Codex Chisianus 88
Codex Chisianus 88 (also Chigianus; also known as "MS 88"; formerly Chigi Library R. VIII. 45, since 1922 part of the Vatican Library; numbered 87 in Field's Hexapla, 1875[1]) is a 9th-century biblical manuscript, first edited in 1772. It contains what was only surviving version of the original Septuagint text of the Book of Daniel until the 1931 discovery of Papyrus 967 (Chester Beatty X, 3rd-century). The manuscript purports to be directly derived from the recension of the Septuagint made by Origen, ca. AD 240.[2]
The content of the so-called Syro-Hexaplar Codex (dated 616/7), which contains a Syriac translation of Origen's recension, has been adduced to corrobate the authenticity of the Greek text of Codex Chisianus.
The Septuagint text of the Book of Daniel had disappeared almost entirely from Greek tradition at the end of the 4th century, being superseded by the revised text of Theodotion.
John Gwynn concurred with Jerome that the church was right to adopt Theodotion's Greek text of Daniel in place of the LXX version attested in the Codex Chisianus:
Indeed, the greater part of this Chisian Daniel cannot be said to deserve the name of a translation at all. It deviates from the original in every possible way; transposes, expands, abridges, adds or omits, at pleasure. The latter chapters it so entirely rewrites that the predictions are perverted, sometimes even reversed, in scope.[3]
See also
References
- ↑ Jellicoe, Sydney (1993). The Septuagint and Modern Study. Retrieved 31 March 2015.
- ↑ Charles, R. H. The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament in English Apocrypha. Vol. 1., 1913.
- ↑ Dictionary of Christian Biography, article on Theodotion.