Thursday, September 7, 2017

The Photios Manuscripts and More

            Among the Greek manuscripts overseen by the Jerusalem Patriarchate, there are a few small collections which were included in the group that was photographed by Kenneth Clark’s expedition in 1949-1950, with the larger Saba and Stavros collections.  Here is a list of Greek New Testament manuscripts in the smaller collections, with embedded links to page-views at the website of the Library of Congress.  Some of these manuscripts are very late, post-dating the invention of printing, but K. W. Clark and his colleagues went through the trouble of photographing them and I did not want their work to be ignored. 

A simple case of homoeoarcton:
in GA 1364, in Mark 4:39, the copyist’s
line of sight drifted from και to και,
skipping the letters in between
(consisting of the phrase, “and there
was a great calm”).  A correction has
been added in the margin.
            MatthewMarkLukeJohn.          

            Matthew.  Mark.  Luke.  John.   
            The zoomorphic initials at the beginning of Mark and John have a Western European style.

Photios 1 – Evangelion (1000’s/1100’s(?))
Photios 2 – Evangelion (1100’s)
Photios 53 – Evangelion (1200’s/1300’s)

            I am not sure where the Photios collection was before it was transferred to the care of the Jerusalem Patriarchate.  Perhaps these manuscripts were in the care of Archimandrite Photios in the early 1880’s, shortly before several collections were combined.  Also photographed in 1949-1950 were New Testament manuscripts in the care of the Jerusalem Patriarchate from the following collections:

● The Naos Anastaseos collection: 
            GA 1358 – Naos Anastaseos 15  – Four Gospels (c. 1000)
                        MatthewMarkLukeJohn.
            Naos Anastaseos 9 – Evangelion (made in 1152).  The Gospels-text in this lectionary appears to be closely related to the text in Codex Tischendorfianus III (Λ, 039), at least in John 8:1-11, as described in an earlier post.
            Naos Anastaseos 1 – Evangelion (made in 1647?)
            Naos Anastaseos 2 – Evangelion (made in 1610)
            Naos Anastaseos 3 – Evangelion (made in 1633) Two dragons form the initial ε of John 1:1.
            Naos Anastaseos 5 – Evangelion (made in 1596)
            Naos Anastaseos 6 – Evangelion (made in 1599)
            Naos Anastaseos 8 – Evangelion (1400’s)
            Naos Anastaseos 10 – Evangelion (1500’s)
            Naos Anastaseos 11 – Evangelion (1200’s)
  
● The Epiphanios Collection
Heavily damaged but recognizable,
a picture of the Evangelists precedes
the text in Megale Panagia 1.
            Epiphanios 1 – Apostolos (1300’s)
            Epiphanios 6 – Apostolos (1300’s)
            Epiphanios 7 – Apostolos (1400’s)

● The Megale Panagia Collection
            Megale Panagia 1 – Evangelion (made in 1061) (Was this lectionary previously at the Megale Panagia Monastery on the island of Samos?)

● The Naos Abraam Collection
            Naos Abraam 55 – Sylloge and Four Gospels (1600’s)

● The Treasury Collection
            Treasury 1 – Evangelion (1500’s)
            Treasury 2 – Evangelion (made in 1616)
            Treasury 3 – Evangelion (1600’s)

            Perhaps some readers, even with the newly accessible page-views of all these manuscripts from the Library of Congress, may be thinking, “But I want more lectionaries to study!”  For those rare souls I commend the collection of links at the website of Princeton University where one can find links to digital presentations of very many Greek lectionary-manuscripts, not least of which are GA Lect 1957 (Chester Beatty Library W 138), GA Lect 1627 (Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago Gruber 124), the fragmentary Cod. Suppl. Gr. 122 Han, and the palimpsest Bodleian Library Barocci 206

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