A Trilingual by Christa Müller-Kessler
Studies in Manuscript Cultures, 2024
This article deals with the history of various methods to read palimp-sests with Christian Palest... more This article deals with the history of various methods to read palimp-sests with Christian Palestinian Aramaic and Syriac texts (fifth to seventh century) of diverse makings and origins, and the different results achieved through them in the last forty years. Early Christian Palestinian Aramaic and a variety of Syriac texts can be found hidden under a number of scripts such as Arabic, Christian Palestinian Aramaic, Georgian, Greek, Hebrew, and Syriac. Some have even been overwritten two or three times, which makes deciphering them an arduous task. The Hebrew square script tends to be particularly awkward, as it can cover al-most the whole lower script, which is then at times difficult to bring out with any technical methods, including even multispectral imaging. It will be demonstrated that such obstacles could and can be overcome with a number of approaches.
Fragment of the Month, 2023
ARAM, 2022
Excavations were conducted in February-April and November 2019 at the site of ‘Uyun Umm el-‘Azam ... more Excavations were conducted in February-April and November 2019 at the site of ‘Uyun Umm el-‘Azam West, ca. 3.8 km south of Sussita-Antiochia Hippos, in the southern Golan Heights and overlooking the Sea of Galilee. These excavations were undertaken on behalf of the Zinman Institute of Archaeology, University of Haifa, in the context of the Hippos Regional Project, which focuses on the study of rural sites and fortifications in the territory of Antiochia Hippos from the Hellenistic through to the Byzantine period. Several building phases in the complex were uncovered. They included a tower, inner courtyard, and a room. The mixed Early Roman material found in the foundations of the tower might suggest an earlier date for its construction, with the tower completely rebuilt in the Byzantine period. The room known as ‘The Mosaic Room’ was divided, probably by a partition wall, as indicated by the gap in the mosaic running across the room. A set of rooms was built on the eastern side of the inner courtyard and against the tower including a large oven.
This paper focuses on the Christian Palestinian Aramaic mosaic inscription from ‘Uyun Umm el-‘Azam West dedicated by a deaconess Thekla, its parallels, and its contribution to a better understanding of the ethnic and religious diversity in the Hippos territorium in the southern Levant and its environmental interactions.
Revue Biblique, 2024
This palimpsest parchment fragment T-S 12.758 from the Cairo Genizah contains the unattested pass... more This palimpsest parchment fragment T-S 12.758 from the Cairo Genizah contains the unattested passages of Joshua 7:2c-4; 9b-11a in the Christian Palestinian Aramaic version. It could be recently identified in the Cambridge University Library. The edition here offers a first reading of this fragment.
Digital Kartvelology, 2023
Christian Palestinian Aramaic, a branch of Western Aramaic, can be studied today due to the fact ... more Christian Palestinian Aramaic, a branch of Western Aramaic, can be studied today due to the fact that it was preserved for the early period (5th to 7th century) in the form of palimpsests. These early manuscripts were re-used in later centuries by scribes writing Arabic, Georgian, Hebrew, or Syriac. In this context one particular Georgian scribe plays an important role. The tenth-century scribe Ioanne Zosime started to make use of these parchments written in Christian Palestinian Aramaic in the Lavra of Mar Saba near Jerusalem in order to write new Georgian texts. He later moved these parchments to the Monastery of St Catherine on Mount Sinai, where he fulfilled the role of librarian. There he continued to dismember more of these Palestinian Aramaic manuscripts for his own purposes. Despite the dismantlement of this early text material, he helped to preserve unique texts relevant for the study of early church history by reusing them as palimpsests. Among them are the earliest witnesses of the Catecheses of Cyril of Jerusalem, the Dormition of Mary, the Old Jerusalem Lectionary, and unknown or very rare martyrdoms of which the Greek sources have been lost.
New Light on Old Manuscripts, 2023
The eighteenth quire of Codex Climaci rescriptus, which had been missing from the manuscript sinc... more The eighteenth quire of Codex Climaci rescriptus, which had been missing from the manuscript since its first publication, resurfaced now among the New Finds from St Catherine’s Monastery in 1975. Listed as Sinai, Syriac NF 38 it contains the missing chapters in the Syriac translation of the liber ad pastorem by the Sinaitic monk John Climacus in the upper text. It is a palimpsest as were the previous parts of this unique manuscript and adds quite a number of unattested passages of 1–2 Corinthians in Christian Palestinian Aramaic. The eight folios enlarge the lexical collection as well as the grammatical forms within this rather small Western Aramaic dialect.
Le Muséon, 2023
The New Finds from 1975 in the Monastery of St Catherine, Sinai turned out to be a mine for the d... more The New Finds from 1975 in the Monastery of St Catherine, Sinai turned out to be a mine for the discovery of early Christian Palestinian Aramaic palimpsest manuscripts (5th-7th century AD). The finds unveiled unknown and unique texts as well as additions or missing text witnesses of the New and Old Testament as well as of hagiographic texts in this Western Aramaic dialect. Most interesting of all have always been these early palimpsest text witnesses for comparative Aramaic language study and Bible text criticism. The palimpsest manuscript codex Sinai, Gr. NF 32 MG and three other fragments from Georgian NF 19, 71 presented here are placed into context with all other surviving early sources of the Old Jerusalem lectionary in this Western Aramaic Dialect. This lectionary clearly predates the Armenian Jerusalem lectionary as the next earliest source after the missing Greek source by showing new Old and New Testament lections with unattested biblical pericopes under a martyrologion written in a Greek majuscule and under a Iadgari and a homily in Georgian script.
Analecta Bollandiana, 2023
This palimpsest bifolio Sinai, CPA NF Frg. 7, fol. 5/6 published here is preserved as a large fra... more This palimpsest bifolio Sinai, CPA NF Frg. 7, fol. 5/6 published here is preserved as a large fragment with a smaller detached one. The underneath text could be identified with the first part of the martyrdom of Proclos and Hilarios endured between 249–251 AD during the reign of the Roman emperor Trajan Decius. The Christian Palestinian Aramaic text is written in an early uncial (5th to 7th century) and its translation goes back to a longer non-attested Greek witness. The Vita is now attested for the first time in an Aramaic translation. It belongs to the New Finds made in the Monastery of Saint Catherine on Mount Sinai in 1975.
Collectanea Christiana Orientalia, 2023
The Genizah of the Ben Ezra Synagogue in Cairo preserved plenty of text material, which would oth... more The Genizah of the Ben Ezra Synagogue in Cairo preserved plenty of text material, which would otherwise have proven a loss for many areas in Jewish studies as well as Bible, linguistic, lexicographic, or patristic research. Of particular interest are the finds of palimpsests with various scripts and languages underneath. The ones with Christian Palestinian Aramaic among them form the majority. It has been one hundred thirty years since the first five palimpsest fragments saw the light of publication. Most of them could be identified and often attributed to unique textual transmissions. For a number of isolated fragments, it was recently possible to identify specific texts under various Hebrew hands on badly preserved parchment leaves, among them Biblical texts previously unattested in Christian Palestinian Aramaic. This provided the impetus to prepare an updated list of all palimpsests known to date in this Western Aramaic dialect, which is presented here in an overview.
ARAM, 2021
The magical corpus in Aramaic from Late Antiquity is teeming with demon names that go back to var... more The magical corpus in Aramaic from Late Antiquity is teeming with demon names that go back to various kinds of languages and cultural backgrounds. A long demon list transmitted in Mandaic gives us a fair idea of what conceptions of demons were like and whose names they carried. Of interest in this connection is the appearance of the Iranian (Parthian) suffix -pat [pty] for high-ranking officials, which is employed to form several demon names. They may occur in incantations incised on metal or written on earthenware bowls and later text transmissions (Ginzā, Book of John) originating from Iraq and Iran. This study offers a short overview of a selected number of demons and their Iranian etymological origin.
Piecing together Christian Palestinian Aramaic Texts under Georgian Manuscripts (St Petersburg, NLR, Syr. 16; Sinai, Georg. NF 19, 71; Oslo, Martin Schøyen, MS 35, 37; Princeton, Garrett MS 24; Göttingen, Syr. 17, 19, 23, 25), Digital Kartvelology 1 (2022), 24–49 Digital Kartvelology, 2022
Various early Christian Palestinian Aramaic manuscripts dating to the 5th till 7th centuries CE ... more Various early Christian Palestinian Aramaic manuscripts dating to the 5th till 7th centuries CE were taken apart and reused by the tenth-century Georgian scribe Ioane Zosime for new Georgian texts. They were overwritten by him either at the Great Laura of Mar Saba near Jerusalem or in the Monastery of St Catherine on Mount Sinai. These manuscripts were split up and removed from St Catherine in the middle and late nineteenth century by scholars or other unknown persons and went into public and private collections in Europe (St Petersburg, Göttingen, Oslo) and in the United States (Princeton). Parts of them, however, had been hidden and stored in a closed-up chamber within the St George Tower of the Sinai Monastery and belong to the New Finds of 1975. These individual folios and fragments which have been torn apart and mutilated could be now joined and attributed according to their former manuscripts on account of their content and codicological features. It concerns quite a number of rare texts as the earliest attested witness of the Jerusalem Lectionary, the Catecheses of Cyril of Jerusalem, Ephrem Graecus’ Sermo in adventum Domini, the homily on the Repentence by John Chrysostom, and Saint Silvanus from the Apophthegmata.
Revue Biblique, 2022
The find from 1975 in St Catherine’s Monastery, Sinai of palimpsest Sinai, Greek NF MG 14 shows e... more The find from 1975 in St Catherine’s Monastery, Sinai of palimpsest Sinai, Greek NF MG 14 shows early Christian Palestinian Aramaic scripts (5th to 7th century) next to a Greek majuscule under the Lives of Saints, Encomium on the Theotokos which is also written in a Greek majuscule. Four folios contain Old Testament passages from various biblical books (1 Kingdoms, Job, Proverbs) for this Western Aramaic dialect. The edition here presents a new and unattested text witness for 1 Kingdoms 8:22b-9:2a; 3b-4a; 6-8; 18:25c-19:5 with additions of Lucian and Origen readings in the Christian Palestinian Aramaic transmission
Collectanea Christiana Orientalia, 2022
This Syriac palimpsest manuscript with four remaining folios bound with others into one volume ru... more This Syriac palimpsest manuscript with four remaining folios bound with others into one volume runs under the shelf mark Add 14.665, no. 2 in the British Library. It displays a well-executed 5th century Estrangela. William Wright in his Contributions to the Apocryphal Literature of 1865 offered only readings of some scanty passages. The text has been neglected ever since. Preserved in it are sections of an early witness for the Obsequies of My Lady Mary in Syriac (S1) covering the final part of the second book, the beginning of book three, and central sections of book five with the apocryphal History of Peter and Paul according to the Ethiopic five-book cycle. The textual diversity is at times considerable in comparison to the other early transmissions in Greek and Christian Palestinian Aramaic, and the much later Ethiopic one. It has been the first Syriac source to attest the central term for the palm tradition ܬܘܠܣܐ ‘palm- shoot’. The new and additional readings intend to fill some lacunae in the only partially preserved transmission of the early Syriac translation of the Dormition of Mary from Upper Mesopotamia.
Revue Biblique, 2021
One palimpsest bifolio from shelf number Greek NF M 167 was published as a poorly legible black a... more One palimpsest bifolio from shelf number Greek NF M 167 was published as a poorly legible black and white photo in 1980 and again in 1981, together with other manuscript samples of the New Finds 1975 from a secluded storage room in the St George Tower at St Catherine’s Monastery. It has so far defied identification for the underneath text. This Christian Palestinian Aramaic text in uncial letters (6th century) is overwritten by a Greek Menaion (11th century) and preserves in the lower text unparalleled textual readings for Leviticus 26:26b-44 and Numbers 4:15b-5:6a from a lost Greek witness.
Collectanea Christiana Orientalia , 2021
Christian Palestinian Aramaic has always been a mine of peculiar words and spellings despite bein... more Christian Palestinian Aramaic has always been a mine of peculiar words and spellings despite being a rather conservative written dialect within the Western Aramaic group. Three words in this dialect, b‘š, b‘šwn’, and mb‘šwn’, which are variant derivations of b’š, have puzzled scholars for more than a century. In addition to another set of ‘incorrectly spelled’ words, these were considered doubtful in the first dictionary, grammar, and text editions, but they turned out to have sound explanations and etymological origins.
ARAM, 2020
For Jacob of Serugh’s large text corpus hardly any early text or primary witnesses have survive... more For Jacob of Serugh’s large text corpus hardly any early text or primary witnesses have survived. Most of them are copies from centuries later, with the most ancient ones dating to the seventh century AD. The discovery of a sixth-century palimpsest (6th cent.) with the Homily on the Presentation in the Temple by this prolific author among the Syriac manuscripts in the British Library from Deir al-Suryan is rather surprising after so many years since the publication of the catalogues by William Wright in 1871–1873. This study presents the attribution of the palimpsest folios according to their content.
Collectanea Christiana Orientalia, 2020
This palimpsest fragment with unattested passages of Job 3:11c- 4:3b in the Christian Palestinian... more This palimpsest fragment with unattested passages of Job 3:11c- 4:3b in the Christian Palestinian Aramaic translation with Lucian readings has been preserved in a Greek codex registered as Sinai, Greek NF MG 14 in the Monastery of St Catherine. The biblical text is one of more than 160 palimpsests, which could be identified among the New Finds that were discovered in 1975 in a blocked-up chamber. With the help of the new technology of multispectral digital imaging it was possible to bring out the reading of the lower script for this Bible section. The unpublished text is edited here in transliteration and translation with commentaries on the variant witnesses.
Collectanea Christiana Orientalia
This palimpsest fragment with unattested passages of Job 3:11c-4:3b in the Christian Palestinian ... more This palimpsest fragment with unattested passages of Job 3:11c-4:3b in the Christian Palestinian Aramaic translation with Lucian readings has been preserved in a Greek codex registered as Sinai, Greek NF MG 14 in the Monastery of St Catherine. The biblical text is one of more than 160 palimpsests, which could be identified among the New Finds that were discovered in 1975 in a blocked-up chamber. With the help of the new technology of multispectral digital imaging it was possible to bring out the reading of the lower script for this Bible section. The unpublished text is edited here in transliteration and translation with commentaries on the variant witnesses.
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A Trilingual by Christa Müller-Kessler
This paper focuses on the Christian Palestinian Aramaic mosaic inscription from ‘Uyun Umm el-‘Azam West dedicated by a deaconess Thekla, its parallels, and its contribution to a better understanding of the ethnic and religious diversity in the Hippos territorium in the southern Levant and its environmental interactions.
This paper focuses on the Christian Palestinian Aramaic mosaic inscription from ‘Uyun Umm el-‘Azam West dedicated by a deaconess Thekla, its parallels, and its contribution to a better understanding of the ethnic and religious diversity in the Hippos territorium in the southern Levant and its environmental interactions.
The mixed Early Roman material found in the foundations of the tower might suggest an earlier date for its construction, with the tower completely rebuilt in the Byzantine period.
The room known as 'The Mosaic Room' was divided, probably by a partition wall, as indicated by the gap in the mosaic running across the room. A set of rooms was built on the eastern side of the inner courtyard and against the tower including a large oven.
This paper focuses on the Christian Palestinian Aramaic mosaic inscription from 'Uyun Umm el-'Azam West dedicated by a deaconess Thekla, its parallels, and its contribution to a better understanding of the ethnic and religious diversity in the Hippos territorium in the southern Levant and its environmental interactions.