Novgorod Codex

Code Novgorod (Russian Новгородский кодекс, scientific transliteration Novgorodskij kodeks ) is a term that has received the July 13, discovered in 2000 during excavations in Novgorod oldest book in the Rus. This is a wax tablet book, a triptych of three linden wood panels bonded together with a total of four filled with wax pages where the former owner has, indeed probably written hundreds of texts in the course of two to three decades, dozens by each obliterating the previous text.

Following from the stratigraphy ( supported by dendrochronology ), by the radiocarbon method and from the text itself (in the multi- year is mentioned 999) obtained data was the guard codex in the first quarter of the 11th century and perhaps even in the last years of used 10th century, so that he is older by several decades as eg the Ostromir Gospel.

Psalms

On the growth of the code itself, the text of the Psalms is get 75 and 76 (as well as a small part of Psalm 67); this is the so-called basic text (in Russian osnownoj tekst ) of the Novgorod Code, according to which the language monument is sometimes called Novgorod Psalter. This text is as easy to read as other documents on parchment and was the research immediately accessible. The Psalter translation reflects a slightly different translation tradition resist than the previously known oldest texts of the Slavic Psalter (especially the Psalter Sinaiticum ).

Language

The language of the Novgorod Codex is a very regular basis, especially in the Church Slavonic text, albeit with some " errors " in the reproduction of nasal vowels, which disclose the East Slavic origin of the writer. The entire text is written by the same hand, in a so-called one - Jer - orthography (Russian odnojerowaja sistema ) in the ь at the site of two Jer -letter ъ and uniformly only the letter ъ used.

Hidden texts

A. A. Salisnjak (Russian А. А. Зализняк ) has succeeded in extraordinarily laborious work, yet a small portion of the original text preceding, deleted ( "hidden " ) texts on the basis of marks and scratches of the stylus on the wax under the to reconstruct located Holzbrettchen. The difficulty of this work consists in the fact that the usually very weak and hardly to be distinguished from a natural grain in the wood prints tens of thousands of letters overlap each other and thus yield an impenetrable tangle of lines ( Salisnjak speaks of a Hyperpalimpsest ). This may due to the "Read" a single page of a "hidden " text sometimes take weeks.

On " hidden " texts have been found, among other things:

  • A variety of psalms, each of which was written more than once
  • The beginning of the Book of Revelation
  • The beginning of a translation of the treatise " On Virginity " of John Chrysostom, which was not previously known in the Slavonic translation
  • A variety of spellings of the alphabet, and in a short form ( а б в г д е ж ѕ з и ї к л м н о п р с т оу ф х ц ч ш щ ѿ ) and a long form ( а б в г д е ж ѕ з и ї к л м н о п р с т оу ф х ц ч ш щ ѿ ъ ѣ ѫ ѭ ю я ѧ ѿ ) as well as a list of the names of letters ( азъ боукы вѣдѣ глаголи ... )
  • The tetralogy "From Paganism to Christ " (the award of Salisnjak title): four previously unknown texts with the titles "The law of Moses " (Russian " Sakon Mojissejew "), " The debilitating and Entfriedenden " ( " Rasmarjajuschtschije i razmirjajuschtschije " ), " The Archangel Gabriel " ( " Archangel Gavriil ") and " The Law of Jesus Christ" ( " Sakon Iissussa Christa" ).
  • A fragment of the previously unknown text "On the hidden church of our savior Jesus Christ in Laodicea and the laodikeische prayer of our Lord Jesus Christ "
  • A fragment of the previously unknown text "Report of the Apostle Paul about the secret Paterikon Moses"
  • A fragment of the previously unknown text " statement of Alexander of Laodicea about the forgiveness of sins"
  • A fragment of the previously unknown text "Spiritual instruction from his father and from mother to son "
  • The note " Въ лѣто ҂ ѕ҃ф҃з҃ азъ мънихъ исаакии поставленъ попомъ въ соужъдали въ цръкъве свѧтаго александра арменина ... " ( "In the year 6507 [ according to Byzantine count, ie 999 AD ] I was the monk Isaaki, Hieromonach in Suzdal, in the church of Saint Alexander the Armenian ... "); the year 6507 or 999 repeats quite a few times on the edges, so that one may assume that this monk Isaaki is the writer of the code itself, especially since the language has no typical Novgorod features so that it is quite possible that he came from Suzdal.

The large number of previously unknown texts in the Novgorod codex can probably be explained by the fact that the writer belonged to a Christian community, which was declared by the " official church " heretical - probably a dualistic, the Bogomils -affiliated group. After the " official church " had prevailed, the texts of the sect were no longer depreciated and even obliterated the traces of the existence of such a group. Particularly significant in this respect is a section from the "spiritual instruction from his father and from mother to son ":

  • Russian Language
  • Literature ( Russian)
  • Literature ( Church Slavonic )
  • Bible manuscript
  • Christian literature
  • Veliky Novgorod
  • Palimpsest
Ostromir Gospels Patericon Hieromonk Dualism Bogomilism
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