Earlier this week, I made it to the Sacred exhibition at the British Library. I was very enthusiastic about this exhibition as Jewish religious texts are an integral part of my academic life — and that is quite an understatement! Slightly concerningly, I hadn’t ever been into the British Library, but it might be just as well, as it has a book shop to rival that at the British Museum.
The things that I was most excited about were a Dead Sea Scroll (a fragment of a Psalms scroll, if you’re interested) and a Walton Polyglot. I’d never seen a Dead Sea Scroll before, and was very pleased to remedy that…a fact that, I suspect, the entire population of London, and a large proportion of its tourists, were aware of by the time I left! As far as Dead Sea Scrolls go, there are some I’d rather see (the Genesis Apocryphon is top of that list…), but getting to see one at all was pretty exciting! As for the Walton Polyglot, this is a thing of joy. This is a Bible which includes a variety of versions in different languages, each with a Latin translation. The languages vary between the biblical books, but (according to the catalogue, page 87) nine occur overall: Hebrew, Greek, Samaritan, Aramaic, Latin, Syriac, Ethiopic, Arabic and Persian. It’s truly spectacular. I was having lots of fun trying to read the various languages — having studied most of the ones that occured on the page they displayed, I was missing Latin, which is sadly critical, and Arabic.
Other than that, there was both Codex Sinaiticus (the earliest surviving copy of the New Testament) and Codex Alexandrinus (an early copy of the entire Bible in Greek), which are exciting! There were, of course, a wide variety of Christian and Islamic texts to look at, including a very impressive copy of ‘Uthman’s Qur’an and the ever lovely Lindisfarne Gospels. The displays on the different sorts of illumination and illustration were very fascinating too. There are also some displays of artefacts relating to each religion, which are probably very interesting, if you’re not there solely for the manuscripts.
It is definitely worth seeing, and is aimed at everyone, not just academic types. The website is well worth a look too, if you can’t make it to London!
It sounds like you had a really good time at the exhibition – so which languages can you read?
I did, I had a lovely time! I can read Hebrew, Greek, Syriac, and Aramaic of the ones used in the Walton Polyglot. One day I’d like to know more, but I have enough on my plate with these ones, really!
That’s an impressive list. What got you interested in ancient languages?
You know, I don’t know. I was never much good at languages at school. It all started with Hebrew really, I studied that, fell utterly in love with it, and from there it just made sense to learn the other languages to. Plus, once I decided to attempt to have an academic career, they became necessary!
Wow awesome list of languages, I struggle with English most of the time.
Wonderful photographs of the texts, so colourful. I’ve seen some of those kinds of medieval books in local museums and the amount of time and skill involved is amazing.
The photography is absolutely amazing, and one of the reasons I splashed out on the catalogue, so I can look at the exhibition whenever I like! Although I definitely plan on going back a couple of times before the exhibition closes…