Pseudo-Athanasius of Alexandria. 
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Quaestiones ad Antiochum ducem 94-97, in Georgian. Georgia, c. 1000 CE. Bifolium (185 x 226 mm). 2 ff. Georgian manuscript on vellum, blind-ruled for a single column of 22 lines in brown ink in Asomtavruli bookhand, ruled space 140 x 180 mm. Bound in grey buckram at the Quaritch bindery. Important witness to late antique Christian tradition in the earliest Georgian alphabet. Structured around questions and answers, the "Quaestiones ad Antiochum ducem" ("Questions to Duke Antiochus") address a series of what might be called Frequently Asked Questions about Christian doctrine and behaviour. As the textual transmission is still poorly understood, this fragment of the Georgian version represents a vital testimony to the tradition. Why can Christian men not have multiple wives, as in the Old Testament? Why are dreams sometimes true and sometimes false? Is it true that even virtuous Jews and Pagans will not see the Kingdom of Heaven if they never embrace Christianity? These and other such questions clearly crossed believers' minds, and the resulting compendium of answers proved to be so useful for clergy that it was translated from the original Greek into Latin, Old Church Slavonic, Ge'ez, Arabic, Armenian and Georgian. A later Nuskhuri hand has added numbers to the questions in the margins, indicating that we have the end of question 94 through question 97. These appear to correspond to numbers 98-102 in the Greek (as 99 and 100 in the Greek are very short and related, they seem to be rendered together as 95 in the Georgian). The text is written in Asomtavruli, the oldest Georgian alphabet, in use since at least the fourth century CE. Following the rise of the more fluid Nuskhuri minuscule in the ninth century, the use of Asomtavruli became confined to inscriptions, although manuscripts written entirely in it can be found through the eleventh century. Palaeographical similarities between our bifolium and a fragment of the Georgian text in the Leipzig University Library from the tenth or eleventh century suggests that ours is of similar date. As the text was accorded a high degree of authority, the "Quaestiones ad Antiochum ducem" were commonly attributed to St Athanasius of Alexandria (c. 296-373 CE), but it appears to have been the work of a cleric in Palestine. The presence of questions about the worship of icons points to the eighth century CE as the most likely time of composition, in the wake of the iconoclast controversy. A rare and elegant witness to Christian instruction in Georgia's oldest alphabet.
Some fading of text and marginal staining, overall well preserved, text clear and legible. Provenance: 1) English private collection since 1826, according to a report of Prof. J. Neville Birdsall (1928-2005), Professor Emeritus of New Testament Studies and Textual Criticism at the University of Birmingham. 2) Sam Fogg, London, 1992. 3) Schøyen Collection, sold at Christies, London, 10 July 2019, Lot 417. 4) European private collection.
65000,- EUR
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Sachgebiete: Literatur bis ca. 1900, Religion, Religionsgeschichte, Theologie
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