Catena Palestinensis in tripartite form

h/t Longacre and Ryan Sikes: Felix Albrecht thinks he's found the Old Greek Psalter. The first two-thirds of it anyway. With Patristic commentary.

The Greek Bible comes to us from Greek Christians, for the most part; Greek-speaking Jews having abandoned the old Alexandrine and Palaestinian translation(s) for the literalism of Aquila. Origen, basically just trying to sort out the translational mess in his (third) century, compiled various readings in his Hexapla. The fifth column was the Old Greek. And then apparently we Christians lost track of that. Such "Hexaplar" readings of Greek as we have tend Lucianic, that is revised from the OG.

Albrecht finds that the Greeks didn't quite lose the tradition so much as mislay (most of) it. Some of it can be had in Latin - that "Gallican" tradition, in whose lections we've found "2 Colossians". Albrecht further finds some witnesses to the Catena Palestinensis likewise untainted by Lucian.

The Catena is preserved in two forms, tripartite and bipartite. By "tripartite" we actually only have Psalms 1-100 so far; third volume lost. "Bipartite" runs Psalms 77-150 so first volume lost. Albrecht dismisses the bipartite tradition. The tripartite form, by contrast, is what is making him jump up and down with joy. MS Ra 1121 preserves OG for 1-50; Ra 1209 for 51-100 (and as noted 101+ is gone, for all we know might have gone on to 151-155 or beyond).

As for what even is this Catena: that's not a "col-lection" of psalms for liturgy, so much as a catena of commentary. But as commentary it must quote from the source. This metacommentary, then, gathers Origen, Eusebius, Didymus, Apollinaris and Theodoret. Origen is hardly a surprise. Eusebius and Theodoret interest me more: they would point to moderate-Arian use, so middle fourth century under Imperial oversight, I think. Might we be seeing this in Syriac one day...?

The tripartite catena later became subject to Lucianic revision. I see the hand of Theodosius at work, he who commissioned (again: I think) Jerome to do the Vulgate out West.

BACKDATE 6/7