INTF’s Liste search is a wonderful tool.1. But sometimes a transcription isn’t available, the default image is harder to read, or both.
In those cases, you might want to consult a different source for the images.
1. “External Images by …”
If you’ve just done a Liste search, you can click through the “External Images by …” link shown atop the left-hand fly out pane below.
2. Other Image Repositories
But there might be still other sets of images you can consult.
To find these, go back to the general Liste, and use the document ID to search for the particular manuscript you’re wanting to see.
You’ll then get a search result page that looks like this.
Scroll down until you see in the right-hand pane a section titled “External image Repo Name.”
This field returns any repositories logged in INTF’s database that have images of the manuscript you’ve searched for.
For 629, there’s just one.
In this case, you’ll get the same thing by clicking through this link as you would using the “External Images by …” link when you have 629 open in the image viewer.
But sometimes, you’ll see more than one external repository listed, as you will if you look up 1881.
If you open 1881, atop the image viewer, you’ll see only a link to CSNTM for external images. You won’t also see the Library of Congress link.
But from the initial Liste search results page, you can click through any external image repository link to view the manuscript images in that repository.
When you do so, you’ll want to know the page number and side (recto or verso) you’re looking for. You’ll need that information to find the corresponding place in the manuscript in the external site.
From there, it’s just a matter of paging through the images on the external site to find the proper page number and side.
Conclusion
Even given INTF’s tools, it still might take you some time to sift through the different image repositories to find exactly what you’re looking for.
But it’s comparatively so easy that I’m reminded of how much more applicable to us are Martin Luther’s comments to the German city councilmen in his day:
What great toil and effort it cost the[ fathers] to gather up a few crumbs, while we with half the labor—yes, almost without any labor at all—can acquire the whole loaf!2
Header image provided by Kelly Sikkema via Unsplash. ↩
Quoted in Pratico and Van Pelt, Basics of Biblical Hebrew, 1st ed., §11.9. ↩
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