Editing Book of Kells (section)

===Text and script===
The Book of Kells contains the text of the four Gospels based on the [[Vulgate]]. It does not, however, contain a pure copy of the Vulgate. There are numerous differences from the Vulgate, where [[Old Latin]] translations are used in lieu of Jerome's text. Although such variants are common in all the insular Gospels, there does not seem to be a consistent pattern of variation amongst the various insular texts. Evidence suggests that when the scribes were writing the text they often depended on memory rather than on their exemplar.

[[File:KellsFol309r.jpg|thumb|Folio 309r contains text from the [[Gospel of John]] written in Insular majuscule by the scribe known as Hand B.]]

The manuscript is written primarily in insular majuscule with some occurrences of [[Lower case|minuscule]] letters (usually ''e'' or ''s''). The text is usually written in one long line across the page. [[Françoise Henry]] identified at least three scribes in the manuscript, whom she named Hand A, Hand B, and Hand C.<ref name="Henry154">Henry 1974, 154.</ref> Hand A is found on folios 1 through 19v, folios 276 through 289, and folios 307 through the end of the manuscript. Hand A, for the most part, writes eighteen or nineteen lines per page in the brown [[Iron gall ink|gall ink]] common throughout the West.<ref name="Henry154"/> Hand B is found on folios 19r through 26 and folios 124 through 128. Hand B has a somewhat greater tendency to use minuscule and uses red, purple and black ink and a variable number of lines per page. Hand C is found throughout the majority of the text. Hand C also has a greater tendency to use minuscule than Hand A. Hand C uses the same brownish gall ink used by hand A and wrote, almost always, seventeen lines per page.<ref>Henry 1974, 155.</ref> Additionally a fourth scribe named Hand D has been hypothesized, to whom folio 104r was attributed.<ref name="Hand D" />

[[File:KellsFol200rGeneolgyOfChrist.jpg|thumb|left|Folio 200r begins Luke's [[genealogy of Jesus]], which runs for five pages.]]

====Errors and deviations====
There are several [[Bible errata|differences]] between the text and the accepted Gospels. In the [[genealogy of Jesus]], which starts at Luke 3:23, Kells names an extra ancestor.<ref>{{cite book|last=Sullivan|first=Edward|title=The Book of Kells|year=1920|publisher=The Studio|page=120|url=http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/celt/bok/bok20.htm|isbn=1-85170-196-6}}</ref> At [[But to bring a sword|Matthew 10:34]], a common English translation reads "I came not to send peace, but a sword".  However, the manuscript reads ''gaudium'' ("joy") where it should read ''gladium'' ("sword"), thus translating as "I came not (only) to send peace, but joy."<ref>{{cite book|last=Nathan|first=George Jean Nathan|title=The American Mercury|year=1951|page=572|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=pXgWAQAAIAAJ&q=%22refused%20to%20adopt%20St.%20Jerome's%20phrase%22|author2=Henry Louis Mencken|quote=The compilers of the late seventh century manuscript, The Book of Kells, refused to adopt St. Jerome's phrase "I come not to bring peace but a sword." (" . . . non-pacem sed gladium.") ...}}</ref> The lavishly decorated opening page of the Gospel according to John had been deciphered by George Bain as: "In principio erat verbum verum"<ref>{{cite book |first=George |last=Bain |title=Celtic Art: The Methods of Construction |year=1973 |publisher=Dover Publications, Inc |isbn=0-486-22923-8 |url=https://archive.org/details/methodsofconstru00bain }}, page 95, Plate 14.</ref> (In the beginning was the True Word). Therefore, the incipit is a free translation into Latin of the [[Koine Greek|Greek]] original [http://biblehub.com/interlinear/john/1.htm λογος] rather than a mere copy of the Roman version.

====Annotations====
Over the centuries multiple annotations have been written in the book, recording page information and historical events.  During the 19th century, former Trinity Librarian [[James Henthorn Todd|J.H. Todd]] numbered the book's folios at recto, bottom left.  On several of the blank pages among the preliminaries (folios 5v-7r and 27r) are found land charters pertaining to the Abbey of Kells; recording charters in important books was a common custom in the medieval period.  James Ussher transcribed the charters in his collected works, and they were later translated into English.<ref>{{cite journal |last=O'Donovan |first=J |title=The Irish Charters in the Book of Kells |journal=Miscellany of the Irish Archeological Society |year=1846 |volume=1 |url=https://archive.org/details/miscellanyofiris00iris/page/126/mode/2up |pages=127–158 }}</ref> A blank page at the end of Luke (folio 289v) contains a poem complaining of taxation upon church land, dated to the 14th or 15th century.  In the early 17th century one Richardus Whit recorded several recent events on the same page in "clumsy" Latin, including a famine in 1586, the [[James VI and I#Accession in England|accession of James I]], and plague in Ireland during 1604.  The signature of [[Thomas Ridgeway, 1st Earl of Londonderry|Thomas Ridgeway]], 17th century [[Lord High Treasurer of Ireland|Treasurer of Ireland]], is extant on folio 31v, and the 1853 [[monogram]] of [[John O. Westwood]], author of an early modern account of the book, is found on 339r.

Three notes concerning the book's pagination are found together on a single page (folio 334v): in 1568 one Geralde Plunket noted his annotations of the Gospel's chapter numbers throughout the book.  A second note from 1588 gave a folio count, and a third note by James Ussher reported 344 folios in the book as of 1621. The bifolium 335-336 was lost and subsequently restored in 1741, recorded in two notes on folio 337r.  Plunket's accretions were varied and significant.  He inscribed transcriptions in the margins of the major illuminated folios 8r, 29r, 203r and 292r.  On folio 32v, he added the annotation "Jesus Christus" in the [[spandrel]]s of the composition's architecture, identifying the portrait's subject as Christ; in the 19th century, this annotation was covered by white paint, altering the composition.  Plunket also wrote his name on multiple pages, and added small animal embellishments.<ref name="Henry74"/><ref>Brown 1980, 92-95.</ref><ref>Meehan 1994, 19, 76, 92.</ref>