Novgorod Codex

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Novgorod Codex (Russian Новгородский кодекс) is a name for the oldest book of Rus’, unearthed on July 13, 2000 in Novgorod. This is a book consisting of three wooden tablets containing four pages filled with wax, on which its former owner wrote down dozens, probably hundreds of texts during two or three decades, each time wiping out the preceding text.

According to the data obtained by stratigraphy (and dendrochronology), carbon dating and from the text itself (where the year 999 occurs several times), the wax codex was used in the first quarter of the 11th century and maybe even in the last years of the 10th century. It is therefore older than the Ostromir Gospel, the earliest precisely dated East Slavic book.

[edit] Basic text

The wax of the codex itself contains psalms 75 and 76 (and a small fragment of psalm 67). This is the so-called basic text of the Novgorod Codex. Consequently, the book is alternatively known as the Novgorod Psalter. This text can be read as easily as any other document on parchment and could be examined at once. The Psalter translation exhibits a somewhat different translatory tradition than the Slavonic translations of the Psalter known so far (especially the Psalterium Sinaiticum).

[edit] Language

The language of the Novgorod Codex is a very regular (especially in the basic text) Church Slavonic, albeit with some 'mistakes' in the rendition of the yus letters betraying the author's East Slavic origin. The whole text was written by the same hand in a so-called 'monoyeric' orthography (Russian одноеровая система письма), i.e. instead of the two yer letters ь and ъ only ъ is used.

[edit] Concealed texts

Andrey Zaliznyak has taken tremendous effort to reconstruct so far only a small portion of the texts preceding the basic text and thus wiped out from the wax surface, leaving only faint imprints and scratches on the wooden tablet beneath the wax. The main difficulty with this task is the fact that the feeble traces of dozens of thousands of letters left by the stylus, often hardly discernible from the natural shading of the soft lime wood, have been superimposed on each other, producing an impenetrable labyrinth of lines (Zaliznyak speaks of a “hyper-palimpsest”). Consequently, ‘reading’ a single concealed text of one page can take weeks.

The following concealed texts, among others, have been found so far:

• a multitude of psalms, written down several times each
• the beginning of the Apocalypse of John
• the beginning of a translation of the treatise “On virginity” by John Chrysostom, of which a Slavonic translation had not been known
• a multitude of examples of the alphabet, in a short version (а б в г д е ж ѕ з и ї к л м н о п р с т оу ф х ц ч ш щ ѿ) and a full version (а б в г д е ж ѕ з и ї к л м н о п р с т оу ф х ц ч ш щ ѿ ъ ѣ ѫ ѭ ю я ѧ ѿ) as well as with an enumeration of the letter names (азъ боукы вѣдѣ глаголи…)
• the tetralogy “From Paganism to Christ” (title from Zaliznyak): four so far unknown texts titled “Moses’ Law” (Russian “Закон Моисеев”), “The Unstrengthening and the Unpeacing” (“Размаряющие и размиряющие”), “Archangel Gabriel” (“Архангел Гавриил”), and “Jesus Christ’s Law” (“Закон Иисуса Христа”).
• a fragment of the so far unknown text “On the Concealed Church of Our Saviour Jesus Christ in Laodicea and On the Laodicean Prayer of Our Lord Jesus Christ”
• a fragment of the so far unknown text “Tale of the Apostle Paul on Moses’ Secret Patericon”
• a fragment of the so far unknown text “Instruction by Alexander of Laodicea on Forgiveness of Sins”
• a fragment of the so far unknown text “Spiritual Instruction from the Father and the Mother to the Son”
• the note “Въ лѣто ҂ѕ҃ф҃з҃ азъ мънихъ исаакии поставленъ попомъ въ соужъдали въ цръкъве свѧтаго александра арменина…” (“In 6507 [i.e. 999] I, monk Isaakiy, became hieromonk in Suzdal, in the church of St. Alexander the Armenian…”); the year 6507/999 reappears several times on the margins, so that it may be assumed that the monk Isaakiy is none other than the writer of the Codex. As the language of the texts does not show any features typical of a writer from Novgorod, it seems reasonable that he should have come from Suzdal.

The great number of so far unknown texts in the Novgorod Codex might be explained by the fact that the writer belonged to a Christian community declared heretic by the ‘official’ church — probably a dualistic group similar to the Bogomils. After the ‘official’ church had prevailed, the sect’s texts were no longer copied and most traces of the existence of this heresy were erased. An especially symptomatic example of the scribe’s attitude to the ‘official’ church is the following excerpt from the “Spiritual Instruction from the Father and the Mother to the Son”:

[…]	[…]
Миръ естъ градъ въ немъ же отълѫчаѭтъ отъ цръкъве еретикы.	The world is a town in which heretics are excluded from the church.
Миръ естъ градъ въ немъ же отълѫчаѭтъ отъ цръкъве чловѣкы неразоумъны.	The world is a town in which unwise people are excluded from the church.
Миръ естъ градъ въ немъ же отълѫчаѭтъ отъ цръкъве чловѣкы непокоривы.	The world is a town in which disobedient people are excluded from the church.
Миръ естъ градъ въ немъ же отълѫчаѭтъ отъ цръкъве чловѣкы непорочъны.	The world is a town in which blameless people are excluded from the church.
Миръ естъ градъ въ немъ же отълѫчаѭтъ отъ цръкъве чловѣкы невиновъны.	The world is a town in which innocent people are excluded from the church.
Миръ естъ градъ въ немъ же отълѫчаѭтъ отъ цръкъве чловѣкы непрѣломъны.	The world is a town in which inflexible people are excluded from the church.
Миръ естъ градъ въ немъ же отълѫчаѭтъ отъ цръкъве чловѣкы недостоины такоѩ кары.	The world is a town in which people not deserving of this punishment are excluded from the church.
Миръ естъ градъ въ немъ же отълѫчаѭтъ отъ цръкъве чловѣкы недостойны такого отълѫчения.	The world is a town in which people not deserving of this exclusion are excluded from the church.
Миръ естъ градъ въ немъ же отълѫчаѭтъ отъ цръкъве чловѣкы прѣчистыѩ вѣры.	The world is a town in which people of pure faith are excluded from the church.
Миръ естъ градъ въ немъ же отълѫчаѭтъ отъ цръкъве чловѣкы достоины хвалы.	The world is a town in which people worthy of praise are excluded from the church.
Миръ естъ градъ въ немъ же отълѫчаѭтъ отъ цръкъве чловѣкы достоины прославления.	The world is a town in which people worthy of veneration are excluded from the church.
Миръ естъ градъ въ немъ же отълѫчаѭтъ отъ цръкъве чловѣкы неотъстѫпъны отъ правыѩ вѣры х҃совы.	The world is a town in which people not forsaking the true faith in Christ are excluded from the church.
[…]	[…]

Work on the Novgorod Codex is continuing. Scholarly literature, so far published only in Russian, is listed in the Russian Wikipedia article.