Abstract
Abstract This paper unfolds parts of the dynamic, yet mostly hidden, history of MS Sinai Arabic 151 based on its paleographical, codicological, paratextual, and textual features. Combining these aspects opens new horizons of research in the Arabic Bible manuscripts that had previously received attention limited solely to the text. MS Sinai, Ar. 151 is an intact manuscript containing the Pauline Epistles, Acts of the Apostles, and the Catholic Epistles. Its fame derives mainly from its colophon, which dates it to 867 CE, and bestows it with the distinction of belonging to the earliest Arabic Bibles. In observing the various stages through which the manuscript evolved from two separate units of production into the codex preserved today, several aspects of the life of MS Sinai, Ar. 151, such as the copies made from it, its damage and restoration, and the functions it served, become clearer. Furthermore, for different reasons, scholars have cast shadows on its colophon’s authenticity. Our investigation clarifies that there is no reason to suspect the authenticity of the colophon.
Highlights
The Christian communities of the Near East gradually abandoned their original languages—Greek, Syriac, or Coptic—and adopted the Arabic language after the rise of Islam
The earliest manuscripts go back no further than the late 8th century, for instance, MS Sinai, Ar. 154, which includes in addition to the aforementioned treatise the Acts of the Apostles and the Catholic Epistles
An anonymous author in the thirteenth century made a preface to the translation of Saadiah Gaon that is called the tafsīr ‘commentary.’11. These prefaces were text-centred and contained nothing about the making of the physical object; the Arabic Bible manuscripts still lack the proper investigation of this aspect
Summary
1 and 2Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, 1 and 2 Thessalonians, 1 and 2Timothy, Titus, Philemon, and Hebrews. 34 Staal thought that the Syriac exemplar from which the Pauline Epistles were translated originated from the so-called Alexandrian or Western text-type; see Staal, Mt. Sinai Arabic Codex 151, I. Pauline Epistles [Translation], 228; Brock, “A Neglected Witness to the East Syriac New Testament Commentary Tradition,” 208. A number of them, such as MSS Sinai, Ar. 34–36, are Greek-Arabic psalters and, unlike the Byzantine custom, they usually begin with the hair-side of the parchment, in accordance with the Arabic custom.60 These ‘sloping pointed Majuscule’ manuscripts began to appear in the second half of the ninth century and continue to exist until the late tenth century.. D’Agostino, Collectanea 23 (Spoleto: Centro italiano di studi sull’ alto medioevo, 2010), 461–464
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