Monday, December 26, 2022

Bruce M. Metzger on the Dating of the Cotton Genesis and Vienna Genesis Manuscripts

  

Among noteworthy illuminated manuscripts of the Septuagint is the ill-fated Cotton Genesis dating from the fifth or sixth century. Although only charred fragments of this manuscript survived the disastrous fire in the Cotton Library in 1751, these are sufficient to indicate the superior abilities of the artist who painted the 330 or so miniatures originally contained in the manuscript. Slightly later in date than the Cotton Genesis, the miniatures in the Vienna Genesis preserve that mode of the classical style which relates to impressionism. The illustrator also enriched the extensive Joseph cycle of miniatures with extraneous elements drawn from Jewish legends. (see Plate 20). In the case of the Psalms, instead of cycles illustrating continuous narrative, the imagination of the artist moved from one kind of scene to another . . .  (Bruce M. Metzger, Manuscripts of the Greek Bible: An Introduction to Greek Palaeography [New York: Oxford University Press, 1981], 45)

 

The Vienna Genesis is a handsome illuminated purple parchment manuscript of the v/vi century . . . (Ibid., 92)

 

Plate 20 = Genesis 39:9-18. Rahlfs L (Vienna Genesis) (p. 93)




 

 

Further Reading:

 

 Answering Fundamentalist Protestants and Roman Catholic/Eastern Orthodox on Images/Icons