More Leaves from
an Old Armenian New Testament Manuscript:
The “Kurdian/Chicago Praxapostolos“

Separate Leaves on Vellum
from the Acts of the Apostles
in Different Collections

Double columns of 27 lines in bolorgir minuscule script,
with rubrications and Euthalian apparatus

1) Private Collection: Acts 16:24 [middle] – 17:6 [middle]

2) Richard Weber Collection: Acts 20:5 [beginning] – Acts 20:26 [end]
(Leaf size: 10.2 x 13.7 cm; Written area: 7.1 x 10.2 cm; Column width: 3.2 cm)

[Posted on 30 May 2022, with updates]

Research Group on Manuscript Evidence, “Two Detached Leaves” Booklet Cover, with the opening of Acts 23:12.

More leaves emerge into view from a dismembered manuscript in Old Armenian with selections from the New Testament. Apparently it comprised a copy of a Praxapostolos, that is, containing parts of the New Testament without the Gospels and certain other Books.  We have examined several leaves from this book before.

Some earlier blogposts, and an RGME Research Booklet, have introduced other leaves from the same manuscript.

• New Testament Leaves in Old Armenian
  reporting “A Pair of Leaves [in a Private Collection] Identified, Described, Collated, and Set into the Context of its Manuscript”
• Leslie J. French, Two Detached Manuscript Leaves containing New Testament Texts in Old Armenian: A Report prepared for the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence (RGME, 2015)
• The Plot Thickens
  reporting on “A New Leaf Found at the University of Pennsylvania
  from the “Kurdian/Chicago New Testament Praxapostolos[?]
  in Old Armenian”

For the Research Report, Armenian glyphs were designed for the Research Group’s multi-lingual digital font Bembino, freely available on our website.  (See Multi-lingual Bembino.)

As the word spreads, the story grows.

After those reports, we were contacted by Sani Eskinazi (then at Stanford University), as he worked to complete a Final Project for History 14N on “Reconstituting an Armenian Bible from the 15th Century” (2019), based upon a leaf in Special Collections with part of II Corinthians:  Stanford University Libraries, M0297, Box 1, Item 103. With Sani’s expected collaboration, we continue to prepare an updated and expanded version of the Report Booklet.

Meanwhile, it is time to show some more leaves from the same manuscript, as custodians and owners respond to our blogpost, and wish to share their materials more widely. As part of the work for the updated Report, here we present two leaves which have come to our attention this year.

First, we recall some other leaves from the manuscript.  (See below.)

Next we present the “new” leaves. Each of them was purchased online as a separate leaf, with or without an accompanying label. Each presents part of the text of the Acts of the Apostles.

1) One has come to the same Private Collection with the two leaves which prompted both our first blogpost on the manuscript and its accompanying Report Booklet. Those two leaves are considered to be Folios “I” and “II” in the collection; the new one is its Folio “III” (or “3”).

2) The other belongs to the collection of Richard Weber. While we prepare a report, or series of reports, on a group of other materials in his collection, manuscript and printed, we begin with the Old Armenian New Testament Leaf which he purchased on its own (plus label) from an online seller, who had little information about it.

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