Local man seeks to donate ancient Greek manuscript

Nov. 23—A scrap of paper bearing Greek script led counselor Win Belcher on a decades-long search to piece together an early Christian puzzle.

Belcher, a therapist at Oklahoma Families First, earned degrees in psychology and Judaic studies in religion from Emory University and earned a certificate for ordained ministry from Trinity Lutheran Seminary.

Belcher's story begins in 1984 while he was serving a Lutheran church near Pittsburgh. He stopped by a supermarket in Warrendale, Pennsylvania. The shop also sold antiques, including fine, priceless manuscripts.

He recalled spying a picture frame with a paper fragment sandwiched between glass panes. The fragment was written in Greek, he said.

"This was real authentic manuscript, there were no word spaces, just run-on letters," he said, describing the old practice of writing in continuous script.

"It was at least two and a half months of my gross pay," Belcher said."I did buy it from him, because I knew it was more valuable than I could imagine."

After checking its authenticity, Belcher learned that the fragment could have been written by early Greek church leaders, particularly St. John Chrysostom, an archbishop who lived from 347 to 407.

Belcher said it was an exposition on Psalm 144 and contained the quote "Great is the lord, greatly to be praised, and of his greatness there is no limit."

The page also shows a brown gash and watermark that indicates damage from water and fire.

He said he put his find in the rare book room at the seminary he attended. He said he wrote overseas, seeking all known copies of the text.

In 2009, he resumed his search.

"It's like archaeology, you excavate part of it and wait a number of years, and new resources come along and you find out more," Belcher said.

One new resource was the Internet.

Belcher made an online acquaintance with Nadezhda Kavrus-Hoffmann, a scholar of Greek texts. He turned to her to verify authenticity of texts.

Earlier this year, Belcher turned to Pinakes, a worldwide database for Medieval and Greek manuscripts. He said he particularly searched for St. John Chrysostom, expositions and psalms from Psalm 119-150. He said he found references from around the world but only one U.S. entry — a photo from the University of Portland, a Catholic university in Oregon.

He recalled finding that online photo earlier this month.

"Ten o'clock on Nov. 10, and I saw the watermark first," Belcher said. "I know my manuscript, but I thought 'this can't be.' It's got some rather idiosyncratic renderings of some of these letters.... I'm sure the writing of this is not like anything I've seen."

The pages showed Greek script of Psalms 142 and 143.

"The fact that they're so close together, and the watermarks are completely matched will tell you that whatever the catastrophic event was, those things were still together at that time," he said. "The photo showed a page with the same watermark, showed the same type of damage on the pages."

He said he called the university and asked for as much history on their manuscript as they could give.

"The big question I'm pursuing now is how it got to the United States," he said.

One remote possibility could be a Byzantine Catholic Church established in Lindora, Pennsylvania, in 1910, he said. After the sanctuary opened in 1915, it was destroyed by fire and rebuilt, he said.

Belcher said he is negotiating with the University of Michigan about donating his fragment.

"Portland records are not that good, compared with Michigan, Princeton, Duke," Belcher said. "The University of Michigan has more of Chrysostom's works than any other university in America."

Universities such as Michigan also have more specialized ways to care for early manuscripts, including a climate-controlled room and more detailed paleographic description, he said.

Belcher said he would love to be able to physically reunite his fragment with the Portland fragments.

"But guess what, we could put them together digitally," he said. "That way, regardless of how either of these manuscript fragments survive over time, we have the images."