Robert P. Blake

The Athos Codex of the Georgian Old Testament

Georgian literature, if it must yield the palm to the Armenian for extent and variety of content, is in at least one respect distinctly superior to its neighbor. A large body of extremely ancient manuscripts have survived, which have preserved to us a highly diversified series of texts. And in general the oldest Georgian manuscripts usually contain the most valuable material. This is true of the Old Testament; the most complete, and on the whole the best, surviving manuscript of that is likewise the oldest. About this manuscript much has been written, but hardly anything has been published from it, and, strangely enough, no detailed description of it has ever appeared. The account herewith presented rests on a careful personal study of the entire codex in the original and in photographs.

The Text of the Gospels and the Koridethi Codex

Since the time of Griesbach it has been generally recognized that the main problem of textual criticism in the New Testament is due to the existence of three distinct types of text, the Neutral, Western, and Syrian (or Antiochian). The great contributions of Westcott and Hort were the clear delineation of this problem and the establishment in considerable detail of the Neutral text. The Western text they only indicated in outline, and the Antiochian text was left with little further definition than that already provided by the Textus Receptus.

Greek Script and Georgian Scribes on Mt. Sinai

In a joint article on the Koridethi Gospels, published by K. Lake and the writer some years since, attention was called to the eclectic character of the Greek alphabet employed in the Koridethi codex, and emphasis laid on the mechanical and unnatural ductus of the writing. I there advanced the hypothesis that these peculiarities, when taken in connection with certain others, tended to show that the scribe was not a Hellene by birth, but probably a foreigner, and that the presence of a Coptic word in one of the adscriptions would show that the MS. was written in an area not too far removed from Egypt. Sinai was suggested as the possible place of origin. My arguments were attacked by J. de Zwaan and, although on certain fundamental points I felt obliged to differ with his interpretation, I could at the time adduce no further data in support of my contentions.

The Serâbît Inscriptions: I. The Rediscovery of the Inscriptions

In the spring of 1927 a small expedition, consisting of Professors Lake and Blake, Mrs. Blake, and the Reverend A. W. Johnson, went to Mt. Sinai to study the manuscripts in the Monastery of St. Catherine. Some results relating to our more immediate aim will be published later, but the most important outcome was entirely foreign to the original plan.