MS 2866=2483–sold by Ferrini, registred twice

One of the recent registered MSS in the Liste is 2866 (= MS 2932 in the Schøyen collection in Oslo). The owner was kind enough to let me examine Jude in the MS. When I had entered the data in my computer I dicovered that it had the same text as another MS 2483, including marginal corrections, etc. It turned out that even the line breaks were identical. I doublechecked with Maurice Robinson who had examined the Pericope of the Adulteress in the MS, and he compared the two transcriptions and confirmed that text and line breaks are identical, i.e. this is one and the same MS, which has been registred twice in the official list.

The owner told me via his librarian that it had come from a private collection in France, sold to him by Ferrini. According to the Kurzgefasste Liste, 2483 was owned by a René Bonjean in Bulligny, Château de Tumejus. I am not surprised that the institute in Münster has not kept track of these transactions which involved the infamous bookdealer Bruce Ferrini, who was also involved in the transactions with the recently published Gospel of Jude (which he also offered to Schøyen in 2000).

Anyhow, the MS is now registered twice in the Liste, and there are some discrepancies between these entries in terms of dating, numbers of pages and format. My own examination of the manuscript indicates that the data in the old entry of 2483 concerning numbers of pages (348) and format (21,7x15,4) is correct. Therefore I have chosen in my file to retain also this dating (13th century rather than c. 1300). The MS is presented online at:
http://www.nb.no/baser/schoyen/4/4.1/412.html#2932

(I have notified the INTF in Münster.)

UPDATE: The INTF has now confirmed to me that they will delete entry 2866 and register: 2866 = 2483.

UPDATE: The librarian of the Schøyen collection has now counted the number of folios, and indeed there are only 340 left, which means that 8 folios have gone missing. Peter Heas was correct in his suspicion (see in comments below).

There are some notes about the MS in Kurt Aland, "Zur Liste der neutestamentlichen Handschfriften. V." in ZNW 45 (1954):201. According to Aland there was on fol. 347 verso an owner's note (Athos, Lavra) and a buyer's note (the MS was sold in Istanbul, 1925). Further, fol. 348 was empty – I do not know what was on fols. 341-346, but probably no portion of NT text since the current owner has not even noticed that the folios were missing until I told him so. Perhaps someone could not resist the temptation to remove the folios and sell them separately or use them for other purposes ... The only person we know of who has been in possession of the MS between the time that photos were taken and Schøyen bought the MS is Bruce Ferrini.