News from CSNTM: Digital Manuscript Collection Interface is Coming!

The countdown has begun —on Monday 16 February, the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscrips (CSNTM), for which I am a boardmember since 2010, will launch its new CSNTM DIgital Manuscript Collection at collections.csntm.org. According to Denis Salgado, Lead Research Fellow and Assistant Executive Director, this platform will offer enhanced functionality, increased flexibility, and the ability to host a broader range of manuscripts and resources that will be added in coming months. Whether you are a scholar, student, or someone passionate about biblical studies, this database will undoubtedly serve as an essential resource for New Testament manuscript research and discovery for years to come.

Copyright of Digital Images of Biblical Manuscripts

The other day I attended an interesting professional development session on "Foundations of Copyright for Researchers" (by the way, this was not punishment for using academia.edu). One of the interesting things about this was a discussion about a recent UK court case and its implications for copyright of digital images - something many of us are interested in and use pretty much every day. 

In brief it seems that the Judge in this court case (Lord Justice Arnold) broadly ruled that simply taking a photograph of an object was not sufficiently "creative" to warrant the copyrighting of the digital image.  

"What is required is that the author was able to express their creative abilities in the production of the work by making free and creative choices so as to stamp the work created with their personal touch […] This criterion is not satisfied where the content of the work is dictated by technical considerations, rules or other constraints which leave no room for creative freedom.” 

If you are interested in this, then there is more information here: https://douglasmccarthy.com/2024/01/after-thj-v-sheridan/ (and also further reading and references to follow up). 

Is Codex Sinaiticus a Fake? New Evidence

Just to be clear, no. It’s not a 19th-century fake.

With that out of the way, I decided to take another look at a couple of things, and I noticed what some might consider to be new evidence in the question of whether or not the manuscript is a modern fake.

One of the biggest ‘selling points’ for people who claim that it’s a fake is the difference in colour between the Leipzig leaves and the British Library leaves, according to the images at the Codex Sinaiticus Project website. Despite at least one professional manuscript photographer taking the time to explain why it is problematic to make arguments based on the colour of those images, the colour is still a point of emphasis from people who maintain that Codex Sinaiticus is a fake.

David Daniels, author of the book Is the “World’s Oldest Bible” a Fake? (Ontario, CA: Chick Publications, 2017), recently posted a video (link and info in my longer note linked below) in which he again emphasised the colour of the leaves as part of his ‘evidence’.

So what about this new evidence I claim to have? Well, it’s not really new as much as it is a repackaging of old evidence into a way that more clearly shows why determining colour from images is a bad idea.

I’ve put a file online that goes into more detail, but I’ll give you the spoilers here.

When you compare the colour charts in the Leipzig images and the British Library images, it becomes clear that there is no way that these two sets of images were taken to the exact same standards. However, the clearest way to demonstrate this conclusion is to take a single colour from each of the colour charts, lay the two samples out in a mosaic like Daniels does, and then see how they look.

Obviously, the two sets of images were not taken to the level of precision that Daniels’ theory needs. If they were, we would see no difference in colour at all, because those two versions of yellow that you see in this image are the exact same colour in real life.

For the full description (as well as a couple of other samples like this one using other colours from the colour charts, and an argument based on raking light images), see my note here: “Unpublished Paper: ‘New’ Evidence on “Is Codex Sinaiticus a Fake?”

Deux minuscules et cent lectionnaires du Nouveau Testament à ajouter à la Liste de Gregory-Aland

Jean-Louis Simonet has been busy finding over 100 minuscule manuscripts and lectionaries containing portions of the Greek NT (which are not found in the Liste). Here is his report.

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Deux minuscules et cent lectionnaires du Nouveau Testament à ajouter à la Liste de Gregory-Aland

Il y a quelques mois, nous considérions la Liste de Gregory-Aland à peu de chose près comme le Canon du Nouveau Testament : avec ses presque 5900 témoins du Nouveau Testament, elle nous semblait être une œuvre quasi achevée. On pouvait sans doute encore espérer la compléter par quelques découvertes nouvelles (des manuscrits pas encore enregistrés dans des catalogues de bibliothèques, ou des manuscrits dans d’autres manuscrits), mais nous pensions qu’il serait vain d’espérer l’enrichir considérablement. Pendant longtemps d’ailleurs, n’y avait-il pas eu en moyenne un seul manuscrit nouveau par année ? Seul le travail de recherche systématique de Dan Wallace et son équipe du CSNTM avait permis de hausser cette moyenne depuis quelques années. On savait certes aussi, grâce à des communications du CSPTM, que des monastères grecs peu connus contenaient au moins 42 manuscrits du Nouveau Testament (communiqué du 20-10-2012, qui ne figure plus sur le site actuel de cet organisme), et que les monastères de l’Athos ont aussi quelques manuscrits qui restent non enregistrés (communiqués du 24-12-2014, du 10-60 et du 20-11-2015), mais jusqu’à présent ces recherches restent sans écho visible au niveau de la Liste, et les images des manuscrits, s’ils ont été numérisés, sont encore inaccessibles au chercheur. De même un Praxapostolos de Kallimaki (Chypre) a été signalé par la revue Dodonè, sans autre suite.

J’avais déjà découvert, par hasard, les pages de garde en grec d’un manuscrit arménien de Bzommar, et un lectionnaire grec de Thessalonique. Puis, en constatant l’absence, sur le site du Vatican, du manuscrit Barberini grec 346 (qui est dans la liste), j’ai, par curiosité, jeté un coup d’œil à son potentiel voisin, le Barberini grec 345. Surprise : ce lectionnaire, inconnu de la liste, contenait des lectures du Nouveau Testament ! Mais alors, se pourrait-il qu’il y en ait d’autres dans son cas ? Ce soupçon m’a amené à vérifier systématiquement d’autres lectionnaires, d’abord dans le groupe des Barberini grecs, puis dans le reste de la Bibliothèque Vaticane, puis dans d’autres bibliothèques (généralement) accessibles sur Internet. Nous dressons ci-dessous une liste des résultats de cette recherche, qui ont bien sûr été dûment communiqués à l’Institut für neutestamentliche Forschung de Münster.

St Catherine’s Monastery Manuscripts: Photographs online

Just a quick post to alert you to the fact that the Library of Congress has put its collection of photographs of manuscripts from St. Catherine’s Monastery online. For example, here you will find 1,081 Greek manuscripts (!). Heavenly.

(HT: Alin Suciu on FB)

Codex Gigas Images Online

The Devil

Codex Gigas, otherwise known as the “Devil’s Bible” is considered the largest Medieval Latin codex. Its pages are 35 inches tall and 19 inches wide and contains the complete Bible along with several other works from Josephus and others meant to illuminate the Bible. The name “Devil’s Bible” comes from the picture of the Devil found on f. 290r. As the official website explains:

The portrait was intended to remind the viewer of sin and evil. It is opposite a page with a representation of the Heavenly City and the two pages were deliberately planned to show the advantages of a good life and the disadvantages of a bad one.

The website has lots of useful information and includes all the photos here. There are some impressive initial letters (e.g., Mark’s Gospel) and other decorations throughout. Interestingly, the only human represented appears to be Josephus. You can download high resolution images from Wikimedia Commons here.

Update: there’s more good info linked in Tommy’s post from 2007.

The beginning of Mark’s Gospel

M 021 online images

Images of M 021 (a ninth century gospels majuscule) are now online. (HT Paul Anderson)

For Images of NT Majuscules in Paris now:

C 04: Ephraimi Rescriptus (Paris, Bibl. Nat., Gr. 9)

D 06: Claromontanus (Paris, Bibl. Nat. Gr., 107)

H 015: Coislinianus (Paris, Bibl. Nat., Suppl. Gr. 1074; Paris, Bibl. Nat., Coislin 202)

K 017: Cyprius (Paris, Bibl. Nat., Gr. 63)

L 019 (Paris, Bibl. Nat., Gr. 62)

M 021 (Paris, Bibl. Nat., Gr. 48)

063 (Paris, Bibl. Nat., Suppl. Gr. 1155 II)

0102 (Paris, Bibl. Nat., Suppl. Gr. 1155 I)

0303 (Paris, Bibl. Nat., Suppl. Gr. 1155 VII)

0305 (Paris, Bibl. Nat., Cot. 133.2 fol. 3)

Codex Bezae Goes Digital

The digital Codex Bezae has been released today in Cambridge Digital Library along with transcriptions of the International Greek New Testament Project (IGNTP). There is also a description of the codex written by David Parker. Here is the first paragraph:

There are half-a-dozen ancient manuscripts which are the foundation of our understanding of the text of the New Testament writings. Among these stands the copy known since the sixteenth century as Codex Bezae Cantabrigiensis. Any manuscript which has survived from antiquity is a marvel for this reason alone, and as we explore its pages, we have a rare opportunity to explore a little of the written culture of late antique Christianity. Although in the past century some remarkable papyrus manuscripts have been recovered from the sands of Egypt, their discovery has in general served more to highlight the significance of the parchment manuscripts than to diminish it. 

Click this link to access high-resolution images and transcriptions of the IGNTP.