Greek Manuscripts on Mt. Athos

Katie Leggett has posted a very thorough and informative article on the Greek manuscripts on Mt. Athos. While she focuses on the 1037 recorded Greek New Testament manuscripts, her detailed discussion of the collections and catalogues is very valuable also for setting context for the Old Testament manuscripts. For comparison, I did a quick search of the Göttingen Verzeichnis from 2012 and found 250 Septuagint manuscripts from Mt. Athos dating from the 9th–16th centuries. Of these, not surprisingly, almost 200 contain the Psalms.

New Biblia Arabica Project

The Biblia Arabica group report that they have received funding for a large, 21-year project cataloguing, transcribing, studying, and editing the manuscripts and translations of the Bible into Arabic. They want to make around 8,200 manuscripts readily available to users, which will be a great resource for this oft-neglected corpus. Ronny Volandt and Nathan Gibson are to be heartily congratulated on procuring such substantial funding for a critical humanities project.

Corpus of Samaritan Coinage from the Persian Period

The Israel Numismatic Society reports a new publication on the corpus of Samaritan coinage from the Persian period. 

Abstract:

This two-volume monograph, A Corpus of Samarian Coinage, is the definitive culmination of a major research program focused on the Samarian minting authority during the Persian period. This coinage represents one of the earliest and most varied official coinages produced in the southern Levant, likely being issued from the late fifth century BCE until after the Greco-Macedonian conquest.

While building on earlier scholarship, this work offers a substantive re-evaluation of the field. It incorporates numerous newly identified coin types and establishes a robust, modern classification system essential for all future study. The data is based on an exhaustive, multi-year study of the entire corpus of known Samarian issues, involving the global examination of specimens in publications and in public and private collections.

Friedberg Genizah Fragments in the Ktiv Database

In a recent update that was sent out by the Friedberg Genizah Project, they announced that most of the images and metadata from the site have now been migrated to the Ktiv database, and they are continuing to work on developing new tools and transferring the remaining data.