The ms. Ambrosiano O 39 sup. – is a

manuscript A manuscript (abbreviated MS for singular and MSS for plural) was, traditionally, any document written by hand – or, once practical typewriters became available, typewritten – as opposed to mechanically printed or reproduced i ...

of 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 ...

Origen Origen of Alexandria, ''Ōrigénēs''; Origen's Greek name ''Ōrigénēs'' () probably means "child of Horus" (from , "Horus", and , "born"). ( 185 – 253), also known as Origen Adamantius, was an early Christian scholar, ascetic, and the ...

dated to the late ninth century C.E. written in a

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 ...

, meaning that the current text is written on leaves which had been used written before and cleaned. The manuscript is designated with the number 1098 in the list of the septuagint manuscripts as the classification of

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 ...

and with the number 587 in Emidio Martini and Domenico Bassi's catalogue of the

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece 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 ...

manuscripts in the

Biblioteca Ambrosiana The Biblioteca Ambrosiana is a historic library in Milan, Italy, also housing the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana, the Ambrosian art gallery. Named after Ambrose, the patron saint of Milan, it was founded in 1609 by Cardinal Federico Borromeo, whose agen ...

Description

The palimpsest contains about 150 verses of the Psalms. The codex is written in five columns per page, unlike other portions of the Hexapla it does not contain one column written in

Hebrew language Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserve ...

. The first column is a sequential transliteration from the Hebrew to Greek text, in the second probably a translation of Aquila, the third is a version of Symmachus, the fourth contain a text of the

Septuaginta The Greek Old Testament, or Septuagint (, ; from the la, septuaginta, lit=seventy; often abbreviated ''70''; in Roman numerals, LXX), is the earliest extant Greek translation of books from the Hebrew Bible. It includes several books beyond ...

and the fifth column contains the Greek version of Quinta. This is the latest known manuscript that has the Septuagint text with the tetragrammaton. 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 ...

occur in square Hebrew characters in all the five columns in the following places within the

Book of 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 ...

: 18:30, 31, 41, 46; 28:6,7,8; 29:1 (x2), 2 (x2), 3 (x2); 30:1, 2, 4, 7, 8, 10, 10, 12; 31:1, 5, 6, 9, 21, 23 (x2), 24; 32:10, 11; 35:1, 22, 24, 27; 36:5; 46:7, 8, 11; 89:49 (in the columns 1, 2 and 4), 51, 52.

History

A facsimile and a textual transcription was published in 1958 by Giovanni Mercati in a publication entitled: ''Psalterii Hexapli Reliquiae... Pars prima. Codex Rescriptus Bybliothecae Ambrosianae O 39 sup. Phototypice Expressus et Transcriptus''.

Actual location

The manuscript is kept in the

, located at

Milan Milan ( , , Lombard: ; it, Milano ) is a city in northern Italy, capital of Lombardy, and the second-most populous city proper in Italy after Rome. The city proper has a population of about 1.4 million, while its metropolitan city ...

(O. 39 sup.).

References

Bibliography

External links