1/8/09
Cologne Mani-Codex
The Codex Manichaicus Coloniensis has made an appearance in blogdom today because April DeConick found it in its high-res glory (Der Mani-Kodex) at the website for the Cologne Papyri collection, which has provided quality images of its catalog items for some time now. The codex is interesting for a few reasons. What is left of it has provided a great deal of previously unknown information (firm dates and background info) about the founder of Manicheism. But it is also very tiny, only about 38 x 48 mm. As you can tell from the photos, its 96 parchment leaves are of a high quality, which permitted the clarity of its tiny and exacting script. Scattered throughout are remnants of thread, a lot of stitching stations, and curiously graphical marginal notations. Due to its size and presentation, many take it as an amulet, but I agree with Lee that the incredible amount of scribal artistry involved with such miniatures suggests alternative uses. I am inclined to think that the size of CMC is a radical example of the use of codices as a far more convenient and transportable format over the scroll. "Amulet" as a designation gets tossed around very quickly when dealing with artifacts of this size - it may be that these kinds of books were to their larger ancestors what a Kindle download of Infinite Jest would be to its massive counterpart.
1/7/09
New Series on "Bible in Technology": Learning and Teaching in a Post-PowerPoint Age.
Excellent news via Mark Goodacre about a new series from Gorgias Press about the impact computer technology can (and could) have on biblical studies: Bible in Technology:
"The Bible in Technology (BIT) is a series that explores the intersection between biblical studies and computer technology. It also includes studies that address the application of computer technology to cognate fields of ancient history. The series provides a forum for presenting and discussing advancements in this area, such as new software or techniques for analyzing biblical materials, online projects, and teaching resources. The series also seeks to reflect on the contribution and impact of computer technology on biblical research and teaching methods."
Besides the obvious impact these tools can have on scholarship, it is entirely possible that the current exploration of various database packages, imaging programs, and online virtualization platforms will change the appearance of biblical studies classrooms within the next generation of teaching. I can imagine walking students through Paul's missionary journeys via a set of Google Earth reconstructions of major Greco-Roman urban centers. Consider the ease with which students can be trained to deal with textual variants through the evolving online NA 28, and schooled in the basics of NT manuscript features with reference to commonly available hi-res images. Even just the potential similar software holds for rooting the student's first experience of NT theology and narration in physical materials is provocative. We are moving quickly beyond PowerPoint here. In terms of emerging forms of pedagogy, I look forward to the possiblity that this series may provide the practical tools for teachers eager to provide more immersive contexts for learning.
And beyond this, the wikification of biblical studies in a plethora of blogs and twitters is but one facet of the changing face of the Bible in Technology. It is the increased functionality of text-critical databases that will move debate about text-types forward. We can't even quite predict what the increased focus on digital imaging (as at CSNTM) will produce, at least an increase in knowledge of both the breadth and depth of existing fragments and manuscripts. Every year I attend papers on ANE archeology more to see what impact tech is having on that guild than anything else, and one can see such innovation clearly in the first volume to be published by Gorgias Press on virtual Qumran. It is important to note that new technologies can affect academic scholarship in the same the way technology affects other disciplines or industries. The shift towards the internet as a news source, for example, has affected the very form of advertising and journalism. In the same way that the printing press affected literacy habits, so has digital publishing begin to create seismic shifts in the way we relate to texts. This is all entry-level McLuhan, but the effect of technology on the way we percieve antiquity and historiography has been tested more specifically by Walter Ong (Orality and Literacy) and Jeffrey Staley (The Print's First Kiss). Beyond the ability of emerging technology to arrange and articulate large fields of data that NT scholars, textual critics, and papyrologists have been wrapping their heads around for centuries, software can actually create new disciplines of thought that otherwise could not exist.
Consider, for example, a visual updating of Turner's Typology of the Codex, which would lay out the same data (including minor modifications and updates) with hypertexted reference to each manuscript and feature listed. Such a tool would provide the codicological database that doesn't currently exist, but it would also enable us to further root our understanding of the scribal process in more clarified historical forms. It would enable us to think of this newly accessible record as a searchable collection of artifacts rather than a set of figures which could only previously be "seen" through charts and graphs. The odd effect of a continued use of technology may not be the disembodiment of New Testament history through the same virtualizing processes that have characterized effects of the internet in other industries, but the evocation of an historical realism that has otherwise been inacessible to the casual student.
So, other than the possibility that this series may eventually alight on the topic of what current tech can reveal about books and literacy in the first and second century (as if there were anyone that could speak to this specific topic), it will be well worth keeping tabs on it for two reasons:
1. It may provide the post-PowerPoint practical tools that enable teachers to create more immersive learning contexts and student access points to all the fields of data that copy machines can't really provide.
2. It may not just track the ways in which technology is increasing the accuracy, adaptability, and searchability of current databases, but it may also chart the movement of scholarship towards schools of thought that can only be enacted within these emerging technologies themselves.
"The Bible in Technology (BIT) is a series that explores the intersection between biblical studies and computer technology. It also includes studies that address the application of computer technology to cognate fields of ancient history. The series provides a forum for presenting and discussing advancements in this area, such as new software or techniques for analyzing biblical materials, online projects, and teaching resources. The series also seeks to reflect on the contribution and impact of computer technology on biblical research and teaching methods."
Besides the obvious impact these tools can have on scholarship, it is entirely possible that the current exploration of various database packages, imaging programs, and online virtualization platforms will change the appearance of biblical studies classrooms within the next generation of teaching. I can imagine walking students through Paul's missionary journeys via a set of Google Earth reconstructions of major Greco-Roman urban centers. Consider the ease with which students can be trained to deal with textual variants through the evolving online NA 28, and schooled in the basics of NT manuscript features with reference to commonly available hi-res images. Even just the potential similar software holds for rooting the student's first experience of NT theology and narration in physical materials is provocative. We are moving quickly beyond PowerPoint here. In terms of emerging forms of pedagogy, I look forward to the possiblity that this series may provide the practical tools for teachers eager to provide more immersive contexts for learning.
And beyond this, the wikification of biblical studies in a plethora of blogs and twitters is but one facet of the changing face of the Bible in Technology. It is the increased functionality of text-critical databases that will move debate about text-types forward. We can't even quite predict what the increased focus on digital imaging (as at CSNTM) will produce, at least an increase in knowledge of both the breadth and depth of existing fragments and manuscripts. Every year I attend papers on ANE archeology more to see what impact tech is having on that guild than anything else, and one can see such innovation clearly in the first volume to be published by Gorgias Press on virtual Qumran. It is important to note that new technologies can affect academic scholarship in the same the way technology affects other disciplines or industries. The shift towards the internet as a news source, for example, has affected the very form of advertising and journalism. In the same way that the printing press affected literacy habits, so has digital publishing begin to create seismic shifts in the way we relate to texts. This is all entry-level McLuhan, but the effect of technology on the way we percieve antiquity and historiography has been tested more specifically by Walter Ong (Orality and Literacy) and Jeffrey Staley (The Print's First Kiss). Beyond the ability of emerging technology to arrange and articulate large fields of data that NT scholars, textual critics, and papyrologists have been wrapping their heads around for centuries, software can actually create new disciplines of thought that otherwise could not exist.
Consider, for example, a visual updating of Turner's Typology of the Codex, which would lay out the same data (including minor modifications and updates) with hypertexted reference to each manuscript and feature listed. Such a tool would provide the codicological database that doesn't currently exist, but it would also enable us to further root our understanding of the scribal process in more clarified historical forms. It would enable us to think of this newly accessible record as a searchable collection of artifacts rather than a set of figures which could only previously be "seen" through charts and graphs. The odd effect of a continued use of technology may not be the disembodiment of New Testament history through the same virtualizing processes that have characterized effects of the internet in other industries, but the evocation of an historical realism that has otherwise been inacessible to the casual student.
So, other than the possibility that this series may eventually alight on the topic of what current tech can reveal about books and literacy in the first and second century (as if there were anyone that could speak to this specific topic), it will be well worth keeping tabs on it for two reasons:
1. It may provide the post-PowerPoint practical tools that enable teachers to create more immersive learning contexts and student access points to all the fields of data that copy machines can't really provide.
2. It may not just track the ways in which technology is increasing the accuracy, adaptability, and searchability of current databases, but it may also chart the movement of scholarship towards schools of thought that can only be enacted within these emerging technologies themselves.
1/5/09
Nein to Umlauts. Long Live Distigmai!
Breaking news is a common thing in textual criticism in terms of interesting fragments, variants, and digitized bits and bobs popping up on the blogosphere and discussion lists. But in a breathtaking blitz on the common use of "umlaut" to describe the pairs of dots in the margin of Codex Vaticanus, Philip Payne has officially declared* that they henceforth be called "distigmai" (pl) or "distigme" (sing) for the following reasons:
1. It will be readily recognized as a technical term with a specific
meaning, namely the presence of two (di) points (stigmata).
2. It has no other meaning that might distract from its use to
identify the locations of textual variants.
3. It is related to other expressions that described textual variants
in antiquity and is the most in keeping with the standard lexicon of
Greek paleography.
4. It is the expression most likely to gain universal acceptance.
Thanks to this modification, we will also know what to call the marks discovered by James Snapp in Codex Sangallensis 50 (a beautiful 9th century gospels codex, see the covers and pastedowns in the "binding" menu). It is generally accepted that they indicate textual variants in Vaticanus, but this is not indicative of their purpose in other contexts. This clarification is helpful, in that umlaut has always been a silly makeshift designation - I just tended to call them double stigmai when not in mixed company. See Evangelical Textual Criticism for the whole story behind this shift in terminology. I don't expect to hear about this on Paul Harvey anytime soon. Willker has an excellent page on these distigmai (which is just today outdated!), from which this image is shamefully stolen:
*Apparently this will be codified in the forthcoming: Philip B. Payne and Paul Canart. "Distigmai Matching the Original Ink of Codex Vaticanus: Do they Mark the Location of Textual Variants?" pages 191-213 in Patrick Andrist, ed., Le manuscrit B de la Bible (Vaticanus gr. 1209): Introduction au fac-similé, Actes du Colloque de Genève (11 juin 2001), contributions supplémentaires. Prahins, Switzerland: Éditions du Zèbre, 2009
1. It will be readily recognized as a technical term with a specific
meaning, namely the presence of two (di) points (stigmata).
2. It has no other meaning that might distract from its use to
identify the locations of textual variants.
3. It is related to other expressions that described textual variants
in antiquity and is the most in keeping with the standard lexicon of
Greek paleography.
4. It is the expression most likely to gain universal acceptance.
Thanks to this modification, we will also know what to call the marks discovered by James Snapp in Codex Sangallensis 50 (a beautiful 9th century gospels codex, see the covers and pastedowns in the "binding" menu). It is generally accepted that they indicate textual variants in Vaticanus, but this is not indicative of their purpose in other contexts. This clarification is helpful, in that umlaut has always been a silly makeshift designation - I just tended to call them double stigmai when not in mixed company. See Evangelical Textual Criticism for the whole story behind this shift in terminology. I don't expect to hear about this on Paul Harvey anytime soon. Willker has an excellent page on these distigmai (which is just today outdated!), from which this image is shamefully stolen:
*Apparently this will be codified in the forthcoming: Philip B. Payne and Paul Canart. "Distigmai Matching the Original Ink of Codex Vaticanus: Do they Mark the Location of Textual Variants?" pages 191-213 in Patrick Andrist, ed., Le manuscrit B de la Bible (Vaticanus gr. 1209): Introduction au fac-similé, Actes du Colloque de Genève (11 juin 2001), contributions supplémentaires. Prahins, Switzerland: Éditions du Zèbre, 2009
1/3/09
An Intermission - The Machines That Made Us
Bear with me during this time of re-designing the site (it is horrific at the moment). In the meantime, enjoy Stephen Fry's The Machines that Made Us, which is the best introduction to Gutenberg and bookbinding tech around:
11/16/08
More Medieval Rebindings - Hebrew Manuscript Institute
On the heels of a previous post, Dr. Ezra Chwat passed along a photo from a Latin manuscript at an Innsbruck monastery (I am assuming the Wilton Basilica based on the file name). It is a rather pretty Latin text, you can see the column rules really well even from this picture (16th? 17th?). It has been rebound relatively recently in red cloth with some nice looking page repair. But whoever rebound it included the Hebrew folios that I am guessing lined the interior of the boards. You can see how intact and useful they are. In his email, Dr. Chwat made the point that if such folios had not been reclaimed and used as material in re-bindings, then they would have simply been read and handled until no longer viable and then buried according to custom. Such is the great blessing of bookbinding, which often recycles important literary artifacts simply because they were handy at the time.
Thanks for the helpful photo!
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