Uncial 097: Acts beneath a Georgian Palimpsest

Constantin von Tischendorf examined and published the undertext, and Kurt Treu later reassessed Greek New Testament manuscripts in the former Soviet collections. The early route before the Russian National Library remains uncertain. The modern GA identifier and repository shelfmark are treated as complementary controls on identity: the first connects the object to international textual scholarship, while the second identifies the physical leaf or codex in its present collection. This is especially important where old catalogs divided leaves that belong together, joined fragments that later proved distinct, or used a nickname based on a collector rather than a place of production. The record therefore distinguishes recovery place, copying place, later custody, publication, and current location. Where the early route is undocumented, it remains unknown rather than being reconstructed from a later library label. Facsimiles and digital workspaces extend access, but the original parchment remains the archaeological object.

One palimpsest leaf preserves Acts 13:39–46 in Greek beneath a tenth-century Georgian overtext. The passage covers Paul’s synagogue appeal, rejection by part of the audience, and the turn toward the Gentiles. The original page measured about 26 by 21 centimeters and used two columns of eighteen large majuscule lines. Erasure, reuse, and the overlying Georgian script obscure portions of the Greek, making the leaf a layered artifact of two manuscript cultures. The dossier reads the writing surface as evidence alongside the copied words. Column count, line count, page size, ink, letter formation, nomina sacra, punctuation, corrections, commentary, pagination, reuse, and broken margins each answer different questions about production and use. A single photographed side cannot stand for every page of a lost codex, so the image caption identifies the exact role of the surviving leaf. The selected public-domain image depicts this manuscript itself rather than a generic scribe, modern painting, or unrelated Bible. Where fragments share a parent codex, they are consolidated into one interpretive record instead of being counted as independent artifacts.

The display date “Seventh-century Greek undertext; tenth-century Georgian overtext” follows current catalog and palaeographic judgment. Letter shapes, ruling, page design, material, related dated hands, and publication history can narrow a range, but most of these manuscripts do not carry a copied colophon that supplies a modern calendar year. The artifact directly preserves Acts 13:39–46; that is a material connection to Scripture in the manuscript’s own historical period, not a claim that the leaf was present when the narrated events occurred. Later date does not automatically mean worthless text, and early date does not automatically make every reading original. Textual criticism weighs agreements, differences, corrections, scribal habits, translation, and genealogy passage by passage.