Style-Based Retrieval for Ancient Syriac Manuscripts

Thousands of documents written in Syriac script by early Christian theologians are of unknown provenance and uncertain date, partly due to a shortage of human expertise. This paper addresses the problem of attribution by developing a novel algorithm for offline handwriting style identification and document retrieval, demonstrated on a set of documents in the Estrangelo variant of Syriac writing. The method employs a feature vector based upon the estimated affine transformation of actual observed characters, character parts, and voids within characters as compared to a hypothetical average or ideal form. Experiments on seventy-six pages from nineteen Syriac manuscripts written by different scribes show that the method can identify pages written in the same hand with high precision, even with documents that exhibit various challenging forms of degradation

The Joint IGNTP/INTF Editio Critica Maior of the Gospel of John: its goals and their significance for New Testament scholarship

Conference paper delivered at SNTS Annual Meeting in Halle, Germany, August 200

Chronological Profiling for Paleography

This paper approaches manuscript dating from a Bayesian perspective. Prior work on paleographic date recovery has generally sought to predict a single date for a manuscript. Bayesian analysis makes it possible to estimate a probability distribution that varies with respect to time. This in turn enables a number of alternative analyses that may be of more use to practitioners. For example, it may be useful to identify a range of years that will include a document’s creation date with a particular confidence level. The methods are demonstrated on a selection of Syriac documents created prior to 1300 CE

Chapter 6 The user-friendly Galen

When a text is translated into another language and leaves its previous linguistic, cultural and social context, it also leaves its old audience behind. The new audience the text now faces has its own set of requirements, which may only partly overlap with those of the original audience. The task of bridging the gap between old and new audiences and appealing to the latter falls to the translator. In the field of medieval Arabic medicine, an abundance of extant medical translations allows us to document how translators attempted to appeal to their audience and how they took the immediate practical needs of their readers into account. This chapter presents samples from this material and illustrates the insights it can provide into the relationship between the translator and his audience

The Penn/Cambridge Genizah Fragment Project: Issues in Description, Access, and Reunification

The University of Pennsylvania Library and the Taylor-Schechter Genizah Research Unit at Cambridge University Library in England have embarked on a project to digitize their joint holdings of manuscript fragments from the Cairo Genizah. One goal of this collaboration is to develop and implement an online catalog and image database for the University of Pennsylvania\u27s collection of Genizah fragments, which will provide the foundation for a global electronic repository and catalog of the entire Cairo Genizah. The project staffs have developed preliminary guidelines for standardized descriptive metadata. The authors discuss the issues and difficulties specific to cataloging these fragments, how an online catalog can facilitate this ambitious task, and why MARC tagging was adopted for this purpose

Patronage and the Idea of an Urban Bourgeoisie

From the reports of travelers and historians, people learn of the crafting of beautiful rock crystal and metalwork objects in the Cairo bazaar and, during the later Mamluk period, of beautiful gilded and enameled glass being produced in commercial areas of Aleppo and Damascus. Given the diverse subject matter of the manuscripts, people may speak of a patronage base allying the intelligentsia to the merchant class within a more broadly conceived bourgeoisie, one whose interests and aesthetic preferences, as compared with those of the court, might be productively investigated through such illustrated manuscripts. One of the frontispieces of a wonderful illustrated manuscript contains clearly Christian iconographical elements, and among the Christian community of Iraq and Syria, people encounter ample evidence for the patronage and production of metalwork, ceramics, and gilded and enameled glass as well as manuscripts

Translation Technique and Versional Evidence: The Syriac Peshitta Version of Colossians as a Witness to Its Greek Text

The Syriac Peshitta version of the New Testament holds great potential for NT textual criticism, but its value to this field is partially dependent upon the ability to deduce the particularities of the Greek text from which it was translated. To assess this ability, a thorough understanding of translation technique in each NT book is required. Toward such an end, this thesis provides a detailed study of the translation technique of Peshitta Colossians (PCol) and an evaluation thereof as a witness to its Greek Vorlage. I argue that the translation technique of PCol does not consistently allow confident conclusions to be reached about the specifics of its underlying Greek text, but rather that the Syriac of PCol sometimes may have been made from a range of possible Greek readings. This is not always recognized when editors of Greek NT editions cite PCol in the critical apparatus as a witness to certain readings. I demonstrate this by a systematic study of the citations of PCol in the 28th revised edition of the Nestle-Aland Novum Testamentum Graece (NA28), in which I conclude that no fewer than eleven citations in the NA28 are illegitimate on translational grounds, with several more requiring further clarification. Chapter I contains a review of the pertinent literature and an overview of the project. In Chapter II, I lay out the three methodologies implemented in this study. Chapter III is a detailed presentation of the translation technique in PCol. In Chapter IV, I apply the conclusions about translation technique to an evaluation of PCol as a witness to its Greek source text and I analyze each citation of PCol in the NA28 critical apparatus. Finally, Chapter V contains conclusions about suggested changes to citations of PCol in critical apparatuses as well as how this study should affect the implementation of versional evidence in NT textual criticism. The arguments I advance in this Thesis stand to improve upon the approach to employing versions as witnesses to their Greek texts and to clarify the place of the Peshitta in the critical apparatus of future editions of the Greek text of Colossians