Facsimile Of The Washington Manuscript Of Deuteronomy And Joshua In The Freer Collection (Two Volumes) Sanders, Henry A.

The larger of the two volumes is a 201-page, half-leather elephant folio, number 191 of only 265 published. These books were published in 1910, and not offered for sale, but rather presented to other institutions by the University of Michigan. This volume was given to Wesley College in Winnipeg, according to the presentation page, and bears the usual ex-library markings applied to the book by that college in all its subsequent incarnations. Spine has five raised bands and gilt lettering. The cover is stained and edge-worn, and the endpapers and half-title page are giving way along the gutter from the sheer weight of the book. The pages are yellowed at the outer edges. This volume is made up almost entirely of reproductions of the 5th-century manuscript, and fully half of the three-page introduction is given over to a description of the photographic process used to reproduce the pages. The second volume is a soft-cover quarto that describes the history of the manuscript, the palaeography, the contents, a text problem, and the collation, before providing a Greek transcript (there is no English translation). This 104-page volume also contains three plates like those found in the primary volume, but smaller and folded in the middle. The softcover volume is edgeworn, with the previous owner's name in ink on the upper front cover and significant chipping at the ends of the well-worn spine. There is also a weakening of the gutter along the inside front and back covers, which may or may not have included blank endpapers. Finally, the softcover volume has shallow, diagonal creases at the upper corner. Despite the wear, all text pages are intact and clean, and there are no ex-library markings on this smaller volume. These two volumes describe the first books in one of the oldest collections of ancient Greek biblical manuscripts written on vellum. The other manuscripts in the Freer Collection, facsimiles of which are not included here: 1) an incomplete Greek parchment codex of the Psalms; 2) the four Gospels; 3) the Pauline epistles; 4) the Twelve Prophets on papyrus; 5) a Coptic manuscript of the Psalms. The Deuteronomy and Joshua offered here are designated as Washington Manuscript I. The eminent textual critic Sir Frederic G. Kenyon said in his 1932 Schweich Lectures that the "splendid collection at Washington has given America an important standing in respect of biblical manuscripts." In 2007, Larry W. Hurtado published THE FREER BIBLICAL MANUSCRIPTS: FRESH STUDIES OF AN AMERICAN TREASURE TROVE, a collection of ten essays constituting "fresh scholarship with long-term value for the study of what is a small but highly valuable treasure trove of biblical manuscripts." Oversized volumes may require additional shipping.