Chapter Lists in Giant and Beneventan Bibles: Some Preliminary Remarks

The contribution aims at showing the potential of the codicological study of Biblical chapter lists as a useful tool to highlight relationships between individual witnesses or groups of codices clues to cultural before than editorial choices, perpetuated over time even after their ratio and the connection to the text had been forgotten (as evidenced by the misalignment between capitula and test partitions and the convergence of several strands of traditions in the same Bible). For book historians, the arrangement of the lists on the page, the use of visual and art historical devices to highlight the individual tituli, the presence and hierarchy of initial and final titles (both of the biblical books and their accompanying texts) are all aspects that may allow to better understand the the work of artisans and copyists and the challenges involved in transcribing the “Book among the books”, in the multiplicity of its forms. In the specific perspective of paratextual studies, chapter lists obviously play a privileged role in the analysis of the interplay between the Biblical books and the variety of its surrounding (organizing, interpretive, navigational, accompanying, etc.) tools and materials. Last but not least, chapter lists are texts of varying structure and lenght, which can – and should – also be analyzed from the point of view of their structure (descriptions, quotes or paraphrases, summaries, etc.), literary choices and quality.