Friday, April 03, 2009

"What Does It Mean to Discover a Manuscript?" (via CSNTM)

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Over at The Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscript, Jeff Hargis writes on the topic, "What Does It Mean to Discover a Manuscipt?":

In the last few years, the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts has discovered more manuscripts of the New Testament than the rest of the world combined. In the past nine months alone, CSNTM has discovered about twenty, and we are in the process of presenting our finds to the academic community.

Read the whole story here.

I am happy to have been able to contribute to at least one of those discoveries thus far. It was a leaf from an uncial lectionary that was found within another liturgical manuscript. We reported on that here last year. The reason I knew it was there is that I had discovered it some years ago in a microfilm collection in Denmark.

2 comments

  1. If "discovery" = transferring the contents of a MS from an obscure location to a non-obscure location, then maybe we should not consider any MS to be "discovered" until its text is collated and the collation is easily accessible.

    Yours in Christ,

    James Snapp, Jr.

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  2. James, one obscure location can be two feet under the sand in Egypt, just as it could be two feed under a stack of dusty and ancient books in a monastery or museum. Both mss were put/left there by somebody. What the contents of an obscure ms are seem to me to be a separate issue altogether. I really don't see a benefit to limiting discoveries to mss whose contents meet some criteria.

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