brittle ancient parchment

Steven Avery

Steven Avery

Administrator
Pure Bible Forum

PBF INDEX - pics of various manuscripts, comparisons, yellow and brittle, the St Catherine's manuscripts
https://www.purebibleforum.com/inde...d-brittle-the-st-catherines-manuscripts.4452/

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https://www.purebibleforum.com/index.php?threads/brittle-manuscripts-at-st-catherines.3350/

Our thread with Nikolai Alexandrovich Morozov in 1914 discussed using the condition of the parchment as an indication of age. We know the colour is one factor, but also elements like losing flexibility, the edges getting greasy and stained, etc.

Codex Tischendorfianus I - see below

While the Leipzig leaves, same monastery, heavily used, greater age by hundreds of years, are in great shape even today:

"the pages were in a very good state according to conservation standards." - Elisabeth Fritsch-Hartung, Leipzig photographer for CSP

Which can be easily seen by the pictures. As well as by handlers.

So you would think that this enormous difference would be a major part of discussions of age?

Nahhh. When the Tischendorf-Hort steamroller moved, any questions should be rolled over.
 
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Steven Avery

Steven Avery

Administrator
Codex Vercellensis - the crumbling manuscript

Seeing the Codex Vercellensis in a New Light: Multispectral Imaging and the Old Latin Bible
http://evangelicaltextualcriticism.blogspot.com/2015/03/seeing-codex-vercellensis-in-new-light.html

the Codex Vercellensis or Codex A is the earliest manuscript of the Gospels in Latin. As such, it is perhaps the closest witness to the text of the Christian Bible in the West in the age of Constantine and the Council of Nicaea. Housed in the Capitulary Library of Vercelli since the time of St. Eusebius of Vercelli under whose auspices it was written, the manuscript now contains 317 folios, many of which are badly damaged by mold and decay to the point of illegibility. In fact, the last edition of Codex A to be made from an original reading of the manuscript was in the mid 18th century when it was considerably more legible than it is today.

To stabilize the crumbling manuscript, Franz Ehrle, head conservator at the Vatican in the early 20th century, disbound it and encased each bifolium in thin sheets of gelatin.
 
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Steven Avery

Steven Avery

Administrator
Codex Amiatinus - too fragile to be seen by anyone

The book, now known as the Codex Amiatinus after the Tuscan town, remained at the abbey for the next 1000 years, but its ghost in the form of a perfect facsimile returns to Jarrow this weekend.

Codex Amiatinus is the oldest surviving Latin Vulgate bible, the 4th translation by St Jerome that became the official version for the Roman Catholic Church. But it was crafted by the Venerable Bede and his fellow Jarrow-Wearmouth monks over about 24 years to fulfill a commission from their abbot, Ceolfrith. Of the three that were made then, one was destroyed by fire and of the second only a single page survives and is in the British Library.

The Codex stayed at San Salvatore until the mid 18th century when it was removed to the Biblioteca Laurenziana in Florence, where it remains under lock and key, too fragile to be seen by anyone.
 
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Steven Avery

Steven Avery

Administrator
Sinaiticus ink has teshon protection from metallic ink damage

Related is the question of ink condition, e.g. in this thread:

Fountain Pen Network
Archival Qualities Of Iron Gall Inks
http://www.fountainpennetwork.com/forum/topic/226717-archival-qualities-of-iron-gall-inks/page-2
The Cambridge History of the Bible: Volume 2, The West from the Fathers to the Reformation (1975)
editor - Geoffrey William Hugo Lampe
https://books.google...e7wlN8C&pg=PA61 ,

"Early Christian Book-Production: Papyri and Manuscripts" - Theodore Cressy Skeat

Practically all Greek papyri use carbon ink, but from the fourth century A.D., and perhaps earlier, Greek parchment manuscripts used metallic ink: notable examples of the use of metallic ink are the Codex Sinaiticus and the Codex Alexandrinus; the latter has sustained serious damage as a result of the ink eating through the parchment.

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Sinaiticus, however, was immune from such damage. Did have the special "Tishon" coating that prevented such damage?

(ie. The concocted story from Tischendorf that Sinaiticus was a 4th century ms.)

Caution: do not use Sinaiticus for 1500+ years ink science.

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Skeat in the book, p. 79-80

Little can be said of the nature of the ink, as analysis cannot be carried out without damage to the manuscript. It is, however, certain from the way in which the vellum has been eaten away in many places3 that the ink was in the main an iron compound, and not the old carbon-and-gum ink which is found almost universally on papyri. So far as the evidence goes at present, it seems clear that this chemical ink came into use with the adoption of vellum as a writing material; a carbon ink would not stick to the surface of the vellum, whereas a chemical ink held, often only too well. The difference between the two can be clearly seen in a microscope, under which chemical ink appears as a stain, causing a kind of granulated effect on the vellum, whereas a carbon ink appears as a mass of individual specks of carbon resting on the surface. In the Sinaiticus, the ink, though mainly a chemical compound, must have contained a certain amount of carbon, as offsets are frequent, and the ink has run where damp has reached it.

3. The destruction of the vellum is not due to the ink itself, but to sulphuric acid liberated by chemical changes in it
Click to expand...
However, the CSP, Jongkind and others say little or nothing about this chemical eating way of the parchment, which Skeat says is in "many places" and that he uses to theorize on the ink chemistry.
 
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Steven Avery

Steven Avery

Administrator
Codex Tischendorfianus I - Uncial 0106 - Tischendorf theft
came out of Sinai as part of the same batch that Tischendorf heisted, including the 43 CFA leaves that went to Leipzig.

Tischendorfianus I was described by Scrivener (and later Breen) as so brittle that it basically should not be touched.

A Plain Introduction to the Criticism of the New Testament (1861)
https://books.google.com/books?id=6pOl5kos2O0C&pg=PA124
"It consists of but four leaves (all imperfect) 4to, of very thin vellum, almost too brittle to be touched, so that each leaf is kept separately in glass."

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Codex Tischendorfianus I
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codex_Tischendorfianus_I

Codex Tischendorfianus I, designated as Uncial 0106 (in the Gregory-Aland numbering), ε 40 (Soden), is a Greek uncial manuscript of the New Testament on parchment. It is dated palaeographically to the 7th century. The manuscript is fragmentary.

Size 30 centimetres (12 in) x 22 centimetres (8.7 in)
The manuscript was brought by Constantin von Tischendorf in 1845 and in 1853 from Sinai. Tischendorf edited its text in Monumenta sacra inedita.[4] [5]

The codex is divided, and located in three places:
From the same manuscript originated four other leaves now catalogued as Uncial 0119. It was discovered by J. Rendel Harris at Sinai, who examined it.[7] Hermann von Soden designed it as ε 63. It is still housed in the Saint Catherine's Monastery (Sinai Harris 8, 56,8 ff.) on the Sinai peninsula.

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Footnotes

Gregory, Caspar René (1900). Textkritik des Neuen Testaments. Vol. 1. Leipzig: Hinrichs. p. 96.

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Breen (1898)
https://books.google.com/books?id=4iJHAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA469
1692951014657.png
 
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Steven Avery

Steven Avery

Administrator
Codex Alexandrinus; the latter has sustained serious damage as a result of the ink eating through the parchment.

limp, dead compared.
 
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