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Lobegott Friedrich Constantin (von) Tischendorf was a German biblical scholar. In 1844, he discovered the world's oldest and most complete Bible dated to around the mid-4th century and called Codex Sinaiticus after Saint Catherine's Monastery at Mount Sinai, where Tischendorf discovered it.
The Codex Sinaiticus, designated by siglum א [Aleph] or 01, δ 2, also called Sinai Bible, is a fourth-century Christian manuscript of a Greek Bible, containing the majority of the Greek Old Testament, including the deuterocanonical books, and the Greek New Testament, with both the Epistle of Barnabas and the Shepherd of Hermas included. It is written in uncial letters on parchment. It is one of the four great uncial codices. Along with Codex Alexandrinus and Codex Vaticanus, it is one of the earliest and most complete manuscripts of the Bible, and contains the oldest complete copy of the New Testament. It is a historical treasure, and using the study of comparative writing styles (palaeography), it has been dated to the mid-fourth century.
The Dormition of the Mother of God is a Great Feast of the Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, and Eastern Catholic Churches. It celebrates the "falling asleep" (death) of Mary the Theotokos, and her being taken up into heaven. It is celebrated on 15 August as the Feast of the Dormition of the Mother of God. The Armenian Apostolic Church celebrates the Dormition not on a fixed date, but on the Sunday nearest 15 August. In Western Churches the corresponding feast is known as the Assumption of Mary, with the exception of the Scottish Episcopal Church, which has traditionally celebrated the Falling Asleep of the Blessed Virgin Mary on 15 August.
Saint Catherine's Monastery (Arabic: دير القدّيسة كاترين Dayr al-Qiddīsa Katrīn; Greek: Μονὴ τῆς Ἁγίας Αἰκατερίνης, officially the Sacred Autonomous Royal Monastery of Saint Catherine of the Holy and God-Trodden Mount Sinai, is a Christian monastery located in the Sinai Peninsula of Egypt. Located at the foot of Mount Sinai, it was built between 548 and 565, and is the world's oldest continuously inhabited Christian monastery.
Westminster College in Cambridge, England is a theological college of the United Reformed Church. Its principal purpose is training for the ordination of ministers, but is also used more widely for training within the denomination.
The Syriac Sinaiticus or Codex Sinaiticus Syriacus (syrs), known also as the Sinaitic Palimpsest, of Saint Catherine's Monastery, or Old Syriac Gospels is a late-4th- or early-5th-century manuscript of 179 folios, containing a nearly complete translation of the four canonical Gospels of the New Testament into Syriac, which have been overwritten by a vita (biography) of female saints and martyrs with a date corresponding to AD 697. This palimpsest is the oldest copy of the Gospels in Syriac, one of two surviving manuscripts that are conventionally dated to before the Peshitta, the standard Syriac translation.
Eusebian canons, Eusebian sections or Eusebian apparatus, also known as Ammonian sections, are the system of dividing the four Gospels used between late Antiquity and the Middle Ages. The divisions into chapters and verses used in modern texts date only from the 13th and 16th centuries, respectively. The sections are indicated in the margin of nearly all Greek and Latin manuscripts of the Bible, but can be also found in periphical Bible transmissions as Syriac and Christian Palestinian Aramaic 5th to 8th century, and usually summarized in canon tables at the start of the Gospels. There are about 1165 sections: 355 for Matthew, 235 for Mark, 343 for Luke, and 232 for John; the numbers, however, vary slightly in different manuscripts.
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 Curetonian Gospels, designated by the siglum syrcur, are contained in a manuscript of the four gospels of the New Testament in Old Syriac. Together with the Sinaiticus Palimpsest the Curetonian Gospels form the Old Syriac Version, and are known as the Evangelion Dampharshe in the Syriac Orthodox Church.
Christian Palestinian Aramaic was a Western Aramaic dialect used by the Melkite Christian community, predominantly of Jewish descent, in Palestine, Transjordan and Sinai between the fifth and thirteenth centuries. It is preserved in inscriptions, manuscripts and amulets. All the medieval Western Aramaic dialects are defined by religious community. CPA is closely related to its counterparts, Jewish Palestinian Aramaic (JPA) and Samaritan Aramaic (SA). CPA shows a specific vocabulary that is often not paralleled in the adjacent Western Aramaic dialects.
Agnes Smith Lewis (1843–1926) and Margaret Dunlop Gibson (1843–1920), nées Smith, were English Semitic scholars and travellers. As the twin daughters of John Smith of Irvine, Ayrshire, Scotland, they learned more than 12 languages between them, specialising in Arabic, Christian Palestinian Aramaic, and Syriac, and became acclaimed scholars in their academic fields, and benefactors to the Presbyterian Church of England, especially to Westminster College, Cambridge.
Syriac is a dialect of Aramaic. Portions of the Old Testament were written in Aramaic and there are Aramaic phrases in the New Testament. Syriac translations of the New Testament were among the first and date from the 2nd century. The whole Bible was translated by the 5th century. Besides Syriac, there are Bible translations into other Aramaic dialects.
The Schøyen Collection is one of the largest private manuscript collections in the world, mostly located in Oslo and London. Formed in the 20th century by the father of current owner Martin Schøyen, it comprises manuscripts of global provenance, spanning 5,000 years of history. It contains more than 13,000 manuscript items; the oldest is about 5,300 years old. There are manuscripts from 134 different countries and territories, representing 120 languages and 185 scripts.
Codex Climaci rescriptus is a collective palimpsest manuscript consisting of several individual manuscripts underneath Christian Palestinian Aramaic texts of the Old and New Testament as well as two apocryphal texts, including the Dormition of the Mother of God, and is known as Uncial 0250 with a Greek uncial text of the New Testament and overwritten by Syriac treatises of Johannes Climacus : the scala paradisi and the liber ad pastorem. Paleographically the Greek text has been assigned to the 7th or 8th century, and the Aramaic text to the 6th century. It originates from Saint Catherine's Monastery going by the New Finds of 1975. Formerly it was classified for CCR 5 and CCR 6 as lectionary manuscript, with Gregory giving the number ℓ 1561 to it.
Uncial 0281, is a Greek uncial manuscript of the New Testament. Palaeographically it has been assigned to the 7th or 8th century.
Hyrcania was an ancient fortress in the Judean Desert. It was built by Hasmonean ruler John Hyrcanus or his son Alexander Jannaeus in the 2nd or 1st century BCE. The fortress was rebuilt and greatly expanded by King Herod. After Herod's death Hyrcania was abandoned, only to be resettled during the Byzantine period, when a late-5th century monastery named Kastellion was established on the ruined fortress, which remained active until the early 9th century. There was a short-lived attempt by monks to rebuild in the 1920s-30s. The ancient ruins can still be seen today.
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.
References
- ↑ Partially and previously Tsagareli 81 according to the catalogue by Alexander Tsagareli, Katalog Gruzinskikh rukopisej Sinajskogo monastyrja, Palestinskij Sbornik IV, 1 (St Petersburg, 1888), pp. 193–240.
- ↑ Christa Müller-Lessler, The Early Jerusalem Lectionary Tradition in Christian Palestinian Aramaic (5th–7th Century AD): Lections Containing Unattested Old and New Testament Pericopes in Unpublished Palimpsests (Sinai, Greek NF MG 32; Georgian NF 19, 71), Le Muséon 136.1, 2023, pp. 201–263
- 1 2 3 Christa Müller-Kessler, Codex Sinaiticus Rescriptus (CSRG/O/P/S). A Collection of Christian Palestinian Aramaic Manuscripts, Le Muséon 127, 2014, pp. 263–309.
- ↑ Zaza Aleksidze, Mzekala Shanidze, Lily Khevsuriani, and Michael Kavtaria, The New Finds of Sinai. Catalogue of Georgian Manuscripts Discovered in 1975 at Saint Catherine's Monastery on Mount Sinai (Athens, 2005).
- 1 2 3 Sebastian P. Brock, Sinai: a Meeting Point of Georgian with Syriac and Christian Palestinian Aramaic, in Dali Chitunashvili (ed.), The Caucasus between East and West (Tbilisi, 2012), pp. 482–494.
- ↑ Sebastian P. Brock, Ktabe Mpassqe. Dismembered and Reconstituted Syriac and Christian Palestinian Aramaic Manuscripts: Some Examples, Ancient and Modern, Hugoye. Journal of Syriac Studies 15, 2012, pp. 8–10.
- ↑ Constantin von Tischendorf, Anecdota sacra et Profana ex Oriente et Occidente allata: sive, Notitia codicum graecorum, arabicorum, syriacorum, copticorum, hebraicorum, aethiopicorum, latinorum, cum exceptis multis maximan partem graecis et triginta quinque scripturarum antiquissimarum speciminibus (Leipzig, 1855) https://archive.org/download/anecdotasacraet00tiscgoog/anecdotasacraet00tiscgoog.pdf
- ↑ Constantin von Tischendorf, Notitia Editionis Codicis Sinaitici (Leipzig, 1960) https://archive.org/download/notitiaeditionis00tisc/notitiaeditionis00tisc.pdf
- ↑ M. F. Brosset, Note sur un manuscrit géorgien de la Bibliothèque Impériale publique et provenant de M. Tischendorf, Mélanges Asiatiques 3, 1858, pp. 264-280.
- ↑ Incompletely edited by J. P. N. Land, Anecdota Syriaca IV (Leiden, 1875), pp. 185–189.
- ↑ N. Pigoulewski, Manuscrits syriaques bibliques de Léningrad (suite), Revue Biblique 46, 1937, p. 556.
- ↑ Olga V. Vasilieva, Christian Manuscripts of the East in the National Library of Russia, Manuscripta Orientalia 13, 2007, p. 29.
- ↑ Hans Peter Kraus, Monumenta codicum manuscriptorum. An exhibition catalogue of manuscripts of the 6th to the 17th centuries from the libraries of the monasteries of St. Catherine, Mount Sinai; Monte Cassino; Lorsch; Nonantola (New York, 1974).
- ↑ Hugo Duensing, Neue christlich-palästinische-aramäische Fragmente, NAWG, phil.-hist. Kl. 9 (Göttingen, 1944).
- ↑ E. G. Sørenssen, M. Schoyen, The Schøyen Collection: checklist of Western manuscripts 1-2000, 13th edition (Oslo, 1995), pp. 10–11.
- ↑ Peter Tarras, From Sinai to Munich: Tracing the History of a Fragment from the Grote Collection, Comparative Oriental Manuscript Studies Bulletin 6, 2020, pp. 73–90.
- ↑ Sebastian P. Brock, Catalogue of the “New Finds” in St. Catherine Monastery, Sinai (Athens, 1995).
- ↑ https://sinai.library.ucla.edu Sinai Palimpsest Project
- ↑ Christa Müller-Kessler, Piecing together Christian Palestinian Aramaic Texts under Georgian Manuscripts (St Petersburg, NLR, Syr. 16; Sinai, Georg. NF 19, 71; Oslo, Martin Schøyen MS 35, 37; Princeton, Garrett MS 24; Göttingen, Syr. 17, 19, 23, 25), Digital Kartvelology 1, 2022, pp. 35–40. https://adh.ge/en/digital-kartvelology.
- ↑ Sebastian P. Brock,Review of Alain Desreumaux, Codex sinaiticus Zosimi rescriptus (Histoire du Texte Biblique, 3), Lausanne, 1997’, in The Journal of Theological Studies, 50, p.766.
- ↑ Martin Schøyen's part MS 36, the partially non-palimspsest, containing Matthew 26:59–27:10 was auctioned on 10 July 2019 by Christie's for GBP 35,000. It has in contrast to the other manuscripts a Syria script on top. https://www.christies.com/en/lot/lot-6217449
- ↑ The remaining part is stored in the Staats- und Universität Bibliothek, Göttingen in Germany. Formerly partially published in Hugo Duensing, Nachlese christlich-palästinisch aramäischer Fragmente, NAWG, phil.-hist. Kl. 5 (Göttingen, 1955), p. 118 (fol. 1 top)), and fully edited in Christa Müller-Kessler and Michael Sokoloff, The Christian Palestinian Aramaic New Testament Version from the Early Period. Gospels, Corpus of Christian Palestinian Aramaic, IIA (Groningen, 1998), pp. 52–55. ISBN 90-5693-018-4
- ↑ Alain Desreumaux, Codex sinaiticus Zosimi rescriptus, Histoire du Texte Biblique 3 (Lausanne, 1997), pp. 108–111. ISBN 2-9700088-3-1
- ↑ augmented by Sinai, Georgian NF 19; 71 Sinai Palimpsest Project
- ↑ Christa Müller-Kessler, Three Early Witnesses of the «Dormition of Mary» in Christian Palestinian Aramaic. Palimpsests from the Cairo Genizah (Taylor-Schechter Collection) and the New Finds in St Catherine's Monastery, Apocrypha 29, 2018, pp. 69–95.
- ↑ Sinai Palimpsest Project
- ↑ Christa Müller-Kessler, Piecing together Christian Palestinian Aramaic Texts under Georgian Manuscripts (St Petersburg, NLR, Syr. 16; Sinai, Georg. NF 19, 71; Oslo, Martin Schøyen MS 35, 37; Princeton, Garrett MS 24; Göttingen, Syr. 17, 19, 23, 25), Digital Kartvelology 1, 2022, pp. 35–40. https://adh.ge/en/digital-kartvelology.
