Author Archives: Brent Nongbri
A Roman Library in Spain and the “declamatio sarcophagus”
I’ve been thinking quite a bit in recent years about the places where Roman books were stored and used. So I was interested to see several news stories in the last couple days with headlines like “One of the Best … Continue reading
Michael Blanding’s The Gospel According to Hobby Lobby
When I began this blog back in 2017, the mysteries surrounding Hobby Lobby and its biblical manuscripts were really driving some aspects of my research. Over the last decade, there has been thorough reporting of on Hobby Lobby and its … Continue reading
The Iconography of Jewish Scrolls in the Roman Era
A recent visit to the Jewish catacomb at Vigna Randanini got me thinking a little more about the iconography of Jewish scrolls (–thanks to Tony Keddie and the University of Texas at Austin for making the visit possible). The inscription … Continue reading
A New Article on P.Oxy. 7.1008 and 7.1009 (P15 and P16)
The latest issue of Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft contains an article I wrote on two papyrus folia from Oxyrhynchus. Here is the abstract: P.Oxy. 7.1008 and 7.1009 (P15 and P16 in the INTF’s Kurzgefasste Liste) preserve portions of 1 … Continue reading
An Illustrated Papyrus in Florence
I’ve long been intrigued by a famous illustrated papyrus. You may have seen it on the cover of Lincoln Blumell and Thomas Wayment’s book, Christian Oxyrhynchus: Texts, Documents, and Sources (2015): The front matter in the book identifies the illustration … Continue reading
Conservation of a Papyrus Roll with No Glass Frames
Some of the real workhorses of both my teaching and public presentations over the years have been a group of papyrus rolls in Berlin. They are a set of Greek documentary rolls from the second half of the second century … Continue reading
The Provenance and Date of the Berlin Cretans
One of the reference points that used to come up very frequently in discussions of the earliest codices was a manuscript of Euripides–the Berlin Cretans, an isolated parchment folium that was published in 1907 as BKT V.2 XVII (P.Berol. inv. … Continue reading
An Early Latin Codex with a Clear Date of Production
One of the frustrating things about working with the earliest codices and codex fragments is the lack of securely dated examples. Palaeography can give a general range, and archaeological context or reuse can sometimes give us a decent terminus ante … Continue reading
Reusing Pages of Books
Parts of ancient books were recycled in a variety of different ways, but I don’t recall having seen anything quite like this before. It’s a portion of a parchment folium from a codex that contained some works of Demosthenes (P.Amh. … Continue reading
The Reuse of a Sarcophagus with a Menorah
Another very interesting item in the epigraphic collection at the Baths of Diocletian in Rome is a portion of a sarcophagus that contains a nice depiction of a menorah. It is typically assigned to the third or fourth century CE, … Continue reading
Variant Readings 