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Palaeography (UK) or paleography (US; ultimately from , ''palaiós'', "old", and , ''graphein'', "to write") is the study of ancient and historical handwriting (that is to say, of the forms and processes of writing, not the textual content of documents). Included in the discipline is the practice of deciphering, reading, and dating historical manuscripts,〔'Palaeography', ''Oxford English Dictionary.〕 and the cultural context of writing, including the methods with which writing and books were produced, and the history of scriptoria. The discipline is important to understanding, authenticating, and dating ancient texts. However, "paleography is a last resort for dating" and, "for book hands, a period of 50 years is the least acceptable spread of time"〔Turner, Eric G. (1987), ''Greek Manuscripts of the Ancient World'' (2d rev. ed.; London: Institute of Classical Studies〕〔 (Nongbri, Brent (2005) "The Use and Abuse of P52: Papyrological Pitfalls in the Dating of the Fourth Gospel." Harvard Theological Review 98:24. )〕 with it being suggested that "the "rule of thumb" should probably be to avoid dating a hand more precisely than a range of at least seventy or eighty years."〔 Nongbri, Brent (2005) "The Use and Abuse of P52: Papyrological Pitfalls in the Dating of the Fourth Gospel." Harvard Theological Review 98:24.〕 In an 2005 e-mail addendum to his 1996 "The Paleographical Dating of P-46" paper Bruce W. Griffin stated "Until more rigorous methodologies are developed, it is difficult to construct a 95% confidence interval for NT manuscripts without allowing a century for an assigned date."〔Griffin, Bruce W. (1996), ("The Paleographical Dating of P-46" )〕 William M Schniedewind went even further in the abstract to his 2005 paper "Problems of Paleographic Dating of Inscriptions" and stated that "The so-called science of paleography often relies on circular reasoning because there is insufficient data to draw precise conclusion about dating. Scholars also tend to oversimplify diachronic development, assuming models of simplicity rather than complexity".〔Schniedewind, William M. (2005) "Problems of Paleographic Dating of Inscriptions" in Thomas Levy, Thomas Higham (ed) (2014) ''The Bible and Radiocarbon Dating: Archaeology, Text and Science'' Routledge.〕 ==Application== Palaeography can be an essential skill for historians and philologists, as it tackles two main difficulties. First, since the style of a single alphabet in each given language has evolved constantly, it is necessary to know how to decipher its individual characters as they existed in various eras. Second, scribes often used many abbreviations, usually so as to write more quickly and sometimes to save space, so the specialist-palaeographer must know how to interpret them. Knowledge of individual letter-forms, ligatures, punctuation, and abbreviations enables the palaeographer to read and understand the text. The palaeographer must know, first, the language of the text (that is, a 21st-century English or French speaker must become expert in the relevant earlier forms of these languages); and second, the historical usages of various styles of handwriting, common writing customs, and scribal or notarial abbreviations. Philological knowledge of the language, vocabulary, and grammar generally used at a given time or place can help palaeographers identify ancient or more recent forgeries versus authentic documents. Knowledge of writing materials is also essential to the study of handwriting and to the identification of the periods in which a document or manuscript may have been produced.〔Robert P. Gwinn, "Paleography" in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, Micropædia, Vol. IX, 1986, p. 78.〕 An important goal may be to assign the text a date and a place of origin: this is why the palaeographer must take into account the style and formation of the manuscript and the handwriting used in it.〔Fernando De Lasala, ''Exercise of Latin Paleography'' (Gregorian University of Rome, 2006) p. 7.〕 However, William M Schniedewind stated in a 2005 paper "Problems of Paleographic Dating of Inscriptions" that "The so-called science of paleography often relies on circular reasoning because there is insufficient data to draw precise conclusion about dating".〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「palaeography」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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