Has anyone heard of the book Testaments of Time by Leo Deuel? It's a popular account of manuscript hunting, first published in 1965. @EvaMroczek @LivLied 
It's a broad survey of the material, what you might expect for 1965: starts with Renaissance humanists, and moves on to chapters on Tischendorf, the Cairo Geniza, Oxyrhynchus, the Dead Sea Scrolls, but also a range of other things . . .
It also includes what you imagine might have been standard attitudes in the 1960s, cheering on manuscript hunters like Tischendorf who "outwit" the "negligent but perversely possessive" and "half-literate" monks
There's a chapter on Shapira's Deuteronomy, which first led me to the book. It like the rest looks decently researched, well-written enough, with some solid insights but not outstanding.
More than that, though, what stands out are some well-chosen epigraphs.
There's this striking one from Anatole France to open the book, on the burning desire to find manuscripts known to exist.
There's this striking one from Anatole France to open the book, on the burning desire to find manuscripts known to exist.
And another one, opening the chapter on Shapira, from Edward FitzGerald/Omar Khayyam's Rubaiyat.
". . . with advances in textual criticism, paleography, and chemical and physical analysis, faking may soon become a dying art." From 1965. Hahahahahaha
To be fair, the observations here are solid on the challenges of forging an entire manuscript; it's not surprising so many recent ancient manuscript forgeries have been fragments.
https://twitter.com/MichaelDPress/status/1380576702225584129
But more than any of this, what strikes me most about the book is Deuel himself:
This book was first published by Alfred A. Knopf, then republished in 1970 by Penguin.
He wrote other popular books on archaeology for St. Martin's Press, Schocken Books, and Harper & Row.
This book was first published by Alfred A. Knopf, then republished in 1970 by Penguin.
He wrote other popular books on archaeology for St. Martin's Press, Schocken Books, and Harper & Row.
He appears to have been a major popularizer of archaeology in the 1960s and 1970s -- yet I've never heard of him.
Most of the little I can find out about him comes from the bios in the books themselves.
(on the right, from Treasures of Time, originally published in 1961)
Most of the little I can find out about him comes from the bios in the books themselves.
(on the right, from Treasures of Time, originally published in 1961)
Deuel's books were translated into French, German, Italian, Russian, Polish, Czech, Slovak, and Japanese at least, from what I've seen.
Yet, a half-century later, how many people know who he was?
Yet, a half-century later, how many people know who he was?
Finley reviews Deuel (and many others) for the New York Review of Books, 1966
https://twitter.com/MichaelDPress/status/1380846611081875456
Judging from the responses (& non-responses too, I guess), it appears no one here had heard of this book or of Deuel -- including me. I find this very interesting and a little sad.
UPDATE: We do have someone who's heard of Deuel and Testaments of Time, and considers it a classic of its kind, though perhaps more in Europe.
Thanks @mrustow
Thanks @mrustow
https://twitter.com/mrustow/status/1380881466331127808
And someone else
https://twitter.com/t_m_hickey/status/1380908996471660545
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
