The web-project “Versions”

Our project is dedicated to electronic editions of deuterocanonical books of the Old Testament. Their textual history is of high interest: their Hebrew or Aramaic original text is often lost completely but may be reconstructed (Baruch); Aramaic and Hebrew fragments exist (Tobit); most of the Hebrew original is extant but which text represents the original is uncertain (Sirach).

The main aim of the project is to present these books in all their relevant ancient versions including the reconstructed texts. It may seem that the outcome will not differ from widely used programms as Bible Works or Libronix. Surely it will differ since our editions will include not only parallel texts of several versions; various links which exist between these versions and are not easily seen by way of regular reading process will be visualised. To take one example, the Latin version of Sir 5:1 includes the phrase "nihil enim proderit in tempore vindictae et obductionis" which is absent in all the other ancient versions of this verse. Its equivalent we find in Hebrew and all the other main versions within the verse Sir 5:8. Our task is to help reader finding these hidden links and equivalents within the multiversional text of a book. Another task is to present the versions in Oriental languages which are usually absent from parallel electronic editions, e.g. Arabic, Ethiopian and Coptic. Another set of versions is related to the history of Bible in Russia: Church Slavonic and different Russian versions also will be available online. We plan to include the texts from Gennadiev Bible which were never digitized before.

As to reconstructed versions we have at our disposal the reconstructed Hebrew text of Baruch made by Russian Old Testament scholar archimandrite Antonin (Granovsky). This is not the only text which may be included into this category; there were different attempts made in this field which will be considered.

The pilot text within our project is the Book of Ben Sirah in its Hebrew, Ancient Greek, Latin and Syriac versions accompanied by Russian translation.