Beinecke MS 275               Byzantium, s. XII/XIII
Josephus, Vita (in Greek)

ff. 1r-32v[Greek].
[Greek] [[Greek]][Greek].  [explicit:]
[Greek].  Text is followed by four
lines in the hand of a later scribe, probably of the 15th century.

     A. Pelletier, ed., Flavius Josephe Autobiographie (Paris, 1959)
contains the complete text but does not list Beinecke MS 275.  The explicit
indicates that the Life of Josephus was perhaps an appendage to his
Antiquitates.  This codex appears to be one of the earliest surviving
authorities for the autobiography of Josephus; N. G. Wilson suggests that the
manuscript may be as early as the late twelfth or early thirteenth century.
H. Schreckenberg, Die Flavius-Josephus-Tradition in Antike und
Mittelalter in Arbeiten zur Literatur und Geschichte des
hellenistischen Judentums 5 (Leiden, 1972) p. 28 (dated in s. xiv); idem,
Rezeptionsgeschichtliche und textkritische Untersuchungen
zu Flavius Josephus in Arbeiten zur Literatur und Geschichte des
hellenistischen Judentums 10 (Leiden, 1977) pp. 114-15, believes that the text
of MS 275 is related to that in Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana MS 370.

     Paper (rough, brown; no watermarks), ff. 32 + ii (modern paper), 315 x 231
(260 x 180) mm., trimmed.  Written in 29 long lines, frame-ruled in hard point;
single prickings in upper and lower margins.
     I^^8, II^^10, III^^12 [?], IV^^2.  Extensive repairs to the binding make it
difficult to collate the manuscript with any degree of certainty.
     Written by a single scribe in well-spaced minuscule; a second scribe
added four lines on f. 32v, partly damaged and undeciphered.
     Crude headpiece on f. 1r, with title and small initials in red.
     The upper and lower portions of the manuscript are waterstained.  Most
folios have been repaired; the final leaf is badly mutilated with much damage
to the text.
     Binding:  s. xvii-xviii [?].  Rebound in brick-red leather,
blind-tooled with a rope interlace with small dots in the border and a
floreate cross in the center.

Written in Byzantium in the late 12th or early 13th century; early
provenance unknown.  Belonged to the Library of the Santa Iglesia del Pilar,
Saragossa, Spain (Graux and Martin, p. 211, no. 253; Olivier, pp. 52-57).
Purchased from C. A. Stonehill in 1955 by Thomas E. Marston (bookplate); his
gift in memory of Louis M. Rabinowitz in 1957.

Bibliography:  Faye and Bond, p. 48, no. 275.

Barbara A. Shailor