Word: manuscript
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...merely another prophet of Israel, and denounced Peter and Paul for preaching his message to the Gentiles. Now extraordinary new light has been cast on the beliefs of one such sect of Jewish Christians known as the Nassoreans or Nazarenes, in the form of a medieval Arab manuscript discovered in the archives of Istanbul. Biblical Scholar David Flusser of Jerusalem's Hebrew University, one of the world's ranking experts on early church history, calls the discovery "as important for the story of the first Christians as the Dead Sea Scrolls were for understanding the pre-Christian background...
...document itself is a rambling, 600-page manuscript, written by the 10th century Moslem theologian, Abd-al-Jabbar. About 140 pages of his text consist of an Arabic translation of a much older Syriac account of Nazarene beliefs, probably dating from the 5th century and presumably written by members of the sect. The Nazarenes, who claimed descent from Jesus' first disciples, were driven out of Palestine into Syria around 62 A.D. after a bitter quarrel with other Christians...
Though the garden-variety 19th century English baronet was normally content with a small, showcase library, Sir Thomas Phillipps was a certified bibliomaniac. Eventually his passion for manuscript collecting carried him to the point of buying the entire stock of London wastepaper merchants. He collected to the extent that his wife complained that they were "booked out of one wing and ratted out of the other...
When Phillipps died in 1872, his grandson went to work selling off the collection of nearly 60,000 manuscripts and 50,000 books. It was not until recently that London rare-book dealers, still sorting through remnants of the Phillipps heap, found the prize of his collection. There, scattered loosely, in virtually perfect condition, were the 272 pages of what is believed to be the first book with English illustrations ever prepared for printing. They formed the first nine books of a translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses. Books 10 through 15, unillustrated, were given to Cambridge University by Diarist...
Caxton's version was designed to include a half-page illustration for each of the 15 books. Only four of these miniatures were actually completed. Stylistically, the woodcuts appear to be of Flemish inspiration, although they were conceived and executed in England. The manuscript may never have been published by Caxton's London press at the Sign of the Red Pale. In fact, the printer had to work hard to keep it from being proscribed as the product of a pagan. Ovid was a Roman, but Caxton illustrated the book with the ancient poet praying, described as "atte...