On September 29, 2010, at the Methodical Seminar Problems of Interpretation of Oriental Texts held by the IOM RAS Dr S.Frantsouzoff, senior researcher at the Department of Near Eastern Studies, delivered his lecture on the manuscript Arabic Bible kept at the IOM’s collection (call number D 226).

The lecture lasted for about 45 minutes and treated a number of issues of codicology and textology of the unique Arabic manuscript of the Bible consisting of three volumes that contain all parts of New Testament and most of the parts of Old Testament. It is unparalleled in this respect, only the Vatican ms is as full as our ms of which it is probably a copy.

Dr S. Frantsouzoff presented a number of arguments based on the omissions of some key words in colophons to some Biblical parts in D 226, chronology of postscripts and comparison of various handwritings, that the ms was produced not in mid-13th century as it may be suggested from the colophons but in early 16th century. Moreover, various systems of pagination used in D 226 were scrutinized and it was stated that the printed text of the so-called Arabic Book of the Maccabees (a Biblical apocryphal text known only in Arabic) included into the Paris and London polylingual copies traces back to our ms via the Vatican copy.