Tuesday, January 25, 2022

Raw material

After that little digression into John bar Penkaye's overall oeuvre, I return to the Resh Melle - for manuscripts.

Last Sunday I'd found the Syriaco #592 held at the Vatican. The second Memra starts here at down-arrow 159v = page 320 (in Arabic numerals). For some reason I know not, it is in the Western script - did some Nestorian slip away back there?

I am (now) accustomed to the Eastern script so for that - Furman directs us to BnF 405. Pace Furman, I consider the Qadmaya Memra to start Page 4v=1: BnF 405 carries the first memra to 21v, where the second picks up. BnF 405 is the first volume; the second, BnF 406, starts at Memra #8, best I can read that. Note: not broken #9/#10 like Johanan bar Penkaye intended. I should point out that BnF 405 looks like a palimpsest although the lower text does not obscure our text. The scribe's crabbed handwriting does that...

Both have their flaws; but since we do have this thing in two scripts, poor penmanship in the Bibliothèque may be checked against bad photocopying in the Vatican.

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