Wallace: Well, there are a couple of reasons I suppose. One is that they don't know whom they should release it to. When we were there, they told us, 'We are just not sure how important these manuscripts are. Can you help us by telling us the value of these things? What's in them and train us so we can better understand what we have.'
So in a large respect, since it is not a Christian nation and since they only had one person in the library who even knew a little Greek, there wasn't much they could do to figure out what exactly they had.
So it is kind of like a person that has a very old Bible in a different language and it's not that they are holding back information, but they don't even know who to talk to find out what the Bible is and how old it is and what language it is and that kind of thing. I think that was the case with Albania.
When they learned that we were going to come and photograph the manuscript and that we knew Greek that really encouraged them because they thought this group might just make this news to the world available. They were very pleased with that.
CT: Could you briefly explain historically or geographically why there are so many manuscripts in Albania?
Wallace: I think the reason is because there was an old Roman road that went through Albania - this is one of the reasons - so there was a lot of travel through Albania in ancient times. And they did have monasteries that grew up during the last couple of centuries.
These monasteries were where more than likely these manuscripts were actually produced, but not all of them would be produced in Albania. You have monasteries in a number of ancient sites in both Europe and the Middle East and this is especially where manuscripts get produced. But say a new monastery is built in the 10th century, what often happens is a very important benefactor would donate to that new monastery an ancient manuscript of the Scriptures. And so we don't know where that manuscript came from because typically there is no record of that kind of thing.
So probably some of the earlier manuscripts in Albania probably didn't start out there but they ended up there once these ancient monasteries were opened. That's my best guess on how they got there. Nevertheless, over the centuries there were two or three monasteries in Albania that have kept the manuscripts or produced them or a combination of both.
CT: Will Albania put the manuscripts in a museum where the public can see it, or what do they plan to do now that they know the value of them?
Wallace: Well, they actually had one of their manuscripts on display not too long ago. This is the one that everyone knew was definitely there. It is a purple codex from the 6th century. A purple codex is one where the parchment has been dyed purple and all the ink is in silver or silver and gold. And in case of the Gospel, which is what this manuscript was, all the narratives were in silver and all the words of Jesus are in gold. So it is sort of like the first red letter edition except it is the first gold letter edition.
What they did is they put that on display three or four years ago and, in many respects, Albania treats that one manuscript as their greatest national treasure. It has been classified with UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) as a world treasure and the line of people to get in to see that manuscript wrapped around several blocks. I believe it was a quarter-of-a-mile long, for people to just come in to view it for a few minutes.
So for us to come there and photograph it was an enormous privilege.
