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doi: 10.1163/27728641-00501001pmid: N/A
AbstractThis article critiques Gordon et al.’s VLR Dec. 2024 article (henceforth “Gordon”). Gordon denies that the original scribe of Codex Vaticanus B (henceforth “Vaticanus”) penned any distigmai. It is true that X-ray fluorescence (xrf) tests prove that some distigmai are very late and can distinguish between inks that look similar. Gordon, however, tested only one of the eighteen distigmai that I identify as visually identical to original Vaticanus ink, 1243 B21 RM. 1243 B21 RM has the same ink signature as original Vaticanus ink and looks like a distigme, but Gordon calls it a sigma. Furthermore, Gordon’s claim that distigmai are from the sixteenth century ignores distigmai in the fourth or fifth century Codex Sarravianus-Colbertinus. This article identifies the graphic characteristics and the significance of Vaticanus’s New Testament obeloi. It identifies six striking contrasts between the 16 distigme lines with an obelos (15 of these obeloi evidently by scribe B plus 1 added later) and the 31 with an undisputed paragraphos. Only the hypothesis that scribe B penned obeloi and left a gap in the text at the precise location where some manuscripts insert at least four consecutive words explains these six striking contrasts.
doi: 10.1163/27728641-00402004pmid: N/A
AbstractThis contribution deciphers (with a preliminary analysis) the remaining parts of chapters 8 and 9 of the Gospel of Matthew, as the earliest Syriac undertext of a double palimpsest (Vat. iber. 4, ff. 6 + 10). The importance of this text lies in its expression of a transitional stage between the Old Syriac Gospel on the one hand and the Peshitta on the other. In addition, elements from the Gospels of Mark and Luke were inserted into this Matthean text, leading us to believe that it may expresses a version noticeably influenced by the Diatessaron.
doi: 10.1163/27728641-00402003pmid: N/A
AbstractThe common thread linking these two notes is the calendar: in the first case, understood as computus ecclesiasticus, that is, the calculation of Easter; in the second, as the liturgical calendar. Among the popular pamphlets and explanatory tracts published in the immediate aftermath of the Gregorian calendar reform (1582), one Garshūnī booklet, printed in Rome with the aim of facilitating the widespread acceptance of the reform in the Arab Christian world, is particularly noteworthy. Among other things, it presents an Easter-computation algorithm of striking simplicity. A re-examination of a substantial corpus of contact prints produced during the Schmidt-Moritz expedition to Sinai (1914), now preserved in the Vatican Library, has led to the rediscovery of Palestinian Aramaic fragment NF 13. This fragment constitutes a curious instance of a “negative” liturgical calendar, namely a list of the “inaccessible” days of the liturgical year on which no commemorations are prescribed. Remarkably, the text proves to be in Arabic, thus offering an instructive example of Arabic written in an Aramaic-xenic script.
doi: 10.1163/27728641-00501005pmid: N/A
AbstractA 2023 book by Olivia Adankpo-Labadie—Moines, saints et hérétiques dans l’Éthiopie médiévale. Les disciples d’Ēwosṭātēwos et l’invention d’un mouvement monastique hétérodoxe (XIVe‑milieu du XVe siècle)—recapitulates and further elaborates on the history and construction of the memory of the medieval heterodox monastic community of the ʾĒwosṭāteans (followers of ʾĒwosṭātēwos) in medieval Ethiopia (fourteenth-fifteenth centuries). Through a fine reading and re-interpretation of the hagiographic and documentary sources collected in the past (acquisition of new sources is extremely limited), the monograph analyses the rise and ideological roots of this essential monastic movement. Known for its defence of the two-Sabbath observance and its specific rules concerning the abbot, the movement experienced varying relationships with the monarchy and the metropolitan, ranging from initial persecution to eventual official recognition. This was also connected to the rise and fall of parallel heterodox monastic movements which did not enjoy similar favourable treatment, such as that of the ʾEsṭifānosites. Although the application of historiographical methodologies from the Western Middle Ages provides useful hermeneutical tools and re-examining the sources offers fresh perspectives, concerns arise regarding consistent philological and linguistic accuracy and understanding of the dynamics of canon law development.
doi: 10.1163/27728641-00501006pmid: N/A
AbstractPhilologists and palaeographers routinely rely on visual observations. The distigmai and three end-line sigmas in Codex Vaticanus B (Vat. gr. 1209) demonstrate the limitations of such observations and the importance of utilizing modern imaging techniques and material science testing whenever possible. Based on visual observations, some distigmai (pairs of dots in the margins) were found to match the appearance and color of the original ink of Codex B. It was hypothesized that these distigmai mark the locations of textual variants known to the original scribe in the fourth century. XRF testing in 2022–2023 found that the ink of the light-colored distigmai tested did not have the same elemental fingerprint as the original inks of the main text. Further tests in February 2026 now confirm the earlier findings: despite their matching appearance and color, material science indicates that the light-colored distigmai were not written in the same inks as the original main text of Codex B. The original ink of Codex B is so faded that it was systematically traced over by a reinker. One unreinked glyph has been variously interpreted as a sigma and a distigme. Two other nearby unreinked sigmas are nearly invisible. All three are unambiguously identifiable as sigmas with magnification, especially in ultraviolet light (~395 nm), which enhances the contrast between the iron-gall ink and the parchment. The distigmai and end-line sigmas should serve as an important warning about the limitation of visible observations.
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