the Alexandrian manuscript reached England some twenty years sooner than it actually did, it would doubtless have been made available to those who prepared our Authorized Version; yet, even without its aid, these scholars succeeded in giving to the world that inimitable rendering which we know so well.
