Septuagint manuscripts

Manuscripts of the Septuagint translation

Lower part of col. 18 (according to the reconstruction by E. Tov) of the Greek Minor Prophets Scroll from Nahal Hever containing verses from Habakkuk (c. 50 BCE - 50 CE). The arrow points at the tetragrammaton in paleo-Hebrew script.

The earliest surviving manuscripts of the Septuagint (abbreviated as LXX meaning 70), an ancient (first centuries BCE) translation of the ancient Hebrew Torah into Koine Greek, include three 2nd century BCE fragments from the books of Leviticus and Deuteronomy (Rahlfs nos. 801, 819, and 957) and five 1st century BCE fragments of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy (Rahlfs nos. 802, 803, 805, 848, and 942), only. The vast majority of Septuagint manuscripts are late-antiquity and medieval manuscript versions of the Christian Greek Old Testament tradition.^{[1][2][3][4][5]: 122–170}

Classification

There are currently over 2,000 classified manuscripts of the Greek Old Testament.^[6]

The first list of manuscripts was presented by Holmes and Parsons, of which their edition ends with a full list of manuscripts known to them. It enumerates 311 codes (marked with Roman numerals I–XIII and Arab 14–311), which are designated by their siglum I–XIII, 23, 27, 39, 43, 156, 188, 190, 258, 262.^[5]: 122

The codes marked with Roman numerals signify given letters from A to Z.^{[5]: 122-123}

The list of manuscripts according to the classification of Alfred Rahlfs —a list of all known manuscripts proposed by Alfred Rahlfs based on census of Holmes and Parsons.

Division in classification by Rahlfs

The table of manuscripts is divided into ten parts:

• Part I: A–Z (specific late antiquity codices in majuscule script).
• Part II: 13–311 (medieval manuscripts, numbering given by Holmes and Parsons)
• Part III: 312–800 (medieval manuscripts of the Greek Old Testament without the Psalms)
• Part IV: 801–1000 (antiquity small fragments of the Torah and late antiquity small fragments of the Greek Old Testament without the Psalms)
• Part V: 1001–1400 (psalms from the twelfth century)
• Part VI: 1401–2000 (medieval fragments psalms uncertain dating younger)
• Part VII: 2001–3000 (medieval small fragments psalter [to the eighth century] BCE)
• Part VIII: 3001–5000 (medieval manuscripts of the Greek Old Testament without the Psalms)
• Part IX: 5001–7000 (medieval small fragments of the Greek Old Testament without the Psalms)
• Part X: 7001–xxxx (medieval psalter fragments )

Abbreviations

• Pent. – Pentateuch (Genesis – Deuteronomy)
• Hept. – Heptateuch (Genesis – Judges)
• Oct. – Octateuch (ἡ ὀκτάτευχος = Genesis – Ruth)
• IV Proph. – Four Major Prophets books.
• XII Proph. – Twelve Minor Prophets books.
• Most book names are not written in full. They are abbreviated from their Latin names which can be seen in the article Books of the Vulgate. Example: Book of Wisdom or, Wisdom of Solomon, is abbreviated as Sap.

Acronyms

EBE - National Library of Greece

Latin terms

• aliquot – some
• catenae, catenarum – chain, chains (abbreviated as "cat."). Catena.
• ecloge – safeguard page
• excerpta – items
• graduales – Songs of Ascents (Ps 119-133 by the numbering in the LXX)
• inter alia – among others
• lacunae – missing words/lines/pages
• poenitentiales – Penitential Psalms
• sine – without

List of manuscripts

List taken from Manuscripts of the Septuagint, published by Logos.^[7]

Part I: A–Z

Part II: 13–311

Part III: 312–800

312–500

501–600

601–700

701–800

Part IV: 801–1000

801–900

901–1000

Part V: 1001–1400

1001–1100

1101–1200

1201–1300

1301–1400

Part VI: 1401–2000

1401–1500

1501–1600

1601–1700

1701–1800

1801–1900

1901–2000

Part VII: 2001–3000

Part VIII: 3001-5000

Part X: 7001–xxxx

See also

• Biblical manuscripts
• List of the Dead Sea Scrolls
• List of Hebrew Bible manuscripts
• Vulgate manuscripts

References

1. Sidney Jellicoe, The Septuagint and modern study, 1968, pp. 175, Ch. VII: "For the manuscripts the familiar threefold classification into (1) Uncials, (2) Cursives, and (3) Papyri and Fragments has been adopted, although (see p. 176, n. 1, infra) it is not entirely"
2. Wolfgang Kraus, R. Glenn Wooden, Septuagint research: issues and challenges, 2006
3. Natalio Fernández Marcos, The Septuagint in Context: Introduction to the Greek Version of the Bible, 2000, Ch. 15
4. Cécile Dogniez, Bibliography of the Septuagint, 1995 [This volume is a successor to "A Classified Bibliography of the Septuagint (Brill, Leiden 1973), by S.P. Brock, C. T. Fritsch and S. Jellicoe, for the literature on the Septuagint published between 1970 and 1993."
5. Swete, Henry Barclay; Thackeray, Henry St. John (1900). "Part I chapter V. Manuscripts of the Septuagint". An Introduction to the Old Testament in Greek: With an Appendix. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
6. Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen. "Herzlich willkommen auf den Seiten des Göttinger Septuaginta-Unternehmens!" (in German). adw-goe.de. Archived from the original on 2015-07-06. Retrieved 2013-09-17.
7. "Manuscripts of the Septuagint". Lexham Press. 2020.
8. both believed to form an entity as Henry Barclay Swete states in "An Introduction to the Old Testament in Greek. Additional Notes": "...these two codices originally formed portions of a complete copy of the Greek Old Testament" http://biblehub.com/library/swete/an_introduction_to_the_old_testament_in_greek_additional_notes/chapter_v_manuscripts_of_the.htm]
9. de:Codex Bodleianus Auct. D. 4. 1
10. "France, Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Département des manuscrits, Grec 20 | Biblissima".
11. "Digital Collections Platform - National Library of Greece".
12. Paschou, Christine (1999). "Le Codex Atheniensis 2641 et le Patrice Samonas". Byzantion. 69 (2): 366–395. JSTOR 44172498.
13. "Digital Collections: Wisdom of Solomon; Enarratio in prophetam Isaiam".
14. "THE YALE GENESIS FRAGMENT | C. Bradford Welles | download".
15. Emmel, Stephen (1996). "Greek Biblical Papyri in the Beinecke Library". Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik. 112: 289–294. JSTOR 20189819.
16. "The Yale Genesis". 3 February 2018.
17. "P.Bodmer XXIV (Rahlfs 2110)". Museum of the Bible. Retrieved 2024-08-09.