Cambridge, University Library Taylor-Schechter Collection 12

The siglum Taylor-Schechter 12.182 (T-S 12.182; also referenced as TM nr. 62326;

LDAB The Leuven Database of Ancient Books (LDAB) is a resource for all ancient written literary manuscripts, from 500 BC to AD 800. It currently lists more than 16.000 Greek, Latin, Coptic, Syriac and Demotic literary texts. It is said that it "attempts ...

id: 3490; Rahlfs 2005) designates a manuscript written on

parchment Parchment is a writing material made from specially prepared untanned skins of animals—primarily sheep, calves, and goats. It has been used as a writing medium for over two millennia. Vellum is a finer quality parchment made from the skins ...

codex The codex (plural codices ) was the historical ancestor of the modern book. Instead of being composed of sheets of paper, it used sheets of vellum, papyrus, or other materials. The term ''codex'' is often used for ancient manuscript books, with ...

form. This is a

palimpsest In textual studies, a palimpsest () is a manuscript page, either from a scroll or a book, from which the text has been scraped or washed off so that the page can be reused for another document. Parchment was made of lamb, calf, or kid skin an ...

of a copy of Origen's work called the

Hexapla ''Hexapla'' ( grc, Ἑξαπλᾶ, "sixfold") is the term for a critical edition of the Hebrew Bible in six versions, four of them translated into Greek, preserved only in fragments. It was an immense and complex word-for-word comparison of the ...

. The manuscript is dated to 7th-century AD, and is the oldest of the hexapla manuscripts. The hexapla was completed before 240 CE.

History

The fragments comes from Egypt, were published by C. Taylor in his work Hebrew-Greek

Cairo Genizah The Cairo Geniza, alternatively spelled Genizah, is a collection of some 400,000 Jewish manuscript fragments and Fatimid administrative documents that were kept in the '' genizah'' or storeroom of the Ben Ezra Synagogue in Fustat or Old Cairo, ...

Palimpsests, Cambridge, 1900, pp. 54–65.

Description

This is

in codex form written on

. It contains

Psalms The Book of Psalms ( or ; he, תְּהִלִּים, , lit. "praises"), also known as the Psalms, or the Psalter, is the first book of the ("Writings"), the third section of the Tanakh, and a book of the Old Testament. The title is derived ...

22 (LXX 21): 15-18 fol. A recto, 19-24 and 25-28 fol. B verso, and the middle columns, 2-5 columns of the Hexapla.

Tetragrammaton ΠΙΠΙ

The manuscript is written in koine Greek, and the divine name is notable, it contains the

tetragrammaton The Tetragrammaton (; ), or Tetragram, is the four-letter Hebrew theonym (transliterated as YHWH), the name of God in the Hebrew Bible. The four letters, written and read from right to left (in Hebrew), are ''yodh'', '' he'', '' waw'', and ...

in Greek characters "Pipi" (). According to

Jerome Jerome (; la, Eusebius Sophronius Hieronymus; grc-gre, Εὐσέβιος Σωφρόνιος Ἱερώνυμος; – 30 September 420), also known as Jerome of Stridon, was a Christian priest, confessor, theologian, and historian; he is co ...

, some

septuagint manuscripts The Septuagint (LXX), the ancient (first centuries BC) Alexandrian translation of Jewish scriptures into Koine Greek exists in various manuscript versions. List of Septuagint manuscripts There are currently over 2000 classified manuscripts ...

had the Divine Name written in this way.

mentions that some Greek manuscripts contain the Hebrew letters YHWH (), he also comments that this Hebrew could mislead some Greek readers to read YHWH as "Pipi" (ΠΙΠΙ), since the letters YHWH (read right to left) look like " Pi

Iota Iota (; uppercase: Ι, lowercase: ι; ) is the ninth letter of the Greek alphabet. It was derived from the Phoenician letter Yodh. Letters that arose from this letter include the Latin I and J, the Cyrillic І (І, і), Yi (Ї, ї), and ...

Pi Iota" (read left to right) in Greek.Letter 25 to Marcellus According to Pavlos D. Vasileiadis and Nehemiah Gordon, the manuscript has "the nomen sacrum with a supralinear Hebrew yod for יהוה (YHWH), followed by . This transitional combination represents the Tetragrammaton in Ps 22:20 XX 21:20in three separate ways in the Septuagint column of Origen’s Hexapla, preserved in a palimpsest in the Cairo Genizah."

Actual location

Today it is kept at the Library of the University of Cambridge as a part of the Taylor-Schechter Cairo Genizah Collection (Cambridge University Library T-S 12.182).

References

Sources

External links

Cambridge University Library T-S 12.182 on Cambridge Digital Library'The oldest fragment of Origen's Hexapla: T-S 12.182', Genizah Research Unit's Fragment of the Month
*{{cite web, title=The Hexapla, publisher=Artefacts of Ancient Judaism, url=http://artefacts.lib.cam.ac.uk/show.html#hexapla, access-date=2015-03-09, url-status=dead, archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150416161134/http://artefacts.lib.cam.ac.uk/show.html#hexapla, archive-date=2015-04-16 A description of T-S 12.182
Image 1University Library Taylor-Schechter Collection 12.182.jpg Image 2
7th-century biblical manuscripts Manuscripts in Cambridge Manuscripts from the Cairo Geniza Works by Origen