Behind | Workbook: Recycled Codex Climaci Rescriptus, Part 2

The practice of recycling is not just a modern preoccupation. Reusing parchment reduced the cost of new manuscripts and allowed different scribes to utilize the same animal skins, sometimes centuries apart. The durability of this material allowed for it to be scraped and repurposed at times when the text became worn and illegible, or was in an unfamiliar language.

These images are of a manuscript known as Codex Climaci Rescriptus or just CCR. The older writing on these pages, or undertext, is Palestinian Aramaic and Greek. Both languages appear in the undertext because multiple manuscripts were repurposed in the making of this codex. The Aramaic text dates from between the sixth and eighth centuries AD. It includes the earliest record of the Last Supper in Aramaic and the quote from Jesus on the cross: Eli Eli, lema sabachthani (“My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?”).

The writing on top is a ninth or tenth century Syriac translation of two well-known works originally composed in Greek by an abbot of the famous St. Catherine’s Monastery, John Climacus. “Climacus” derives from the Greek word for ladder—klimach (climax in English). One of these texts is The Ladder of Divine Ascent, a popular spiritual guide for some medieval monastic traditions.

Source: Courtesy Museum of the Bible Collection. All rights reserved. © Museum of the Bible, 2020.