Church Slavonic Translation Research Articles

O modlitwach w Podróży do Świętych miejsc w 1830 roku Andrzeja Murawjowa

Conversation with God accompanied people of various times, nations and religions, because of a universal dimension of the desire for dialogue with the Absolute. The article attempts to analyze those of the prayers which Andrey Muravyev, a Russian writer, poet, state and church activist, practiced during his first pilgrimage to Palestine. Texts of the prayers were from The journey to Holy Places in 1830 (2 vols), which is a record of the author’s experiences and impressions from his pilgrimage to the Holy Land. As an epigraph to both parts of this Muravyev’s work, the words from Ps 135(134) – a hymn of praise to the Lord who works miracles – were served. Attention of the article is paid to: the sense of the prayers, their biographical and literary context, the lexical and partly grammatical material, which Muravyev used (making necessary reference to the Greek and (or) Hebrew sources of Church Slavonic translations of the prayers) and their theological message as well.

Akathist Hymn in the East Slavonic Literature of the 15th – 16th Centuries: On the Problem of the Existence of Russian Version

Purpose. The paper presents the results of a textological investigation of the Church Slavonic translation of the Akathist Hymn – the masterpiece of the Byzantine hymnography – based on East Slavic manuscripts of the 15th – 16th centuries. The author examined textological data proving the existence in the Russian area of a special (unknown n the South Slavic territories) version of the Akathist Hymn. The problems concerning the process of the appearance and the existence of that version in the East Slavic written tradition are discussed in the work.Results. That distinct version is presumably attributed to Metropolitan Cyprian (1330–1406) basing on the attribution of the manuscripts containing its full form, its South Slavic protograph (that fact was also proved with the usage of textological methods), as well as the language features of the corrections to the text of the hymn. Due to textological data it is also supposed that the correction to the text of the Akathist was performed by Cyprian after he had come to Rus and worked on the correction to the Psalter. The compiling process of the certain version of the Akathist with the Athonite version, that existed simultaneously in Rus, explains the diversity of textual traditions of the Akathist Hymn presented in Russian manuscripts of the 15th – 16th centuries.

Венецыянская Біблія – „Бивлия руска” Францыска Скарыны: механічнае прытрымліванне ці творчая перапрацоўка?

The article is devoted to some features of the translation technique used by the famous forerunner of Belarusian printing Francysk Skaryna when translating the Holy Scriptures. Francysk Skaryna is one of the greatest figures of Belarusian Renaissance. Numerous scientific investigations have been devoted to his work, but his legacy still remains terra incognita. One of the questions concerns the original he used when translating the Holy Scriptures – the ancient Hebrew Masoretic text, the Septuagint, the Vulgate, the Czech translation of the Bible, or the Bible in the Church Slavonic language? The article presents the results of the textual analysis of the Book of Job, the Book of the prophet Daniel, and the Book of Ecclesiastes, as well as numerous examples of Skaryna’s use of the Czech translation of the Bible. It should be noted that in some cases when translating well known passages, he used the Church Slavonic translation of the Holy Scriptures. Frequent lexical elements and collocations from the Old Church Slavonic canon entered Skaryna’s translation of the Bible. The article concludes that it was the archaic of Church Slavonic text of the Bible that prompted Skaryna to reach for another, more modern version – the Czech translation. As a result, a hybrid text was created, in which both Church Slavonic and Czech elements were presented at the lexical level.

A Rediscovered Codex of the Old Church Slavonic Translation of the Books of the Kingdoms

This article opens up hitherto unexplored avenues of research into the textual transmission of the Old Church Slavonic version of the Books of the Kingdoms (1-2 Samuel and 1-2 Kings in the Hebrew Bible), undertaken from the Septuagint by an anonymous Bulgarian translator no later than the late 9th – early 10th centuries. The focus is on a mid-15th century South Slavic manuscript, which until the early eighties of the XX century was kept in the Croatian Historical Museum in Zagreb under the call number R-38. Its subsequent place of preservation remained unknown for a few decades until in 2021 the author succeeded in tracking it down in the town of Pakrac, in Western Slavonia, Croatia. The codex, which is today in the possession of the Serbian Orthodox Eparchy of Slavonia, stands out not only for being the only surviving testimony of the translation written in Resava orthography, but also for its unique linguistic and textual features, making it a precious witness for investigating the translation’s oldest textual layer. Specifically, it differs from any other existing source because of its textual arrangement. Furthermore, it appears to be very conservative from a linguistic standpoint given it comprises lexical, grammatical and syntactical archaisms. The analysis of its textual readings proves it not to be a direct copy either of one of the surviving Middle Bulgarian or of the existing East Slavic testimonies; rather it unexpectedly represents an additional third, hitherto completely unexplored branch of transmission. Consequently, this recently rediscovered codex is a source of exceptional significance, particularly since it enriches our understanding of the textual history of the Old Church Slavonic translation of the Books of the Kingdoms.

Pronouns той, тая, тое in the Church Slavonic Translation of the New Testament by Epiphanius Slavinetsky and Euthymius Chudovsky

The New Testament translated from Greek by Epiphanius Slavinetsky and Euthymius Chudovsky is characterized by the excessive use of demonstrative pronouns той, таꙗ, тоѥ instead of personal pronouns of the third person. In the “draft” translation there is a large array of replacement of personal pronouns with demonstrative ones, although there is as well an opposite correction. The «clean» copy of the New Testament maintains this inconsistency. The analysis of the set of corrections allowed us to reconstruct the initial competition of the forms той, таꙗ, тоѥ and *и, *ꙗ, *ѥ. This trait isinherent to the Epiphanius Slavinetsky’s translation and is due to the orientation towards the functioning of the Greek nterpretive pronoun αὐτός as a personal one in all the cases and as a possessive pronoun in the genitive case. The inconsistency of Eupthymius’ correction is due to a combination of various factors: the following of the Epiphanius’ usage, the influence of the older Gospel translation, as well as the desire to avoid homonymy of pronouns when changing the person, dictated by exegetical considerations. The further correction observed in the «clear» copy of the New Testament shows a tendency towards the limitationin the use of the pronouns той, таꙗ, тоѥ to the contexts of the “strong” anaphora.

ОТРАЖЕНИЕ АНТИКВАРНОГО МЕТОДА "ВЕТХОГО ЛЮБОПЫТНИКА" УИЛЬЯМА КЕМДЕНА В ЦЕРКОВНО-СЛАВЯНСКОМ ПЕРЕВОДЕ "БРИТАНИИ"

The article analyses the interpretation of particularities of the antiquarian method that was very popular among the European researchers of the 16th century in the Church Slavonic translation of W. Camden's "Britannia". Created by the English antiquary this treatise was included in the fourth volume of the most famous world geographical atlas - the "New Atlas" of Blaeu. This volume was translated very accurately into Church Slavonic by Isaiah, the Little Russian scribe of the Chudov Monastery in the 1650s-1661 upon the orders of Patriarch Nikon. The examples of archaeology, numismatics and epigraphies were examined. These auxiliary disciplines were just beginning to form in Europe in the late 16th - early 17th centuries. For the Russian state of the same period, it is not necessary to talk about a similar level of development of these areas of historical thought, so Isaiah acted as a pioneer, interpreting, for example, information about ancient coins, archaeological finds, that is, artefacts.

Some Observations on the Composition of the Medieval Slavonic Translation of the Acts of Paul and Thecla

The article examines the Old Church Slavonic translation of the apocryphal Acts of Paul and Thecla with a focus on the oldest extant manuscript. Only a fragment of the manuscript has survived, on the end and the miracles. The article relies on the original Greek text and later Slavonic manuscripts for comparison.

GAMES WITH THE BIBLICAL SERPENT: HERMENEUTIC TRICKS OF HRYHORII SKOVORODA

The paper gives examples of evident semantic inconsistency between the biblical text and its interpretation by Skovoroda. The aim of looking for mentioned details is not to assess the validity of statements about the biblical ideas (the author’s interpretations are usually provided with branched arguments) but to deeper understand the nature of Skovoroda’s work with the text of the Holy Scriptures. In all these cases, or almost all, the philosopher must have been aware of these discrepancies or at least the possibility of their existence. Sometimes Skovoroda’s conscious games with the text of the Bible are obvious if one compares the very quotes in his works even with the Church Slavonic version of the Bible alone. In other cases, the verification of the correspondence of the author’s interpretation of a quote to its linguistic meaning in the Holy Scriptures necessarily requires the involvement of the Bible versions older than the Church Slavonic one. Constructing his hermeneutic ‘symphonies’ on the basis of the word forms of a single lexeme or cognate words, which he collects in the Bible, Skovoroda often ignores possible polysemy of the word and also risks running into common linguistic errors of the Church Slavonic translation. At the same time, it is difficult to suspect him of lacking proper understanding of a textual nature (since elsewhere he willingly compares multilingual versions), nor of excessive sacralization of the Church Slavonic Bible (again, in some places he easily prefers the text in other languages). Baroque games with words and text, accompanying serious exegetical intention, add uniqueness to Skovoroda’s approach to the Bible. An explanation for this paradoxical combination may be his vision of the role designed for the Holy Scriptures. Not too exacting requirements to the semantic correspondence of a specific biblical text to the thoughts that, according to Skovoroda’s understanding, it should carry or confirm, is caused primarily by the idea of the Bible as a reflection of the spiritual world of its reader. Any role of it other than a mirror (which, however, not only reflects what is known but also helps to see and discover what has been hidden in oneself) is simply irrelevant for our author.

Филологические проекты доктора Келлермана

The correspondence of the Tuscan court from 1685 contains a discussion of the idea of compiling a dictionary and a grammar book of the Russian language. The person who suggested the idea was the first Russian Doctor of Medicine and Theology, Heinrich Kellerman. A year later, he offered the Moscow authorities to translate the Bible from Hebrew. Apparently, he was later engaged in correcting the text of the Holy Scriptures, since a false rumor that arose in Europe stated that Kellerman had published a certain eight-language polyglot in Moscow in 1712. That year Peter I issued a decree that established a commission that was tasked with the correction of the Church Slavonic translation of the Bible based on the Greek text of the Septuagint. This decision placed the work in the hands of the Old Russian conservative party. The decree was possibly a reaction to the translation activities of the Moscow physician Heinrich Kellerman.

Theology of the Icon in Hymnographic Form: A Kanon and Four Stichera for the Second Council of Nicaea Attributed to (Theodore?) Stoudites

This article is dedicated to a kanon and four stichera for the Second Council of Nicaea (787), attributed by codex Vind. theol. gr. 187 (c. an. 1500) to (Theodoros?) Stoudites. Although these hymnographic texts were published for the first time in 1992—on the basis of the Viennese codex, alongside a Church Slavonic translation of earlier date than this Greek witness—, they have attracted scarcely any attention in the scholarship on Theodore the Stoudite. The present article offers a new edition of the texts, based, in addition to Vind. theol. gr. 187, on two other Greek manuscript witnesses. The edition is accompanied by an English translation and by an analysis of the hymns’ particularities of content and form, with a special focus on their theological and philosophical concepts regarding the veneration of icons, and on the question of their authorship.

Lexico-semantic Field “power” in Church Slavonic Translations from Polish 16th–17th cs. To the Problem of Adaptive Translation

: The period of the 16th–17th centuries marked by a growing interest in Western culture, the result was the spread in Muscovite Russia of the number of Russian-Polish translations of both secular and didactic content. This article presents the results of a work devoted to some features of the translation technique of Church Slavonic texts of various genres. As an object of study, the lexical-semantic field “power”, presented in interaction with other fields was chosen, which includes the following series of lexemes: the names of rulers, ranks of different grades, royal regalia, as well as constructions with abstract names. The results of the study showed that Russian scribes changed their translation strategies depending on the content of the source text. We have identified the following principles: 1) adaptation of lexemes related to Polish realities, 2) replacement of unmarked Polish units with marked ones, 3) direct borrowing of Turkisms and other non-Polish vocabulary, 4) formation of constructions with abstract nouns.

Orthography of the Handwritings of the 12th Century Lazarevskij Paroemiarion

The Lazarevskij Paroemiarion (Parimejnik) is the earliest copy of this liturgical book in the Old Church Slavonic translation; according to the latest research, it dates back to the middle of the 12th century. This manuscript has East Slavic origins and contains important information on the history of Old Russian orthography. Three scribes contributed to the creation of the manuscript and their spelling varies in many respects.
 Innovative spelling associated with phonetic changes in the Old Russian language of the 12th century are concentrated in the first handwriting: the number of stems with jer omissions, positions with the change of strong jers into o or e, and examples of the so-called “new jat’ (ѣ)”. This handwriting determines the dating of the manuscript. The second scribe also took part in the writing of another Old Russian manuscript, the Miljatino Gospel. The analysis of his part of the Lazarevskij Paroemiarion makes it possible to assess the degree of variability of spelling preferences of the same scribe when working on copies of different texts. The third handwriting looks archaic in the writing of weak jers and the use of non-contracted variants of adjective inflections, although in other positions South Slavicisms can be completely eliminated from it (compare the absence of žd for the reflex of *dj when using žd in the first and second handwritings).
 Of the coincidences in the spelling of the scribes, the most interesting is the spelling specificity in the recording of specific word forms and letter combinations. These coincidences, indicative against the background of the general inconsistency and spelling differences of the three handwritings, can be attributed to the specifics of the spelling of the scriptorium at the Lazarev Monastery, in which the Parimejnik was rewritten. These characteristic features of the scriptorium include the isolation in the recording of the adverb-preposition posrědě, the dative and local case forms of the pronouns tebě, sebě, only in the form of tebe, sebe, the influence of the same graphic clichés on the choice of the affricate letter.

Das sei ferne!

Summary The dialogical exchange with a fictitious opponent is the main feature of the so-called Cynic-Stoic Diatribe, a mode of exposition that was developed in Ancient Greek and Roman literature. In Greek diatribe, the formula μὴ γένοιτο ‘far from it’ is used to reject the views of the fictitious opponent. The Apostle Paul, whose writings exhibit many features of diatribe, makes ample use of this formula. In the Church Slavonic translation of the New Testament, μὴ γένοιτο appears as да не бѫдетъ or (less often) не бѫди. In the Fourth (Athonitic) redaction of this translation, да не бѫдетъ is used throughout. This text served as the basis for the first printed edition of the second part of the New Testament, the Apostolos (Vilna, 1525). The editor, Franciscus Skorina, tried – albeit in a very inconsistent manner – to modernize the text. He either retained the diatribal formula да не бѫдетъ or replaced it by то не естъ, да не будеть сеє при насъ, никако, да не будеть то, да не будемъ, никакоже and николиже. This diversity arose independently of the Czech Bible of Venice (1506), which was the second main source of Skorina’s Bible translations. The use of the 1st person plural (при насъ, да не будемъ) reflects similar forms in the preceding context of Paul’s Letter to the Romans.

Ιnterpretations to Tetrastichae sententiae by Gregory the Theologian in Anthologion (1660): Text and its Greek source

The article examines the work of Arseniy Grek, a corrector of the Moscow Printing Yard (Pechatniy dvor), on the translation of interpretations to the poetic sententiae by Gregory the Theologian; these verses and comments to them were published in 1660 as part of the Moscow collection Anthologion. These scholias are written on the margins of the manuscript to the poems of Gregory the Theologian do not find analogues among the known interpretations. A comparative analysis of the translations of verses and commentaries allowed us to draw a conclusion about the creative approach of Arseniy Grek. The article describes the principles of processing by Arseniy Grek of the source text and the main stylistic and linguistic features of his translation. This is the dissemination of the text by Christian exegesis and biblical quotations and reminiscences, the introduction of new semantic nuances, the use of vocabulary borrowed from Church Slavonic translations, a deviation from the syntactic constructions of the modern Greek source. It is concluded that the technique of translating Gregory the Theologian’s poems and interpretations to them depends not only on the translator’s knowledge of the source language, but also on the literary form (poetry and prose) and on the authority of the original. The texts of modern Grek interpretations and their arrangements by Arseniy Grek are published in the Appendix.

Theoria and Optasia in the Old Church Slavonic Translations of the “Life of St Anthony the Great”

The focus of the present paper is the terms θεωρία and ὀπτασία presented in the Greek text of Life of St Anthony the Great by St Athanasius of Alexandria and their translation representation in the Old Church Slavonic versions of the text. The terms are approached diachronically, i.e. in through history of Classical and post-classical Greek literature, thus providing the necessary cultural background for their usage and context. Each term, then, is commented in its exact attestation in the Life, providing also the corresponding translations and their wider context. The translation renderings are further analyzed in perspective of the lexical material in the classical Old Church Slavonic corpus as well as with material from texts and sources, thus aiming at contextualizing them in wider lexicological perspective.

THE NEWLY DISCOVERED MONUMENTS OF THE OLD PERMIAN LANGUAGE AND SCRIPT

The paper for the first time publishes monuments of the Old Permian language written with Abur, or the script of St. Stephen of Perm; these sources are previously unknown or have not been introduced into academic circulation. They are published here as fac-similes, with transliteration, transcription, and Russian translation. Perhaps the oldest of these inscriptions (from the 1460s — the early 1470s?) is the postscript written in a mixture of Old Permian and Russian at the end of the Church Slavonic Homilae by St. Gregory the Great: it was copied in the Ferapontov Monastery, in the White Lake area, perhaps by the hand of St. Martinianus of White Lake (Belozersky). The next earliest of the Old Permian documents — and the earliest to be dated precisely — is scribal mar-ginalia on a manuscript book with the spiritual homilies of St. Isaac the Syrian in a Church Slavonic translation; it was copied in Ust-Vym (the Komi area) in 1486 by Gabriel (Gavrila) the Deacon (Ki̮ldaś). Other Old Permian postscripts were made at the court of the archbishop of Novgorod the Great in the early 1490s in two volumes with the new Church Slavonic translations from the Vulgate; they were prepared in the circle of Archbishop Gennady of Novgorod and Pskov. Finally, the last word of the late 15th — early 16th century inscription in the Church Slavonic Corpus Areopagiticum has been re-attributed as Old Permian rather than Slavic cryptog-raphy in Abur; this book was donated to the Annunciation Church of Ust-Vym by St. Pitirim, bishop of Perm. The total number of new texts is 37 word-forms, including lexemes that were not previously recorded for this period — this is significant for the Old Permian corpus of the 15th — early 16th centuries. Although from the graphic, phonetic, grammatical, and lexical points of view, these texts basically represent the same linguistic system found in previously known Old Permian monu-ments, they demonstrate, on the one hand, the inclusion of Old Permian scribes into the activities of professional Old Russian scrip-toria and, on the other, they testify to the emergence of interest on the part of East Slavic bookmen in “indigenous” languages. Knowing these languages could be a sign of belonging to a special intellectual stratum that included both the creators of the first Church Slavonic complete biblical collection (the Gennady Bible) and members of the so-called heresy of the Judaizers.

Which Piotr Skarga’s Edition of Żywoty Świętych Was Used for Translation into Old Church Slavonic: The Life of St. Procopius of Scythopolis

The article deals with a small private episode of the general topic of research into Cyrillic translations of an extensive Polish book Żywoty Świętych by Piotr Skarga, a Jesuit and the first rector of the Vilnius University. Using as an example the Old Church Slavonic life of St. Procopius of Scythopolis, translated from Skarga’s book and contained in two manuscripts originating from the territories of the Kingdom of Poland, the author shows that a comparison of the Church Slavonic translation with its Polish original, taking into account all textual changes made in the lifetime editions of Żywoty Świętych makes it possible to determine the exact edition used as a source for the Old Church Slavonic the translation. At the same time, this will serve as a chronological marker indicating the time before which the translation could not have appeared

On the History of the Vocabulary of the Thematic Group «Christian Virtues and Sins»: Based on the Translated Church Slavonic Hymnography

This study examines the formation and further evolution of the Church Slavonic and Russian vocabulary describing Christian virtues and sins. Our research was conducted on the available Church Slavonic translations of four Byzantine hymns (the Akathistos Hymn, the Great Canon of Repentance by St. Andrew of Crete, the Alphabetical Stichera from the Great Canon service, and the Great and Holy Friday Antiphons) found in Southern and Eastern Slavonic manuscripts of the 11th‑16th century, as well as Russian editions dating back to the 17th – early 20th century. The textological study revealed five main stages in the evolution of these texts caused by systematic corrections in accordance with the Greek text. Based on these results, the linguistic textological method was applied in order to reveal the main differences between said stages in regard to conveying terms relevant to Christian virtues and sins. We examined a total of 110 Greek words and idiomatic expressions in this thematic field and classified them following the method suggested by E. M. Vereshchagin who focused on ways of terms creation. There were revealed main ways these terms were formed in the target language and the general tendencies in their translation during different stages in the history of Church Slavonic. The results of our research showcased the leading role of transposition in the formation of the terms, the negligible amount of lexical loans, as well as the growing role of calquing in the history of Church Slavonic. We also showed the ways in which the Church Slavonic and Russian languages adopted new linguistic and cultural realities and reinterpreted the system of Greek ethical terms, which helps us understand the mechanisms of intercultural transfer, as well as the linguistic factors that contribute to the identification of Russian culture in the general Orthodox context

Michael Psellos’ Theologica I.30 and the Byzantine Interpretations of Scala Paradisi XXVII/2.13

"The article examines the exegesis of Michael Psellos on the most mysterious of the “difficult places” of the Ladder by John of Sinai — Step XXVІІ/2.13. This interpretation is one of the so-called Theologica treatises (Theol. I.30). It differs significantly from the rest of the Byzantine explanations of this “difficult place”. Michael Psellos decisively rejects the Christological interpretation of the “vision” and the questions of St. John. He also develops the doctrine of the accessibility to a human in present life of the vision of God in “symbols” and “forms” only. Higher contemplations are linked to the degree of detachment of the soul from the body. Unlike Michael Psellos, other interpreters, firstly, pay more attention to the context in which the chapter of the Ladder in question is located, secondly, they mostly prefer a Christological interpretation of St. John’s questions to the unknown interlocutor, thirdly, they ask themselves who this interlocutor was, an angel or Christ Himself. One of the anonymous Byzantine commentaries convincingly defends the point of view according to which John Climacus talked with Christ. This paper analyses all the extensive interpretations of the difficult passage, and on the basis of the handwritten tradition, draws the conclusion that the exegesis of Michael Psellos had much circulation in Byzantium along with other conceptions of the mysterious chapter. In addition, there has been noted the reception of Psellos’s interpretation in the first Slavic edition of the Ladder in 1647. Appendices I and II contain the edition of the Greek text of an anonymous Scholium and a fragment from the commentary by Elias of Crete respectively. Keywords: Michael Psellos, Theologica, John Climacus, Ladder of Divine Ascent, Photius of Constantinople, Elias of Crete, byzantine commentaries, Church Slavonic translation. "

Hymnographic Complex by Meletios Syrigos Dedicated to the Kyivan Cave Saints and All Russian Saints in the Russian Tradition

Abstract In this paper, topics regarding the glorification of the Kyivan Cave Saints and other Kyivan Saints of the 17th century are discussed, based on the hymnographic complex (complete feast service and paraklesis) to the Kyivan Cave Saints and All Russian Saints composed by Meletios Syrigos, prominent Cretan scholar and official legate of the Ecumenical Patriarch, during his stay in Kyiv in June 1643. The two manuscripts containing the Greek hymnographic text studied – including the autograph manuscript – reference the names of 55 Kyivan Cave Saints as well as 19 other Kyivan Saints, some of whom remain unknown. The Church Slavonic translation carried out directly after the composition of the Greek text was realized in two stages and is analyzed according to two manuscript sources. Only some parts of Meletios’ complex, namely the Paraklesis with the stichera and troparia, were translated into Slavonic. Several decades later (before 1677), the text of this translation was revised without consulting the original Greek text, resulting in the version kept in Church practice today. During the process of this revision, significant changes were made to the text, both regarding the commemorated persons and their presentation. Therefore, the comparative analysis of the Greek text alongside the Church Slavonic texts reveals unknown aspects and stages of the recognition and acceptance of the Kyivan Cave Saints both in Peter Mohyla’s time and later on, as well as the role of Meletios Syrigos in this process.