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BIBLE, with Prologues and Interpretations of Hebrew Names, in Latin, DECORATED MANUSCRIPT ON VELLUM, [England, possibly Oxford, mid-13th century
BIBLE, with Prologues and Interpretations of Hebrew Names, in Latin, DECORATED MANUSCRIPT ON VELLUM, [England, possibly Oxford, mid-13th century] 175 x 120 mm, ii + 437 + ii leaves, ruled space: 173 x 79mm. FLOURISHED PENWORK INITIALS IN RED AND BLUE THROUGHOUT (lacking a few leaves, some marginal staining, headings occasionally cropped). English 19th-century straight-grained morocco gilt, edges gilt and gauffered (lightly rubbed). PROVENANCE : (1) Job is heavily annotated in a contemporary English hand and there are 13th- to 16th-century marginal annotations in English hands throughout. The 16th-century Devonian name ‘Wollocu[m]b’’ appears in the upper margin of Colossians (f.380), and eight English names — for example John Templer, Thomas Pyme and William Cuttler — are legible under UV light below the beginning of Daniel. (2) SAMUEL WHYLE, late 17th- / early 18th-century inscription on ff.1, 4, and 327. A Samuel Whyle of Drayton in Hales appears in land records from the end of the 17th century, while a will in the National Archives dated 1684 records a Samuel Whyle of Pedmore, Worcestershire. (3) HENRY YATES THOMPSON ; given to (4) ALLAN HEYWOOD BRIGHT as a New Year’s gift, 1894, with an inscription by the former (f.ii), and a letter (loosely inserted) explaining that ‘every collection of M.S.S. should have one of these’. CONTENT : Bible with the Prologues (Job ending imperfectly in 41:21 and Psalms starting imperfectly in 8:6 due to the loss of a leaf; Pss.49:8-57:5 missing due to the loss of another leaf) ff.1-410v; Interpretations of Hebrew Names, in three columns, in the uncommon version beginning ‘Aad testificans […]’, ff.411-434; added 13th-century concordance of the Gospels, consisting of a series of subjects in the left column (the first is ‘De divinitate verbi & genealogia Ihesu Christi’) and four columns to the right with relevant chapter numbers, ff.435-437. A WELL-STUDIED AND FUNCTIONAL ENGLISH BIBLE CONTAINING A NUMBER OF RARE AND UNUSUAL FEATURES . II and III Ezra (Nehemiah and II Esdras) are omitted; the prologues include some, but not many, of the standard ‘Paris’ series; the chapter divisions have been amended in many places; and the Interpretations of Hebrew Names are not the usual series, all suggesting that the text was copied from a non- or pre-Paris exemplar. On the first medieval flyleaf are five conventional editorial symbols and their uses: Obelus (‘Obelus est virgule iacens, apponitur in verbis vel sentenciis, superflue iteratis [...]’); Obelus desuper punctatus ; limniscus ; antigraphus ; and asteriscus . From its chapter 11 to the end of Ecclesiasticus, and in Romans, there is a reference system consisting of marginal letters ‘a’-‘g’ in red ink. In the lower margin at the beginning of I John a note cites Bede’s commentary on the Catholic Epistles. A very rare feature of the Psalms is that although they are written out in full as far as Ps.77:31, from that point onwards the text is abbreviated to a series of cues: each verse starts on a new line, but only as much text as will fit on one line is written.