Divine and Kingly Glory Solomon the king, although he excelled in the glory of treasure and magnificent buildings, of shipping and navigation, of service and attendance, of fame and renown, and the like, yet he maketh no claim to any of those glories, but only to the glory of inquisition of truth; for so he saith expressly, “The glory of God is to conceal a thing, but the glory of […]
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Francis Bacon: The Advancement of Learning
Nothing can fill, much less extend the soul of man, but God and the contemplation of God. — Francis Bacon In Defence of the Pursuit of Knowledge It was not the pure knowledge of Nature and universality, a knowledge by the light whereof man did give names unto other creatures in Paradise as they were brought before him according unto their proprieties, which gave the occasion to the fall; but […]
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Exploring LDAB: VI. Earliest Old Testament Manuscripts
The following table lists the earliest dated manuscripts of all 39 books of the Old Testament, sorted in ascending order by the date assigned according to LDAB[1]. To be consistent with the Hebrew Bible, which consists of 24 books, the twelve minor prophets, including Amos, Habakkuk, Haggai, Hosea, Joel, Jonah, Malachi,Micah, Nahum, Obadiah, Zechariah and Zephaniah, are listed as one book. 1 and 2 Samuel, 1 and 2 Kings, 1 and […]
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Exploring LDAB: V. Earliest New Testament Manuscripts
The following table lists the earliest dated Greek manuscripts of all 27 books of the New Testament, sorted by the dates assigned according to Leuven Database of Ancient Books (LDAB)[1] and New Testament Virtual Manuscript Room (NTVMR) [2]. It includes all manuscripts dated to between the 2nd and 4th century by both LDAB and NTVMR. The Gospels and the majority of Paul’s epistles are dated to before mid-3rd century. P52 […]
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Exploring LDAB: IV. The Mystery of the Parchment
Parchment (in green) is the dominant manuscript material for Abrahamic religions, namely Christianity, Judaism and Islam, whereas papyrus (in blue) is the dominant material for pagan religions (Figure 1). Of all Greco-Roman manuscripts in roll form, only five are on parchment, compared to over three thousand on papyrus. The roll is the predominant book form for their literary texts, so the predominant material for Greco-Roman manuscripts is papyrus. This is […]
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Exploring LDAB: III. Most Popular Classical Authors
The classical authors listed above have the most surviving manuscripts, and they have also been cited by other ancient authors. I combined both these factors when ranking their popularity in the ancient world. The list includes epic poets (Homer, Hesiod, Vergil), orators (Demosthenes, Isocrates), philosophers (Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, Chrysippus), writers of tragedy and comedy, lyric poets, historians (Herodotus, Xenophon) and physicians (Hippocrates, Galenus). Not surprisingly, Homer is on top of […]
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Exploring LDAB: II. Christian Preference for the Codex
Christian Preference for the Codex There is a strong Christian preference for the codex for their manuscripts throughout the first millennium (Figure 1), whereas roll is the preferred book form of other religions overall, namely, Egyptian, Greco-Roman, Jewish and Islamic (Figure 2). According to stats based on the Leuven Database of Ancient Books (LDAB) [1], the number of non-Christian manuscripts started to decrease significantly around the 3rd century AD, , […]
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