[2] The manuscript is a palimpsest, with the pages being washed of their original text, and reused in the 12th century for the Greek translations of 38 treatises composed by Ephrem the Syrian, from whence it gets its name Ephraemi Rescriptus.

[1] The lower text of the palimpsest was deciphered by biblical scholar and palaeographer Constantin von Tischendorf in 1840–1843, and was edited by him in 1843–1845.

The manuscript is a codex (the forerunner to the modern book), written on parchment, measuring 12¼ x 9 in (31.4-32.5 x 25.6-26.4 cm).

[3] The text is written continuously, with no division of words (known as Scriptio continua), with the punctuation consisting of only a single point, as in codices Alexandrinus and Vaticanus.

Iota (ι) and upsilon (υ) have a small straight line over them, which serves as a form of diaeresis.

[4]: 123 The breathings (utilised to designate vowel emphasis) and accents (used to indicate voiced pitch changes) were added by a later hand.

The text of the Gospels is accompanied by marginal notations indicating the Eusebian canons (an early system of dividing the four Gospels into different sections, developed by early Christian writer Eusebius of Caesarea), albeit the numerals for the Eusebian Canons were likely written in red ink, which unfortunately have completely vanished.

It is difficult to determine whether Luke 22:43–44 (Christ's agony at Gethsemane) was in the original codex; unfortunately the leaves containing the surrounding verses are not extant.

These are then used to determine the original text as published; there are three main groups with names: Alexandrian, Western, and Byzantine.

[4]: 123  The codex was subsequently washed of its text, had the pages scrapped (howbeit imperfectly), and reused in the twelfth century.

After his death it was probably bought by Piero Strozzi, an Italian military leader, for Catherine de' Medici.

Jean Boivin, supervisor of the Royal Library, made the first extracts of various readings of the codex (under the notation of Paris 9) to Ludolph Küster, who published Mill's New Testament in 1710.

In 1834–1835 potassium ferricyanide was used to bring out faded or eradicated ink, which had the effect of defacing the vellum from green and blue to black and brown.

[4]: 121 The first collation of the New Testament was made in 1716 by Johann Jakob Wettstein for Richard Bentley, who intended to prepare a new edition of the Novum Testamentum Graece.

The torn condition of many folios, and the ghostly traces of the text overlaid by the later one, made the decipherment extremely difficult.

"[23] According to Frederic Kenyon, "the original manuscript contained the whole Greek Bible, but only scattered leaves of it were used by the scribe of St. Ephraem's works, and the rest was probably destroyed".

The scribe who converted the manuscript into a palimpsest used the leaves for his new text without regard to their original arrangement.