Today we are releasing images of the nine New Testament manuscripts held by the Hellenic Parliament Library in Athens, Greece. CSNTM partnered with HPL’s excellent library staff to complete this project earlier in 2018. You can read about it here.
As mentioned in our initial blog about the expedition, one feature of the HPL collection that we found most interesting was the wide variation in size among the manuscripts. GA Lect 450 was one of the largest manuscripts CSNTM has ever digitized, whereas GA 804 was nearly the smallest. To put it in perspective, a leaf of GA Lect 450 has nearly eight times the surface area of GA 804 (GA 804 is roughly the height and width of an iPhone).
These variations among NT manuscripts occur due to the different purposes for which they were intended. GA Lect 450 was obviously intended to be read out loud to a church gathering as part of the liturgy, and therefore its large writing made for easy reading. On the other hand, it seems GA 804 was intended to be a hand edition of the Gospels, perfect for personal use and constant access.
We hope you will enjoy exploring this collection. You can find links to each of the manuscripts below.
GA 804: Eleventh century minuscule of the Gospels
GA 805: Twelfth century minuscule of the Gospels
GA 806: Fourteenth century minuscule of the Gospels
GA 807: Twelfth century minuscule of the Gospels with commentary
GA 2049: Sixteenth century minuscule of Revelation
GA 2096: Twelfth century minuscule of the Gospels
GA 2097: Eleventh century minuscule of the Gospels with commentary
GA 2313: Eleventh century minuscule of the Gospels
GA Lect 450: Tweflth century lectionary of the Gospels
These images have now become part of our growing searchable library, which gives everyone free access to the best available digital images of New Testament manuscripts.