Codex Vaticanus of bible digitized

[ficino]

Check out:

https://withmeagrepowers.wordpress.com/ ... -b-online/

This link has its own link to the digitized manuscript.

[Peter Kirby]

Nice.

It isn't very clear, but Revelation is from a different manuscript. Vaticanus cuts off mid-Hebrews and thus lacks Revelation, 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, Titus, Philemon, though we do not really know that any of them were originally part of Vaticanus.

[Kunigunde Kreuzerin]

Check out:

https://withmeagrepowers.wordpress.com/ ... -b-online/

Thanks

[ficino]

I just looked at a few images. A good deal of Genesis is in a later Byzantine minuscule hand, maybe 14th cent. (?) from what I could see at a glance. I assume the original leaves at the beginning and end of the codex were lost.

[Kunigunde Kreuzerin]

It is often claimed that the blank column between Mark and Luke is unique. But between Esdras II and the Psalms is almost an entire page freely.

[Leucius Charinus]

^ You'd almost think that with almost a whole page free, those who were really (or even peripherally) interested in the dating of the manuscript could organise many independent C14 dating tests. But as we all know, church tradition has a mind of its own. One that does very nicely without the intervention of science.




LC

[ficino]

I haven't worked on this Ms., but I have worked on many other ones. It is not uncommon that when the job of copying was shared among two or more copyists, each would be given sheets of parchment on which to copy certain sections of the text. When one copyist reached the end of his section, there might be some space left over on the last sheet of his set of sheets. People who have worked on this Vaticanus say that several scribes were employed in its production. Without checking where their respective sections ended, I'm guessing that a scenario like the one I just sketched out explains the empty spaces that KK mentions.

LC, the Vaticanus isn't dated by church tradition. It's dated by paleographical criteria that are generally in use. Paleography is a science of its own sort.

[slevin]

Paleography is a science of its own sort.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Han_van_Me ... Emmaus.jpg
This painting, from 1936, was regarded as the finest known masterpiece of Johannes Vermeer, who had lived 250 years earlier.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Han_van_Meegeren
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johannes_Vermeer

I don't doubt that a master, like you, ficino, can distinguish a script originating from one era to that of another era, a hundred or more years apart. Styles change. That's clear.

But, I doubt that we are as skillful, at detecting "modern" forgery, focused on imitating ancient handwriting. If forgery can go undetected for decades, with a painting, like the example above, how hard can it be to accomplish a similar feat, with black ink on old papyrus? Those were not amateurs, ficino, praising that "masterpiece" of Vermeer. There had not been a single or a pair of experts fooled. van Meegeren fooled a whole gaggle of experts.

Paleography is a science of its own sort.

Would Thales concur? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of ... fic_method

In my opinion, palaeography is overvalued. It is helpful, most of the time, but, the accuracy resulting from such analysis is ambiguous at best. P52 comes to mind.

Science involves both observation, expression of doubt, and testing to resolve contradictory issues. Is that how palaeography functions?
https://books.google.com/books?id=Gs8bA ... ry&f=false

Isn't palaeography better defined as an art form, in view of the subjective nature of the assessment? Science could come into play, if an application were created to permit OCR, though such a (purely objective with all subjectivity removed) program would still not reveal the date when the handwriting was accomplished.
http://www.onlineocr.net/
In such a case can we still describe this discipline as "scientific"?

[ficino]

I agree that there's a lot of "trained eye" stuff in palaeography. It's not a hard science. That's why I said "of its own sort."

I don't think many professionals are going to think there's a strong case to be made that the uncial leaves in the Vaticanus are a massive, late forgery. Libraries are very reluctant to cut off pieces of parchment and then undergo the considerable expense of C-14 dating without very strong reason. I think one of the "steves" on this site, or perhaps Stephan Huller, was in correspondence with the British Library on the possibility of dating a piece of the parchment from their portion of Sinaiticus. There's a project on digitizing that, btw:

http://www.codexsinaiticus.org/en/

[Kunigunde Kreuzerin]

Hi ficino, could you please say a few words about what is written as an additional text on the pages of the book of Daniel?