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The Athos Codex of the Georgian Old Testament

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 October 2011

Robert P. Blake
Robert P. Blake
Affiliation:
Harvard University
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Extract

Georgian literature, if it must yield the palm to the Armenian for extent and variety of content, is in at least one respect distinctly superior to its neighbor. A large body of extremely ancient manuscripts have survived, which have preserved to us a highly diversified series of texts. And in general the oldest Georgian manuscripts usually contain the most valuable material. This is true of the Old Testament; the most complete, and on the whole the best, surviving manuscript of that is likewise the oldest. About this manuscript much has been written, but hardly anything has been published from it, and, strangely enough, no detailed description of it has ever appeared. The account herewith presented rests on a careful personal study of the entire codex in the original and in photographs.

Type
Research Article
Information
Harvard Theological Review , Volume 22 , Issue 1 , January 1929 , pp. 33 - 56
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1929

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References

1 On T‘ornik, see A. Natroiev, Иверскiй Mонастырь на Aөон, Tiflis, 1909, pp. 32–18 (not accessible to me here); Schlumberger, G., L'épopée byzantine à la fin du Xe siècle, I, Paris, 1896, pp. 418 ff.Google Scholar; Peeters, P., Histoires monastiques géorgiennes, Bruxelles, 1923, pp. 18Google Scholar f.; 161 f.;, Tiflis, 1892, I, pp. 107 ff.; E. S. Takaïshvili in Cборникъ матерiаловъ по описанiю мстностей и племенъ Кавказа, 35 (1905), pp. 1–80 and also Countess P. S. Uvarova in Матерiалы по археологіи Кавкзsа, IV, Moscow, 1894, pp. 48–60. T‘ornik received the title of πατρίκιος, on the significance of which see J. B. Bury, The Imperial Administrative System in the Ninth Century, 1911, pp. 27–28, 124.

2 Peeters, pp. 18–19.

3 Peeters, p. 19; these facts are contained in the biography of John and Euthymius, written by George the Athonite between the years 1040 and 1050 a.d. Concerning this document see , 1 (, 1923), p. 233; Peeters, pp. 1 ff., and note 19 below.

4 Peeters, p. 19.

5 The date is not given in the life but may be determined approximately. The successful campaign of T‘ornik and Bardas Phocas against Skleros falls in the spring of the year 978; T‘ornik was on Athos the previous year, and had already been there for some years. Kekelidze has worked out that John took Euthymius from Constantinople to the Bithynian Olympus about the year 965 (Kekelidze, p. 183). He did not leave Olympus immediately, and had been on Athos about three years when T‘ornik came thither. These considerations lead me to fix the date approximately at the year 970.

6 Žordania, p. 108; see Takaïshvili, pp. 19 ff.

7 See below, p. 52–3; the proper spelling of the name is Oška, not Ošk'a, as Žordania gives it: Tsagareli has the correct form (Свднія о памятникахъ грузиснкой письменности, выпускъ 1, St. Petersburg, 1886, p. 91).

8 Peeters, p. 19.

9 Peeters, p. 19; Peeters has seen the difficulty, cf. ibid, note 4.

10 Cod. 69 of the Georgian collection at Iviron; Tsagareli, pp. 89–91.

11 Peeters, pp. 25–26 and note 17. My translation differs somewhat from that of Peeters; the word ‘sacinayscarmetqueloy,’ which he takes to mean πρoϕητoλóγειον, or lectionary of the prophets, I believe to mean the unabridged collection of prophetical writings. The only lectionary we have any trace of in Georgian before the time of George the Athonite (ca. 1040) is the Jerusalem calendar (K. S. Kekelidze, Іерусалимскій Канонарь vii–го вка, Tiflis, 1913). The word ‘another’ is not repeated until after the word ‘Maccabees.’

12 The translation of the Maccabees, if it existed in Old Georgian, was probably not included in this Ms., and in any case is now entirely lost. The text in the Moscow Bible (M) is translated from the Slavic.

13 Fifteenth to seventeenth century for the most part. They are of no special historical importance, and I have omitted them in order to save space.

14 Vol. 1, f. 384r in the lower margin.

15 Tsagareli, p. vi.

16 On this matter see Baddeley, J. F., The Russian Conquest of the Caucasus, London, 1908, p. 78Google Scholar.

17 See Th. D. Žordania, Описаніе рукописей церковнаго музея карталино-кахетинкаго духовенства, II, Tiflis, 1902, p. 110 under no. 612.

18 Žordania, Описаніе, II, p. 110; Tsagareli, p. vi.

19 Published in full by M. Djanašvili and A. S. Khakhanov under the title , 1901.

20 See Tsagareli, p. xviii.

21 Langlois, V., ‘Notice sur le convent ibérien du Mont Athos,’ in Journal Asiatique, sér. iv, IX, 1867, pp. 131–150Google Scholar.

22 See the article on Ioseliani in the Православная Богословская Энцикло-педія, VII, 1906, cols. 493–498; also Brosset, M., Rapport sur un voyage archéologique dans la Géorgie et dans l'Arménie, St. Pétersbourg, 1851, 3e livraison, pp. 129–130Google Scholar.

23 This is to be inferred from the fact that the same group of scribes was working on both codices; Tsagareli, p. 6.

24 Described in detail by Žordania, Описаніе, II, pp. 35–41, under no. 471.

25 In 1884; Tsagareli, p. xiv; now Cod. 422 of the library; cf. . , 1905, p. 15.

26 Tsagareli, pp. 1 ff.; the text, ibid. Приложеніе, II, pp.1–56.

27 Tsagareli, pp. xix-xx; the catalogue, ibid. pp. 69–96. It is possible that Tsagareli's text had already been printed off, but the words are not quite definite.

28 As a comparison of the copy with Tsagareli's text showed.

29 Приложеніе, I, pp. 1–16.

30 Ibid. pp. 69–75.

31 Журналъ Министерства Народнаго Просвщенія, T. 322, March 1899, pp. 1 ff., esp. p. 13.

32 He published a brief account of the MS. in the Богословскій Встникъ 12 (Ноябрь 1903), pp. 418–426; Аөонскій списокъ грузинской Библіи 978 г. и значеніе его для исправленія печатнаго текста.

35 See note 34 above; Описаніе, II, pp. 35–41.

34 Harvard Theological Review, XIX, July 1926, pp. 271–297Google Scholar.

35 In the , No. 1, , 1919. My citation is from memory.

36 Cor. Kekelidze, Commentarii in Ecclesiastem Metrophanis Metropolitae Smyrnensis. Monumenta Georgica; Scriptores Eeclesiastici, No. 1, Tiflis, 1920 (georg.), pp. lxxx-lxxxi; text, ibid. pp. 180–226. A collation of this edition which I made with the photographs shows that the copy here is fairly good but has some omissions and misreadings; most of these are not of great importance. Kekelidze revised the orthography systematically in preparing his edition; the MS. is not consistent in its usage. It should be added here that a number of individual readings in the MS. are quoted and discussed by N. Marr in his various works.

37 Vol. 2, fol. 429r; see below, p. 52–3.

38 Ecclesiastical minuscules.

39 The pagination seems to be by the hands of the copyists.

40 See below (on Judith), p. 44.

41 They do not run clear through the latter part of the book, but only partly through Jeremiah.

42 These notes are in pencil and are now smudged, so that most of them are practically illegible.

43 Tsagareli (p. 8), in his account of the Dadiani copy says that it omits Ruth and Baruch. So far as Ruth is concerned he corrects this statement in his description of the original.

44 On the copyists see Tsagareli, op. cit., pp. 6–7.

45 This is not a gap in the archetype, as Žordania thinks (Описаніе, II, p. 37).

46 The statement of the facts in Swete, H. B., Introduction to the Old Testament in Greek, Cambridge, 1900, pp. 271–272Google Scholar, is completely incomprehensible. The facts are clearly set forth by him in the preface to Vol. II of The Old Testament in Greek, pp. vi–vii, Cambridge, 1891. See also Hart, J. H. A., Ecclesiasticus in Greek, Introduction, pp. >vii–viii, Cambridge, 1909Google Scholar. The Greek MSS. are codd. Vat. gr. 248 and 253.

47 This is apparently a corrupt form of Iovaney = John. The č is a part of the stichometry.

48 1 Cor. 3, 9.

49 Eph. 2, 20.

50 1 Tim. 3, 16.

51 1 Cor. 12, 28.

52 Eph. 3, 10.

53 Eph. 3, 9.

54 Matt. 13, 52.

55 Ms.: ‘souls.’

56 This probably refers to Gregory Nazianzen, ep. 101 ad Cledonium, Migne, P.G. 37, col. 178c f.

57 A stemma of the manuscript filiation in the Octateuch with a description of the MSS. is given in my article, ‘Ancient Georgian Versions of the Old Testament’, Harvard Theological Review, vol. XIX, July 1926, p. 287Google Scholar.

58 A discussion of the readings in Ruth in my article cited above, pp. 280 ff.

59 904 A.D. according to Kekelidze; a description of the MS. in Žordania, Описаніе, I, pp. 29–34.

60 Tsagareli, Свднія, II, pp. 51–56. Nos. 1 and 2 and 3–6; these latter are now nos. 42, 29, 86. Codex 2 is now at Graz, and I could not discover the whereabouts of the papyrus psalter No. 1 during my visit to Sinai in 1927.

61 They have the same titles to the Psalms, the introduction of Pseudo-Athanasius, and the apparatus. See A. Rahlfs, Septuagintastudien II, pp. 56–7.

62 Cf. above, p. 45, for Tobit.

63 The various extant texts of Ecclesiastes are printed in parallel columns in the publication of Kekelidze cited above (note 36).

64 From this MS. (A.D. 1215) the text of the Song of Solomon (which is accompanied by a commentary) has been lithographed in facsimile by A. Shanidze, Tiflis, 1924. This part of the MS. is written in ‘mkhedruli’ – the secular hand.

65 The later MSS. are in the library of the Society for the Extension of Literacy among the Georgians, Nos. 409 and 1349; see Karičasvili, , p. 15.

66 Blake, R. P., ‘The Georgian Version of Fourth Esdras from the Jerusalem Manuscript,’ in Harvard Theological Review, XIX, 1926, pp. 299–375CrossRefGoogle Scholar (Georgian text and Latin translation).

67 See the following article in the present number of this Review.

68 On the relation between O and U in the prophets, see my article cited above (note 48), especially pp. 281 ff.

69 If the Book of Daniel ever was included in the MS.