Bible as Notepad: Tracing Annotations and Annotation Practices in Late Antique and Medieval Biblical Manuscripts

Description

The present volume provides a comparative look at the contents and layout features of secondary annotations in biblical manuscripts across linguistic traditions. Due to the privileged focus on the text in the columns, these annotations and the practices that produced them have not received the scholarly attention they deserve. The vast richness of extant verbal and figurative notes accompanying the biblical texts in the intercolumns and margins of the manuscript pages have thus been largely overlooked. The case studies gathered in this volume explore Jewish and Christian biblical manuscripts through the lens of their annotations, addressing the various relationships between the primary layer of text and the secondary notes, and exploring the roles and functions of annotated manuscripts as cultural artifacts. By approaching biblical manuscripts as potential "notepads", the volume offers theoretical reflection and empirical analyses of the ways in which secondary notes may shed new light on the development and transmission of text traditions, the shifting engagement with biblical manuscripts over time, as well as the change of use and interpretation that may result from the addition of the notes themselves. Preface and acknowledgements Contents List of contributors Bible as notepad: Exploring annotations and annotation practices in biblical manuscripts In the margins of the Dead Sea Scrolls Margins as media: The long insertion in 4QJera (4Q70) Additional notes in Christian Egyptian biblical manuscripts (fourth–eleventh centuries): Brief remarks Divining gospel: Classifying manuscripts of John used in sortilege Written evidence in the Italian Giant Bibles: Around and beyond the sacred text Giannozzo Manetti’s handwritten notes in his Hebrew Bibles Notes and colophons of scribes and readers in Georgian biblical manuscripts from Saint Catherine’s Monastery (Sinai) EMML 8400 and notes on the reading of Hēnok in Ethiopia Toward a definition of paratexts and paratextuality: The case of ancient Greek manuscripts List of quoted manuscripts