Novgorod Code

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Novgorod Code
Novgorod Code, Ps 75

Novgorod Codex ( Russian Новгородский кодекс , wiss. Transliteration Novgorodskij kodeks ) is the name for a wax tablet book in Old Church Slavonic from the late 10th and early 11th centuries. It consists of a triptych of three linden wood panels bound together with a total of four sides filled with wax and was found on July 13, 2000 during excavations near Novgorod . It is the oldest surviving code of the Kievan Rus .

Over the course of two to three decades, the former owner had written down dozens, and probably hundreds, of texts, each overwriting the previous text.

Time of origin

In the texts themselves, the year 999 is mentioned several times as a date. According to data obtained from stratigraphy (supported by dendrochronology ), the radiocarbon method and the text itself, the wax code was used in the first quarter of the 11th century and probably also in the last years of the 10th century , so that it was Is decades older than z. B. the Ostromir Gospel .

Psalms

The text of Psalms 75 and 76 (and a small part of Psalm 67) have been preserved on the wax of the code itself ; this is the so-called basic text (Russian osnovnoj tekst ) of the Novgorod Codex, according to which the linguistic monument is sometimes also called the Novgorod Psalter . This text is just as easy to read as other documents on parchment and was immediately accessible to research. The Psalter translation reflects a somewhat different translation tradition than the oldest known texts of the Slavic Psalter (especially the Psalterium sinaiticum ).

language

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

Hidden texts

A. A. Salisnjak (Russian А. А. Зализняк) has succeeded in extraordinarily laborious work, so far, to delete a small part of the text that precedes the basic text ("hidden") using the impressions and scratches of the stylus on the wooden boards under the wax reconstruct. The main difficulty of this work is that the mostly very weak imprints of tens of thousands of letters, which can hardly be distinguished from a natural grain in the wood, overlap each other and thus result in an obscure tangle of lines (Salisnjak speaks of a hyper palimpsest ). As a result, “reading” a single page of “hidden” text can sometimes take weeks.

Among other things, "hidden" texts have so far been found:

  • a multitude of psalms, each of which was written down several times
  • the beginning of the Revelation of John
  • the beginning of a translation of the treatise "On Virginity" by John Chrysostom , which was previously not known in Slavic translation
  • a variety of spellings of the alphabet, namely 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 full 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) and with a list of the letter names (ази боукы вѣдѣ гл…)
  • the tetralogy “From paganism to Christ” (the title given by Salisnjak): four previously unknown texts with the titles “The Law of Moses” (Russian: “Sakon Mojissejew”), “The exhausting and peacemaking” (“Rasmarjajuschtschije i rasmirjajuschtschije”) ), "The Archangel Gabriel" ("Archangel Gawriil") and "The Law of Jesus Christ" ("Sakon Iissussa Christa").
  • a fragment of the previously unknown text "About the hidden church of our Savior Jesus Christ in Laodikeia and about the Laodicean prayer of our Lord Jesus Christ"
  • a fragment of the previously unknown text "Report of the Apostle Paul on the secret Paterikon Moses"
  • a fragment of the previously unknown text "Instruction of Alexander of Laodikeia on the forgiveness of sins"
  • a fragment of the previously unknown text "Spiritual instruction from father and mother to son"
  • the note "Въ лѣто ҂ѕ҃ф҃з҃ азъ мънихъ исаакии поставленъ попомъ въ соужъдали въ цръкъве свѧтаго александра арменина ..." ( "In the year 6507 [by Byzantine count , i. e. 999 n. Chr. ] I was the monk Isaaki, Hieromonach in Suzdal , in of the Church of St. Alexander the Armenian ... “); the year 6507 or 999 is repeated several times on the margins, so that one can assume that this monk Isaaki is the writer of the code himself, especially since his language has no typical Novgorod characteristics, so it is quite possible that he is came from Suzdal.

The large number of previously unknown texts in the Novgorod Codex is probably explained by the fact that the writer belonged to a Christian community that was declared heretical by the “official church” - presumably a dualistic group close to the Bogomils . After the "official church" had prevailed, the texts of the sect were no longer copied and even the traces of the existence of such a group were blurred. A passage from the "Spiritual Instruction from the Father and from the Mother to the Son" is particularly significant in this regard:

[...] [...]
Миръ естъ градъ въ немъ же отълѫчаѭтъ отъ цръкъве еретикы. The world is a city where heretics are excluded from the church.
Миръ естъ градъ въ немъ же отълѫчаѭтъ отъ цръкъве чловѣкы неразоумъны. The world is a city in which ignorant people are excluded from the church.
Миръ естъ градъ въ немъ же отълѫчаѭтъ отъ цръкъве чловѣкы непокоривы. The world is a city where disobedient people are excluded from the church.
Миръ естъ градъ въ немъ же отълѫчаѭтъ отъ цръкъве чловѣкы непорочъны. The world is a city where impeccable people are excluded from the Church.
Миръ естъ градъ въ немъ же отълѫчаѭтъ отъ цръкъве чловѣкы невиновъны. The world is a city where innocent people are excluded from the church.
Миръ естъ градъ въ немъ же отълѫчаѭтъ отъ цръкъве чловѣкы непрѣломъны. The world is a city where inflexible people are excluded from the Church.
Миръ естъ градъ въ немъ же отълѫчаѭтъ отъ цръкъве чловѣкы недостоины такоѩ кары. The world is a city in which people who do not deserve this punishment are excluded from the church.
Миръ естъ градъ въ немъ же отълѫчаѭтъ отъ цръкъве чловѣкы недостойны такого отълѫчения. The world is a city in which people who do not deserve this exclusion are excluded from the church.
Миръ естъ градъ въ немъ же отълѫчаѭтъ отъ цръкъве чловѣкы прѣчистыѩ вѣры. The world is a city where people of pure faith are excluded from the Church.
Миръ естъ градъ въ немъ же отълѫчаѭтъ отъ цръкъве чловѣкы достоины хвалы. The world is a city where people worthy of praise are excluded from the Church.
Миръ естъ градъ въ немъ же отълѫчаѭтъ отъ цръкъве чловѣкы достоины прославления. The world is a city where venerable people are excluded from the Church.
Миръ естъ градъ въ немъ же отълѫчаѭтъ отъ цръкъве чловѣкы неотъстѫпъны отъ правыѩ вѣры х҃совы. The world is a city in which people who do not yield to the true faith of Christ are excluded from the church.
[...] [...]

literature

  • Зализняк А. А., Проблемы изучения Новгородского кодекса XI века, найденного in 2000 г. ( Problems with researching the Novgorod Codex ), in: Славянское языкознание. XIII Международный съезд славистов . Любляна, 2003 г. Доклады российской делегации. - Москва, 2003. - С. 190-212.
  • Зализняк А. А., Азъ архангѣлъ Гавриилъ пишѭ молитвѫ . In: Русистика Славистика Лингвистика. Festschrift for Werner Lehfeldt on his 60th birthday. , Red. Sebastian Kempgen, Ulrich Schweier, Tilman Berger. Munich, 2003, pp. 296-309.