Manuscripts of the Greek Bible: An Introduction to Palaeography

An introduction to any subject must start with the obvious. Much of the art and the science of paleography consists of looking beyond the obvious.

Let's begin by defining the key term: Paleography is "old writing," and the purpose of the study of paleography is to determine as much as possible about an ancient manuscript based on its writing. Most desirable, usually, is to determine the manuscript's date, but the place from which it came, and the sort of person who wrote it, are also worth knowing, and a good paleographer may be able to determine even more than that.

The clues a paleographer uses are many. The most obvious is the writing style itself -- styles change over time, so if a manuscript uses a lot of letters in (say) an eleventh show more century style, it's a good bet it's from the eleventh century. But there are other clues. If a manuscript is written on paper, it was obviously copied after paper was introduced. The watermarks on the paper may also give clues. So may the material used for ink. And the way the writing material was scored for writing (vellum, or animal skin, didn't come with nice margin guides the way modern note paper does!).

So a paleographer will assess all these things in looking at a manuscript.

This book alludes to many of these clues for dating, but it doesn't really say how to use them. It shows pictures of many Greek manuscripts, but doesn't give clues as to how to use them. What we need is hints, such as "observe the form of the letter Σ. This is typical of ninth century usage." Or "the thick strokes, strong verticals, and spaces between words imply a date after the seventh century." Such examples are needed if one is to learn paleography. And this book just doesn't supply them.

One might say that it is not an introduction to paleography itself, but merely to the tools used by paleography. Anyone who wants to actually do it will need a more advanced book, such as Thompson's An Introduction to Greek & Latin Palaeography.

That's the bad news. The good news is, this book contains many large-scale photos of Greek manuscripts, many of them important ones. The student may not learn much about paleography from this book, but the manuscripts are still worth seeing. Yes, someday they should go up on the Internet. But "someday" is not yet. While we wait, this book is still worth having. You just have to understand what it isn't. Which would be a lot easier if it had a more accurate title. I'd probably give it at least one more star if it were renamed. show less

Well illustrated introduction to Greek palaeography. B &W illustrations showing many of the major surviving examples of the Bible in Greek.