Condition of the Voss 1646 book in twentieth century.

[StephenGoranson]

Morton Smith (Clement, 1973 page 1) described the volume as of 1958: “Its front cover and title page have been lost, but Voss’s name is given at the end of the dedication;….The manuscript was written over both sides of the last page (which was blank) of the original book and over half the recto of a sheet of binder’s paper. The binding was of that heavy, white paperboard so often found on books bound in Venice during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. From the remains of it, I should guess that it was approximately contemporary with the book itself….”
So Morton Smith was able to describe the binding based on the back cover, which remained, despite the fact that the front cover *and the spine of the binding* were gone.
In my experience of books, I have seen books where the front cover is missing or separate but the back cover is not missing. However, as I recall, there are fewer cases where the front cover *and the spine binding* is missing but the back cover is intact.
In this case, the missing (“lost”) front and spine binding and missing title page removed probable ownership marks, whereas the back cover binding helped protect the questioned ms.
For a photograph of the spine, taken in Jerusalem in 1983 see page 378 in:
Quentin Quesnell’s Secret Mark Secret: A Report on Quentin Quesnell’s 1983 trip to Jerusalem and his inspection of the Mar Saba Document
Vigiliae Christianae volume 71 number 4 (2017) 353-378
Authors: Stephan Hüller and Daniel N. Gullotta

DOI: the https://doi.org/10.1163/15700720-12341305

For a color scan of the title page of another copy of Voss 1646 see
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id= ... =1up&seq=5

Note the marks of ownership.

[Secret Alias]

Don't forget to check if someone got into the Dominion voting machines ...

[Secret Alias]

In the interest of scholarship I will PM you the expert on Voss book construction. He's retired. If you reach him please be as transparent as I am with my research and share whatever he says regardless of the impact on your argument. Thanks