V erious opportunities and perspectives are offered by the
E ditions of the Vetus Latina series, especially for the areas of
T heology and Classical Philology.
Examination of a series of quotations from the Church Fathers
S o as comparisons of these with Latin Bible manuscripts
L eisten the basis for the reconstruction of the
A ltlatin Actus Apostolorum, with which the
T ext research project at the University of Mainz
I n cooperation with the Institute for
New Testament textual research in Münster,
A ber also employed by the Vetus Latina Institute in Beuron.
This project is primarily preparing the critical edition of the Old Latin Acts of the Apostles as part of the Beuron Vetus Latina series. In addition, the manuscript collations made available online have provided scholars with an important working tool. At the same time, the creation of the text type schemes created an important prerequisite for the Editio Critica Maior of the Greek New Testament published by the Institute for New Testament Text Research in Münster.
A further aim is to utilize the enormous wealth of material for philological questions in the area of the New Testament Studies, which has been made available by the extensive decades of preparatory work carried out by the participating institutions in Münster and Beuron. The focus will be on questions of translation technique, but also on ancient, late antique and medieval citation practice.
- Department of Classical Philology at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz
- Vetus Latina Institute, Beuron (Prof. Dr. Dr. Thomas Johann Bauer/Erfurth)
- Institute for New Testament Text Research, Münster (Prof. Dr. Holger Strutwolf)
- Abilene Christian University
The project received important start-up funding in 2001 from Abilene Christian University of Texas (Prof. Dr. Carroll Osburn). This provided $120,000, which was initially used for a short period (until September 2001) to finance a staff position for the project manager and then, following his appointment to a professorship in Mainz, for project equipment.
In the following years, the generous appointment funds of the University of Mainz could also be used for project activities (at times to the extent of half a staff position).
In 2009/10, the project was funded by the Foundation for Jewish Programs of Study, which was established in 2006 in memory of Prof. Dr. Günter Mayer, who died on 29.12.2004. The founder is Mrs. Wiltrud Keitlinghaus.
The project has been funded by the DFG since June 2010. In the first application period (three years), 60,000 euros in funding was made available. These were mainly used for the preparation of manuscript collations. For the second application period (2014-2016), 75,000 euros were approved. This enabled the assistants currently working on the project to be involved in the editing work in various ways, particularly in the creation of the orthographic apparatus and the witness apparatus.
Vetus Latina refers to the Old Latin translations of the Bible that have been in circulation since the second century AD. These texts are characterized by their great variety and diversity.
The Vulgate, for which St. Jerome († 419 AD) created the basis, brought about a change: The Vetus Latina was replaced by a recognized version, which prevailed in the manuscript tradition.
Pierre Sabatier (†1742) compiled an edition of the Old Latin Bible on the basis of a relatively small amount of material. The Vetus Latina Institute in Beuron has been in existence since 1945 and has set itself the goal of producing an edition based on all available material. For some years now, the work on the individual books still to be edited has been carried out outside Beuron.
The Mainz project manager, Prof. Dr. Wilhelm Blümer, gained his first experience in 1987/88 at the Institute for New Testament Text Research in Münster by compiling a full collation of the New Testament quotations of the Gallican bishop Irenaeus. In 1999, the Church Fathers’ quotations from the First Epistle of Peter were examined there and standards for their evaluation were developed through philological interpretation of the quotations in their respective contexts.
In April 2001, an agreement was reached in Münster between the scientific head of the Beuron Institute, Prof. Dr. Roger Gryson, the then head of the Institute for New Testament Text Research in Münster, Prof. Lic. Dr. Barbara Aland, the Professor of Theology at Abilene Christian University of Texas, Carroll Osburn, and W. Blümer. He was to work as a research assistant (BAT 2a) on the Old Latin tradition of the Acts of the Apostles and prepare a critical edition. For this purpose, Abilene Christian University provided start-up funding in the amount of $120,000. The Institute for New Testament Text Research in Münster offered the appropriate framework conditions (workspace/infrastructure), while the Vetus Latina Institute in Beuron provided the relevant collections of material on CD-ROM. In view of the wealth of material to be processed and the experience with other comparable projects, it was clear to those involved that the total duration of the project up to the completion of the edition would probably significantly exceed 10 years.
Following the appointment to the Chair of Latin Studies in Mainz in 2002, the funds made available by Abilene Christian University were used to finance a research assistant (½ BAT 2a) and student assistants (on average a total of approx. 25 hours per week) from August 2002 to the end of 2004. During the appointment negotiations, a deficiency guarantee from the University of Mainz was agreed for the follow-up financing of the project over two years (financing of half a BAT 2a position and 56,000 euros for student assistants). The staff position was thus financed until the end of 2006. Until 2010, the student assistants were financed by the appointment funds, the seminar’s budget and the support of the Foundation for Jewish Programs of Study; since 2010, the project has been funded by the DFG (see “Research funding” above).
1. the manuscript material
In the case of the Old Testament writings, Jerome’s new translation from the Hebrew makes it easy to distinguish between Old Latin versions, i.e. those translated from the Greek Septuagint text, and the Vulgate. In contrast, the transition from the Old Latin versions to the Vulgate in the New Testament is rather fluid, a process that took place over a long period of time and was not yet complete even in the 13th century. In the course of the revision begun by Jerome, a new version of the text obviously emerged, which sought to achieve the closest possible proximity to the then current Greek biblical text; however, as it reproduces a largely similar Greek source text, it does not represent a radical new creation, but is itself based on older translations. The official recognition of the Vulgate did not take place until 1546, and the first ecclesiastically recognized edition in 1592. When reconstructing the Latin tradition, it is therefore necessary to take into account not only the few manuscripts that have a clearly Old Latin character, but also those that, although they have a Vulgate character over long stretches, are nevertheless repeatedly interspersed with Old Latin, i.e. in this case with intersperses that deviate from the medieval Vulgate text. All of these manuscripts, between 80 and 90 in total depending on the text passage due to the gaps in some of them, were made available to the Mainz project in 2009 in the form of photographs by the Vetus Latina Institute. They have since been collated and the transcriptions transferred to Excel tables, which allow a quick overview of the different versions. This has been made available online to experts (see “Manuscript collations online” below). The electronic databases of the Institute for New Testament Text Research in Münster are available for comparison with the Greek manuscripts.
2 The quotations from the Church Fathers
Since only a few Old Latin manuscripts are available for the reconstruction of the textual history of the Old Latin Actus Apostolorum, in contrast to the Greek tradition of the New Testament Studies, the quotations from the church writers are of particular importance. Therefore, all quotations from the Acts of the Apostles in the Latin Church Fathers must be interpreted philologically and evaluated for the reconstruction of their original. In 24 years of painstaking work, the Munich priest Josef Denk had compiled a card index of around 400,000 Old Latin quotations from the Holy Scriptures by 1927. This material was completed at the Beuron Archabbey, and a total of around 20,000 quotations from the Church Fathers on the Acts of the Apostles alone were collected. The complete documentary material was made available by the head of the Vetus Latina Institute. The wording of these quotations must be checked according to the latest critical editions and their context analyzed with regard to possible deliberate textual changes. It is already clear that the diversity of the text versions to be reconstructed goes beyond the manuscript versions. Where they are identical, they offer the possibility of a more precise dating and localization of the text versions attested by the mostly later manuscripts.
The citations provided by the Vetus Latina Institute on CD-ROM (image files) were first converted into usable databases (WORD files) and, as far as possible, supplemented with important information (dating and localization). As the collection of evidence took place in the first decades of the 20th century, the wording of each individual case had to be checked against the latest critical edition of the respective text, and the location had to be re-entered by page and line. In order to enable the citation to be checked in the context of the respective writing, copies of the sources and their context were made in the relevant editions, unless the edition was available in the library of the Department of Classical Philology. This was usually the case with later authors: here, the libraries of the theological seminars were usually used.
In a further step, the quotations were arranged chronologically and compared with each other in terms of their wording. This already showed that an early text form, whose main witnesses were at home in Africa, can be distinguished from the later text forms. However, it also showed that the so-called vulgate text is not a late manifestation, but that the individual readings are often already attested by early witnesses.
In a third step, the individual quotations were assigned to each other according to their wording and recorded in clear tables. The decisive question here was whether the text versions apparently documented by quotations could actually be regarded as manuscript texts existing in late antiquity or the Middle Ages and thus as representatives of certain text types. To this end, each individual quotation had to be examined in its context, as this was the only way to clarify whether omissions, additions and deviations in word choice or word order were caused by syntactic context adaptation, for example, or were even due to deliberate changes on the part of the quoter in the interest of a particular evidentiary goal. It is therefore not only the grammatical structures in which the quotations occur that must be taken into account, but also the intention or argumentation of the respective author in the context of the text passage in question. For example, in the case of verses 1 and 2 of the first chapter alone, around 200 quotations from the Church Fathers were interpreted in their context and evaluated for the reconstruction, dating and localization of the various text types.
For chapters 1-6, handwritten collations from the Beuron Institute could initially be used, but these caused considerable problems in the evaluation, as the full text of the individual witnesses was not presented in a clear and complete manner. The transfer of the entire documentation to databases in 2009 made it possible to immediately recognize in the test collations carried out between July and December 2009 that not only the 5 text types reconstructed so far mainly from the Church Fathers’ quotations, but also considerably more (depending on the material found, up to 11) text types can be distinguished. Further editorial work was made considerably easier by the fact that the individual text types no longer had to be painstakingly reconstructed from the quotations from the Church Fathers, but that the manuscripts now contain clear leading witnesses for the majority of the text types, to which the quotations from the Church Fathers can be assigned with a few exceptions (above all Augustine). This in turn required a full collation of all existing manuscripts.
This sub-project was launched in July 2010. The German Research Foundation (DFG) provided the necessary funding. Since then, the manuscripts of the Acts of the Apostles have been collated, recorded in Excel tables and made available to scholars online in PDF format (see “Manuscript collations online PDF”). This enables the user to determine the reading of each individual manuscript for each verse of the Acts of the Apostles. The manuscripts considered to be leading witnesses for certain text types have been highlighted in color, so that the group affiliation of the main witnesses can also be conveniently traced.
On the basis of these collations and taking into account the quotations from the Church Fathers, the schemata of the text types were created, which will provide an overview of the various word sounds of the Latin tradition in the edition. These schemes formed the basis for the incorporation of the Latin tradition into the Editio Critica Maior (ECM) of the Greek Acts of the Apostles, published by the Institute for New Testament Text Research (INTF) in Münster.
For the online publication of the first fascicle (chapter 1), some changes were made to the presentation of the text types. In view of the complexity of the transmission history and the large number of text types in the Acts of the Apostles, the previously used system with quotation marks etc. seemed too confusing for the presentation of the findings. The simplest solution (requiring no additional space) was to print the complete text in every single line (see “The Edition of Acts: Chapter 1”).
Manuscript collations online (PDF)
The manuscripts relevant to the edition of Acts were made available to the Mainz research project by the Beuron Vetus Latina Institute under the direction of Msg. Prof. Dr. Roger Gryson in the form of photographs or copies.
The German Research Foundation (DFG) has provided the necessary funding for the collation of the manuscripts.
Since July 2010, the manuscripts have been collated by graduate assistants. For this purpose, an Excel table is being created for each verse of Acts, in which the text of all existing manuscript witnesses is entered. The Vulgate text forms the starting point: each word is given a column to which a word address is assigned (each with even numbers: 2, 4, 6, etc.). The manuscripts follow below: If a word is not present in a manuscript that is in the Vulgate, this is marked with a dash; on the other hand, if a word (or several words) is present in a manuscript that is not in the Vulgate, a new column with an odd word address is added at the relevant position (1, 3, 5, etc.). When collating, the focus is on the reproduction of the textual evidence, i.e. information within individual manuscripts that goes beyond the text itself is not taken into account (e.g. punctuation, capitalization). The abbreviations used in the manuscripts are adopted as far as this is possible using the Times New Roman and RomanOverUnder fonts; in other cases the abbreviations are broken up. A list of abbreviations and explanations of characters can be found under Explanation of characters.
For some manuscripts, existing printed editions are also used and abbreviations are placed under the respective manuscript. If the readings differ from one another, this is indicated by a colored mark (“gold”). The resolution of the abbreviations used can be found under Manuscripts, as well as general information on the individual manuscripts.
The manuscripts belonging to the individual text types or serving as leading witnesses are marked with different colors to facilitate identification within the collations. The edition of the Acts of the Apostles will provide more detailed information on this. It should be noted here that further research may well result in changes.
For the files provided here, the Excel tables have been converted to PDF format to ensure easy, platform-independent access. The formatting is such that each verse has been placed entirely on one page; for particularly long verses, optical enlargement (zoom) may therefore be necessary: In these cases, a second column with the manuscript designations has been inserted approximately in the middle of the verse for clearer usability.
Changes to previously published collations cannot be ruled out in individual cases; the date of the last publication therefore provides information about any updates that may have been made.
If you have any questions or comments, please write to: nttf.mainz@gmx.de
The manuscript photographs can be viewed in person by appointment.
Manuscripts
| Ms | Name | Century and origin | Sigel | Storage location |
| 5 | Bezae Cantabrigiensis | 4th or early 5th century probably Beyrouth | d | Cambridge, University Library Nn. 2.41 |
| 6 | Colbertine | 12th century South of France | c, ΩC | Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale lat. 254 |
| 32 | First half of the 6th century, probably Clermont-Ferrand | Wolfenbüttel, Herzog August Library, Weissenburg 76 (palimpsest, primary text) | ||
| 50 | Laudianus | 6./7. Probably Sardinia or Rome | Oxford, Bodleian Library Laud. gr. 35 (1119) | |
| 51 | Gigas librorum | 13th century probably Podlažice | gig | Stockholm, Kungliga Biblioteket A. 148 |
| 52 | fragmenta Medolanensia | Second half of the 8th century Northern Italy | g2, g2 | Milan, Bibliotheca Ambrosiana B. 168 sup. |
| 53 | Bobiensis, Vindobonensis | 6th century Italy | s | Napoli, Bibliotheca Nazionale lat. 2 (formerly Vienna, Court Library 16) |
| 54 | Perpinianensis | Second half of the 12th century Roussillon | p | Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale lat. 321 |
| 55 | Palimpseste de Fleury | 5th century probably Africa | h | Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale lat. 6400 G fol. 113-130 |
| 56 | Comes Silensis | Middle of the 11th century Silos | t, τ56 | Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale nouv. acq. lat. 2171 |
| 57 | 8th century probably northern Italy | Sélestat, Bibliothèque Municipale 1 (Old call number 1093) | ||
| 58 | Werningerodensis | Second half of the 14th century Bohemia (Tepl?) | w | Praha, Komenského Evangelická Bohoslovecká Fakulta s.n. (formerly Wernigerode/Harz, Castle Library of the Counts of Stolberg Z.a. 81) |
| 59 | Demidovianus | Second half of the 13th century Burgundy, probably Lyon | the | missing |
| 60 | 13th century Catalonia | Lost, formerly Sarriá (Barcelona), Colegio Máximo S. J. s. n. fol. 112-113 | ||
| 61 | Book of Armagh | 9th century Ireland | D | Dublin, Trinity College 52 |
| 62 | Biblia de Rosas | Mid-11th century Ripoll (Catalonia)Santa Maria de Ripoll (Diocese of Vich-Catalonia) | κP | Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale lat. 6, 4 |
| 63 | Probably first half of 12th century England | Ann Arbor (Mich.), University of Michigan Ms 146 | ||
| 67 | Palimpsestus Legionensis | Probably 7th century, perhaps Toledo | l | León, Archivo Catedralicio 15 |
| 69 | Comes Legionensis | 11th century Perhaps León | τ69 | León, Archivo Catedralicio 2 |
| 70 | Comes Aemilianensis | 11th century San Millán de la Cogolla (La Rioja-Spain) | τ70 | Madrid, Real Academia de la Historia Aemil. 22 |
| 72 | Liber misticus | around 1200 Toledo | τ72 | Toledo, Catedral, Biblioteca del Cabildo 35-4 |
| 73 | Liber misticus | 10./11. Maybe silos | τ73 | London, British Library Additional 30846 |
| 74 | Early 10th century perhaps Middle East or North Africa | sin | Sinai, St. Katharina Arab. 455 fol. 1 and 4 | |
| 159E | 14th century probably Spain | Zaragoza, Biblioteca capitular de la Seo 11/52 (no. 653 of the register) | ||
| 251 | Lectionnaire de Luxeuil | around 700 (Gryson)Luxeuil | Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale lat. 9427 | |
| 262 | Liber misticus | 13th century Toledo | Toledo, Catedral, Biblioteca del Cabildo 35-5 | |
| 271 | Liber misticus | Around 1000Toledo | Toledo, Catedral, Biblioteca del Cabildo 35-6 | |
| G | Sangermanensis | 9th century Saint-Germain-des-Prés | #7g1 | Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale lat. 11553 (formerly Sangermanensis 15)(type: Northern Italy) |
| A | Codex Amiatinus | 8th century Wearmouth/Jarrow | Firenze, Biblioteca Mediceo-Laurenziana Amiatino 1 | |
| I | Iuvenianus | Early 9th century Rome or surroundings | Roma, Biblioteca Vallicelliana B. 25II | |
| F | Codex Fuldensis | 6th century probably Capua-Southern Italy | Fulda, Hessian State Library Bonifatius 1 | |
| S | Second half of the 8th century St. Gallen | St. Gall, Abbey Library 2, p. 301-568 | ||
| N | Early 9th century Nonantola | Roma, Biblioteca Nazionale Vittorio Emanuele Sess. 96 | ||
| Π^F | Early 11th century S. Maria di Albaneta | Monte Cassino, Archivo della Badia 521 AA | ||
| ρ^W | Comes Wirziburgensis | Mid 8th century England or Rome | Würzburg, university library M. p. th. f. 62 | |
| ρ^P | Comes Parisinus | Around 800Northern Italy | #183D | Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale lat. 9451 |
| ρ^V | Lectionnaire romain | First half of the 9th century Verona | #183F | Verona, Biblioteca Capitolare LXXXII (77) |
| ρ^A | Lectionnaire romain | Second half of the 9th century Bobbio | #183G | Milano, Biblioteca Ambrosiana C. 228 inf. |
| ρ^S | Lectionnaire romain | Second half of the 9th century St. Gallen | #183H | St. Gallen, Abbey Library 365 |
| ρ^D | Mid 9th century Saint-Denis | Verona, Biblioteca Capitolare LXXXVIII (83), fol. 9-80 | ||
| Γ^A | Bible of Biasca | 10th century Northern Italy | Milano, Biblioteca Ambrosiana E. 53 inf. | |
| Γ^M | 11th century Northern Italy | Milano, Biblioteca Ambrosiana E. 51 inf. | ||
| μ^B | Sacramentary of Bergamo | Mid 9th century Northern Italy | Bergamo, Curia Vescovile s. n. (formerly Biblioteca di S. Alessandro in Colonna 242) | |
| μ^A | Sacramentary of Biasca | First half of the 10th century Northern Italy | Milano, Biblioteca Ambrosiana A. 24 bis inf. | |
| O | Second half of the 8th century to first half of the 9th century Würzburg | Oxford, Bodleian Library Laud. Lat. 108 (copy of the corrected manuscript V [Würzburg, university library M. p. th. F. 69]) | ||
| Z^M | End of 8th century Metz | #145Z | Metz, Bibliothèque Municipale 7 | |
| Z^W | Late 8th century Rhineland or eastern France | Warszawa, Biblioteka Narodowa akc. 12400 (formerly Braunsberg, Lyceum Hosianum Ms. 2° 5) | ||
| Z^C | 9th century Corbie or surroundings | Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale lat. 11533 | ||
| Z^P | 9th century Paris | #150P | Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale lat. 11504-11505 (formerly Sangermanensis 4) | |
| Q | Second quarter of the 9th century Argenteuil/Saint-Denis | #148 | Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale lat. 93 | |
| M | Second half of the 10th century Freising | Munich, Bavarian State Library Clm 6230 | ||
| Θ^A | Aniciensis | around 800Probably Orléans | Le Puy, Trésor de la Cathédrale s. n. | |
| Θ^M | Mesmianus | Early 9th century Probably Orléans | Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale lat. 9380 | |
| θ^V | Second quarter of the 9th century Northern Italy | Vercelli, Archivio Capitolare XI (57) | ||
| θ^B | Late 10th century Northern Italy | Berne, Burgerbibliothek A. 9 | ||
| Φ^E | Around 800Tours | Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale lat. 8847 | ||
| Φ^T | Early 9th century Tours | St. Gallen, Abbey Library 75 | ||
| Φ^M | Early 9th century Tours | Monza, Biblioteca Capitolare g-1/1 | ||
| Φ^Z | First half of 9th century Tours | Zurich, Central Library Car. C. 1 | ||
| Φ^G | Codex Carolinus | First half of 9th century Tours | London, British Library Additional 10546 | |
| Φ^R | Rorigo Bible | First half of 9th century Tours | Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale lat. 3 | |
| Φ^B | First half of the 9th century Marmoutier | Bamberg, State Library Bibl. 1 (A. I. 5) | ||
| Φ^V | Vallicellianus | Middle of the 9th century Perhaps Rheims-Northern France | Roma, Biblioteca Vallicelliana B. 6 | |
| Ψ^L | 11th century Italy | Città del Vaticano, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana Pal. lat. 3-5 | ||
| σ^W | First half of the 9th century St. Gallen | Stuttgart, Württemberg State Library HB. II,54 | ||
| σ^R | First half of the 9th century Probably Reichenau | Fulda, Hessian State Library Aa. 11 | ||
| σ^H | Second half of the 9th century St. Gallen | St. Gallen, Abbey Library 83 | ||
| σ^U | Second half of the 9th century St. Gallen | London, British Library Additional 11852 | ||
| λ^M | Third quarter 9th century Reims | Douai, Bibliothèque Municipale 14 | ||
| λ^P | Mid 9th century Lyon | Paris, Bibliothèque de l’Assemblée Nationale (Chambre des Députés) 1 (A. 20) | ||
| Λ^L | Codex Gothicus Legionensis 2 | Second half of the 10th century, probably León | #133 | León, Biblioteca de la Real Colegiata de San Isidoro 2 |
| Λ^H | 12th century San Millán de la Cogolla (La Rioja-Spain) | #95 | Madrid, Academia de la Historia Aemil. 2-3 | |
| C | Codex CavensisBiblia de Danila | 9th century Asturias | La Cava dei Tirreni, Archivio della Badia della SS. Trinità 1 (14) | |
| Σ^T | Codex Toletanus | Mid 10th century Andalusia | Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional Vitr. 13-1 | |
| Σ^C | Early 10th century Seville | Madrid, Biblioteca de la Universidad Complutense 32 | ||
| Σ^O | Oscensis Bible from Huesca | Beginning 12. or 13th century Northern Spain | #134 | Madrid, Museo Arqueológico Nacional 485 |
| Δ^L | Codex Legionensis 1Biblia de Vimara | 10th century Albeares (northern Spain) | #193 | León, Archivo Catedralicio 6 |
| Δ^M | Bible de Quisius Bible visigothique de San Millán | Beginning of the 10th century San Millán | #194 | Madrid, Academia de la Historia Aemil. 20 (formerly F. 186) |
| Δ^Β | Bible de Cardeña | First half of the 10th century San Pedro de Cardeña(?) | #194A | Burgos, Seminario de San Jerónimo s. n. |
| X | ComplutensisFirst Bible of Alcalá | 10th century Arab territory of Spain | #109 | Madrid, Biblioteca de la Universidad Complutense 31 |
| κ^V | Bible de Ripoll | First half of the 11th century Ripoll (Catalonia) | #159B | Città del Vaticano, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana lat. 5729 |
| Ω^W | Sarisburiensis | 1254England | W | London, Brit. Library Royal 1st B. 12 |
Explanation of symbols
1) Abbreviations taken from the manuscripts
Overlines over individual letters to abbreviate words are very common, here are just a few examples:
ē = est
s̄ = sunt
ih̄s = Ihesus
xp̄s̄ = christ
ds̄ = deus
A special feature are the different variants of the abbreviation of a syllable following the letter “p”, which usually (but not always!) have to be resolved as follows:
𝓹 = per
p̄ = post
p = per
other abbreviations:
÷ = est
・i ・ = id est
i’ = igitur
g° = ergo
v°/u° = vero
2) Text-critical abbreviationsa) In the column of manuscript designations
2) Text-critical abbreviationsa) In the column of manuscript designations
| [HS]* | manus prima: line with the text from the 1st hand, i.e. with the original reading. The sign is only found if there is also a line with a 2nd hand. |
| [HS]^2 | manus secunda: line with the text from the 2nd hand. No distinction is made as to whether the correction was made by a scribe other than the 1st hand. The text that has not been altered is in italics. |
| [HS] superscr. | superscriptum: text written above the line in the manuscript. |
| [HS] in marg. | in margine: text that appears as a marginal note in the manuscript. |
| [HS] ed. | edidit: Text that an editor has changed in an issue. |
b) Within the collations
Within the collations, additional information is placed in angle brackets so that characters not belonging to the manuscript text are clearly marked as such:
| rasura: Text has been removed. | |
| illegibile: Text is not readable. | |
| If possible, information on the length of the removed or illegible part is provided by means of corresponding numbers:< 5 litt.> = 5 letters <2 lin.> = 2 lines | |
| pagina abscissa: The page has been torn off or is otherwise damaged. | |
| lacuna: There is a gap in the text. | |
| Copy incomplete: Our copy of the manuscript is incomplete, so information may have been lost. | |
| < || > | Marks the start of a new page within the manuscript. |
| <?> | Indicates an uncertainty in the findings, be it with regard to the presence of a shave or read letters. |
| <!> | Marks a conspicuous passage that is sure to be read in this way. |
| Tironian grades. Only to be found in manuscript G. | |
| * | There is a marginal note on this passage, which can be found at the end of the verse or below the passage in question. |
c) Colored markings
Lines marked in color indicate manuscripts that have been assigned to a particular text type as a key witness.
Differences between your own collations and existing printed editions of manuscripts are marked with the color “gold”.
Collation files
The critical edition of the Old Latin Acts of the Apostles will provide an indispensable foundation for theological, historical and philological research. Thanks to the possibility of dating and localizing the various text types on the basis of the authors who quote them, far-reaching insights can be expected not only into the development of the biblical text, but also into the relationships between the authors and the institutions they led.
As the translations generally allow extensive conclusions to be drawn about the text of the underlying Greek original, the reconstruction of the Latin text types also allows partial insights into the age and distribution of the respective Greek original. The comparison of the Greek and Latin versions (as well as the Syriac, Coptic and Armenian versions edited in Münster) can provide insights into translation technique and developments in meaning.
Due to the enormous wealth of material and the broad textual tradition, the systematic processing of the Church Fathers’ citations from the (Greek and Latin) New Testament Studies enables well-founded investigations into the citation practice of the late antique authors. This opens up interesting possibilities for comparison with regard to how other authors dealt with other authoritative texts.
The individual reconstructions of the Old Latin Bible are published by Beuron Archabbey. The editions are published by Herder Verlag (Freiburg im Breisgau). One part has already been published.
[BE erschienen]
1 Foundations and sources [BE] – 2 Genesis [BE] – 3 Exodus; Leviticus
4/1 Numbers – 4/2 Deuteronomy – 4/3 Josue 4/4 Judicum – 4/5 Ruth [BE]
5 1-4 Regum – 6 1-2 Paralipomenon; Esdras; Nehemias; 3-4 Esdras
7/1 Tobit [BE] – 7/2 Judith [BE] – 7/3 Hesther [BE] – 8 Job – 9 Psalmi
10/1 Proverbia – 10/2 Ecclesiastes – 10/3 Canticum Canticorum [BE]
11/1 Sapientia [BE] – 11/2 Sirach (Ecclesiasticus) [BE]
12/1 Ezaias 1-39 [BE] – 12/2 Ezaias 40-66 [BE]
13 Jeremiah (Lamentationes, Baruch), Ezekiel
14 Daniel, XII Prophetae – 15 I-II Macchabaeorum
16 Matthaeus – 17 Marcus – 18 Lucas
19 John – 20 Actus Apostolorum – 21 Ad Romanos [BE]
22 Ad Corinthios I [BE] – 23 Ad Corinthios II, Galatas
24/1 Ad Ephesios [BE] – 24/2 Ad Philippenses, Colossenses [BE]
25/1 Ad Thessalonicenses, Timotheum [BE]
25/2 Ad Titum, Philemonem, Hebraeos [BE]
26/1 Epistulae Catholicae [BE] – 26/2 Apocalypsis Johannis [BE]
27 Agrapha, indeterminable; summary of supplements; index of authors and manuscripts
The chapters of the Old Latin Acts of the Apostles that have been edited so far will gradually be made available here in pdf format. These reflect the current status of the work. Until the final publication of the edition, it is therefore to be expected that the individual documents will be subject to further updates.
With regard to the volumes published to date in the Vetus Latina series, the following changes should be noted:
The complexity of the transmission history of the Actus Apostolorum, with its wealth of different text types, has made it necessary to depart from the previous referencing scheme (with >> etc.) and to print the complete wording for each individual text type.
Another change is the slightly altered layout and weighting of the orthographic apparatus. Compared to the older Vetus Latina editions, the situation here is different due to the online collations in that the exact spelling of each individual manuscript can be determined online at each individual point. In this respect, the main issue here was the legibility of the manuscripts and orthographic peculiarities.
We are always grateful for suggestions and criticism (see “Contact”).
Article
Blümer, Wilhelm
- Zur Überlieferung der Apostelgeschichte in griechisch-römischer Tradition, in: Stefan Heid (ed.), Petrus und Paulus in Rom. An interdisciplinary debate, Freiburg et al. 2011, pp. 405-421.
- Who knows the times? On the Latin translation and transmission of Act. 1,7, in: Traditio et Translatio. Programs of study on the Latin Bible in honor of Roger Gryson (Vetus Latin vol. 40), ed. by Thomas Johann Bauer (Freiburg [Herder] 2016), 199-212.
- The Vetus Latina edition of the Acts of the Apostles: Reflections on the chronology, constitution and disposition of the ‘text types’, in: The New Testament in Antiquity and Byzantium. Traditional and Digital Approaches to its Texts and Editing. A Festschrift for Klaus Wachtel, ed. by H.A.G. Houghton, David C. Parker and Holger Strutwolf(Arbeiten zur neutestamentlichen Textforschung 52) 2019, 449-466.
Schirner, Rebekka
- Augustine’s Explicit References to Variant Readings of the New Testament Text: A Case Study, TC: A Journal of Biblical Textual Criticism 20, 2015, 1-13.
- Donkeys or Shoulders? Augustine as a Textual Critic of the Old and New Testaments, in: H.A.G. Houghton (ed.), Early Readers, Scholars and Editors of the New Testament (Texts and Studies 3.11) Piscataway NJ, 2014, pp. 45-66.
Doctoral dissertations
Cibis, Anna Theresa: Lucifer von Calaris. Studien zur Rezeption und Tradierung der Heiligen Schrift im 4. Jahrhundert (= Studien zur Geschichte und Kultur des Altertums N.F. Reihe 1, Bd. 28.), Paderborn 2014.
Bishop Lucifer of Calaris († 370/71) offers a valuable source for the reconstruction of Old Latin biblical texts with his doctrinal writings, which he wrote in exile against Emperor Constantius II.
His quotations from the Acts of the Apostles correspond closely to the text of the Codex Gigas (a Latin Bible manuscript produced in Bohemia in the early 13th century). The subject of the study is both Lucifer’s handling of the Holy Scriptures and the creation and dissemination of the Old Latin version of the Acts of the Apostles handed down by Lucifer and the Codex Gigas, which survived into the Middle Ages as an independent text form alongside the generally valid Vulgate text.
Schirner, Rebekka: Inspice diligenter codices. Philological programs of study on Augustine’s handling of Bible manuscripts and translations (= Millennium-Studien Bd. 49) Berlin/Munich/Boston.
The church father Aurelius Augustinus (354-430 AD) is one of the most important witnesses to the transmission (history) of the Old Latin biblical text due to the large number of biblical quotations in his works. One of Augustine’s most relevant testimonies in this context is the often quoted passage from the second book of his On Christian Education (De doctrina christiana), in which he speaks of the “infinite variety of Latin translators” and discusses the methodically correct handling of different textual sounds of a biblical passage as well as the hermeneutical and interpretative benefits resulting from a comparison of different language versions. But Augustine’s works also repeatedly contain other passages in which the church father makes normative or descriptive statements about the multitude of different Bible translations and reveals the consequences of this for exegesis and homiletic work, but also for internal church or even anti-heresy disputes and the culture of theological discourse as a whole. Often, however, the recipients can also follow, partly in connection with the statements just described, partly detached from them, how Augustin himself, when comparing several versions of the Bible text, weighs up whether one and if so which one should be given preference, using a variety of modes of presentation, but also of comparison criteria.
The resulting image of a church father who, despite his primarily exegetical intentions, also knew how to apply philological-text-critical methods when dealing with Bible text variants, also has far-reaching consequences for the evaluation of the Old Latin Bible texts handed down by him – and thus also for Vetus Latina research.
Comments on individual verses of the Vetus Latina edition
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Team
- Prof. Dr. Wilhelm Blümer (project manager)
- Dr. Anna Theresa Loehrer (née Cibis)
- Lisa Hammes (research assistant)
- Katharina Czepluch (née Oppelland) (research assistant)
- Marie Döngi (research assistant)
Contact us
Department of Classical Philology
Prof. Dr. Wilhelm Blümer
Jakob-Welder-Weg 18, Zi. 03-567
55099 Mainz
(Telephone) 06131/39-22666
(Fax) 06131/39-24797
(e-mail)bluemer@uni-mainz.de
Imprint
Prof. Dr. Wilhelm Blümer
Concept and editing: Anna Theresa Cibis
(e-mail) nttf.mainz@gmx.de
© NTTF 2006-2010
