Beschreibung:

ATHANASIUS OF ALEXANDRIA (PSEUDO-). Quaestiones ad Antiochum ducem 94 – 101, in Georgian, manuscript on vellum [Georgia, 10th century] Two leaves written in asomatavruli , the oldest Georgian script A bifolium, 226 x 195mm, blind-ruled for a single column of 22 lines written in brown ink in a very fine asomatavruli bookhand, ruled space 180 x 140mm (some fading of text and marginal staining). Bound in grey buckram at the Quaritch bindery. Provenance : (1) According to a report by Prof. J. Neville Birdsall (1928-2005), Emeritus Professor of New Testament Studies and Textual Criticism at the University of Birmingham, the leaves had been in an English private collection since 1826. (2) Sam Fogg Rare Ltd., London. (3) Schøyen Collection, MS 1600. Text: The text belongs to the genre of Questions and Responses on Holy Scripture which is well known throughout ancient Christendom. The series within this manuscript is in close textual agreement with the series known under the title Quaestiones ad Antiochum ducem , which figure among the Spuria of the corpus of Athanasius of Alexandria. The series numbered in the manuscript 94-101 corresponds to those numbered 98-105 in the Greek, published in Migne, Patrologia Graeco-Latina , 28, coll. 657-664. It is furthermore very closely related both in content and hand to Leipzig University Library V. 1096 Part 3, three leaves dating from the 10th century containing Questions 109, 110, and 115. Georgian manuscripts extant worldwide number approximately 10,000 in total, of which the majority are late. Of these, 8700 are in two Georgian locations: Tbiblisi and Kutaisi. 500 are in St Petersburg; 161 in the Greek patriarchate in Jerusalem; 86 in the Monastery of St Catherine, Mt Sinai; 22 in Erevan; and 9 in Moscow. Elsewhere in the world only small stray collections are found. They are virtually unknown in private hands. According to Prof. Birdsall, the present leaves are ‘of significance far beyond that which its total […] might be taken to indicate'.