John Zachariah Shuster studies reception history of the Bible at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
In this brief series, I have written about navigating the Herzog August Bibliothek, MS Cod. Guelf. 84.3 Aug. 2° using the Eusebian Canons and the breviarium. In the process of navigation, we ran into a counting error that persisted uncorrected from fol. 16r to fol. 17r.
I’ll let you in on a secret: the scribe left another mistake uncorrected in the Eusebian Canon on fol. 8r:
In the Matthean column, we find the progression: “LXXIII / LXXXIIII / LXXVI.” The scribe wrote an extra “X” in “LXXXIIII”, marking what should be seventy-four as eighty-four.
The manuscript’s apparent neatness comes at a cost: we are left with uncorrected, misleading information. For some reason, the scribe refused to amend his mistakes. Perhaps it would detract from the manuscript’s immaculate presentation? We can only guess.
John Zachariah Shuster, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
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