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Divining Gospel: Classifying Manuscripts Of John Used In Sortilege, Jeff Childers

Graduate School of Theology

The texts of Christian scripture find their way into a variety of ancient artifacts. The manuscript form has been the most widespread, yet manuscripts manifest distinct patterns of organization and structure according to their different purposes. Many include companion texts sharing the page with that of scripture—texts that gloss, provide commentary, give liturgical direction, or otherwise assist the reader in understanding or using scripture. In many instances, pages containing scripture have acquired additional texts over the years–e.g. marginal notes, corrections, claims of ownership, prayers, and fragments of other texts. One of the least well-studied phenomena is the sort of artifact …