Timothy Janz palaeography web site
- Thread starter Steven Avery
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Steven Avery
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Snapp
https://www.thetextofthegospels.com/2022/08/production-dates-how-do-we-get-them.html
The first systematic study of Greek palaeography was made by Bernard de Montfaucon, a Benedictine monk, in 1708. Almost instantly, paleography grew into a scientific field of study. In 1912, Edward Maunde Thompson published An Introduction to Greek and Latin Palaeography, a book which remains useful today. American scholar Bruce Metzger focused on Biblical writings in his 1981 book Manuscripts of the Greek Bible: An Introduction to Palaeography. Recently, Timothy Janz has written Greek Paleography From Antiquity to the Renaissance, which is available to read at the Vatican Library’s website. With just a few hours of effort, readers of Janz’s introduction can gain plenty of information about palaeography (and view the specific scripts in manuscripts at the Vatican Library).
https://www.thetextofthegospels.com/2022/08/production-dates-how-do-we-get-them.html
The first systematic study of Greek palaeography was made by Bernard de Montfaucon, a Benedictine monk, in 1708. Almost instantly, paleography grew into a scientific field of study. In 1912, Edward Maunde Thompson published An Introduction to Greek and Latin Palaeography, a book which remains useful today. American scholar Bruce Metzger focused on Biblical writings in his 1981 book Manuscripts of the Greek Bible: An Introduction to Palaeography. Recently, Timothy Janz has written Greek Paleography From Antiquity to the Renaissance, which is available to read at the Vatican Library’s website. With just a few hours of effort, readers of Janz’s introduction can gain plenty of information about palaeography (and view the specific scripts in manuscripts at the Vatican Library).
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Steven Avery
Administrator
PBF from Nongbri
Strong reasons exist for being skeptical of using a framework of linear palaeographic development to provide precise dates for Greek manuscripts of the Roman era in general and for the ‘Biblical Majuscule’ specifically. As Timothy Janz has pointed out, ‘It is notable that Cavallo’s entire reconstruction of the “formation” of the canon [of the Biblical Majuscule] is not, and cannot be, corroborated by any objective evidence, due to the lack of dated exemplars’.17 The particular case of Codex Sinaiticus with its multiple copyists highlights the problem with attributing too much chronological value to minute graphic differences in scripts, as Milne and Skeat remark: ‘The dangers of judging age on grounds of style are nowhere better illustrated than in the Sinaiticus itself, where the hands of scribes A and B present a markedly more archaic appearance than that of scribe D; did we not know that all three were contemporary, D might well have been judged half a century later than A and B’.18 This striking observation is a reminder that we should be suspicious when high-precision dates for this type of writing are proposed based only on palaeography.
17
Timothy Janz, ‘Greek Paleography: From Antiquity to the Renaissance’ (<https://spotlight.vatlib.it/greek-paleography/feature/1-majuscule-bookhands>). See also the review of Cavallo by Peter J. Parsons in Gnomon 42 (1970), pp. 375–80. For general caution about the use of palaeographic evidence to generate narrow date ranges for Greek literary manuscripts of the Roman era, see
Strong reasons exist for being skeptical of using a framework of linear palaeographic development to provide precise dates for Greek manuscripts of the Roman era in general and for the ‘Biblical Majuscule’ specifically. As Timothy Janz has pointed out, ‘It is notable that Cavallo’s entire reconstruction of the “formation” of the canon [of the Biblical Majuscule] is not, and cannot be, corroborated by any objective evidence, due to the lack of dated exemplars’.17 The particular case of Codex Sinaiticus with its multiple copyists highlights the problem with attributing too much chronological value to minute graphic differences in scripts, as Milne and Skeat remark: ‘The dangers of judging age on grounds of style are nowhere better illustrated than in the Sinaiticus itself, where the hands of scribes A and B present a markedly more archaic appearance than that of scribe D; did we not know that all three were contemporary, D might well have been judged half a century later than A and B’.18 This striking observation is a reminder that we should be suspicious when high-precision dates for this type of writing are proposed based only on palaeography.
17
Timothy Janz, ‘Greek Paleography: From Antiquity to the Renaissance’ (<https://spotlight.vatlib.it/greek-paleography/feature/1-majuscule-bookhands>). See also the review of Cavallo by Peter J. Parsons in Gnomon 42 (1970), pp. 375–80. For general caution about the use of palaeographic evidence to generate narrow date ranges for Greek literary manuscripts of the Roman era, see