The Konikovo Gospel: Konikovsko evangelie (review)

Abstract

The Konikovo Gospel: Konikovsko evangelie (Bibl. Patr. Alex. 268). Jouko Lindstedt, Ljudmil Spasov, and Juhani Nuorluoto, eds. Helsinki: Societas Scientiarum Fennica, 2008. 439 pp., 82 pp. color plates. [Commentationes Humanarum Litterarum, 125.] Since its recent discovery in Patriarchal Library in Alexandria in 2003, Konikovo Gospel (henceforth KG) has been object of intensive study by a team of Finnish and Macedonian scholars (headed respectively by Jouko Lindstedt and Ljudmil Spasov and joined by American Balkanist Victor Friedman). Although KG's history and potential significance were made known to scholarly world by Lindstedt (2006), little of this collective research has been published. The book under review (henceforth KG-2008) now presents not only full Greek and Macedonian texts of KG in a variety of useful formats, but also findings of research teams, which pertain to a range of subjects, including authorship, function, graphemics, phonology, morphology, lexicon, and dialect features of this intriguing document, as well as its cultural-historical significance. Although KG is written in Greek script and one of its authors refers to language of translation as Bulgarian, it is in fact the oldest known text of greater scope that directly reflects living Slavic dialects of what is today Greek Macedonia (Introduction, p. 9) and also oldest known Gospel translation in what we would today term Modern Macedonian. As suck it is a document of considerable importance for history of Macedonian language. KG-2008 will prove to be a valuable resource not only for specialists working in latter field, but also for those with an interest in Balkan Slavic dialectology, Greco-Macedonian translation, rendering of Balkan Slavic through Greek orthography, and production of both Greek and Slavic vernacular Gospels in Balkans. (1) In composition, KG-2008 is a somewhat heterogeneous anthology rather than a centrally coordinated monograph. This has led to some duplication of descriptive effort and inclusion of some topics peripheral to KG itself, particularly in chapter 5 (Study of Macedonian Text). In addition, despite undeniable contributions which KG-2008 makes to our knowledge, level of scholarship in some sections of chapter 5 is at times uneven. One chiefly regrets that, with exception primarily of Lindstedt (Introduction and sec. 5.9, especially pp. 396-97), authors make comparatively little reference to a previous landmark in this field, published edition of Paris manuscript of Kulakia Gospel (Mazon and Vaillant 1938), which includes a detailed and valuable linguistic commentary by Vaillant (pp. 16-250). Closer study of latter would have been all more beneficial inasmuch as KG and Kulakia Gospel share fundamental similarities in language, provenance, date of origin, script, and content (the Kulakia Gospel includes all but one of lections found in KG, in addition to many others). Due to complexity of KG as a historical document, I summarize certain key facts and findings which are presented chiefly in chapter 3 (by Lindstedt and Wahlstrom) and sec. 5.9 (by Lindstedt). First, KG is a late 18th-early 19th centuries bilingual manuscript of 39 folia, which consists of a vernacular Greek Gospel aprakos lectionary rendered in facing columns into a local Macedonian idiom of Lower Vardar region (spoken to northwest of Solun/Thessaloniki) by an anonymous translator who used Greek script (see ch. 3 and sec. 5.9). Second, KG contains a number of interlinear and marginal emendations written in a second hang which can be identified with that of Pavel Bozigropski (ca. 1800-71, henceforth PB), a widely traveled ecclesiastical activist (see sec. 5.10) and native of Lower Vardar village of Konikovo (Greek Dytiko) (called Konikvo, in extant pronunciation of Macedonian speakers in nearby village of Griva; see Introduction, p. …