At 11:30 this morning in the John Paul II Hall at the Vatican Press Office, there was a press conference held to present the texts and rare biblical manuscripts which are part of a current exhibition entitled Verbum Domini II - God's Word goes out to the Nations. The exhibition is sponsored by the Museum of the Bible and is being staged at the Bracciodi Carlo Magno in the Vatican from April 2 to June 22, 2014.
Presentations at this morning's press conference were made by Mister Cary Summers, Chief Operating Officer of the Museum of the Bible; Reverend José María Abrego de Lacy, SJ, Rector of the Pontifical Biblical Institute; Monsignor Melchor Sánchez de Toca y Alameda, Under Secretary of the Pontifical Council for Culture; and Doctor Ambrogio M. Piazzoni, Vice Prefect of the Vatican Apostolic Library.
Throughout history, no one book has had a broader influence than the Bible. Jews and Christians from every corner of the globe have worked to preserve their scriptures and share its message with the people they encountered. World leaders throughout history, from Constantine to Charlemagne, have championed the transmission of the Bible. Along the way, the Bible has been made accessible to different cultures while still remaining true to the original Greek and Hebrew text.
Over the last two millennia, this transmission, translation, and dissemination of the Bible has shaped and reshaped the history of the world. In this exhibit you'll travel around the globe and throughout time as you see how God's Word has gone to the nations.
Through the power of immersive environments combined with one of the most detailed collections of ancient manuscripts and printed materials ever assembled, Verbum Domini II takes the visitor to the Greek world, Northeast Africa, China, the Latin West, the British Isles, Central and Eastern Europe, North America, Ecuador, to all nations and even the moon and into the digital world. There has never been such a diverse and important collection, involving over 15 private and public institutions, showcasing some of the rarest and most important documents of the Biblical text ever to be presented to the public.
In the very rich panorama of the pieces that are featured in the display Verbum Domini II some manuscripts of the Vatican Library stand out, about which, I think, is worth spending a few words.
Above all, an absolute first, the display of a sheet of the Bodmer Papyrus XIV-XV. It is a manuscript dating back around the year 200 that transmits almost entirely the Gospel texts according to Luke and John. It is the oldest physical finding in which we can read, for example, the Prologue of John, or the text of the Our Father of Luke, and this fact already arouses particular emotions; but above all, it is the precious testimony of the existence, already at the end of the second century, of the sequence of the four gospels of Matthew and Mark and Luke and John indeed, attested in those years by Irenaeus of Lyons; Luke and John, in fact, are found in succession in the papyrus and, on the same page, one ends and the other begins. This manuscript was part of a collection assembled by Martin Bodmer in Egypt in the 1950s; it arrived at the Vatican Library in November 2006 after being purchased at an auction by a generous benefactor, the American Frank J. Hanna III, who donated it to Pope Benedict XVI. This is the first time that an original sheet is exposed to the public, and the chosen sheet is precisely the one where the two gospels meet.
Another document exhibited exceptionally is a double page of the famous codex Vaticanus, or Codex B, of the Bible (Vat gr. 1209). This manuscript, realized on parchment in the first half of the fourth century and containing the Old and New Testament in Greek, is, along with the codex Sinaiticus (the main part preserved at the British Library in London), the first complete manuscript of the bible. It is a privileged witness of the canon of Scriptures at such an ancient time. According to a very accredited hypothesis (of Theodore Skeat), it is part of a group of 50 bibles that the Emperor Constantine ordered Eusebius of Caesarea to copy to give as a gift to the churches of Constantinople (a project that was not subsequently implemented). In order to make the visitor understand how this enormous book (there are more than 1500 pages) originally presented itself, the codex facsimile is also exposed, since the original is hanging in sheets arranged in folders, for conservation reasons.
Other manuscripts from the Vatican Library, though not so extraordinary, are of great interest. For example, the codex Claromontanus is very ancient, dating back to the V and VII century, an early witness of the Gospels translated into Latin in the Vulgate by Saint Jerome, except the text of Matthew that is still present in the Vetus latina version (Vat lat. 7223). Also very beautiful, even in aesthetic terms, is the so called Barberini Gospels, a splendid witness to the insular miniature of the eighth century realized in the British Isles (Barb. lat. 570).
Also noteworthy is a palimpsest, a book written several times, deleting the previous writing, which can however be read with the help of particular techniques: under a work of Strabo is in fact found a writing dated back to the ninth century with texts of Matthew, Mark and Luke (Vat gr. 2061 A). Rather unique is a Greek octateuch (which includes the five books of the Pentateuch plus Joshua, Judges and Ruth) from the eleventh century (Vat gr. 747), which also contains the so called Letter of Aristea, an official of Ptolemy II Philadelphus, who tells of the Greek translation of the ancient Hebrew Scriptures entrusted to the Septuagint in the third century B.C.
Finally, a manuscript not specifically biblical is also exposed, which is a tribute to the Venerable Bede, scholar and commentator of many books of the Bible, in which a copy of the Ecclesiastical History of the twelfth-thirteenth century is presented (Reg. lat. 122). Moreover, it is a tribute to Pope Francis, whose motto (miserando atque eligendo) is taken right from a text of Bede commenting the Gospel’s episode of the call of Saint Matthew.
It is a pleasure for me to be here today and to convey to you all the warmest greetings of Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, the President of the Pontifical Council for Culture. My presence here today is an expression of the support of the Pontifical Council for Culture for this endeavour and to underline the importance of the links between Bible and Culture.
The Bible is, among many other things, a cultural product. We know that in composing the Bible and transmitting the Word of God, the human authors draw extensively upon literary and cultural traditions of Israel’s neighbours. The first chapters of the book of Genesis resemble very much the Gilgamesh epic poem and other Babylonian myths and sagas making it difficult to deny a direct link between them. Proverbs and poetry reflect the influence of similar motifs and styles in Egyptian or Sumerian literature. And yet, while using symbols, themes styles and motifs from foreign cultures, the human authors of the Bible, divinely inspired have thoroughly transformed them to put them at the service of God’s eternal Word. They have filtered, purified and elevated those literary motifs and adapted them to Israel’s faith in the only One God. God’s Word, is sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit (Heb 4:12). It judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart, and this applies not only to every individual but also to every culture. This process of cultural transformation and transfiguration, to which the Bible bears testimony, must continue also in our time: with the power of God’s Word, every culture has to be purified and elevated to the best of itself.
But the Bible is a cultural product also in another way. It is the cultural codex of the Western culture, as Verbum Domini affirms and as Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi often says, Our culture, the world we live in, would be simply incomprehensible without taking into account the influence of the Bible on it. It has shaped our art, the architecture, the landscape of our countries, and even the cornerstones of our philosophical thought as well as modern science, which was only possible in a Christian context. The very concept of person, of human dignity, of history and time as an indication towards an end, the very principles of freedom, equality and brotherhood, the inner rationality of the cosmos, the presence of the Logos in the created world, all these have their roots in the Bible.
It is one of the drawbacks of our time that there is a general ignorance of the Bible. Considered as a religious book, a sacred text, it is often confined to Sunday schools or to the religion hour in the schools. It should be instead be the object of study in the school at the same level as Dante, Shakespeare or Cervantes, as the key to understanding our very world, our art, our history and literature: who we are.
That is why the Council for Culture greets this initiative and has supported it by granting its patronage. It is our desire that many can visit the exhibition and get to know and love the Bible as the book of God’s Word. And in that way make true what the prophet Amos had predicted:
Presentations at this morning's press conference were made by Mister Cary Summers, Chief Operating Officer of the Museum of the Bible; Reverend José María Abrego de Lacy, SJ, Rector of the Pontifical Biblical Institute; Monsignor Melchor Sánchez de Toca y Alameda, Under Secretary of the Pontifical Council for Culture; and Doctor Ambrogio M. Piazzoni, Vice Prefect of the Vatican Apostolic Library.
Intervention spoken by Mister Cary Summers
Chief Operating Officer of the Museum of the Bible
Throughout history, no one book has had a broader influence than the Bible. Jews and Christians from every corner of the globe have worked to preserve their scriptures and share its message with the people they encountered. World leaders throughout history, from Constantine to Charlemagne, have championed the transmission of the Bible. Along the way, the Bible has been made accessible to different cultures while still remaining true to the original Greek and Hebrew text.
Over the last two millennia, this transmission, translation, and dissemination of the Bible has shaped and reshaped the history of the world. In this exhibit you'll travel around the globe and throughout time as you see how God's Word has gone to the nations.
Through the power of immersive environments combined with one of the most detailed collections of ancient manuscripts and printed materials ever assembled, Verbum Domini II takes the visitor to the Greek world, Northeast Africa, China, the Latin West, the British Isles, Central and Eastern Europe, North America, Ecuador, to all nations and even the moon and into the digital world. There has never been such a diverse and important collection, involving over 15 private and public institutions, showcasing some of the rarest and most important documents of the Biblical text ever to be presented to the public.
Intervention spoken by Doctor Ambrogio M. Piazzoni
Prefect of the Vatican Apostolic Library
In the very rich panorama of the pieces that are featured in the display Verbum Domini II some manuscripts of the Vatican Library stand out, about which, I think, is worth spending a few words.
Above all, an absolute first, the display of a sheet of the Bodmer Papyrus XIV-XV. It is a manuscript dating back around the year 200 that transmits almost entirely the Gospel texts according to Luke and John. It is the oldest physical finding in which we can read, for example, the Prologue of John, or the text of the Our Father of Luke, and this fact already arouses particular emotions; but above all, it is the precious testimony of the existence, already at the end of the second century, of the sequence of the four gospels of Matthew and Mark and Luke and John indeed, attested in those years by Irenaeus of Lyons; Luke and John, in fact, are found in succession in the papyrus and, on the same page, one ends and the other begins. This manuscript was part of a collection assembled by Martin Bodmer in Egypt in the 1950s; it arrived at the Vatican Library in November 2006 after being purchased at an auction by a generous benefactor, the American Frank J. Hanna III, who donated it to Pope Benedict XVI. This is the first time that an original sheet is exposed to the public, and the chosen sheet is precisely the one where the two gospels meet.
Another document exhibited exceptionally is a double page of the famous codex Vaticanus, or Codex B, of the Bible (Vat gr. 1209). This manuscript, realized on parchment in the first half of the fourth century and containing the Old and New Testament in Greek, is, along with the codex Sinaiticus (the main part preserved at the British Library in London), the first complete manuscript of the bible. It is a privileged witness of the canon of Scriptures at such an ancient time. According to a very accredited hypothesis (of Theodore Skeat), it is part of a group of 50 bibles that the Emperor Constantine ordered Eusebius of Caesarea to copy to give as a gift to the churches of Constantinople (a project that was not subsequently implemented). In order to make the visitor understand how this enormous book (there are more than 1500 pages) originally presented itself, the codex facsimile is also exposed, since the original is hanging in sheets arranged in folders, for conservation reasons.
Other manuscripts from the Vatican Library, though not so extraordinary, are of great interest. For example, the codex Claromontanus is very ancient, dating back to the V and VII century, an early witness of the Gospels translated into Latin in the Vulgate by Saint Jerome, except the text of Matthew that is still present in the Vetus latina version (Vat lat. 7223). Also very beautiful, even in aesthetic terms, is the so called Barberini Gospels, a splendid witness to the insular miniature of the eighth century realized in the British Isles (Barb. lat. 570).
Also noteworthy is a palimpsest, a book written several times, deleting the previous writing, which can however be read with the help of particular techniques: under a work of Strabo is in fact found a writing dated back to the ninth century with texts of Matthew, Mark and Luke (Vat gr. 2061 A). Rather unique is a Greek octateuch (which includes the five books of the Pentateuch plus Joshua, Judges and Ruth) from the eleventh century (Vat gr. 747), which also contains the so called Letter of Aristea, an official of Ptolemy II Philadelphus, who tells of the Greek translation of the ancient Hebrew Scriptures entrusted to the Septuagint in the third century B.C.
Finally, a manuscript not specifically biblical is also exposed, which is a tribute to the Venerable Bede, scholar and commentator of many books of the Bible, in which a copy of the Ecclesiastical History of the twelfth-thirteenth century is presented (Reg. lat. 122). Moreover, it is a tribute to Pope Francis, whose motto (miserando atque eligendo) is taken right from a text of Bede commenting the Gospel’s episode of the call of Saint Matthew.
Intervention spoken by Monsignor Melchor Sánchez de Toca y Alameda
Under Secretary of the Pontifical Council for Culture
It is a pleasure for me to be here today and to convey to you all the warmest greetings of Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, the President of the Pontifical Council for Culture. My presence here today is an expression of the support of the Pontifical Council for Culture for this endeavour and to underline the importance of the links between Bible and Culture.
The Bible is, among many other things, a cultural product. We know that in composing the Bible and transmitting the Word of God, the human authors draw extensively upon literary and cultural traditions of Israel’s neighbours. The first chapters of the book of Genesis resemble very much the Gilgamesh epic poem and other Babylonian myths and sagas making it difficult to deny a direct link between them. Proverbs and poetry reflect the influence of similar motifs and styles in Egyptian or Sumerian literature. And yet, while using symbols, themes styles and motifs from foreign cultures, the human authors of the Bible, divinely inspired have thoroughly transformed them to put them at the service of God’s eternal Word. They have filtered, purified and elevated those literary motifs and adapted them to Israel’s faith in the only One God. God’s Word, is sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit (Heb 4:12). It judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart, and this applies not only to every individual but also to every culture. This process of cultural transformation and transfiguration, to which the Bible bears testimony, must continue also in our time: with the power of God’s Word, every culture has to be purified and elevated to the best of itself.
But the Bible is a cultural product also in another way. It is the cultural codex of the Western culture, as Verbum Domini affirms and as Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi often says, Our culture, the world we live in, would be simply incomprehensible without taking into account the influence of the Bible on it. It has shaped our art, the architecture, the landscape of our countries, and even the cornerstones of our philosophical thought as well as modern science, which was only possible in a Christian context. The very concept of person, of human dignity, of history and time as an indication towards an end, the very principles of freedom, equality and brotherhood, the inner rationality of the cosmos, the presence of the Logos in the created world, all these have their roots in the Bible.
It is one of the drawbacks of our time that there is a general ignorance of the Bible. Considered as a religious book, a sacred text, it is often confined to Sunday schools or to the religion hour in the schools. It should be instead be the object of study in the school at the same level as Dante, Shakespeare or Cervantes, as the key to understanding our very world, our art, our history and literature: who we are.
That is why the Council for Culture greets this initiative and has supported it by granting its patronage. It is our desire that many can visit the exhibition and get to know and love the Bible as the book of God’s Word. And in that way make true what the prophet Amos had predicted:
'Behold, the days are coming,' says the Lord God,
'That I will send a famine on the land,
Not a famine of bread,
Nor a thirst for water,
But of hearing the words of the Lord.'
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