I have been
working on the Syriac Codex Ambrosianus lately. Or have I?
Let me be
precise. For a couple of weeks during the last years, maybe for a month all
together, I have indeed been exploring the codex kept at the Biblioteca
Ambrosiana. But apart from that, I have been sitting at my desk in Oslo working
on Antonio M. Ceriani’s facsimile edition, Translatio Syra
Pescitto Veteris Testamenti ex codice Ambrosiano, sec. fere VI
photolithographice edita (1876—1883) as well as the Gorgias Press reprint edition published in
2013.
The fact
that published editions of a text are something qualitatively different than the
copies of that text surviving in actual manuscripts has been pointed out on
several occasions already and need not be reiterated here. Eva Mroczek is among
the scholars who have eminently shown how such editions may come to shape the
scholarly imagination of given texts.
However,
what I want to run with you in the current blog post is the ways in which facsimile
editions may also shape our imagination, both of a manuscript and its texts,
using Ceriani’s facsimile edition as a test case. The effects of a facsimile
may be more subtle and therefore sometimes harder to pin down, since a
facsimile edition is supposed to be a reproduction of the manuscript page and because
it is sometimes used by scholars as a manuscript replacement. “Facsimile” – the
very word promises an exact copy, right?
Let me start
by making one thing very clear: the importance of Ceriani’s photolitographical
edition of the Syriac Codex Ambrosianus for the research on the Peshiṭta
version of the Old Testament cannot be overstated. At the time of its
publication in the latter part of the nineteenth century it was regarded a
masterpiece. Ceriani’s facsimile edition was of unrivalled quality and
usability, making the texts of the codex available to the scholarly community.
The importance of the edition can be illustrated by the fact that its very existence
was one of the reasons why the Codex Ambrosianus was chosen as the main
manuscript source for the editions of the Peshiṭta Old Testament, published by the International Organization for the
Study of the Old Testament and the Leiden Peshiṭta Institute in the series The Old Testament in Syriac According to
the Peshiṭta Version since 1966 (1972). The facsimile made the
manuscript witnesses easily available to the editors taking part in the
project.
Due to the
importance of this particular facsimile edition, it becomes even more pertinent
to point out how it may shape our imagination of the codex: how it changes the
codex, what it adds and what it takes away.
Four brief points.
The first three concern the way the facsimile represents the organization of the
codex, the page layout, as well as the various text units co-inhabiting the
page. The fourth and final point concerns the editor’s additions to the codex.
First, the
facsimile edition does not show the difference between black and red ink. In
other words, all text is reproduced in black. This means that titles, end
titles and subsection headings, which are written in red ink in the manuscript,
do not stand out as they do in the codex itself. Hence, we may easily overlook
some of the subsection headings, in particular, and we miss out on the visual
effect and function the red ink may have had to those who engaged with the
codex in late antiquity and the middle ages, serving for instance as book marks
and to highlight unit dividers. We also miss out on observations that may
matter to the way we understand the production phase of the codex and possibly
the use of various Vorlagen in that process, for instance the
observation that the layout of Chronicles stands out from the rest of the
codex, containing no red ink whatsoever. In Chronicles, there are no subsection
headings and no use of rosettes as paragraph markers (crafted in red and black
in the rest of the codex), but rather a different set of division markers.
Second, the
facsimile shows only (approximately) half of the marginal notes appearing in
the codex itself. The best preserved marginal notes certainly show in the
facsimile as well, but the ones that have faded, some of the notes written in
green and red ink, as well as those that are partly erased do not show. Several
of these notes provide information about later engagement with the codex,
particularly the notes appearing on the first eleven folios containing Genesis,
and certainly matter to the discussion of the usage (or non-usage) of this
codex (I may return to these notes in a later post).
Third, the
2013 Gorgias reprint (which is, as far as I can tell, based on the University
of Pennsylvania copy of the facsimile [?]) has systematically reproduced the recto
pages of the folios in the position of verso pages and vice versa. This
makes it difficult to grasp the constitution of the codex, for instance, how
the quires are made up and how running titles in the upper margins are
functioning. And importantly: since we cannot see in this edition how the pages
are facing each other in the codex, it is much harder to detect the occasions
where ink has been transferred from one adjacent page to another. This extra
ink on a page may be misunderstood as part of the text of the columns, or as a
correction or an additional note. (And by the way: the additional note on folio
330v, which provides important information about the history of the codex, has
not been included at all in this edition).
Fourth, Ceriani
equipped the biblical books in the facsimile with titles, as well as chapter (and
sometimes verse) numbers. On the one hand, this may certainly serve as an aid
to the reader. On the other hand, the addition of titles and chapter enumeration
may also effectively add to – and hide – information, further affecting our
imagination of the texts in the codex.
The
representation of the First Epistle of Baruch is an excellent example. In the
codex, the so-called First Epistle of Baruch is copied on folios 176v-177v. The
title in red ink on folio 176v identifies this epistle as “The first epistle of Baruch the scribe,
which he sent from the midst of Jerusalem to Babylon”. There is no chapter
enumeration, but rosettes are serving as paragraph marks. In the facsimile,
Ceriani has added a title in the intercolumn next to the title provided in the
column, identifying the First Epistle of Baruch as “Ep. Bar. Apoc.”. He has
also added chapter numbers, starting with 78 and ending with 86. In other
words, Ceriani’s additional paratextual layer re-identifies this epistle as the
epistle located in the latter part of the Apocalypse of Baruch (2 Baruch),
which is copied elsewhere in the codex (ff. 257r-267r), and assimilates the
organization of this text unit with the organization of the epistle copied as
part of the larger apocalypse, starting in chapter 78.
On the one
hand, it could be argued that Ceriani has done editors of the epistle a favor,
showing that this epistle ascribed to Baruch is copied twice in the codex –
after all the two copies share approximately 80% of the text and may in this
regard be understood as more or less “the same”. In the history of editing of
this epistle the two copies have indeed been used as witnesses to the same
text, a single epistle of Baruch. On the other hand, it should be pointed out
that Ceriani has effectively erased the identity of the First Epistle of Baruch
as an autonomous text unit in the codex. In the codex, this epistle bears
another name than the epistle in 2 Baruch, it is copied as part of another
tripartite unit (The Epistles of Jeremiah and of Baruch), and copied adjacent
to Jeremiah and Lamentations. Furthermore, the organization of the text,
indicated by its use of rosettes as division markers, suggests that it has been
read quite differently than the epistle attached to the apocalypse – which may
potentially be important since this is the (version of the) epistle that was
read in worship contexts. Ceriani’s additions, thus, may have served the work
of text critics identifying various witnesses to an assumed earlier Epistle of
Baruch, but they have certainly clouded the view of those of us who aim to
understand this text unit as it appears in the codex kept at the Biblioteca Ambrosiana.
Back at my
desk in Oslo, I find myself constantly juggling the two in my mind, the codex
and the facsimile. After my last stay in Milan, I had memorized the position of
a passage in the codex, but due to the inverted location of the verso and recto
pages in the reprint edition I have to reimagine everything in order to
retrieve it in Oslo. Moreover, I constantly have to remind myself that the titles
provided by Ceriani serve most of all as indications as to how modern
scholarship has perceived of biblical books and assessed copies of texts in
manuscripts primarily by their perceived value as text witnesses. They do not
help me understand the organization and identifications of the text units as
integral parts of the codex.
And, as the
memory of the codex continues to fade, the facsimile is starting to play tricks
with my mind.
This blog post is based on my research and is part of the wider dissemination of my work. If you want to use the information in this post, please cite it!
Lied, Liv Ingeborg, “What facsimiles may do for you: the Syriac Codex Ambrosianus (7a1) reimagined,” posted on Religion – Manuscripts – Media Culture, [20 May 2016] (URL, retrieved [date]).
If you want to discuss any of the findings or hypotheses, feel free to contact me in the commentary field below.
Select
literature
P.A.H. de Boer. “Praefatio.” Pages v-xiv in Institutum Peshittonianum
Leidense, Vetus Testamentum Syriace iuxta simplicem syrorum versionem. Part
I, fasc. 1. Leiden: Brill, 1977.
Antonio M. Ceriani. Translatio Syra Pescitto Veteris Testamenti ex
codice Ambrosiano, sec. fere VI photolithographice edita. 2 vols. Milan:
Bibliotheca Ambrosianae Mediolani, 1876-1883.
–. , ed. A Facsimilie Edition of the
Peshiṭto Old Testament Based on Codex Ambrosianus (7a1). Introduction by
Emidio Vergani. Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2013.
Liv Ingeborg
Lied. “Between ‘Text Witness’ and ‘Text on the Page’: Trajectories in the
History of Editing the Epistle of Baruch.” In Snapshots of Evolving
Traditions: Jewish and Christian Manuscript Culture, Textual Fluidity, and New
Philology. Edited by Liv Ingeborg Lied and Hugo Lundhaug. Texte und Untersuchungen zur
Geschichte der altchristlichen Literatur 175. Berlin: De Gruyter, forthcoming.
Eva Mroczek,
The Literary Imagination in Jewish Antiquity. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2016.
