Nonnos and Wulfila

Nonnos of Panopolis paraphrased the Gospel of John on the basis of a text of the New Testament available in Constantinople since the fourth century. In a number of passages his text gives a new wording of expressions present also in the Alexandrinus manuscript as well as in the Gothic translation by Wulfila. The fact that these three texts have the same readings of the Gospel of John in a significant number of passages, implies that they used a similar version of the biblical text and that this did not coincide with that employed by non-Chalcedonian Christians, since Wulfila was an Arian and wrote before the council of Chalcedon (451). Moreover, Nonnos, Wulfila and Alexandrinus agree against Vaticanus and Sinaiticus. Given the importance given to these latter manuscripts in the Nestle– Alland critical edition (NA28), it means that Nonnos does not paraphrase a text as is printed in that edition, but one more similar to the patriarchal edition of 1904.