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The Codex Gissensis ( Universitätsbibliothek Giessen, Handschrift 651/20) was a fragmentary
parchment Parchment is a writing material made from specially prepared untanned skins of animals—primarily sheep, calves, and goats. It has been used as a writing medium for over two millennia. Vellum is a finer quality parchment made from the skins of ...
manuscript A manuscript (abbreviated MS for singular and MSS for plural) was, traditionally, any document written by hand – or, once practical typewriters became available, typewritten – as opposed to mechanically printed or reproduced in ...
, a Gothic
Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through ...
diglot A polyglot is a book that contains side-by-side versions of the same text in several different languages. Some editions of the Bible or its parts are polyglots, in which the Hebrew and Greek originals are exhibited along with historical translat ...
containing texts of the
Bible The Bible (from Koine Greek , , 'the books') is a collection of religious texts or scriptures that are held to be sacred in Christianity, Judaism, Samaritanism, and many other religions. The Bible is an anthologya compilation of texts of ...
in Gothic on the left and Latin on the right.D. Gary Miller, ''The Oxford Gothic Grammar'' (Oxford University Press, 2019), p. 11. The manuscript was made in the 6th century AD. Brian Murdoch, "Gothic", in Brian Murdoch and Malcolm Read (eds.), '' Early Germanic Literature and Culture'' (Boydell & Brewer, 2004), p. 158. Only a double-folio single leaf was known. It was discovered in Antinoë in
Egypt Egypt ( ar, مصر , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia via a land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Medite ...
and in 1907 brought to the German town
Giessen Giessen, spelled Gießen in German (), is a town in the German state (''Bundesland'') of Hesse, capital of both the district of Giessen and the administrative region of Giessen. The population is approximately 90,000, with roughly 37,000 univer ...
, from which it gets is common name. During World War II, the manuscript was placed in the vault of the
Dresdner Bank Dresdner Bank AG was a German bank and was based in Frankfurt. It was one of Germany's largest banking corporations and was acquired by competitor Commerzbank in May 2009. History 19th century The Dresdner Bank was established on 12 Novembe ...
branch in Giessen to protect it from air raids. In 1945, the river
Lahn The Lahn is a , right (or eastern) tributary of the Rhine in Germany. Its course passes through the federal states of North Rhine-Westphalia (23.0 km), Hesse (165.6 km), and Rhineland-Palatinate (57.0 km). It has its source in ...
flooded the vault and the manuscript was destroyed. The manuscript can be studied today only from photographs taken in 1910.E. A. Ebbinghaus, "Some Observations on Codex Gissensis", ''General Linguistics'' 29.4 (1989): 276. The Gothic column contain the text from ''
Luke People * Luke (given name), a masculine given name (including a list of people and characters with the name) * Luke (surname) (including a list of people and characters with the name) *Luke the Evangelist, author of the Gospel of Luke. Also known ...
'' 23:11–14 and 24:13–17, while the Latin contains some from ''Luke'' 23:3–6, 24:5–9. The
Gothic Bible The Gothic Bible or Wulfila Bible is the Christian Bible in the Gothic language spoken by the Eastern Germanic ( Gothic) tribes in the early Middle Ages. The translation was allegedly made by the Arian bishop and missionary Wulfila in the ...
is the 4th-century translation of
Ulfilas Ulfilas (–383), also spelled Ulphilas and Orphila, all Latinized forms of the unattested Gothic form *𐍅𐌿𐌻𐍆𐌹𐌻𐌰 Wulfila, literally "Little Wolf", was a Goth of Cappadocian Greek descent who served as a bishop and missiona ...
, while the Latin is the ''
Vetus Latina ''Vetus Latina'' ("Old Latin" in Latin), also known as ''Vetus Itala'' ("Old Italian"), ''Itala'' ("Italian") and Old Italic, and denoted by the siglum \mathfrak, is the collective name given to the Latin translations of biblical texts (both ...
'' with some readings from the
Vulgate The Vulgate (; also called (Bible in common tongue), ) is a late-4th-century Latin translation of the Bible. The Vulgate is largely the work of Jerome who, in 382, had been commissioned by Pope Damasus I to revise the Gospels us ...
.


References

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Further reading

*Snædal, Magnús
"The Gothic Text of Codex Gissensis."
In Christian T. Petersen (ed.), ''Gotica Minora II: Scripta nova et vetera''. Frankfurt, 2003): 1-20. 6th-century biblical manuscripts Gissensis Gothic Bible Lost biblical manuscripts 1945 disestablishments in Germany