‘The Old is in the New Revealed’: Prophetical Quotations from the Slavonic Translation of Doctrina Iacobi in the Literature of Early Kyivan Rus´
The Old is in the New Revealed’: Prophetical Quotations from the Slavonic Translation of Doctrina Iacobi in the Literature of Early Kyivan Rus´

(Part two)

Summary/Abstract: The second part of this paper (see part one in Palaeobulgarica 40, 1) introduces quotations from the prophets in the Philosopher’s Speech and in Hilarion of Kyiv’s Sermon on Law and Grace (1037–1050) which in form and/or language differ from their counterparts in the received translations available in Kyivan Rus´ and which can be shown to be derived from the Slavonic translation of Doctrina Iacobi. This includes quotations largely coinciding in Philosopher’ Speech and Hilarion (Is 52:10; Is 63:9; Is 51:4–5; and a combination of 2 Cor 5:17 Is 42:9–10, and Is 65:15–16) but also quotations which, in this form, are found only in Hilarion (Is 35:6–7 and Mal 1:10–11). It is demonstrated that two more prophetical quotations in the Tale of Bygone Years outside of the Philosopher’s Speech have their ultimate Slavonic origin in Doctrina (Ez 36:25 and Mic 7:18–19); this is in the so-called Tale of Book-Learning in the entry for 988/9. Some of the prophetical quotations in Speech instead have their source in the Chronicle of George the Monk (Hamartolos), a text of which there are no traces in Hilarion. The author concludes that L. Müller’s thesis of a Spruchsammlung of prophetical testimonies available in early Kyivan Rus´ is fully vindicated. This collection had incorporated material from Doctrina and from the canonical versions of the Bible. It turns out that Hilarion did not draw material directly from Doctrina, and even for mere chronological reasons it is therefore almost impossible that Doctrina would have been translated in Kyivan Rus´. Rather, we should conclude that this is an Old Bulgarian or, just possibly, Moravian translation. At some point in the second half of the 11th century, the Spruchsammlung was culled for material for yet another, probably more aggressively anti-Judaic, collection of prophecies, into which much material from George the Monk was incorporated as well. The prophetical collection extant in the Philosopher’s Speech and the quotations in the Tale of Book-Learning are probably secondary reflections of this work. They were added to a chronicle compilation that already included the Philosopher’s Speech.

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