A book is a medium for recording information in the form of writing or images. Books are typically composed of many pages, bound together and protected by a cover. Modern bound books were preceded by many other written mediums, such as the codex and the scroll. The book publishing process is the series of steps involved in their creation and dissemination.
The codex was the historical ancestor of the modern book. Instead of being composed of sheets of paper, it used sheets of vellum, papyrus, or other materials. The term codex is often used for ancient manuscript books, with handwritten contents. A codex is bound by stacking the pages and securing one set of edges, in a form analogous to modern bookbinding. Modern books are divided into paperback and those bound with stiff boards, called hardbacks. Elaborate historical bindings are called treasure bindings. At least in the Western world, the main alternative to the paged codex format for a long document was the continuous scroll, which was the dominant form of document in the ancient world. Some codices are continuously folded like a concertina, in particular the Maya codices and Aztec codices, which are actually long sheets of paper or animal skin folded into pages. In Japan, concertina-style codices called orihon developed during the Heian period (794–1185) were made of paper.
The Voynich manuscript is an illustrated codex, hand-written in an unknown script referred to as 'Voynichese.' The vellum on which it is written has been carbon-dated to the early 15th century (1404–1438). Stylistic analysis has indicated the manuscript may have been composed in Italy during the Italian Renaissance. While the origins, authorship, and purpose of the manuscript are still debated, hypotheses range from a script for a natural language or constructed language, an unread code, cypher, or other form of cryptography, or perhaps a hoax, reference work, or work of fiction currently lacking the translation(s) and context needed to both properly entertain or eliminate any of these possibilities.
The Masoretic Text is the authoritative Hebrew and Aramaic text of the 24 books of the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) in Rabbinic Judaism. The Masoretic Text defines the Jewish canon and its precise letter-text, with its vocalization and accentuation known as the mas'sora. Referring to the Masoretic Text, masorah specifically means the diacritic markings of the text of the Jewish scriptures and the concise marginal notes in manuscripts of the Tanakh which note textual details, usually about the precise spelling of words. It was primarily copied, edited, and distributed by a group of Jews known as the Masoretes between the 7th and 10th centuries of the Common Era (CE). The oldest known complete copy, the Leningrad Codex, dates from the early 11th century CE.
The Codex Vaticanus, designated by siglum B or 03, δ 1, is a Christian manuscript of a Greek Bible, containing the majority of the Greek Old Testament and the majority of the Greek New Testament. It is one of the four great uncial codices. Along with Codex Alexandrinus and Codex Sinaiticus, it is one of the earliest and most complete manuscripts of the Bible. Using the study of comparative writing styles (palaeography), it has been dated to the 4th century.
The Rohonc Codex is an illustrated manuscript book by an unknown author, with a text in an unknown language and writing system, that surfaced in Hungary in the early 19th century. The book's origin and the meaning of its text and illustrations have been investigated by many scholars and amateurs, with no definitive conclusion, although many Hungarian scholars believe that it is an 18th-century hoax.
The Vienna Dioscurides or Vienna Dioscorides is an early 6th-century Byzantine Greek illuminated manuscript of an even earlier 1st century AD work, De materia medica by Pedanius Dioscorides in uncial script. It is an important and rare example of a late antique scientific text. After residing in Constantinople for just over a thousand years, the text passed to the Holy Roman Emperor in Vienna in the 16th century, a century after the city fell to the Ottoman Empire.
The history of books became an acknowledged academic discipline in the 1980s. Contributions to the field have come from textual scholarship, codicology, bibliography, philology, palaeography, art history, social history and cultural history. Its key purpose is to demonstrate that the book as an object, not just the text contained within it, is a conduit of interaction between readers and words. Analysis of each component part of the book reveals its purpose, where and how it was kept, who read it, ideological and religious beliefs of the period, and whether readers interacted with the text within. Even a lack of evidence of this nature leaves valuable clues about the nature of that particular book.
Luigi Serafini is an Italian artist and designer based in Milan. He is best known for creating the Codex Seraphinianus, an illustrated encyclopedia of imaginary things in what was believed to be a constructed language. This work was published in 1981 by Franco Maria Ricci.
The Dresden Codex is a Maya book, which was believed to be the oldest surviving book written in the Americas, dating to the 11th or 12th century. However, in September 2018 it was proven that the Maya Codex of Mexico, previously known as the Grolier Codex, is, in fact, older by about a century. The codex was rediscovered in the city of Dresden, Germany, hence the book's present name. It is located in the museum of the Saxon State Library. The codex contains information relating to astronomical and astrological tables, religious references, seasons of the earth, and illness and medicine. It also includes information about conjunctions of planets and moons.
Asemic writing is a wordless open semantic form of writing. The word asemic means "having no specific semantic content", or "without the smallest unit of meaning". With the non-specificity of asemic writing there comes a vacuum of meaning, which is left for the reader to fill in and interpret. All of this is similar to the way one would deduce meaning from an abstract work of art. Where asemic writing distinguishes itself among traditions of abstract art is in the asemic author's use of gestural constraint, and the retention of physical characteristics of writing such as lines and symbols. Asemic writing is a hybrid art form that fuses text and image into a unity, and then sets it free to arbitrary subjective interpretations. It may be compared to free writing or writing for its own sake, instead of writing to produce verbal context. The open nature of asemic works allows for meaning to occur across linguistic understanding; an asemic text may be "read" in a similar fashion regardless of the reader's natural language. Multiple meanings for the same symbolism are another possibility for an asemic work, that is, asemic writing can be polysemantic or have zero meaning, infinite meanings, or its meaning can evolve over time. Asemic works leave for the reader to decide how to translate and explore an asemic text; in this sense, the reader becomes co-creator of the asemic work.
Aztec codices are Mesoamerican manuscripts made by the pre-Columbian Aztec, and their Nahuatl-speaking descendants during the colonial period in Mexico.
The Libellus de Medicinalibus Indorum Herbis is an Aztec herbal manuscript, describing the medicinal properties of various plants used by the Aztecs. It was translated into Latin by Juan Badiano, from a Nahuatl original composed in the Colegio de Santa Cruz de Tlatelolco in 1552 by Martín de la Cruz that is no longer extant. The Libellus is also known as the Badianus Manuscript, after the translator; the Codex de la Cruz-Badiano, after both the original author and translator; and the Codex Barberini, after Cardinal Francesco Barberini, who had possession of the manuscript in the early 17th century.
Franco Maria Ricci was an Italian art publisher and magazine editor. Amongst his publications is FMR, a Milan-based bi-monthly art magazine published in Italian, English, German, French, and Spanish for over 27 years. Ricci is known for having created limited editions honoring particular independent artists, which are characterized by their tinted handmade paper, and black silk-bound hardcovers with silver or gold lettering stamping. He sold his publishing house, Ricci Editore, to Marilena Ferrari in 2007 only to regain control in 2015.
Minuscule 69, δ 505, known as the Codex Leicester, or Codex Leicestrensis, is a Greek minuscule manuscript of the New Testament on paper and parchment leaves. Using the study of comparative writing styles (palaeography), it has been dated to the 15th century. Some leaves of the codex are lost. It has been examined and collated by many palaeographers and textual critics. Although it is of a late date, its text is remarkable from the point of view of textual criticism.
Papyrus 47, designated by siglum 𝔓47, is an early Greek New Testament manuscript written on papyrus, and is one of the manuscripts comprising the Chester Beatty Papyri. Manuscripts among the Chester Beatty Papyri have had several places of discovery associated with them, the most likely being the Faiyum. Using the study of comparative writing styles (palaeography), it has been dated to the early 3rd century CE. The codex contains text from the Book of Revelation chapters 9 through 17. It is currently housed at the Chester Beatty Library in Dublin.
Minuscule 1424, δ 30 is a Greek minuscule manuscript of the New Testament, written on parchment. Using the study of comparative writing styles (palaeography), it has been dated to the 9th or 10th century. It is a catena manuscript, with the main New Testament text in the middle and a commentary surrounding it. The commentary was added several centuries later, likely in the 12th century.
The great uncial codices or four great uncials are the only remaining uncial codices that contain the entire text of the Bible in Greek. They are the Codex Vaticanus in the Vatican Library, the Codex Sinaiticus and the Codex Alexandrinus in the British Library, and the Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus in the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris.
Jeremiah 16 is the sixteenth chapter of the Book of Jeremiah in the Hebrew Bible or the Old Testament of the Christian Bible. This book contains prophecies attributed to the prophet Jeremiah, and is one of the Books of the Prophets. In the first part of this chapter, Jeremiah is instructed to adopt a lifestyle which will serve as a "symbolic enactment of God's word", comparable to the instructions given to other prophets: see Hosea 1:2–9, Isaiah 8:3–4 and Ezekiel 24:15–24.
Jeremiah 51 is the fifty-first chapter of the Book of Jeremiah in the Hebrew Bible or the Old Testament of the Christian Bible. This book contains prophecies attributed to the prophet Jeremiah, and is one of the Books of the Prophets. This chapter contains the last of a series of "oracles against foreign nations" which commences in chapter 46. Chapters 50 and 51 focus on Babylon. The New American Bible denotes this chapter as "the second oracle against Babylon", following on from "the first oracle" contained in chapter 50.
