Some features of early Slavic translations from Greek (on the material of the collection Thirteen Homilies of St. Gregory of Nazianzus)

The collection Thirteen Homilies of St. Gregory of Nazianzus is preserved in one codex of the 11th century which is stored in The National Library of Russia in St. Petersburg. This codex has the earliest collection of St. Gregory's works translated into the Slavic language. The translation was probably made in the 10th century in Bulgaria. The selection and the order of the homilies are different from any Greek codex. Attempts to find a Greek prototype of the collection were recently made by A.M. Bruni and A.M. Moldovan, but the results of their study of the subject are quite opposite. A.M. Bruni thinks that the full Greek collection is the prototype of the Slavic codex; A.M. Moldovan supposes that the collection of 16 homilies is the desired prototype. Scholars (Kotseva E., Petrova L.) who studied the language of the Slavic codex do not consider that one person translated all the homilies of the collection; they insist on its gradual formation. In some homilies there are features which indicate that they were translated earlier, than the others. The translations were probably made in different translation schools (possibly in Preslav and in Ochrid). The study of Greek loanwords in the Slavic texts of the homilies also shows differences in the translations. The homilies in the collection differ not only in the number of Greek borrowings, but also in the quality of the translation. For example, the translation of the Funeral Oration on the Great S. Basil, Bishop of in C^sarea Cappadocia, is sometimes erroneous and there even are occasional transcriptions of Greek words in Slavic letters. The translations of the Orations on Easter, On Holy Lights, on Pentecost and on Christmas have better texts. The comparison of the texts of the homilies with the original Slavic texts, such as The Sermon on Law and Grace by Metropolitan Hilarion, shows the similarity of using certain Greek loanwords in the original and translated texts. Prominent among them are words reflecting biblical realia and Christian terms. As a result of the research, the author distinguishes two groups of Greek loanwords in early Slavic texts - variant and invariant. The results of the work also prove the opinion of previous researches about the gradual formation of the collection Thirteen Homilies of St. Gregory of Nazianzus.

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