An unconventional Catena on the Psalms. A Partial Edition of the Type III Catena and an Assessment of its Position in the Exegetical Tradition

There are many catenae on the Psalms, but one of the finest and most important is the one that can be found in the so-called 'Paris Psalter' (Par. gr. 139 = Rahlfs 1133). It is a tenth-century manuscript that was probably composed for emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus and contains not only fabulous miniatures, but also a catena commentary on the Psalms. In the beginning of the 20th century, the Psalter catenae have been categorized into 27 different types, according to their content. The Paris Psalter is the most important witness for the type III catena. This catena has a place high up in the exegetical tradition, but is based on older catenae and is therefore a secondary catena. Its sources are the so-called Palestinian catenae, dating from the sixth to the ninth/tenth century. None of them is preserved in its entirety, but they can be reconstructed from other catenae. In the first chapter of my thesis, the type III catena is introduced through a description of the different angles of previous research, with an overview of the textual tradition of its text. The second chapter offers a study of this (unconventional) catena with an analysis of its sources, a detailed description of every witness of the text, a stemma of those witnesses and a preliminary study on the archetype of the type III catena. The partial edition with an introduction to the methodology behind it, forms the nucleus of this work. The two appendices at the end support the analyses made in this thesis and the indices serve as guidelines for the edited text.

Publication year:2020

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