Alessandro Bausi, ed., Comparative Oriental Manuscript Studies: An Introduction
Philip Michael
Forness
Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main
Beth Mardutho: The Syriac Institute
George A. Kiraz
James E. Walters
TEI XML encoding by
James E. Walters
Beth Mardutho: The Syriac Institute
2018
Volume 21.2
For this publication, a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
license has been granted by the author(s), who retain full
copyright.
https://hugoye.bethmardutho.org/article/hv21n2prforness
Philip Michael Forness
Review of: Comparative Oriental Manuscript Studies: An Introduction
https://hugoye.bethmardutho.org/pdf/vol21/HV21N2PRForness.pdf
Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies
Beth Mardutho: The Syriac Institute, 2018
vol 21
issue 2
pp 429–433
Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies is an electronic journal dedicated to the study
of the Syriac tradition, published semi-annually (in January and July) by Beth
Mardutho: The Syriac Institute. Published since 1998, Hugoye seeks to offer the
best scholarship available in the field of Syriac studies.
File created by James E. Walters
Alessandro Bausi, ed., Comparative Oriental
Manuscript Studies: An Introduction (Hamburg: Tredition, 2015). Pp. xxii +
677; €56.29.
Increased access to archives and collections has made working with manuscripts
routine in many areas of scholarship on the Syriac tradition. A great number of
unedited texts are now easily accessible in digital form. Further, the study of
material culture has demonstrated how manuscripts participated in social networks
surrounding the texts they preserve. Manuscripts will remain a focus of Syriac
studies for the foreseeable future. The need for methodological clarity and
precision on practices from the description of manuscripts and scripts to the
editing of the texts is pressing. The set of articles in Comparative Oriental Manuscripts Studies: An Introduction represents an
opportunity to learn from neighboring fields of study.
This volume is an introductory handbook on comparative oriental manuscript studies
that emerged from a five-year collaborative project supported by the European
Science Foundation. It is divided into a general introduction and five edited
chapters that feature contributions from seventy-two specialists. The introduction
examines twelve different manuscript traditions: Arabic, Armenian, Avestan,
Caucasian Albanian, Christian Palestinian Aramaic, Coptic, Ethiopic, Georgian,
Greek, Hebrew, Slavonic, and Syriac. The five edited chapters consider individual
aspects of manuscript research from a comparative perspective: (1) codicology, (2)
palaeography, (3) textual criticism and text editing, (4) cataloguing, and (5)
conservation and preservation. Readers will appreciate the large number of color
illustrations and detailed table of contents. The end matter includes a
comprehensive bibliography and several indexes: languages and traditions, pla-ces,
persons and works, institutions and projects, collections and manuscripts, papyri,
and a general index. A searchable digital file of the volume is freely available
online.
https://www.aai.uni-hamburg.de/en/comst/publications/handbook.html
.
The organization of each part is heterogeneous. The extensive first chapter (pp.
70–266), edited by Marilena Maniaci, treats codicology. An introduction offers an
overview of seven categories: (1) materials and tools, (2) book forms, (3) the
making of the codex, (4) the layout of the page, (5) text structure and readability,
(6) the scribe, the painter, and the illuminator at work, and (7) bookbinding.
Studies on manuscripts in ten languages follow, authored by specialists in each
field. The section on each language addresses, in so far as possible, the seven
categories. This enables a quick comparison of the tendencies in different
traditions. As Maniaci suggests, this chapter enables “one to speak of a ‘universal
grammar’ of the manuscript book (and in particular of the codex)” (p. 69).
The shorter second chapter (pp. 267–320), edited by Paola Buzi and Marilena Maniaci,
discusses palaeography. A brief introduction describes the method of palaeographic
analysis and identifies problems in the field: competing views on the object of the
study of palaeography (i.e., only the formal aspects of writing or the entire
sociology of writing cultures), a lack of shared terminology, and confusion over the
meaning of common terms. Individual studies on nine of the ten languages examined in
the first chapter take different approaches to describing the palaeographic
tendencies. Readers may use these studies to consider the relationship between
different traditions, but the comparative emphasis of this volume does not feature
as strongly in this chapter.
The third chapter (pp. 321–465), edited by Caroline Macé et al., addresses textual
criticism and text editing. The first two sections in this chapter provide an
overview of the principles of neo-Lachmannian textual criticism and a useful guide
to producing an edition. The third section features twenty-one case studies on
editing texts that examine challenges with producing editions, based on their genre,
conditions of production, inclusion in specific types of collection, linguistic
register, relationship to other texts, textual fluidity, among other topics. These
contributions represent some of the more forward-looking aspects of the volume. The
two contributions specifically related to Syriac studies are explored in more detail
below.
The fourth chapter (pp. 467–537), edited by Paola Buzi and Witold Witakowski,
discusses the concept and practice of cataloguing manuscripts. A general history of
the practice of cataloguing (4.1) is followed by a comparative history of
cataloguing practices across eleven languages: Arabic, Armenian, Coptic, Ethiopic,
Georgian, Greek, Hebrew, Persian, Slavonic, Syriac, and Turkish (4.2). The remaining
four sections in this chapter offer a guide on practical matters related to
producing catalogues and catalogue entries. Here the different types of catalogues
(4.3), the syntactical description of manuscripts (4.4), the physical description of
manuscripts (4.5), and digital practices of cataloguing (4.6) are covered.
The fifth and final chapter (pp. 539–581), edited by Laura E. Parodi, turns to
conservation and preservation of artefacts with special attention to ethical issues.
After setting out the principles of conservation, the chapter offers concise
summaries of different types of damage with recommendations for preservation,
conservation, and digitization.
Syriac studies are well-represented throughout the volume. Pier Giorgio Borbone and
Françoise Briquel-Chatonnet offer a very brief overview of the Syriac manuscript
tradition in the general introduction, highlighting dating, production, and current
repositories (pp. 57–59). In the first chapter, Borbone, Briquel-Chatonnet, and Ewa
Balicka-Witakowska summarize trends in the physical features of Syriac manuscripts
and offer a guide for preparing codicological descriptions (pp. 252–266). In the
second chapter, Andrea Schmidt surveys the history of Syriac palaeography and offers
recommendations for describing palaeography in catalogue entries on manuscripts (pp.
316–320). In the fourth chapter, André Binggeli provides a concise overview of
Syriac catalogues and suggests standards for producing syntactical descriptions of
manuscripts (pp. 502–504). Contributions on neighboring areas of study, such as
Arabic and Christian Palestinian Aramaic, will provide especially fruitful points of
comparison. But Syriac materials are also placed into conversation with other
traditions in less obvious places such as in Wido van Peursen’s discussion of
linguistic features of sacred texts in Hebrew and related languages (p. 456).
The third chapter on text editing includes two case studies related to Syriac.
Grigory Kessel identifies a distinctive type of Syriac manuscript that transmits
monastic literature, namely monastic miscellanies (pp. 411–414). Such miscellanies
are attested in around 130 manuscripts and were produced by and circulated among
Chalcedonian, Syrian Orthodox, and East Syriac communities. They have received very
little attention in comparison to miscellanies in Latin, Greek, and western
vernacular manuscripts. Kessel explores the challenges of producing critical
editions based on texts found in monastic miscellanies in reference to two specific
works: a text attributed to Thomas the Monk and a fragment of an anonymous
commentary on Abba Isaiah’s Asceticon. In another case study,
Alessandro Mengozzi surveys the history of producing critical editions in Syriac
(pp. 435–439). He highlights the influence of René Draguet who directed the Corpus
Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium (CSCO) series through much of the second half
of the twentieth century. Draguet recommended a practice of representing the best
manuscript and noting variants only in the apparatus rather than producing an
eclectic text, a method that dominated editions in the CSCO until a change in
leadership in 1995. Mengozzi highlights an alternative strategy for producing
editions, exemplified by Sebastian Brock’s publication of Syriac dialogue poems.
Rather than collecting these poems into a single volume, Brock published them in
over twenty journals and edited volumes. These publications generally do not include
critically edited texts but simply present the text on the basis of a selection of
manuscripts and even printed books for a broad audience. Mengozzi sees Brock’s
strategy as an attractive alternative given publishing demands of contemporary
universities.
There are a couple of shortcomings in this useful volume. First, although Andrea
Schmidt appropriately reminds readers that “[a]ccording to the modern standard it is
now inappropriate to denote the scripts and vowel systems of the Western and Eastern
Syriac traditions by the confessional terms ‘Jacobite’ and ‘Nestorian’ ” (p. 340),
other entries in the volume do not exhibit such careful attention to terminology and
indiscriminately use “Jacobite” and “Nestorian” to refer to Syriac confessional
communities (pp. 109, 264).
Second, there is at least one aspect of manuscript studies which the volume does not
adequately cover. The third chapter features some of the most innovative and
integrative aspects of the volume, as the case studies identify problems encountered
while working on individual texts. Yet the introduction to this section explores
traditional philological approaches to the editing of texts at the expense of
“material” or “new philological” approaches (p. 321). While this decision may be
justified on practical grounds, many of the case studies that follow draw on the
resources of new philology. On the view of this reviewer, this represents a missed
opportunity. Tensions between traditional philology and new philological approaches
are evident in several manuscript cultures examined in this volume. A survey of this
debate from a comparative perspective would have made a welcome addition.
This volume will enable scholars to compare manuscript cultures, to gain from the
perspectives of scholarship in other fields, and to work towards developing
terminology and approaches that cross disciplines.