Posted on 07/21/2003 3:49:04 PM PDT by blam
DNA used in attempt to solve Christian mystery
Tim Radford, science editor
Monday July 21, 2003
The Guardian (UK)
A full-page miniature in the Canterbury Gospels manuscript. Photograph: Corpus Christi
Genetic fingerprinting might soon clear up an ancient Christian mystery - the origins of medieval parchments and even the Canterbury Gospels, thought to have arrived in Britain in 579AD. Cambridge scientists plan to study DNA in parchments prepared from animal skins to trace where they came from.
With a £52,000 grant from the arts and humanities research board, Christopher Howe, a Cambridge biochemist, and Christopher de Hamel of Corpus Christi college, have begun to hunt for ways to take tiny samples of tissue from manuscripts.
In Dr Howe's sights is a spiritual treasure. Corpus Christi college houses a set of gospels which, according to tradition, were given to St Augustine, the founder of Christianity in England, by Pope Gregory the Great. It is the earliest existing illustrated Latin manuscript of the Gospels. The new Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, swore his enthronement oath upon this text.
"If we could show the DNA in the parchment of those was closely related to parchment known to have come from Italy, then it would be very good evidence this really was an Italian manuscript," he said.
Dr Howe has already used genetic techniques to study Chaucer, who died before the invention of printing. By 1500 there were 88 versions of the Canterbury Tales in manuscript, containing 25,000 pages of text, and the Canterbury Tales Project, led by Peter Robinson at De Montfort University, Leicester, embarked on a 10-year long attempt to sort out their lineage.
Geneticists use changes in genes in related creatures to build up an evolutionary tree and identify a likely ancestor. Monkish scribes copied texts rather in the way replicating cells copy genes - with occasional mistakes. Dr Howe realised a systematic study of "mutations" in the texts could help solve questions of precedence. The technique has already confirmed the earliest version of the Wife of Bath's prologue.
The partnership of DNA and the bawdy badinage of Chaucer's pilgrims began at a Corpus Christi dinner. "I really like books and manuscripts," said Dr Howe. "I was sitting next to some manuscript people and we talked about what we were doing and I realised we were actually interested in similar issues."
The leap from analysis of words to the analysis of the parchment, however, presents a challenge. Dr Howe and his colleague have been able to extract DNA from modern parchment, still used for legal texts and the Queen's speech at the opening of parliament.
"We now need to see if we can get DNA from old parchment. What are the best techniques?" he says. "Can we avoid contamination from the DNA of the people who have been fingering it? Or the animal glue used in the binding? How small a sample can we get away with? That is going to be crucial."
Okay, thanks.
The good Doctor (or the writer, more likely) is on shaky ground, there. The best textual analysis can do is to say that the text in question is more likely to be earlier than the other texts analysed.
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| GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother & Ernest_at_the_Beach | |
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Thanks blam. |
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So? did these guys ever reach a conclusion? were the studies done?
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