The Psalterium Sinaiticum (scholarly abbreviations: Psa or Ps. sin.) is a 209-folio

Glagolitic The Glagolitic script (, , ''glagolitsa'') is the oldest known Slavic alphabet. It is generally agreed to have been created in the 9th century by Saint Cyril, a monk from Thessalonica. He and his brother Saint Methodius were sent by the Byzan ...

Old Church Slavonic

canon Canon or Canons may refer to: Arts and entertainment * Canon (fiction), the conceptual material accepted as official in a fictional universe by its fan base * Literary canon, an accepted body of works considered as high culture ** Western ca ...

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 in ...

, the earliest Slavic psalter, dated to the 11th century. The manuscript was found in

Saint Catherine's Monastery Saint Catherine's Monastery ( ar, دير القدّيسة كاترين; grc-gre, Μονὴ τῆς Ἁγίας Αἰκατερίνης), officially the Sacred Autonomous Royal Monastery of Saint Katherine of the Holy and God-Trodden Mount Sinai, ...

Egypt Egypt ( ar, مصر , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia via a land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Medit ...

, after which it was named and where it remains to this day.

Discovery

The major part of the psalter (177 folios) was discovered in 1850 by the Russian

archimandrite The title archimandrite ( gr, ἀρχιμανδρίτης, archimandritēs), used in Eastern Christianity, originally referred to a superior abbot (''hegumenos'', gr, ἡγούμενος, present participle of the verb meaning "to lead") wh ...

Porphyrius Uspensky Bishop Porphyrius (russian: Епи́скоп Порфи́рий, secular name Konstantin Aleksandrovich Uspensky, russian: Константи́н Алекса́ндрович Успе́нский; 8 September 1804 - 19 April 1885), was a Russian ...

( Sin. slav. 38/O), and additional 32 folios with the exact continuation (Ps. 138-150 and the 14 canticles) turned up in 1968 (Sin. slav. 2/N).

Editions

It was published by L. Geitler (''Psalterium. Glagolski spomenik manastria Siani brda''; Zagreb 1883), S.N. Severjanov (''Sinajskaja psaltyr'. Glagoličeskij pamjatnik XI veka. Prigotovil k pečati Sergej Sever'janov''; Saint Petersburg 1922, transcribed to Cyrillic; reprinted in Graz in 1954) and by

Moshe Altbauer Moses ( el, Μωϋσῆς),from Latin and Greek Moishe ( yi, משה),from Yiddish Moshe ( he, מֹשֶׁה),from Modern Hebrew or Movses (Armenian: Մովսես) from Armenian is a male given name, after the biblical figure Moses. According to ...

in 1971, in a facsimile reproduction (''Sinajski psaltir, glagolski rakopis od XI. vek od manastirot Sv. Katerina na Sinaj'', MANU, Skopje 1971). The manuscript is also extensively discussed with facsimile reproductions in Ioannis C. Tarnanidis: ''The Slavonic Manuscripts Discovered in 1975 at. St. Catherine's Monastery on Mount Sinai'' (Thessaloniki 1988).

Linguistic analysis

Paleographic and linguistic analysis shows that the writing of some letters is very inconsistent. Therefore, it is assumed that several scribes worked on the manuscript. Especially inconsistent is the writing of yers and nasal vowels, and very obvious is the tendency of the vocalization of jers and the omission of epenthetic ''l''.

References

* * *

Source

*{{Cite web , url=https://www.loc.gov/item/00279385664-ms/ , title=Sinai, Saint Catherine's Monastery, Ms. Slav. 38 , work=“Psalterium sinaiticum” (Psa, Ps. sin.) – Incomplete Glagolitic Psalter with only Ps. 1-137, one leaf (Ps 67:19-36) is missing (11th-century) , ref=SinSl38 Sinaiticum 11th-century biblical manuscripts Cyrillo-Methodian studies Old Church Slavonic canon Church Slavonic manuscripts

Discovery

Editions

Linguistic analysis

See also

References

Source