Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Digitization of the Goussen Library Collection

Michael Herkenhoff of the Goussen Library collection just sent me this link to 850 prints of their collection which they just finished digitizing and uploading to the net. Some of the prints are in Syrian, Coptic, Ethiopian, Arabic, Armenian, and Georgian languages. They date from the 16th to the 20th century. For copyright reasons, all prints digitized predate 1901.

I briefly checked out the Coptic version of Revelation. The copy dates from 1885. The pdf file of the scanned manuscript shows the Coptic written out by hand with annotations occasionally at the bottom of the pages. Wish I had more time to study this.

I also noticed a Syriac edition of the Didascalia Apostolorum edited by P.A. de Lagarde is in the collection along with a large number of other Syriac texts.

It was VERY neat to click a button and have the printed manuscript in front of me! What will all this digitizing mean for the future of scholarship. One day soon, we will be able to double check the manuscripts themselves for readings by surfing the internet!!

Check out the entire collection HERE.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Wow, what an excellent resource. Thanks for sharing this with us!

Anonymous said...

What do you mean "Coptic version of Revelation based on Tatian's diatessaron"? I thought the Diatessaron was only supposed to be a gospel not a canon?

Unknown said...

Isn't technology wonderful?