Greek NT MSS from the Gruber Rare Books Collection on-line

I was meaning to post on The Gruber Rare Books Collection at the Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago a long time ago, but now is the perfect time, because Jeff Hargis announced the other day on W. Willker's textual criticism discussion-list that the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts (CSNTM) have posted images of fourteen Greek New Testament manuscripts in the collection:

CSNTM is pleased to announce the posting of fourteen Greek New Testament manuscripts from the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, as well as a single leaf held by a private owner in Chicago. The manuscripts were photographed in March 2010 by a team from the Center and include GA 1424, an important late 9th or early 10th century manuscript that includes the entire New Testament. The manuscripts are posted on the “Manuscripts” section of the website. CSNTM is grateful to Dr. Ralph Klein, curator of the Rare Books Collection of the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, and to Dr. Edgar Krentz, for permission to post these images.

The Gruber Collection was mainly assembled by L. Franklin Gruber (1870-1941), President of Chicago Lutheran Theological Seminary, Maywood, Illinois. The MSS dates from the 9th to the 13th centuries. The most well-known, as apparent from Hargis' announcement is Greg.-Aland 1424. One of the interesting features of this MS is the so-called TO IOUDAIKON scholia found in few GNT MSS (incidentally, one other is in Sweden, so I have prepared an article including a brief treatment of the scholia and its suggested connection to the Jerusalem colophon).

As we have reported earlier on this blog, here, Dr. Nadezhda Kavrus-Hoffmann is cataloguing the Greek Medieval and Renaissance manuscripts in collections in the United States.

In March last year, she was at the Lutheran Theological Seminary in Chicago. She then found that the MSS had been studied very little by Seymour De Ricci and Kenneth Clark who had put together earler catalogues, and there were some erroneous information. For example, Kenneth Clark had dated one the MS to the latter 12th century, but Kavrus-Hoffman found palaeographic evidence that suggested a later date, and also the style of the miniatures confirmed her judgment.

In another MS there were notes in the margins about a solar eclips which helped her to establish the date and location of the scribe when he wrote the note.

Read the whole story here. I will come back with more news about Kavrus-Hoffmann's work.

An overview of the Greek New Testament MSS in the Gruber collection is found here.

The images of the MSS are found at CSNTM here.