A PROOF COPY OF THE OSTROG BIBLE AS A SOURCE OF INFORMATION ABOUT THE WORK ON THE MOSCOW BIBLE OF 1663

Abstract

The Bible, printed by the Moscow Printing Yard in 1663, has been considered an almost complete reproduction of the Ostrog Bible of 1581. The basis for this opinion was a fragment of the preface, compiled by the head of the revision Epiphany Slavinetsky, which states that it was published from a readymade Ostrog translation “invariably”. The study of the proofreading copy of the Ostrog Bible stored in the Russian State Archive of Ancient Acts brings new data on the nature of the work on the 1663 edition, demonstrating the use of additional sources in the creation of the Moscow Bible, primarily Western European editions of the Greek Old and New Testaments. Significant are the coincidences with the London Polyglot Bible, compiled by Brian Walton (1654-1657) and probably with the Frankfurt Bible of 1597. The appeal to the Greek editions was not systematic. In some cases, when working on the Moscow Bible, Church Slavonic manuscripts could also be involved. But their use was also dotty. The work could take into account the results of the reconciliation of Greek manuscripts and editions of the Bible, already carried out by Polish Jesuit scholars in the 16th century. At the same time, not all additions made to the proofreading copy of the Ostrog Bible were taken into account in the final version of the Moscow edition. The leading principle of the revision in the preparation of the Moscow edition of the Bible in 1663 is grammatical, not textual, as in the continuous reconciliation of the text.