New Witnesses to Origen's Text of the Psalms

Felix Albrecht on the Göttingen Psalter Project's blog announces new identifications of catena manuscripts that attest to Origen's Septuagint text according to the Hexapla. Note well that this is the text (perhaps only lightly edited?) that Origen used for the LXX column in his Hexapla of the Psalms (Felix calls it the Origenic recension), not a heavily edited recension or thoroughgoing edition of the Psalms (which Felix calls a Hexaplaric recension). This new data is critical, since this Origenic text is not well preserved in the tradition but is often very close to the Old Greek. The new grouping suggested is: O = 1098(ο′)-1121-1209-Ga.

HT Ryan Sikes

Manufacturing Egyptian Scribal Palettes

Chip Hardy just showed me a fascinating lecture by James Terry for ARCE on how to make replicas of Egyptian scribal palettes. These kinds of palettes also seem to have been used by Israelite/Judahite scribes up until the Hellenistic period, when they changed to using split-nibbed reed pens with ink wells. For more info, see my article here.

Lead Ruling on Herculaneum Papyri

A recent Nature article has observed lead ruling on several Herculaneum papyri, including three different patterns:

1. top, bottom, and left column borders;

2. top, bottom, and both left and right column borders;

3. top, bottom, left, and right column borders AND horizontal line ruling on each line.

This has long been suspected based on literary references, but here we have it demonstrated in ancient papyri. Scribes apparently had lead discs and rulers that they used to rule the lines in preparation of the layout. Interestingly, these lines are intentionally laid out to produce columns slightly slanting to the right, an aesthetic phenomenon commonly known as Maas's law.

We have a similar situation in some of the Dead Sea Scrolls, where the lines are ruled with a light gray substance sometimes thought by editors to be "diluted ink." See, e.g., 11Q17:

https://www.deadseascrolls.org.il/explore-the-archive/image/B-365349

For someone with the time, interest, and technology, it would be interesting to check this and other scrolls noted in Tov's 2004 Scribal Practices book (section 4a) to see whether they are actually also ruled in lead.

The Original Language of the New Testament

While most scholars agree that the New Testament was originally written in Greek (even if sometimes using Hebrew or Aramaic sources), some writers have suggested that parts or even all of the NT were originally written in Hebrew or Aramaic. This seems to be a topic that comes up regularly in popular discussions, so I teamed up with Logos to write an article summarizing the key evidence and explaining the mainstream position for lay audiences. See the new article: Was the New Testament Written in Hebrew, Aramaic, or Greek?

Ancient Inscriptions from Israel / Palestine

The Ancient Inscriptions from Israel / Palestine allows you to search for inscriptions from the land of Israel/Palestine from the Persian period to the Islamic conquest. The catalogue is quite extensive and useful, though for many they do not have images and text available.

The Textual History of the Bible from the Dead Sea Scrolls to the Biblical Manuscripts of the Vienna Papyrus Collection

A new book from Brill has many articles of text-critical interest: The Textual History of the Bible from the Dead Sea Scrolls to the Biblical Manuscripts of the Vienna Papyrus Collection.

Chapter 1 Introduction: A Survey of the Textual History of the Jewish Scriptures

Author: 

Armin Lange

Pages: 

1–21

Part 1  The Text of the Jewish Scriptures during the Second Temple Period

• Chapter 2 Isaiah and the Twelve in Quotations and Allusions in Some Second Temple Period Writings: Textual History and Textual Reception

  Author: 

  Russell E. Fuller

  Pages: 

  23–42

• Chapter 3 Jeremiah in the Dead Sea Scrolls: The Textual History of Jeremiah in Light of the Qumran Library

  Author: 

  Armin Lange

  Pages: 

  43–154

• Chapter 4 The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Old Latin Text

  Author: 

  Pablo A. Torijano Morales

  Pages: 

  155–182

• Chapter 5 The Contribution of Text Criticism to Literary Analysis, Redaction History, and the Study of Ancient Israelite Religion: The Case of Genesis 9:6

  Author: 

  David Frankel

  Pages: 

  183–218

• Chapter 6 The Quasi-Priestly Additions in MT 1 Kings 6–8 in Light of “Rewritten Bible” Compositions from Qumran

  Author: 

  Guy Darshan

  Pages: 

  219–240

• Chapter 7 Midrashic Elements in Biblical Texts

  Author: 

  Alexander Rofé

  Pages: 

  241–252

• Chapter 8 Demonic Deuteronomy? The Ending of Deuteronomy and the Sectarian Debate

  Author: 

  Jonathan Ben-Dov

  Pages: 

  253–284

Part 2  The Text of the Jewish Scriptures from the Jewish Wars to the Early Masoretic Codices

• Chapter 9 Greek Jewish Biblical Papyri: A Reconsideration

  Authors: 

  Noah Hacham

   and 

  Armin Lange

  Pages: 

  285–301

• Chapter 10 P.Vindob. G 39777 (Symmachus) and the Use of Divine Names in Greek Scripture Texts

  Author: 

  Emanuel Tov

  Pages: 

  302–315

• Chapter 11 A Byzantine Armband with Psalm 91(90):1 and the Rabbinic Shema in Greek: Text, Date, Provenance, and Function

  Author: 

  Nancy Benovitz

  Pages: 

  316–343

• Chapter 12 The Strange Journey of a Demonstrative Pronoun from the Judean Desert to the Babylonian Talmud: דיכי

  Author: 

  Shamma Friedman

  Pages: 

  344–362

• Chapter 13 The Karaites and the Hebrew Bible

  Author: 

  Geoffrey Khan

  Pages: 

  363–395

Part 3  The Biblical Manuscripts in the Vienna Papyrus Collection

• Hebrew Manuscripts from the Papyrus Collection of the Austrian National Library Discussed in This Section

  Pages: 

  397–400

• Chapter 14 The Papyrus Collection of the Austrian National Library and Its Jewish Manuscripts

  Author: 

  Bernhard Palme

  Pages: 

  401–410

• Chapter 15 Masoretic Summaries of the Weekly Portions in P.Vindob. H 133 from the Rainer Collection in Vienna

  Author: 

  Yosef Ofer

  Pages: 

  411–455

• Chapter 16 The Vienna Biblical Fragments (Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers) in Light of the Karaite Tradition, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and Jewish Halakhah, with a Detailed Study of the Unit Divisions by Josef Oesch

  Author: 

  Ursula Schattner-Rieser

  Pages: 

  456–511

• Chapter 17 P.Vindob. H 12: A Page from a Haftarah Book in the Vienna Papyrus Collection

  Author: 

  Leeor Gottlieb

  Pages: 

  512–525

• Chapter 18 Manuscripts of the Former and the Latter Prophets in the Vienna Papyrus Collection

  Author: 

  Viktor Golinets

  Pages: 

  526–567

• Chapter 19  Ketubim Fragments in the Austrian National Library: P.Vindob. H 11, H 14, H 104, H 119, H 156, H 191

  Author: 

  Josef M. Oesch

  Pages: 

  568–593

• Chapter 20 Masoretic Lists and Biblical Scribal Exercises in the Vienna Papyrus Collection: Evidence of Learning and Study of the Biblical Text in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries CE

  Author: 

  Élodie Attia

  Pages: 

  594–615