Textologische Übersicht von südslawischen Abschriften der Geschichte über Akiris den Weisen
Text-Critical Observations on Some South Slavic Copies of the Story of Ahiqar

Summary/Abstract: The ancient Story of Ahiqar (7th–6th century ВС) is a writing in two parts: an Aramaic narrative about the wise counselor of the Assyrian kings and a list of ca. one hundred wise sayings. The second part originated later and the sayings in it are similar to proverbs known from the Bible and some Middle East writings. The Story was extremely popular in a large range - in terms of both languages and religions - and was translated, edited and copied over the centuries. One of its productive versions is the Slavic one. The study proposed here aims at a text-critical systematisation of eight Bulgarian and Serbian copies of the so-called primary version of the Slavic translation (according to the Russian copies classification made by N. Durnovo, 1915). Their analysis shows the active involvement of the scribes while copying, expressed in shortenings of the text, on the one hand, and in the use of contextual synonyms, on the other. The various readings could not be explained as deliberate modernisation or archaisation of the language, or as correction after comparison of the target text with its source text. The free copying is therefore most probably due to the non-liturgical character of the Story and the loose logical connection between the sayings in its didactical part.

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