Judeo-Greek Legacy in Medieval Rus’

Abstract

The article examines the “Byzantine theory” of the origin of East European Jewry against textual evidence on Judeo-Greek cultural activity in Kievan Rus’. Since some Judeo-Greek texts have been preserved in East Slavic translations, it may be assumed that in Medieval Rus’ contact with the Jews—the local representatives of Byzantine culture—and access to their book collections was at a certain stage more readily available than was contact with distant Constantinople. This assumption enables us to raise the question of the existence of a “Jewish channel” in the cultural interference within the framework of the Byzantine Kulturbereich, and specifically of Byzantine influence in Rus’ in the earliest stage of its cultural development.