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168 lines
12 KiB
PHP
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<meta name="description" content="A review and examination of an original 18th-century copy of Adam Rechenberg’s New Testament">
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<title>Adam Rechenberg’s Greek New Testament (1736 ed.) — ancient-greek.net</title>
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<h1 style="margin-bottom: 0px;">Τὴν Καινὴν Διαθήκην βιβλίῳ παλαιῷ ἀναγιγνωσκώμεθα!</h1>
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<h3>Let us read the New Testament with an old book!</h3>
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<img src="/media/imgs/NTRechenberg/IMG_0156.JPG", width="300", height="300">
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<h2>Rechenberg’s New Testament</h2>
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<p>In the following article, I will be examining the oldest book I currently — as of June 20, 2021 — have in my collection, namely Adam Rechenberg’s edition of the Greek New Testament. I have extensively documented various features of this book — and, most importantly, of this particular edition that I own — and will showcase those in this article, alongside some explanations and observations. </p>
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<h2>Content</h2>
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<li><a href="#about">About the publisher</a></li>
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<ol>
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<li><a href="#about_preliminary">Preliminary information</a></li>
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<li><a href="#about_adamrechenberg">Adam Rechenberg</a></li>
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</ol>
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<li><a href="#book">About the book</a></li>
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<li><a href="#book_title">Title page</a></li>
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<li><a href="#book_preface">Prefaces and Prologues</a></li>
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<h2 id="about">About the author / publisher</h2>
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<p>In the following section, I will be briefly talking about the publisher of the book and I will be mentioning what other books he has written or published, where he studied, where he lived and more.</p>
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<h3 id="about_preliminary">Preliminary information</h3>
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<p>Before I begin my examination of various points of interest in the book itself, I would like to begin highlighting some information about the author — or, rather, the publisher of this particular volume of the New Testament, Adam Rechenberg. I have misspelt his name frequently over the course of writing this website, as it is oddly reminiscent of Sherlock Holmes’ <i>The Reichenbach Fall</i>; my brain appears to have the desire to write Adam’s name not as <i>Rechenberg</i>, but rather as <i>Rechenbach</i>. My frequent consultation of the stories of Sherlock Holmes might have caused this issue.</p>
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<figure>
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<img src="/media/imgs/NTRechenberg/rechenberg_portrait.jpg">
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<figcaption>A portrait of Rechenberg, © The Trustees of the British Museum (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)</figcaption>
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</figure>
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<p>It was, unfortunately, rather difficult for me to find in-depth information regarding him, and the only two sources I found were <a href="https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Rechenberg">a German Wikipedia article</a> and a short biography on <a href="https://www.deutsche-biographie.de/pnd116373164.html">deutsche-biografie.de</a>. The book itself does contain a number of prefaces written in Latin which might contain further information about the author and the reasons for his publishing this edition of the New Testament; as I do not, however, speak any (or, more accurately, only very little) Latin, finding out what these pages say will be a difficult affair. Nevertheless, over the course of this article, I will be providing you with images and a machine-translated version of some of the Latin in this book, hoping that such a — most likely rather sloppily translated — version might prove helpful and interesting to some. Should you, however, speak Latin fluently — or have sufficient enough knowledge of it to be of help —, feel free to write me an email. </p>
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<h3 id="about_adamrechenberg">Adam Rechenberg</h3>
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<p>Adam Rechenberg was born on September 7<sup>th</sup>, 1642 near the town of Augustusburg in the German state of Saxony; he died on October the 22<sup>nd</sup>, 1721 in the city of Leipzig (also in Saxony). His father was a squire named Clemens Rechenberg, and his mother was Christina Beyer, about whom I was unable to find any further information. After finishing his secondary education at a school in Freiberg, he began studying philology, history, philosophy and theology at the University of Leipzig<a class="footnote" href="#footnote_1" id="footnote_1_ref">Note [1]</a>. He eventually became a professor of Greek and Latin in 1677 and was given the right to hold lectures on theology the year thereafter. By 1699, he had become a professor of theology and received his doctorate in theology the same year under Gottfried Olearius. </p>
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<p>He wrote and published a rather large number of books, the majority of which were, however, rather small in their scope. Listing all of his works here would, I believe, not be of any use, so I hope it is sufficient to say that over eighty titles were written by him. He published fewer books than he wrote himself, including a copy of the writings of the Early Church Fathers and the book we shall be discussing in this article — The Greek New Testament. </p>
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<p></p>
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<h2 id="book">About the book</h2>
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<p>Now that we have briefly examined the author himself, I believe we may commence our examination of this particular book of his. This section includes a physical description of the book, countless photographs thereof and some additional intriguing aspects I found prudent to mention. I shall be examining each prominent part of the book in detail and provide further insights.</p>
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<p>Please also note that images in this section will be presented in a small gallery-like format; by clicking them, you can enlarge them and inspect them more closely.</p>
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<h3 id="book_title">Title page</h3>
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<img src="/media/imgs/NTRechenberg/IMG_0177.JPG" alt="Title page with illustration on verso." width="600" height="400">
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<div class="desc">Title page with illustration on verso.</div>
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<img src="/media/imgs/NTRechenberg/IMG_0181.JPG" alt="Place of printing (Lipsiæ, Leipig), author and date of publishing." width="600" height="400">
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<div class="desc">Place of printing author and date of publishing.</div>
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<img src="/media/imgs/NTRechenberg/IMG_0191.JPG" alt="Closeup of illustration." width="600" height="400">
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<div class="desc">Closeup of illustration.</div>
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<img src="/media/imgs/NTRechenberg/IMG_0195.JPG" alt="Closeup of Bible quote on illustration." width="600" height="400">
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<div class="desc">Closeup of Bible quote on illustration.</div>
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<p>As the title page is generally that which the reader of a book sees first, we shall begin our examination of the book here. And, indeed, upon opening it, one immediately notices a rather nicely designed title with every other letter being coloured red, producing an interesting colour-alternating pattern. What I found rather interesting upon a somewhat closer inspection of the aforementioned coloured text, is that the black letters were not originally black; instead, it appears as if the text had originally been red — just as all the other letters — but was subsequently coloured black, presumably by hand after the printing of the book had finished. Why exactly it has been done this way is, unfortunately, beyond me, though I am guessing that it was impossible — or, at the very least, impractical — for them to print an alternating colour pattern such as this one using the printing technology available at the time. </p>
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<p>Speaking of the title, it is actually bilingual (Latin and Greek) and is as follows: — </p>
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<blockquote>
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Η ΚΑΙΝΗ ΔΙΑΘΗΚΗ, (The New Testament)<br>
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NOVUM (New)<br>
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JESU CHRISTI (Of Jesus Christ)<br>
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TESTAMENTUM (Testament)
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</blockquote>
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<p>The remaining information present on the title page concerns things such as the textual basis (<q>ad formam editionis Leusdeni</q><a class="footnote" href="#footnote_2" id="footnote_2_ref">Note [2]</a>), information on the author / publisher of the book and also the edition (which, in this case, is the fourth one). </p>
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<p>Also of interest is the expression <q>nec non chartis geographicis</q> which translates to <q>as well as a map</q>; and, indeed, this volume actually does include a map of the Holy Land glued onto one of the later pages of the preface — we shall be examining it more in-depth later on.
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<p>On the opposite side of the title page, a nice illustration — which appears to be a chalcography — can be seen with a small Bible quote (taken from the Gospel of John) underneath which reads the following: — </p>
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<blockquote>
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<b>Greek</b>: Κύριε πρὸς τίνα ἀπελευσόμεθα ῥήματα ζωῆς αἰωνίου ἔχεις. Io. VI. 68.<br>
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<b>Translit.</b>: Kyrie pros tina apeleusometha rhēmata zōēs aiōniou echeis<br>
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<b>Translat.</b>: O Lord, whom shall we go to? (For) you have the words of eternal life.<br>
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</blockquote>
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<p>The illustration itself is most likely a depiction of a scene from John’s Gospel as well, since there is a figure standing in the middle of the illustration, which has a halo floating above his head, and from whom there is pertruding a white bar (akin to a speech bubble). In the background, one can spot the backs of other people (who are most likely leaving the scene) and the figure appears to be addressing one person in particular and saying the following: —</p>
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<blockquote>
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<b>Greek</b>: Μὴ καὶ ὑμεῖς θέλετε ὑπάγειν;<br>
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<b>Translit.</b>: Mē kai hymeis thelete hypagein?<br>
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<b>Translat.</b>: Surely you (guys) do not want to leave as well?
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</blockquote>
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<p>This is a direct quote from John 6:67, wherein Jesus is addressing the twelve apostles after having been left alone by (a large number of) his desciples and hopes that they will not leave as well. Considering the remainder of the illustration (as mentioned above), I would argue that the likelihood of this being a depiction of that particular Bible passage is rather high. The illustration also has a — only rather faintly visible — title at the top which simply reads ΚΑΙΝΗ ΔΙΑΘΗΚΗ with a dove — or similar bird — in-between the two words.</p>
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<p>All in all, I find the illustration rather nice and the attention to detail — regarding the short Bible quotes upon which the illustration is based — remarkable.</p>
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<h3 id="book_preface">Prefaces and Prologues</h3>
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</div>
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<div class="footnote">
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<h2>Footnotes</h2>
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<p id="footnote_1">[1] Interestingly enough, the <a href="https://www.deutsche-biographie.de/pnd116373164.html">deutsche-biographie.de</a> website actually mentions some of his teachers’ names, which I found rather intriguing. Amongst these are Rappolt, Thomasius and Frankenstein (yes, indeed) who were teachers of the philosophical subjects; and Scherzer, Kromayer and Geyer were teachers of theology. I was particularly surprised seeing the name of <i>Frankenstein</i> here. <a href="#footnote_1_ref">Back to text</a></p>
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<p id="footnote_2">[2] The word <q>Leusdeni</q> that appears here is, in actuality, the genitive form of the name <q>Leusden</q>, belonging to a very prominent Dutch theologian of the 17<sup>th</sup> century. His full name was Johannes Leusden and he wrote a substantial amount of books on the Bible and even published his own <i>Biblia Hebraica</i>. <a href="#footnote_2_ref">Back to text</a></p>
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