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Author Archives: Brent Nongbri
Parchment Book Covers for Papyrus Rolls
In a series of earlier posts, I examined some of the vocabulary used to describe papyrus rolls, especially those deluxe literary rolls described by Latin poets. One additional feature of these rolls that is sometimes mentioned is a parchment cover. … Continue reading
Posted in Book covers, Palaeography, Voluminology
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The Faddan More Psalter
One of the most interesting manuscripts to come to light in recent years is the Faddan More Psalter, a parchment codex in a leather cover that contained the Psalms in Latin. It was discovered by a worker harvesting peat for … Continue reading
Update: Hobby Lobby vs. Dirk Obbink
An anonymous commenter links to the resource below, which appears to show some developments in the civil case against Professor Obbink. I have not accessed the documents in the linked here, as they are behind a paywall: https://www.pacermonitor.com/public/case/40480193/Hobby_Lobby_Stores_Inc_v_Obbink
Posted in Dirk Obbink, Green Collection
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New Site for Posts on Codices and Codicology
Back in the summer, I mentioned that I would be starting a new research project this autumn, The Early History of the Codex: A New Methodology and Ethics for Manuscript Studies (EthiCodex). For the last few weeks, I’ve been in … Continue reading
Posted in Codices, Codicology
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The Next Book
I’m excited to say that my colleague Liv Ingeborg Lied and I recently signed a contract with Yale University Press to co-author a book tentatively titled Working with Manuscripts: A Guide. The goal of the book is to demystify manuscript … Continue reading
Posted in Working with Manuscripts
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The Dead Sea Scrolls of New Jersey
It is well known that a few of the best preserved Dead Sea Scrolls spent some time in the United States in the 1940s and 1950s. The Syrian Archbishop Mar Athanasius Yeshue Samuel brought four scrolls to the US in … Continue reading
Posted in Antiquities Market, Archaeological context, Dead Sea Scrolls
Tagged Dead Sea Scrolls, qumran, Qumran Cave 1Q
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Dead Sea Scrolls at the Vatican
A visit to the Vatican Museums almost always yields something new. You can never know which rooms will be open, so occasionally there is the pleasant surprise of getting to see material that is usually hidden away. There are also … Continue reading
The Fate of the Van Kampen Collection
I’ve written before on a few occasions about the Van Kampen Collection of ancient manuscripts, a kind of predecessor of the Green Collection. In fact, it was Scott Carroll, the main architect of the Green Collection, who was also the … Continue reading
Stands for Holding Open Papyrus Rolls?
In discussions of the early codex, one often finds statements about the obvious technological superiority of the book with pages over the roll. Sometimes these claims will push further and say that rolls were not only relatively less easy to … Continue reading
Posted in Voluminology
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More Papyrus Roll Vocabulary: frons, cornua, umbilicus
In an earlier post, I raised some questions about the description of papyrus rolls. This generated some very helpful discussion in the comments. I now want to look at some of the ancient terminology for rolls. A good place to … Continue reading
Posted in Martial, Voluminology
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Variant Readings 