A forum for people with knowledge of the Bible in its original languages to discuss its manuscripts and textual history from the perspective of historic evangelical theology.
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Looks like the Lord's Prayer as per the Didache to me...
ReplyDeletedreadful penmanship...
ReplyDeleteThe hand looks terribly modern, but what do I know.
ReplyDeleteI agree with professor Robinson on the Didachean look at it, especially at the end.
ReplyDeleteActually quite good Greek penmanship for the time in which this transcript was written. Lots of neat litgatures and abbreviations.
ReplyDeletewhen would you date it?
ReplyDeleteI'd date it to the late 19th century.
ReplyDeleteLooks like someone's old Greek homework from a recent decade.
ReplyDelete'And now, Mr Coxe, let me show you a very ancient and valuable MS I have for sale, and which ought to be in your Library. To what century do you consider this belongs?'
ReplyDelete'This, Mr Simonides, I have no doubt,' said Mr Coxe, 'belongs to the nineteenth century.'
If, as Maurice surmised, this is the Lord's Prayer from the Didache, then this is a dated manuscript: Codex Hierosolymitanus, written in 1056 AD. Discovered by Bryennios in 1873, it also contains (among many documents) 1-2 Clement, Barnabas, and the long form of the Ignatian letters.
ReplyDeleteThis actually looks very much like a minuscule MS that I've seen for John and that we collated here in New Orleans. I'll have to do some checking on which MS it was, but of course Peter already knows the source, so I suspect I'll just wait and let him tell us. The entire text of John had abbreviated ending and ligatures like this.
ReplyDelete"Codex Hierosolymitanus, written in 1056 AD. "
ReplyDeleteNo, I don't think so. The letters are just too disjointed. Scribes didn't typically leave so many spaces in a ms--too expensive.
Well--OK. Looking at Codex Hierosolymitanus some more, it seems to be a definite candidate.
ReplyDeleteThat scribe sure did leave a lot of blank space. My English Composition teacher would have loved him/her/it.
And all those diacriticals! I guess Peter was expecting it to be unique enough to identify that specifically.
It's either Hierosolymitanus or a red herring.
And of course, John doesn't have the text of the Lord's Prayer.
ReplyDeleteWhat is the most common gospel to appear in a stand-alone ms? I think I heard Mark is the least common.
The text is most definitely from Didache 8:2-3, and I believe that Michael Holmes is correct that it is from Codex Hierosolymitanus.
ReplyDeleteThe script looks like a commentary I once worked on that was dated to the 12th century. It just so happens that Codex Hierosolymitanus is also dated to right around 1100.
-c-
Here is the text as I read it. Asterisks mark nomina sacra. Parenthesis set off abbreviations (well, most of them). I periods where I noted 'stops' in the text (though they seemed oddly placed to me).
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Didache 8:2 ....t(w) euaggeliw aut(ou) . out(w) proseucesqe . *p(at)er* hmwn ho en t(w) *ou(ra)nw* . hagiasqht(w)to onoma sou . elqetw hH basileias(ou) .
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I love the miniscule beta! Interestingly, the 'sou' looks almost joined to 'basileia' as if it were part of the word.
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gennhqht(w) to qelhma s(ou).
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I wonder why the ligature for 'ou' sometimes looks like a single upsilon and other times it looks like a "twisty-tie"...for lack of a better term.
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hws en *ou(ra)nw* (kai) epi g(hs) . t(on) art(on) hm(wn) t(on) epiousi(on) d(os) hmin shmer(wn) . (kai) afes hmin t(hn) ofeilhn hmwn . hws (kai) hm(eis) afiem(en) t(ois) ofeilet(ai)s hmwn . (kai) mh eisenegk(hs) hm(as) eis peirasm(on) .
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The division of 'eisenegk(hs)' confused me at first. Where it breaks at the end of the line, I thought I saw 2 sigmas, but then I realized that some ink is missing...the ink that formed the ligature between the sigma and the epsilon (that looks like a "c"-sigma without the ligature).
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alla hrus(ai) hm(as) apo (tou) ponhrou . oti sou estin hH dunam(is) kai hH doxa . eis t(ous) aiwn(as) .
Didache 8:3 - tris t(hs) hmer(as) out(w) ...
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The rest is cut off.
That was fun! Reading miniscule Greek reminds me of doing codes and ciphers as a child.
-c-
Yes,
ReplyDeleteI can confirm that this is : Jerusalem Patriarchate MS 54. (AD 1056 as already noted). Plates of the Didache are found in J.Rendel Harris, The Teaching of the Apostles (London & Baltimore, 1887), plates 1-10 (I'm not sure about images of the other important texts and would be happy to be directed to more images).
Anyway we studied this in our Greek Palaeography course this week. As Rendel Harris noted this is a great manuscript to study for reading the abbreviations and contractions. Also very interesting from the point of view of contact (we read this plate which covers most of 8 & 9).
For 'contact' read 'content'.
ReplyDeleteOne interesting point which Anonymous noted is this phrase:
ReplyDeletegennhqht(w) to qelhma s(ou).
Pretty much everyone treats this as a simple error for GENHQHTW, and fair enough that -GEN- and -GENN- do get confused all over the textual tradition of the NT. But one could suggest that this is a meaningful version of this part of the Lord's Prayer: 'may your will come to birth'.
Mike, you are the expert, any mileage in this?
How secure is the dating actually? It seems to me that the script is more at home in the 13th/14th century frame than in the 11th. But I am willing to submit to the true experts.
ReplyDeleteI think it is pretty solid. The date is widely reported (e.g. in Lake); Barbour gives the dating colophon in print (#75 I don't think the plate is of the final page): 11th of June (ind. 9) year 6,564. I haven't seen a photo of the colophon but it is in volume 1 of Lake's collection (plate 11).
ReplyDelete