A Previously Unidentified Folio of 093?

Earlier this week, I was working on Acts in the forthcoming textual commentary for the Tyndale House Greek New Testament, and I believe there is another page of 093 that the INTF does not currently recognise. Oddly enough, this is not the first time someone at Tyndale House working on Acts has stumbled across a previously-unknown page of a Greek New Testament manuscript.

According to the online Liste at the INTF, 093 is housed at the Cambridge University Library in the Cairo Genizah collection as “Taylor-Schechter Coll. 12.208”. That is slightly imprecise, but the print edition of the Liste (at least the first edition, which is the one I checked) correctly notes that 093 is two folios, each with its own shelfmark. The LDAB entry rightly gives them as Taylor-Schechter 12.208 and Taylor-Schechter 12.189. The manuscript itself is rather interesting. It is a palimpsest in which 6th-century Greek text (of Acts 24–25 and 1 Peter 2–3) was overwritten with Hebrew.

If you’ll hold that thought, we’ll hop over momentarily to the other side of the Atlantic.

As it turns out, the University of Pennsylvania also has a collection of manuscripts that came from the Cairo Genizah in their Center for Advanced Judaic Studies Library. Their online catalogue describes one manuscript, Halper 114, as an “Early midrash on Genesis 40:18-41:3; 46:28-47:1”. Note the following, however:

The hand may be identical to that of the ancient palimpsest copy of compendium of Midrash Rabbah Genesis, Cambridge T-S 12.208 and 189....

Another online catalogue at UPenn has a slightly longer set of notes (and I note that they do give a description for the undertext: “Palimpsest of Book of Acts(?) (Sixth century?)”) and includes the following:

Fragmented Greek characters, disposed vertically in 3 lines within center margins, along joint on hair side; no other Greek characters visible to naked eye, none visible on flesh side; some additional characters seem to appear with digital enhancement, but currently impossible to make out text; the identification with the Cambridge TS 12.208 and 189 bifolia is tentative, given ruling differences (Halper 30-32 lines; Cambridge 28-29 lines), and paucity of identifiable text, notwithstanding kinship between Hebrew texts.

I would suggest that it is not impossible to make out the Greek undertext, only very difficult. Still, I did some playing around, and I think I have found bits of Acts 21:13–14 in one of the more legible sections. As far as I know (and with my sincerest apologies to the INTF if this is not the case), the INTF does not currently recognise Halper 114 as part of 093 or as part of any other Greek New Testament manuscript.

[These images and the content of Center for Advanced Judaic Studies Library, Halper 114: Early midrash on Genesis 40:18-41:3; 46:28-47:1 are free of known copyright restrictions and in the public domain. See the Creative Commons Public Domain Mark page for usage details, http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/.]

Section of Halper 114, without my edits.

Section of Halper 114, with my very rough drawing on enough undertext for a preliminary identification

I can also see ε[ι]πο[ντες] after I stopped drawing in red there as well, but I admit I didn’t spend as much time on it as I could have.

My proposals:

1. It would be great if Halper 114 could be digitised with MSI so that the undertext can be read and edited (and I hear CSNTM has MSI capabilities now!).
2. It would be great if someone at the INTF could verify if Halper 114 is indeed a previously-unidentified (or at least previously-unrecognised in the Liste) folio of 093.

Finally, here we have another application of Head’s Rule, that “the best place to look for ancient manuscripts is in a library”.

Preserving the Cairo Geniza: Video

As part of its new exhibition on the Cairo Genizah, the Cambridge University Library has put together a nice video on the process of conserving this extensive collection of Medieval Hebraica. More info here.

Ancient Bible Fragments Reveal a Forgotten History

News from Cambridge University:

Ancient Bible fragments reveal a forgotten history
New research has uncovered a forgotten chapter in the history of the Bible, offering a rare glimpse of Byzantine Jewish life and culture.

The study by Cambridge University researchers suggests that, contrary to long-accepted views, Jews continued to use a Greek version of the Bible in synagogues for centuries longer than previously thought. In some places, the practice continued almost until living memory.

The key to the new discovery lay in manuscripts, some of them mere fragments, discovered in an old synagogue in Egypt and brought to Cambridge at the end of the 19th century. The so-called Cairo Genizah manuscripts have been housed ever since in Cambridge University Library.

Now, a fully searchable online corpus (http://www.gbbj.org) has gathered these manuscripts together, making the texts and analysis of them available to other scholars for the first time.

"The translation of the Hebrew Bible into Greek between the 3rd and 1st centuries BCE is said to be one of the most lasting achievements of the Jewish civilization - without it, Christianity might not have spread as quickly and as successfully as it did," explained Nicholas de Lange, Professor of Hebrew and Jewish Studies in the Faculties of Divinity and Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, who led the three-year study to re-evaluate the story of the Greek Bible fragments.

"It was thought that the Jews, for some reason, gave up using Greek translations and chose to use the original Hebrew for public reading in synagogue and for private study, until modern times when pressure to use the vernacular led to its introduction in many synagogues."

Close study of the Cairo Genizah fragments by Professor de Lange led to the discovery that some contained passages from the Bible in Greek written in Hebrew letters. Others contained parts of a lost Greek translation made by a convert to Judaism named Akylas in the 2nd century CE. Remarkably, the fragments date from 1,000 years after the original translation into Greek, showing use of the Greek text was still alive in Greek-speaking synagogues in the Byzantine Empire and elsewhere.

Read the whole story here.

Access the database "Greek Bible in Byzantine Judaism" here.

See also this earlier report on the digitization of the Cairo Genizah fragments by Christian Askeland, one of our men in Cambridge.

Digitization of the Cairo Genizah Fragments

The Taylor-Schechter Collection at the University of Cambridge has announced significant progress in the digitization of its approximately 140,000 Hebrew manuscripts:

"65,000 images are already safely stored away on the Library's DSpace digital repository... more than 500 superbly high-quality digital images are shot every day. More than 310,000 images will be produced by project's end, and the experienced team .. are well on schedule to achieve this within three years." (Genizah Fragments 59, April 2010)

The Friedberg family of Toronto has donated more than £1,000,000 in support of the project. Post-doctoral students and those planning a sabbatical may want contact the unit, as there is plenty to be done. Register to access the Friedberg database here.