Yavor Miltenov
The Slavonic Translation of the Minor Prophets with Commentary – a Textological Approach
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Summary/Abstract
The paper attempts at a comparative study between Slavonic copies of Minor Prophets with commentary, covering its text in full. A list of the most important variae lectiones is arranged, where primary or secondary origin of a certain reading is supported by its Greek parallel, if available. The analysis of variant readings is preceded by a reconstruction of the history of the text before the emergence of the protographs that have started the Russian and South Slav manuscript traditions, then these two branches are compared. The further investigation comes to the conclusion, that the Russian copies should be a subject of an intensive future research, as they preserve to the greatest extent the features of the Old Bulgarian Glagolitic original. The text of the Minor Prophets with commentary found in South Slav copies shows numerous deviations from the archetype – missing text fragments, which are about half of the translation (527 of 1049 verses and their commentaries) and over 450 cases of text displacements and transpositions; omissions of single phrases and words; various mistakes made in the process of copying; incorrect changes; lexical replacements and intentional emendations. Thus one major principle in Slavonic textual criticism is once again corroborated – the earlier chronology of certain copy and/or its affiliation to the language and provenance of the original do not prove its reliability.