A Rediscovered Codex of the Old Church Slavonic Translation of the Books of the Kingdoms

This article opens up hitherto unexplored avenues of research into the textual transmission of the Old Church Slavonic version of the Books of the Kingdoms (1-2 Samuel and 1-2 Kings in the Hebrew Bible), undertaken from the Septuagint by an anonymous Bulgarian translator no later than the late 9th – early 10th centuries. The focus is on a mid-15th century South Slavic manuscript, which until the early eighties of the XX century was kept in the Croatian Historical Museum in Zagreb under the call number R-38. Its subsequent place of preservation remained unknown for a few decades until in 2021 the author succeeded in tracking it down in the town of Pakrac, in Western Slavonia, Croatia. The codex, which is today in the possession of the Serbian Orthodox Eparchy of Slavonia, stands out not only for being the only surviving testimony of the translation written in Resava orthography, but also for its unique linguistic and textual features, making it a precious witness for investigating the translation’s oldest textual layer. Specifically, it differs from any other existing source because of its textual arrangement. Furthermore, it appears to be very conservative from a linguistic standpoint given it comprises lexical, grammatical and syntactical archaisms. The analysis of its textual readings proves it not to be a direct copy either of one of the surviving Middle Bulgarian or of the existing East Slavic testimonies; rather it unexpectedly represents an additional third, hitherto completely unexplored branch of transmission. Consequently, this recently rediscovered codex is a source of exceptional significance, particularly since it enriches our understanding of the textual history of the Old Church Slavonic translation of the Books of the Kingdoms.