Mount Sinai, Monē tēs Hagias Aikaterinēs, ar. 588

Images: Sinai Palimpsests Project (login required); Library of Congress

Physical description: parchment, 23 × 17.5 cm, 69 fols., 1 col. (upper text), 2 cols. (lower text)

Language: Arabic (upper text), Syriac (lower text), Christian Palestinian Aramaic (lower text).

Date: 10th cent. (upper text), 6th/7th cent. (lower texts)

Provenance: unknown

Contents:

Protevangelium of James (lower text fols. 57^r, 57^v, 60^r, 60^v, 61^r, 61^v, 67^r, 68^r, 68^v, 69^r, 69^v)

Infancy Gospel of Thomas (lower text fols. 52^r, 52^v, 62^r, 62^v, 66^r, 66^v, 67^r, 67^v)

Six-Books Dormition of the Virgin (lower text fols. 58^v, 58^r, 63^r, 63^v, 64^r, 64^v, 53^r, 53^v, 65^v, 65^r, 50^r, 50^v, 59^r, 59^v, 56^r, 56^v)

Additional Contents: Arabic overwriting is a Prophetologion (Old Testament lectionary). Syriac undertext also includes the Life of Symeon Stylites. Christian Palestinian Aramaic undertext features portions of 2 Kings.

Catalogs and Studies:

Attiya, Aziz Suryal. The Arabic Manuscripts of Mount Sinai. Baltimore: John Hopkins, 1955 (p. 24).

Gibson, Margaret Dunlop. Catalogue of the Arabic mss in the Convent of St. Catherine on Mount Sinai. London: C.J. Clay and Sons, 1894 (p. 125).

Kamil, Murad. Catalogue of All Manuscripts in the Monastery of St. Catharine on Mount Sinai. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1970 (p. 23).

Lewis, Agnes Smith. Apocrypha Syriaca. The Protevangelium Jacobi and Transitus Mariae with Texts from the Septuagint, the Corân, the Peshitta, and from a Syriac Hymn in a Syro-Arabic Palimpsest of the fifth and other centuries. Studia Sinaitica 11. London: C. J. Clay, 1902 (p. v).

__________. “Introduction.” Pages v–xxxiv in The Four Gospels in Syriac Transcribed from the Sinaitic Palimpsest. Robert L. Bensly, J. Rendel Harris, and F. Crawford Burkitt. Studia Sinaitica 11. London: C. J. Clay, 1894 (pp. xvii–xix).

Other online databases: none

Entry created by Tony Burke, York University ([email protected]), 7 January 2023.