Latest News
New Fragmentary Lectionary in Bucharest
Jeff Hargis
July 20, 2010
Last week, the Center announced the discovery of a "manuscript within a manuscript," a two-leaf minuscule fragment of Luke's Gospel at the end of a complete New Testament (GA 2554) at the National Museum of Art in Bucharest.
Yet another discovery of this nature was made two days later at another institution in Bucharest, the Library of the Romanian Academy. In this case, the fragmentary manuscript consists of three leaves of a lectionary bound within another lectionary. The "host" lectionary is GA lect 1738, a 14th century two-column lectionary of 87 leaves (MS Gr. 936).
Within this codex are three leaves that were apparently not a part of the original manuscript. Leaves 64 and 66 are from a single-column lectionary, in contrast to the two-column lectionary in which they are located; in addition, the text of the leaves consist of 27 lines of text, while the "host" manuscript contains 28–31 lines of text. Leaf 65 is so fragmentary that it cannot be determined for certain whether it shares the same characteristics as the leaves that surround it (64 and 66), but the appearance of the parchment seems to indicate that it belongs with the two other leaves. Since the text of 64 and 66 are not contiguous, it seems possible that this fragmentary leaf is the intervening leaf (or one of several).
The leaves measure 21.5–22 x 16.5–17 cm, the same dimensions as the manuscript in which they are bound. The hand is estimated as 14th century.
The Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts is grateful to the Library of the Romanian Academy for the opportunity to examine this manuscript.
New Fragmentary Minuscule in Bucharest
Jeff Hargis
July 12, 2010
It sometimes happens that the Center finds a “manuscript within a manuscript,” and this is exactly what happened in Bucharest, Romania a few weeks ago. The National Museum of Art of Romania possesses five exquisite manuscripts, which we were allowed to examine on 31 May 2010.
One of the manuscripts, GA 2554, is a complete New Testament dated to the year 1434 (shelf number 3, previously INV 691). It is one of only about 60 complete New Testament manuscripts known to exist. The books of the manuscript are in a common ancient order: Gospels, Acts, General Epistles (1 Peter through Jude), Paul (Romans through Philemon), and Revelation. Interestingly, the book of Revelation is written in a different hand with more lines per page (30) than the rest of the codex (27), indicating that this copy of Revelation might not originally have been part of the manuscript.
The "manuscript within a manuscript" occurs after Revelation, at the very end of the codex. Between the end of Revelation and the back cover are two parchment leaves containing the text of Luke 10:31–13:29. The text is written in a hand similar to that of the rest of the codex and contains the same number of lines per page; a check of the appropriate section of the Gospels confirmed that the leaves were not displaced from the earlier portion of the manuscript. The text begins with συγκυριαν in Luke 10:31 and ends with νοτου in Luke 13:29. It is not clear why these two leaves were inserted into the codex, other than as flyleaves for the end of the manuscript.
The leaves measure 23.5 x 17.5 cm, only slightly smaller in height than the manuscript in which they are bound (the leaves of the codex measure on average 24.0 x 17.5 cm). Like most of the rest of the codex, the text is in a single column with 27 lines per column. The hand is estimated as 15th century and is similar to the handwriting in the rest of the manuscript.
Because the catalogue of the National Museum of Art of Romania already mentions the existence of these two leaves of text, the material is not a “new discovery” since that they were previously known to the Museum. To New Testament scholars, however, the leaves constitute a “new” fragmentary manuscript of Luke’s Gospel.
The Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts is grateful to the National Museum of Art of Romania for the opportunity to examine this manuscript.
New TC Notes
We have recently posted three new TC Notes:
Uncatalogued MSS at Stephanou, Meteora
Meteora is one of the most stunningly beautiful and other-worldly places on earth. Over a millennium ago, monks traveled throughout Greece in search of a place where they could get away from it all. Ultimately, six monasteries were established there, all but one perched atop stone pillars rising hundreds of feet above the plain below.
The Comma Johanneum in an Overlooked Manuscript
I am in Munich currently, examining Greek New Testament manuscripts at one of the world’s great libraries, the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek (Bavarian State Library). Among other things, this library boasts the largest collection of incunabula (books printed before the year 1500) in Europe—a whopping 18,000 of the total 30,000 titles that belong to this early period of printing.
Manuscript Discoveries in Greece and Romania May–June 2010
Over the past few weeks, I have been doing a little blog-posting about manuscript discoveries in Greece and Romania by CSNTM. These include manuscripts that are known to the libraries but were not hitherto known to New Testament scholars because they had not yet received a Gregory-Aland number by the Institut für neutestamentliche Textforschung in Münster, Germany. Some of the manuscripts that CSNTM ‘discovered’ will still not receive such a number for some time because we did not photograph these documents. But this summary is meant to give virtually all the details as we have them to date. It is easiest to put it the data in tabular form.
Uncatalogued Gospels Minuscule at the Museum of Oltenia in Craiova, Romania
Jeff Hargis
July 7, 2010
On May 25, 2010, a team from CSNTM examined an uncatalogued Gospels minsucule manuscript at the Museum of Oltenia in Craiova, Romania. We are grateful to the Director, Prof. Dr. Mihai Fifor, for permission to examine the manuscript.
Since the manuscript (shelf number 535, formerly 00022) was in the process of conservation, it could not be photographed at the time of the visit. However, the situation presented a rare opportunity for Center staff to examine a manuscript that was completely disbound. Each quire had been removed from the binding, and then the leaves of the quires separated for conservation. We were able to examine the details of quire construction and the ordering of leaves, as well as see areas of the manuscript that are usually concealed by the binding.
The manuscript is a twelfth century Gospels manuscript written on parchment with several supplementary paper leaves. The manuscript measures 25.5 x 20.5 cm and consists of 293 leaves with 19–22 lines per column, one column per page (the supplementary leaves contain 30–32 lines per column with two columns per page). The manuscript contains extensive commentary in the margins.
Nearly the whole of the four Gospels are contained in the codex. A few leaves appear to be missing—a leaf from Matthew and several leaves from John. The manuscript ends at John 21:10 and seems to be missing the last two leaves. The long ending of Mark follows Mark 16:8 on 127 verso to 128 recto. A marginal note beside Mark 16:19 references Irenaeus’ work Against Heresies, where the second-century father quotes the verse. The pericope adulterae is found on 251r–252r in its traditional location.