Contents and organization

Published

January 6, 2025

The Complutensian Bible is an extraordinarily creative design, mixing many conventions family from manuscript copying with highly innovative experiments exploiting the potential of the still new technology of printing.

Although the Complutensian Bible was organized in six volumes, it is clear from the colophons recording the completion of each major section, as well as from the language of each volume’s title page that Cisneros conceived of the project in three sections:

  1. the multilingual Old Testament1
  2. the multilingual New Testament2
  3. reference works, especially the Hebrew lexicon3

Volumes 1-4

  • Volume 1: Torah (including Targum Onkelos)
  • Volumes 2-4: remainder of Hebrew Bible (following order of books in Vulgate)

Volume 5: contents

  • Text of New Testament (with Pauline prefaces)
  • Greek grammar
  • Greek vocabulary
  • etymologies of proper names
  • journeys of Paul

Volume 6: contents

  • Hebrew lexicon
  • Hebrew grammar
  • Reverse index of Latin words to the Hebrew lexicon
  • Alternate forms of names
  • Etymologies of names

Volume 6: quire analysis

  • The quire registers:
    • vol 1
    • vol 2
    • vol 3
  • The colophons:
    • vol 4
    • vol 5: MM 7 verso
    • vol 6

Respect for Greek and Hebrew texts

Note that Third Maccabees is not in the Vulgate

Volume 1 title page

Collation

The registers

See it

Footnotes

  1. Part 1!↩︎

  2. NT↩︎

  3. yes, it’s really the lexicon↩︎