Location | Cologny, Canton of Geneva |
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Coordinates | 46°12′55″N6°10′50″E / 46.2153°N 6.1806°E |
Type | memory institution museum |
Heritage designation | class A Swiss cultural property of national significance |
Country | Switzerland |
Director | Jacques Berchtold |
Website | www |
The Bodmer Foundation (French: Fondation Bodmer) is a library and museum specialised in manuscripts and precious editions. It is located in Cologny, Switzerland just outside Geneva.
Also known as Bibliotheca Bodmeriana (or Bodmer Library), it is a Swiss heritage site of national significance. [1] The library was established by Martin Bodmer and is famous as the home of the Bodmer Papyri. Some of these papyri are among the oldest remaining copies of the New Testament. Some manuscripts are written in Greek, others in Coptic (e.g. Papyrus Bodmer III). The first of the manuscripts was purchased in 1956 (Papyrus Bodmer II — P66). It also houses a copy of the Gutenberg Bible.
Martin Bodmer established the library in the 1920s. Bodmer selected the works centering on what he saw as the five pillars of world literature: the Bible, Homer, Dante Alighieri, William Shakespeare and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. [2] He prioritized autographs and first editions. 1951 Bodmer had built two neo-baroque houses in Cologny to accommodate the collection.
In 1970, shortly before Bodmer's death, the Bodmer Foundation was established to make the collection accessible and conserve it. In 2003 the building was remodelled by Mario Botta. He connected the cellars of the two houses by a two-story underground structure, pierced by light shafts. [3]
The collection comprises some 160,000 items, including Sumerian clay tablets, Greek papyri and handwritten originals including music sheets. He aimed at representing the historical context by adding political, philosophical and scientific items. [2] Some samples are:
Papyrus is a material similar to thick paper that was used in ancient times as a writing surface. It was made from the pith of the papyrus plant, Cyperus papyrus, a wetland sedge. Papyrus can also refer to a document written on sheets of such material, joined side by side and rolled up into a scroll, an early form of a book.
The John Rylands Research Institute and Library is a late-Victorian neo-Gothic building on Deansgate in Manchester, England. It is part of the University of Manchester. The library, which opened to the public in 1900, was founded by Enriqueta Augustina Rylands in memory of her husband, John Rylands. It became part of the university in 1972, and now houses the majority of the Special Collections of The University of Manchester Library, the third largest academic library in the United Kingdom.
The Egerton Gospel refers to a collection of three papyrus fragments of a codex of a previously unknown gospel, found in Egypt and sold to the British Museum in 1934; the physical fragments are now dated to the very end of the 2nd century CE. Together they comprise one of the oldest surviving witnesses to any gospel, or any codex. The British Museum lost no time in publishing the text: acquired in the summer of 1934, it was in print in 1935. It is also called the Unknown Gospel, as no ancient source makes reference to it, in addition to being entirely unknown before its publication.
Cologny is a municipality in the Canton of Geneva, Switzerland.
Papyrus 66 is a near complete codex of the Gospel of John, and part of the collection known as the Bodmer Papyri.
The Bodmer Papyri are a group of twenty-two papyri discovered in Egypt in 1952. They are named after Martin Bodmer, who purchased them. The papyri contain segments from the Old and New Testaments, early Christian literature, Homer, and Menander. The oldest, P66 dates to c. 200 AD. Most of the papyri are kept at the Bodmer Library, in Cologny, Switzerland outside Geneva.
Martin Bodmer was a Swiss bibliophile, scholar and collector.
There have been many Coptic versions of the Bible, including some of the earliest translations into any language. Several different versions were made in the ancient world, with different editions of the Old and New Testament in five of the dialects of Coptic: Bohairic (northern), Fayyumic, Sahidic (southern), Akhmimic and Mesokemic (middle). Biblical books were translated from the Alexandrian Greek version.
A biblical manuscript is any handwritten copy of a portion of the text of the Bible. Biblical manuscripts vary in size from tiny scrolls containing individual verses of the Jewish scriptures to huge polyglot codices containing both the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) and the New Testament, as well as extracanonical works.
The Chester Beatty Biblical Papyri or simply the Chester Beatty Papyri are a group of early papyrus manuscripts of biblical texts. The manuscripts are in Greek and are of Christian origin. There are eleven manuscripts in the group, seven consisting of portions of Old Testament books, three consisting of portions of the New Testament, and one consisting of portions of the Book of Enoch and an unidentified Christian homily. Most are dated to the 3rd century CE. They are housed in part at the Chester Beatty Library in Dublin, Ireland, and in part at the University of Michigan, among a few other locations.
Papyrus 75, designated by the siglum 𝔓75, is an early Greek New Testament manuscript written on papyrus. It contains text from the Gospel of Luke 3:18–24:53, and John 1:1–15:8. It is generally described as "the most significant" papyrus of the New Testament to be discovered so far. Using the study of comparative writing styles (palaeography), it has been traditionally dated to the third century. It is due to this early dating that the manuscript has a high evaluation, and the fact its text so closely resembles that of the fourth-century Codex Vaticanus (B).
Papyrus 72 is the designation used by textual critics of the New Testament to describe portions of the so-called Bodmer Miscellaneous codex, namely the letters of Jude, 1 Peter, and 2 Peter. These books seem to have been copied by the same scribe, and the handwriting has been paleographically assigned to the 3rd or 4th century.
Papyrus 73, designated by 𝔓73, is a copy of the New Testament in Greek. It is a papyrus manuscript of the Gospel of Matthew. The surviving texts of Matthew are verses 25:43; 26:2-3. The manuscript paleographically has been assigned to the 7th century.
Papyrus 74, designated by 𝔓74, is a copy of the New Testament in Greek. It is a papyrus manuscript of the Acts of the Apostles and Catholic epistles with lacunae. The manuscript paleographically had been assigned to the 7th century.
Codex Bodmer XIX is a Coptic uncial manuscript of the four Gospels, dated palaeographically to the 4th or 5th century. It contains the text of the Gospel of Matthew 14:28-28:20; Epistle to the Romans 1:1-2:3. It is written in the Sahidic dialect of the Coptic language.
Codex Bodmer III, is a Coptic uncial manuscript of the fourth Gospel, and the first four chapters of Genesis, dated palaeographically to the 4th century. It contains the text of the Gospel of John with some lacunae. It is written in an early Bohairic dialect of Coptic language.
Minuscule 556, A 213, is a Greek minuscule manuscript of the New Testament, on a parchment. Palaeographically it has been assigned to the 12th century. Scrivener labelled it by number 526.
The Vision of Dorotheus or Dorotheos is an autobiographical Homeric Greek poem, composed in 343 lines of dactylic hexameter and attributed to "Dorotheus, son of Quintus the Poet". The poem chronicles a vision, wherein the author is transported to the Kingdom of Heaven and finds himself in its military hierarchy. He is conscripted into and deserts his post, only to receive punishment, be forgiven, and rediscover his Christian faith. The poem, penned sometime in the 4th-century, depicts the Kingdom of Heaven in an Imperial fashion; Christ is enthroned as a Roman emperor, surrounded by angels bearing Roman military and official titles, with the military structures of the Kingdom of Heaven modelled on those of Rome.