6 ms·

There's a "custodial history" section on that page.

by c0brac0bra 3y ago

verisimi 3y ago
I saw and that's where I'm getting the info from, partly. There is no info there, to explain the 700 missing years.
- pacaro 3y ago
  There is an ancient greek inscription on page 467r which reads (translated by chat gpt) "Whoever removes this present book from the place where the humble body of me, Theodosius the Prince, lies, let them be anathema, separated from the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, and may their portion be with Judas the betrayer." which is presumably used to assert the ownership of the book by Theodosius of Prinkipos There's also another inscription on page 3r which translates as "And this [is] from Paisios, Bishop of Vothrotou and Glykeos, among others."
- Zancarius 3y ago
  N.B.: I am not a biblical scholar. I just read way too much. That said, in addition to what pacaro wrote... Where we get the date of many of these manuscripts from is some combination of how and where they were found, in this tome's case the custodial history helps, but also the writing style, use of particular idiomatic language, or word/grammar utilization. Mentions of specific events or pieces of information that may have a known point in history also help, because obviously a material cannot predate an event that hasn't yet occurred. Often works cite others that have more well-established provenance or are themselves cited elsewhere. Carbon dating helps, but because of material reuse it's sometimes unreliable (and obviously can be faked with enough money to purchase/reuse ancient materials, as you pointed out in your earlier comment). In the case of this manuscript, I would find this possibility to be rather unlikely due simply to the volume (ahem) of materials used. Given also that it is mostly a commentary on what appears to be based on the LXX the motivation for faking it is much less. Here are a couple of sources that might help: https://textandcanon.org/four-ways-scholars-date-early-hebrew-bible-manuscripts/ https://textandcanon.org/four-ways-scholars-date-early-hebre... https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/stewart_don/faq/words-bible/question8-how-is-the-age-of-an-ancient-manuscript-determined.cfm https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/stewart_don/faq/words-b... One example of the use of idiomatic language as a dating tool that comes to mind: It is one of reasons why the precise dating of the book of Daniel is a somewhat problematic topic. Its use of specific vocabulary wasn't known in any extant works at the time of the earlier date, suggesting it was either authored later or saw edits/redactions by the time of the Babylonian exile. Exhilic and post-exhilic edits aren't entirely unknown in much of the OT, so that's always a possibility. My personal opinion reading the body of literature surrounding Daniel is that it is likely an edited work around a much more ancient core (6th century BC), but I'm always open to other arguments. I suspect the age of this manuscript is accurate and isn't a later contrivance. Welcome to the world of textual criticism!
  - verisimi 3y ago
    Thanks for your thoughtful comment. I am aware of the fuzzy nature of the provenance for all these books - its always fuzzy. Now you can take the document at face value, and say it mentions this or that, the idiomatic language, the patina, etc - I am familiar with this sort of reasoning for guessing the age - and I agree it is totally fair. My problem is that there is often this grand claim eg that the book is ancient ie '2nd half of the 12th century' (say 1175) but then the only actual traceable thread is from 1897 - ie for only 12% of the time do we know where it was. This is the same for every 'ancient' book I look at, its the same story. Yes the 'translators' justify the text, and then their embellishments as attempts to be faithful to the original.. but there is no original! Perhaps you appreciate my outlandish theoretical possibility which I will now outline for you.. Could it be that much of history is 'edited'. I mean, that bits are changed according to whatever is expedient and 'the message' is redirected for the present? As crazy as this may sound, just a few hundreds years ago, very few had access to books. The super rich of the time, really could control history, most common folk could not read. They couldn't even understand the Latin mass. So, the possibility is that perhaps control of history is a governance tool, and this tool itself has an ancient pedigree.
    - Zancarius 3y ago
      I have an appreciation for such "conspiratorial" thinking (using that term loosely since it's taken on a mind of its own in recent years), but mostly as a source of amusement. I want to suggest that the idea is entirely preposterous and ridiculous, which it probably is, but where I would agree with your caution lies mostly in the time frame from which this manuscript originates. It's possible (although unlikely) it's been faked in some capacity since human history (and literacy) somewhat undulate over time and the period this originates was a bit more hostile to free interchange of information (even the article mentions that many of the source texts could have been destroyed as heretical). In such a case, the Hebrew texts have a substantially more solid provenance simply by virtue of their volume and because we have significantly older witnesses at our disposal from the discoveries in Qumran. For something that dates from the 12th or 13th centuries this becomes a little more difficult as, perhaps ironically, fewer witnesses to the material actually exist. But, again, my argument against it being a significantly later fabrication is in the volume of physical materials used in construction: The binding, the number of leaves, etc., conspire toward the earlier dating since it would be virtually impossible to source that many original pieces of parchment or vellum that hadn't seen prior use (I'm saying this without any knowledge of this manuscript, but I'd imagine if the individual leaves showed signs of prior use they'd have mentioned it). These were expensive to produce when new. The other piece of evidence in this case is that this appears to be a compilation of other works, specifically commentaries, on the text of the LXX. The article mentions that the Koine Greek used in the LXX was somewhat difficult for later audiences to read due to its grammatical peculiarities, derived from its nature as a word-for-word translation of (now lost) earlier Hebrew texts. Hence why in my lay-estimation the earlier dating is most probably correct. The probable destruction of source texts support this claim, but also raises the question as to how (or why) this text managed to survive. You do raise a great point: Virtually every manuscript we have available is a copy of an earlier manuscript. No originals, to our knowledge, have survived into the present.

There's a "custodial history" section on that page.

verisimi 3y ago

I saw and that's where I'm getting the info from, partly. There is no info there, to explain the 700 missing years.

pacaro 3y ago
There is an ancient greek inscription on page 467r which reads (translated by chat gpt) "Whoever removes this present book from the place where the humble body of me, Theodosius the Prince, lies, let them be anathema, separated from the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, and may their portion be with Judas the betrayer." which is presumably used to assert the ownership of the book by Theodosius of Prinkipos There's also another inscription on page 3r which translates as "And this [is] from Paisios, Bishop of Vothrotou and Glykeos, among others."
Zancarius 3y ago
N.B.: I am not a biblical scholar. I just read way too much. That said, in addition to what pacaro wrote... Where we get the date of many of these manuscripts from is some combination of how and where they were found, in this tome's case the custodial history helps, but also the writing style, use of particular idiomatic language, or word/grammar utilization. Mentions of specific events or pieces of information that may have a known point in history also help, because obviously a material cannot predate an event that hasn't yet occurred. Often works cite others that have more well-established provenance or are themselves cited elsewhere. Carbon dating helps, but because of material reuse it's sometimes unreliable (and obviously can be faked with enough money to purchase/reuse ancient materials, as you pointed out in your earlier comment). In the case of this manuscript, I would find this possibility to be rather unlikely due simply to the volume (ahem) of materials used. Given also that it is mostly a commentary on what appears to be based on the LXX the motivation for faking it is much less. Here are a couple of sources that might help: https://textandcanon.org/four-ways-scholars-date-early-hebrew-bible-manuscripts/ https://textandcanon.org/four-ways-scholars-date-early-hebre... https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/stewart_don/faq/words-bible/question8-how-is-the-age-of-an-ancient-manuscript-determined.cfm https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/stewart_don/faq/words-b... One example of the use of idiomatic language as a dating tool that comes to mind: It is one of reasons why the precise dating of the book of Daniel is a somewhat problematic topic. Its use of specific vocabulary wasn't known in any extant works at the time of the earlier date, suggesting it was either authored later or saw edits/redactions by the time of the Babylonian exile. Exhilic and post-exhilic edits aren't entirely unknown in much of the OT, so that's always a possibility. My personal opinion reading the body of literature surrounding Daniel is that it is likely an edited work around a much more ancient core (6th century BC), but I'm always open to other arguments. I suspect the age of this manuscript is accurate and isn't a later contrivance. Welcome to the world of textual criticism!
- verisimi 3y ago
  Thanks for your thoughtful comment. I am aware of the fuzzy nature of the provenance for all these books - its always fuzzy. Now you can take the document at face value, and say it mentions this or that, the idiomatic language, the patina, etc - I am familiar with this sort of reasoning for guessing the age - and I agree it is totally fair. My problem is that there is often this grand claim eg that the book is ancient ie '2nd half of the 12th century' (say 1175) but then the only actual traceable thread is from 1897 - ie for only 12% of the time do we know where it was. This is the same for every 'ancient' book I look at, its the same story. Yes the 'translators' justify the text, and then their embellishments as attempts to be faithful to the original.. but there is no original! Perhaps you appreciate my outlandish theoretical possibility which I will now outline for you.. Could it be that much of history is 'edited'. I mean, that bits are changed according to whatever is expedient and 'the message' is redirected for the present? As crazy as this may sound, just a few hundreds years ago, very few had access to books. The super rich of the time, really could control history, most common folk could not read. They couldn't even understand the Latin mass. So, the possibility is that perhaps control of history is a governance tool, and this tool itself has an ancient pedigree.
  - Zancarius 3y ago
    I have an appreciation for such "conspiratorial" thinking (using that term loosely since it's taken on a mind of its own in recent years), but mostly as a source of amusement. I want to suggest that the idea is entirely preposterous and ridiculous, which it probably is, but where I would agree with your caution lies mostly in the time frame from which this manuscript originates. It's possible (although unlikely) it's been faked in some capacity since human history (and literacy) somewhat undulate over time and the period this originates was a bit more hostile to free interchange of information (even the article mentions that many of the source texts could have been destroyed as heretical). In such a case, the Hebrew texts have a substantially more solid provenance simply by virtue of their volume and because we have significantly older witnesses at our disposal from the discoveries in Qumran. For something that dates from the 12th or 13th centuries this becomes a little more difficult as, perhaps ironically, fewer witnesses to the material actually exist. But, again, my argument against it being a significantly later fabrication is in the volume of physical materials used in construction: The binding, the number of leaves, etc., conspire toward the earlier dating since it would be virtually impossible to source that many original pieces of parchment or vellum that hadn't seen prior use (I'm saying this without any knowledge of this manuscript, but I'd imagine if the individual leaves showed signs of prior use they'd have mentioned it). These were expensive to produce when new. The other piece of evidence in this case is that this appears to be a compilation of other works, specifically commentaries, on the text of the LXX. The article mentions that the Koine Greek used in the LXX was somewhat difficult for later audiences to read due to its grammatical peculiarities, derived from its nature as a word-for-word translation of (now lost) earlier Hebrew texts. Hence why in my lay-estimation the earlier dating is most probably correct. The probable destruction of source texts support this claim, but also raises the question as to how (or why) this text managed to survive. You do raise a great point: Virtually every manuscript we have available is a copy of an earlier manuscript. No originals, to our knowledge, have survived into the present.