And for my next trick…

Thesauruses, or if you are more classically inclined thesauri, appear to be in vogue. In ET12 (Oct 87), we reviewed the latest Longman revision of Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases, which the company had first published in 1852. Then, in ET14 (Apr 88) we drew attention to the rather surprising facsimile reproduction by Bloomsbury of the original 1852 Roget. Now, it is both relevant and important to highlight some developments on the part of a third British publisher, Collins, who have brought out not one but two new wordbooks:• The COLLINS School Thesaurus, ISBN 0-00-313318-4, £5.95: This is actually an Australian work, first published by Jacaranda Press in 1986 under the copyright of Macquarie University, New South Wales, and edited by Linsay Knight. The blurb claims ‘over 940 word groups, each consisting of words and phrases with closely related meanings’. The keyword in each group is explained, after which its associate words take their turn, as shown in the group for the verb fall reproduced below. The school thesaurus is a concise and powerful tool, lucidly organized and complemented by an easy-to-use index.• The COLLINS Dictionary and Thesaurus in One Volume, 0-00-433186-9, £11.95; Collins already had a concise version of their standard dictionary of English, and a companion thesaurus. The trick here has been to combine them, so that the thesaurus section runs along the bottom of each page, in time with the alphabetic columns. The blurb says: ‘Here for the first time in one handy volume the reader is offered a general-purpose Dictionary and a Thesaurus in dictionary form’. And the blurb is right, as far as we know. Collins claim 71,000 dictionary references and 250,000 thesaurus ‘synonyms’. We already have on our shelves the volumes before they were unified, and have concluded that the unification is to be preferred. (See sample page.)

A Re-examination of Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus

Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus has been the neglected member of the family of great uncials. Photographic facsimiles have been produced of ℵ, A, B, D, and others, but only a sample page or two of the valuable palimpsest is available in textbooks. All the important codices have been studied and collated more than once. But as regards Codex C only Tischendorf has transcribed its text and edited it according to modern standards. In textbooks on textual criticism Codex C has been given—almost without excepdon—less than half the space of any of the other main uncials. To be sure, it is a difficult manuscript to read, and many lacunae exist. Yet because of its age and the quality of its text, as well as the fact that it contains portions of all the sections of the New Testament, every possible detail should be accurately extracted from this once beautiful codex. Owing to this unwarranted neglect of Codex C, especially the fact that no one had tested the accuracy of Tischendorf's work, a new study was undertaken and a new edition is being prepared. The present article will include (1) a brief history Of thern manuscript and its use by textual critics; (2) introductory items on which new light may be shed or on which previous statements need to be corrected; and finally, (3) a list of the more significant errors found in Tischendorf's edition.