5. To Euthalius has been also referred a division of the Acts into sixteen lessons (ἀναγνώσεις) and of the Pauline Epistles into thirty-one (see table on p. 67); but these lessons are quite different from the much shorter ones adopted by the Greek Church. He is also said to have numbered in each Epistle of St. Paul the quotations from the Old Testament(81), which are still noted in many of our manuscripts, and is the first known to have used that reckoning of the στίχοι which was formerly annexed we know not when to the Gospels and Epistles, as well as to the Acts. Besides the division of the text into στίχοι or _lines_ (_above_, p. 52) we find in the Gospels alone another division into ῥήματα or ῥήσεις “sentences,” differing but little from the στίχοι in number. Of these last the precise numbers vary in different copies, though not considerably: whether that variation arose from the circumstance that ancient numbers were represented by letters and so easily became corrupted, or from a different mode of arranging the στίχοι and ῥήματα adopted by the various scribes.
6. It is proper to state that the _subscriptions_ (ὑπογραφαί) appended to St. Paul’s Epistles in many manuscripts, and retained even in the Authorized English version of the New Testament, are also said to be the composition of Euthalius. In the best copies they are somewhat shorter in form, but in any shape they do no credit to the care or skill of their author, whoever he may be. “Six of these subscriptions,” writes Paley in that masterpiece of acute reasoning, the Horae Paulinae, “are false or improbable;” that is, they are either absolutely contradicted by the contents of the epistle [1 Cor., Galat., 1 Tim.], or are difficult to be reconciled with them [1, 2 Thess., Tit.].
The _subscriptions_ to the Gospels have not, we believe, been assigned to any particular author, and being seldom found in printed copies of the Greek Testament or in modern versions, are little known to the general reader. In the earliest manuscripts the subscriptions, as well as the _titles_ of the books, were of the simplest character. Κατὰ Μαθθαῖον, κατὰ Μάρκον, &c. is all that the Codd. Vaticanus and Sinaiticus have, whether at the beginning or the end. Εὐαγγέλιον κατὰ Ματθαῖον is the subscription to the first Gospel in the Codex Alexandrinus; εὐαγγέλιον κατὰ Μάρκον is placed at the beginning of the second Gospel in the same manuscript, and the self-same words at the end of it by Codices Alex. and Ephraemi: in the Codex Bezae (in which St. John stands second in order) we merely read εὐαγγέλιον κατὰ Μαθθαῖον ἐτελέσθη, ἄρχεται εὐαγγέλιον κατὰ Ἰωάννην. The same is the case throughout the New Testament. After a while the titles become more elaborate, and the subscriptions afford more information, the truth of which it would hardly be safe to vouch for. The earliest worth notice are found in the Codex Cyprius (K) of the eighth or ninth century, which, together with those of several other copies, are given in Scholz’s Prolegomena N. T. vol. i. pp. xxix, xxx. _ad fin. Matthaei_: Τὸ κατὰ Ματθαῖον εὐαγγέλιον ἐξεδόθη ὑπ᾽ αὐτοῦ ἐν ἱεροσολύμοις μετὰ χρόνους ἡ [ὀκτὼ] τῆς τοῦ Χριστοῦ ἀναλήψεως. _Ad fin. Marci_: Τὸ κατὰ Μάρκον εὐαγγέλιον ἐξεδόθη μετὰ χρόνους δέκα τῆς τοῦ Χριστοῦ ἀναλήψεως. Those to the other two Gospels exactly resemble St. Mark’s, that of St. Luke however being dated fifteen, that of St. John thirty-two years after our Lord’s Ascension, periods in all probability far too early to be correct.