Colophonscriptural

Colophonscriptural is a neologism used in manuscript studies and digital editing to describe a category of texts in which the colophon functions as an integral part of the scriptural content rather than as a peripheral bibliographic note. A colophon is traditionally a concluding statement that records information about the production of a manuscript—scribe, date, place, printer, ownership marks. Colophonscriptural extends this concept to literature that treats such metadata as part of the authoritative text; in practice, the colophon may be placed before or after the spirit of the scriptural text, or embedded within a system of marginalia and apparatus.

In colophonscriptural works, metadata and scriptural content are often interwoven, and the colophon may crystallize the manuscript’s transmission history, provenance, or lineage of textual traditions. The practice can appear in historical manuscripts where endnotes, ownership and copying notes, or date stamps are inseparable from the sacred text, as well as in modern editions that deliberately blend editorial colophony with the text to signal authority or provenance.

Origins and usage of the term are found in discussions within textual criticism, palaeography, and digital humanities, where scholars categorize corpora of scriptures or religious writings that foreground colophonic information as part of the text’s fabric. Colophonscriptural has utility for edition design, manuscript cataloging, and provenance studies, and it highlights how transmission practices influence interpretation of sacred writings.

See also: colophon, scriptural manuscript, textual criticism, palaeography, manuscript studies.