The present project facilitates student involvement into the textual examination of the Pauline Epistles, introducing students to the Greek minuscule script and its transcription through the Münster Virtual Manuscript Room (VMR). The resultant transcriptions will support new critical editions of the New Testament, as well as the editions of the Greek New Testament most commonly used by scholars (e.g., the "Editio Critica Maior," the "Nestle-Aland Novum Testamentum Graece"). Students also will interact with several key topics relevant to New Testament textual criticism.
Students will interact with paleography, translation technique, the textual history of the Old Greek tradition, and textual criticism to produce a Brill volume including a second edition of Ra 2110. This manuscript is of particular significance for both its early date (likely third or fourth century AD) and the extent of its contents (Psalms 17-118). The work will (1) incorporate the contributions of biblical scholars to reconstruct gaps in the manuscript, and (2) publish, for the first time, related papyri fragments.
The present project involves students in the study of the Codex Climaci Rescriptus (CCR), focusing on two Syriac texts by John Climacus. Currently a part of Museum of the Bible's collection, the CCR is particularly well known for its status as a "palimpsest" manuscript (a manuscript where older text has been erased and newer text written over the old). Participants will interact with codicology, paleography, translation technique, and the textual and reception histories of these Syriac translations. The primary goal is the production of a critical edition of the relevant Syriac texts which critically engages the Greek text. Furthermore, the edition will explore the role of the Syriac translation as a witness to the Aramaic world in which the Syriac text had been created and would flourish for centuries. The CCR will enjoy a central role, but the project will also transcribe and incorporate parallel texts in Greek and Syriac.
The aim of the project is to read the underwriting of the Codex Climaci Rescriptus (CCR) which was rubbed out. This erased writing comes from about 11 previous manuscripts, each of which was rubbed out and each of which is now incomplete. These 11 previous manuscripts are either in Aramaic or Greek and come from the fourth to sixth centuries. Transcriptions of these texts will be published in two Brill volumes, one each for the Greek and Aramaic texts.