Codex of Novgorod

The Codex of Novgorod () is the name of the oldest book of Rus', unearthed the July 13rd 2000 with Novgorod. It is about a book made up of three shelves out of wooden containing four pages filled with wax, on which them owner wrote dozen, probably hundreds, texts lasting two or three tens of years. Each time, the written text recovered the precedent.

According to the data obtained by stratigraphy (and Dendrochronology), dating with carbon and starting from the text itself (where the year 999 appears on several occasions), the wax codex was used in the first quarter of the 11th century and perhaps in the last years of the 10th century. This document is thus former to the Ostromir Gospels, the last precisely dated Slave book.

Basic text

The wax of the codex contains the Psaumes 75 and 76 (and a small fragment of the Psaume 67). It is about the basic text of the Codex of Novgorod. Consequently, the book is also known under the name of Novgorod Psalter . This text can be read as easily as any other document on a Parchemin and can be examined in first. Translation of the psalms exhibe a Slavic translation different from those known until now, particularly for the Psalterium Sinaiticum.

Language

The language of the Codex of Novgorod is a very regular (especially in the basic text) Church Slavonic, with some “errors” in the C-W communication of the letters Yus betraying the origins East Slavic of the author. The whole text was written same hand in an orthography that one can qualify “monoyeric” (Russian одноероваясистемаписьма ), i.e.: in the place of two letters Yer ь and ъ , only the ъ is used.

Exhumed texts

Andrey Zaliznyak made considerable efforts to reconstitute only one small portion of the texts former to the text basic and thus unobtrusive of the wax surface, leaving only weak prints and scratches on the wood shelf below the wax. The principal difficulty of this task is the fact that the weak traces of thousands of letters left by the Stylet, often not easily distinguishable of the grain of wood itself, were superimposed, producing an impenetrable labyrinth of lines (Zaliznyak speaks about “hyper- Palimpseste”). Consequently, `to read' a simple portion of a page can take weeks.

The following texts were found until now:

a multitude of psalms, writings each one several times
the beginning of Apocalypse off John
the beginning of translation of the treaty “One virginity” of John Chrysostom, whose no Slavonic translation was known
a multitude of examples of alphabet, in a short version
the tetralogy “From Paganism to Christ” (title of Zaliznyak): four unknown texts: “Moses' Law” (in Russian “ЗаконМоисеев”), “The Unstrengthening and the Unpeacing” (“Размаряющиеиразмиряющие”), “Archangel Gabriel” (“АрхангелГавриил”), and “Jesus Christ' S Law” (“ЗаконИисусаХриста”).
a fragment of the unknown text hitherto “One the Concealed Church off Our Savior Jesus Christ in Laodicea and One the Laodicean Prayer off Our Lord Jesus Christ”
a fragment of the unknown text hitherto “Bruises off the Apostle Paul one Moses' Secret Patericon”
aun fragment of the unknown text hitherto “Instruction by Alexander off Laodicea one Forgiveness off Sins”
a fragment of the unknown text hitherto “Negro spiritual Instruction from the Father and the Mother to its”

Work on the Codex of Novgorod continuous. The university literature on the subject, generally published in Russian, is listed in.

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