Towards Authorship of the Church Slavonic Translation of the Preface to the 1597 Frankfurt Bible and Its Fate in the Polemical Literature at the Turn of the 17th ‒ 18th Centuries

Abstract

The article presents a complete linguistic analysis of an only copy of the 17th century, which contains a Church Slavonic translation of the preface to the Greek Septuagint published in Frankfurt in 1597. The common linguistic features of the translation school of the Chudov Monastery have been identified. The presence of specific lexico-grammatical forms of the Epiphanius Slavinetsky’s idiolect, which are of Belarusian-Ukrainian origin and characteristic of other Epiphanius’ translations, made it possible to attribute to him the authorship of the translation, excluding other versions. The text was written by Epiphanius, probably, in the 1650‒1660s in connection with the revision of the Church Slavonic Bible translation. It has been established, that the translation was used in the 1690s in the compilation of the polemical treatise «Oblichenie na gazhdateli Svyashchennogo Pisaniya Biblii». The shortened and revised text of the biblical preface, together with fragments from the works of Athanasius of Alexandria, Epiphanius of Cyprus and Caesarius Baronius, was included in the section of the treatise devoted to the history of Greek biblical translations. The fate of excerpts from the preface in the complete copies of the polemical treatise is traced.

Received: 24.03.2024.
Revised: 08.08.2024.
Accepted: 24.09.2024.

Citation
Verner I. V. Towards Authorship of the Church Slavonic Translation of the Preface to the 1597 Frankfurt Bible and Its Fate in the Polemical Literature at the Turn of the 17th‒18th Centuries // Slavic Almanach. 2024. No 3–4. P. 102–131 (in Russian). DOI: 10.31168/2073-5731.2024.3-4.05