siglum Scribal abbreviations, or sigla (singular: siglum), are abbreviations used by ancient and medieval scribes writing in various languages, including Latin, Greek, Old English and Old Norse. In modern manuscript editing (substantive and mecha ...

Greek Greek may refer to: Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...

Hebrew Bible The Hebrew Bible or Tanakh (;"Tanach"
. '' Tanakh The Hebrew Bible or Tanakh (;"Tanach"
. ''

Old Testament The Old Testament (OT) is the first division of the Christian biblical canon, which is based primarily upon the 24 books of the Hebrew Bible, or Tanakh, a collection of ancient religious Hebrew and occasionally Aramaic writings by the Isr ...

) known as the

Septuagint The Septuagint ( ), sometimes referred to as the Greek Old Testament or The Translation of the Seventy (), and abbreviated as LXX, is the earliest extant Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible from the original Biblical Hebrew. The full Greek ...

. It is now in the

Vatican Library The Vatican Apostolic Library (, ), more commonly known as the Vatican Library or informally as the Vat, is the library of the Holy See, located in Vatican City, and is the city-state's national library. It was formally established in 1475, alth ...

. The text was written on

vellum Vellum is prepared animal skin or membrane, typically used as writing material. It is often distinguished from parchment, either by being made from calfskin (rather than the skin of other animals), or simply by being of a higher quality. Vellu ...

in

uncial Uncial is a majuscule script (written entirely in capital letters) commonly used from the 4th to 8th centuries AD by Latin and Greek scribes. Uncial letters were used to write Greek and Latin, as well as Gothic, and are the current style for ...

letters. Palaeographically it has been assigned to the 6th century. Marginal annotations were later added to the copy of the Scripture text, the early ones being of importance for a study of the history of the Septuagint. Its name was derived from a former owner, René Marchal.

Description

The manuscript is an in quarto volume, arranged in quires of five sheets or ten leaves each, like

Codex Vaticanus The Codex Vaticanus ( The Vatican, Bibl. Vat., Vat. gr. 1209), is a manuscript of the Greek Bible, containing the majority of the Old Testament and the majority of the New Testament. It is designated by siglum B or 03 in the Gregory-Aland numb ...

or

Codex Rossanensis The Rossano Gospels, designated by 042 or Σ (in the Gregory-Aland numbering), ε 18 ( Soden), held at the cathedral of Rossano in Italy, is a 6th-century illuminated manuscript Gospel Book written following the reconquest of the Italian peninsul ...

. It contains text of the Twelve Prophets,

Book of Isaiah The Book of Isaiah ( ) is the first of the Latter Prophets in the Hebrew Bible and the first of the Major Prophets in the Christian Old Testament. It is identified by a superscription as the words of the 8th-century BC prophet Isaiah ben Amo ...

,

Book of Jeremiah The Book of Jeremiah () is the second of the Latter Prophets in the Hebrew Bible, and the second of the Prophets in the Christian Old Testament. The superscription at chapter Jeremiah 1#Superscription, Jeremiah 1:1–3 identifies the book as "th ...

with Baruch, Lamentations, Epistle of Jeremiah,

Book of Ezekiel The Book of Ezekiel is the third of the Nevi'im#Latter Prophets, Latter Prophets in the Hebrew Bible, Tanakh (Hebrew Bible) and one of the Major Prophets, major prophetic books in the Christian Bible, where it follows Book of Isaiah, Isaiah and ...

,

Book of Daniel The Book of Daniel is a 2nd-century BC biblical apocalypse with a 6th-century BC setting. It is ostensibly a narrative detailing the experiences and Prophecy, prophetic visions of Daniel, a Jewish Babylonian captivity, exile in Babylon ...

, with Susanna and Bel. The order of the 12 Prophets is unusual:

Hosea In the Hebrew Bible, Hosea ( or ; ), also known as Osee (), son of Beeri, was an 8th-century BC prophet in Israel and the nominal primary author of the Book of Hosea. He is the first of the Twelve Minor Prophets, whose collective writing ...

,

Amos Amos or AMOS may refer to: Arts and entertainment * ''Amos'' (album), an album by Michael Ray * Amos (band), an American Christian rock band * ''Amos'' (film), a 1985 American made-for-television drama film * Amos (guitar), a 1958 Gibson Fl ...

, Micah, Joel,

Obadiah Obadiah (; – ''ʿŌḇaḏyā'' or – ''ʿŌḇaḏyāhū''; "servant/slave of Yah"), also known as Abdias, is a biblical prophet. The authorship of the Book of Obadiah is traditionally attributed to the prophet Obadiah. The ma ...

,

Jonah Jonah the son of Amittai or Jonas ( , ) is a Jewish prophet from Gath-hepher in the Northern Kingdom of Israel around the 8th century BCE according to the Hebrew Bible. He is the central figure of the Book of Jonah, one of the minor proph ...

, Nahum,

Habakkuk Habakkuk or Habacuc is the main figure described in the Book of Habakkuk, the eighth of the Twelve Minor Prophets in the Hebrew Bible. He is traditionally regarded as a prophet active around 612 BCE. Almost all information about Habakkuk is dr ...

, Zephaniah,

Haggai Haggai or Aggeus (; – ''Ḥaggay''; ; Koine Greek: Ἀγγαῖος; ) was a Hebrew prophet active during the building of the Second Temple in Jerusalem, one of the twelve minor prophets in the Hebrew Bible, and the author or subject of the ...

, Zechariah, and

Malachi Malachi or Malachias (; ) is the name used by the author of the Book of Malachi, the last book of the Nevi'im (Prophets) section of the Hebrew Bible, Tanakh. It is possible that ''Malachi'' is not a proper name, because it means "messenger"; ...

. The order of books is the same as in

Codex Vaticanus The Codex Vaticanus ( The Vatican, Bibl. Vat., Vat. gr. 1209), is a manuscript of the Greek Bible, containing the majority of the Old Testament and the majority of the New Testament. It is designated by siglum B or 03 in the Gregory-Aland numb ...

. The Book of Daniel represents the Theodotion version. In its present state, the manuscript consists of 416 parchment leaves, but the first twelve contain patristic matter, and did not form a part of the original manuscript. The leaves measure 11 x 7 inches (29 x 18 cm). The writing is in one column per page, 29 lines per column, and 24–30 letters in line. It is written in bold uncial of the so-called Coptic style. In the first half of the 19th century it was thought to be one of the oldest manuscripts of the Septuagint. It is generally agreed that Codex Marchalianus belongs to a well-defined textual family with Hesychian characteristics, a representative of the Hesychian recension (along with the manuscripts A, 26, 86, 106, 198, 233).

Marginal notes

Some notes were added in the margins of the manuscript's Septuagint text in 6th-century uncial letters, some of them added quite soon by the same scribe who wrote the patristic material now placed at the beginning of the manuscript,Henry Barclay Swete, ''An Introduction to the Old Testament in Greek'' (Cambridge University Press 1902), pp. 144–145
/ref> but many are in a minuscule script, perhaps as late as the 13 century, which led Swete to classify the manuscript as of the 12th century. Images of pages with early notes in uncials of smaller size and of the much more abundant medieval notes in minuscules can in seen in an article by Marieke Dhont. The marginal notes indicate

Hexapla ''Hexapla'' (), also called ''Origenis Hexaplorum'', is a Textual criticism, critical edition of the Hebrew Bible in six versions, four of them translated into Ancient Greek, Greek, preserved only in fragments. It was an immense and complex wor ...

ric corrections of the Hesychian text In the margins of Ezekiel and Lamentations they add about seventy items of an onomasticon. In their comment on the two verses Ezekiel 1:2 and 11:1, they use Ιαω, a phonetic transliteration into Greek letters of Hebrew יהוה, as an indirect reference to the

Tetragrammaton The TetragrammatonPronounced ; ; also known as the Tetragram. is the four-letter Hebrew-language theonym (transliteration, transliterated as YHWH or YHVH), the name of God in the Hebrew Bible. The four Hebrew letters, written and read from ...

. Several other marginal notes, not the text itself, give ΠΙΠΙ in the same way. In Isaiah 45:18 Codex Marchalianus has Ἐγώ εἰμι, ("I am"), as does the Greek Septuagint in general. In the margin, this text was "corrected" to "I am the Lord", adding Κύριος ("the Lord") and making it conform to the

Masoretic Text The Masoretic Text (MT or 𝕸; ) is the authoritative Hebrew and Aramaic text of the 24 books of the Hebrew Bible (''Tanakh'') in Rabbinic Judaism. The Masoretic Text defines the Jewish canon and its precise letter-text, with its vocaliz ...

אני יהוה.

History of the codex

The manuscript was written in Egypt not later than the 6th century. It seems to have remained there till the ninth, since the uncial corrections and annotations as well as text exhibit letters of characteristically Egyptian form. From Egypt it was carried before the 12th century to South Italy, and thence into France, where it became the property of the Abbey of St. Denys near Paris. René Marchal (hence name of the codex) obtained the manuscript from the Abbey of St. Denys. From the library of Marchal it passed into the hands of Cardinal La Rochefoucauld, who in turn presented it to the

College de Clermont A college (Latin: ''collegium'') may be a tertiary educational institution (sometimes awarding degrees), part of a collegiate university, an institution offering vocational education, a further education institution, or a secondary school ...

, the celebrated Jesuit house in Paris. Finally, in 1785, it was purchased for the Vatican Library, where it is now housed. The codex was known by

Bernard de Montfaucon Dom Bernard de Montfaucon, O.S.B. (; 13 January 1655 – 21 December 1741) was a French Benedictine monk of the Congregation of Saint Maur. He was an astute scholar who founded the discipline of palaeography, as well as being an editor of w ...

and Giuseppe Bianchini. The text of the codex was used by J. Morius, Wettstein, an Montfaucon. It was collated for James Parsons, and edited by Tischendorf in the fourth volume of his ''Nova Collectio'' 4 (1869), pp. 225–296, and in the ninth volume of his ''Nova Collectio'' 9 (1870), pp. 227–248. Giuseppe Cozza-Luzi edited its text in 1890.Giuseppe Cozza-Luzi, ''Prophetarum codex Graecus Vaticanus 2125'' (Romae, 1890) Ceriani classified the text in 1890 as a Hesychian recension, but

Hexapla ''Hexapla'' (), also called ''Origenis Hexaplorum'', is a Textual criticism, critical edition of the Hebrew Bible in six versions, four of them translated into Ancient Greek, Greek, preserved only in fragments. It was an immense and complex wor ...

ric signs have been freely added, and the margins supply copious extracts from Aquila, Symmachus,

Theodotion Theodotion (; , ''gen''.: Θεοδοτίωνος; died c. 200) was a Hellenistic Jewish scholar, perhaps working in Ephesus, who in c. A.D. 150 translated the Hebrew Bible into Greek. History Whether he was revising the Septuagint, or was wor ...

, and the Septuaginta of the Hexapla.

Alfred Rahlfs Alfred Rahlfs (; ; 29 May 1865 – 8 April 1935) was a German Biblical scholar. He was a member of the history of religions school. He is known for his edition of the Septuagint published in 1935. Biography He was born in Linden near Hanover, a ...

''Verzeichnis der griechischen Handschriften des Alten Testaments, für das Septuaginta-Unternehmen''
Göttingen 1914, pp. 273–274. The codex is housed in the

Vatican Library The Vatican Apostolic Library (, ), more commonly known as the Vatican Library or informally as the Vat, is the library of the Holy See, located in Vatican City, and is the city-state's national library. It was formally established in 1475, alth ...

(Vat. gr. 2125).

References

External links

*
Digitised copy of Codex Marchalianus
in the Vatican library, Vat.Gr.2125 {{Authority control Illuminated biblical manuscripts 6th-century biblical manuscripts Septuagint manuscripts Manuscripts in the Vatican Library

Description

Marginal notes

History of the codex

See also

References

Further reading

External links