New Editions of Biblical Texts Published from CCR

The original reason Tyndale House was asked to work on the palimpsest known as Codex Climaci Rescriptus(CCR) was because, at the time, it was thought that all the text underneath was biblical or theological. Given Bible research is what we do, it made sense for us to take on the task of transcribing and publishing the underlying text. Those of you who have been following the project will know that those initial assumptions have since been proven wrong; alongside the biblical texts, the palimpsest has been found to contain long-lost astronomical and classical texts.

Whilst some of the initial publications from CCR have been outside of our normal area of biblical research, this latest update on the project is back in the more familiar territory of biblical texts. Peter Malik, a previous reader at Tyndale House, has spent time working on the underlying Greek biblical texts found in CCR. He has been producing new editions of the texts, which has so far led to two publications. One article contains the Joshua portions of the text (published online in September 2022, ahead of print), while the other focuses on the Psalms portions (published February 2023). Peter’s new editions correct various errors in earlier editions of the text and uncover new textual and paratextual elements.

Peter said, ‘The new edition of Psalms in CCR, based on multi-spectral images, reads hitherto undeciphered lines in this portion of the manuscript and corrects a number of errors in the previous edition. As a result, we have been able to locate the textual affinities of this witnesses to the Greek Psalms with greater precision and, in turn, contribute to our knowledge of the textual history of this complex tradition.’

We’re excited to see more of the newly deciphered biblical texts in CCR being published in the future, some of which contains double erased texts.