Greek Patristics

This paper provides novel, relevant data to study the translation technique of the First Old Church Slavonic Version of Gregory of Nazianzus’ Homily 38 “On the Theophany” (Εἰς τὰ Θεοφάνια, CPG 3010.38; BHG, 1921-1921b; PG 36, 312A-333A). This work was rendered from Greek into Old Church Slavonic by an anonymous Bulgarian translator, presumably between the late 9th and the early 10th century. The text is transmitted by two testimonies, one of East Slavic (St Petersburg, Russian National Library, Q.п.I.16, late 11th century), the other of South Slavic origin (Sofia, SS Cyril and Methodius National Library, № 674, mid-14th century). The translation’s archaic morphological and lexical features reveal a marked analogy with the language of the Old Bulgarian Ecclesiastical Writer, Constantine, Bishop of Preslav. By investigating hitherto unexplored aspects of the translation technique the author offers further compelling evidence of a connection between Homily 38 and Constantine’s Didactic Gospel. The focus is on a very peculiar rendering of the Greek modality adverb ἴσως (“possibly, perhaps”), which is translated by means of the verb “мьнѣти” (“to mean”, “to think”, “to assume”, “to consider”), conjugated in the first-person singular present indicative.

Subject: Scripta

Keywords: Old Church Slavonic Translations MANUSCRIPTS Greek Patristics Gregory of Nazianzus Constantine of Preslav translation techniques modality adverbs

This article focuses on the Slavonic reception of Methodius of Olympus, a Greek patristic author who flourished in the second half of the third and the beginning of the fourth centuries. Most of his writings have not survived in their Greek original; however, most of them have been preserved in a full Slavonic translation. Most probably, this translation was produced in the First Bulgarian Kingdom at some point between the end of the ninth and the eleventh centuries. The present article focuses exclusively on one of the writings of Methodius of Olympus, viz. the exegetical letter De cibis ad Chilonam (CPG 1814), presenting – for the first time in a systematic manner – some preliminary observations on the question of transmission of this text in the Slavonic manuscript tradition. Furthermore, it explores how the study of the Slavonic hermeneutical terminology in this text can shed more light on the biblical patristic exegesis of Methodius of Olympus, in general.

Subject: Debuts

Keywords: Methodius of Olympus De cibis ad Chilonam (CPG 1814) Greek Patristics SLAVONIC TRANSLATION exegesis