Early Slavonic writings have preserved a unique corpus of compositions that develop biblical themes. These extracanonical, parabiblical narratives are known as pseudepigrapha, and they preserve many ancient traditions neglected by the canonical scriptures. They feature tales of paradise and hell, angels and Satan, the antediluvian fathers and biblical patriarchs, kings, and prophets. These writings address diverse questions ranging from artistically presented questions of theology and morals to esoteric subjects such as cosmology, demonology, messianic expectations, and eschatology. Although these Slavonic texts themselves date from a relatively late period, they are translations or reworkings of far earlier texts and traditions, many of them arguably going back to late biblical or early postbiblical times. The material in these works can contribute significantly to a better understanding of the roots of postbiblical mysticism, rabbinic Judaism and early Christianity, ancient and medieval dualistic movements, as well as the beginnings of the Slavonic literary tradition. The volume provides a collection of the minor biblical pseudepigrapha preserved solely in Slavonic; at the same time, it is also the first collection of Slavonic pseudepigrapha translated into a western European language. It includes the original texts, their translations, and commentaries focusing on the history of motifs and based on the study of parallel material in ancient and medieval Jewish and Christian literature. The aim of the volume is to to bridge the gap between the textual study of this corpus and its contextualization in early Jewish, early Christian, rabbinic, Byzantine, and other traditions, as well as to introduce these texts into the interdisciplinary discussion of the intercultural transmission of ideas and motifs.

Biblical Pseudepigrapha in Slavonic Traditions

History

Kulik, Alexander

Minov, Sergey

World

Oxford University Press

Jews in Old Rus’: A Documentary History (Harvard Series in Ukrainian Studies)

Russia

Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute

The Apocalypse of Abraham is one of the most significant ancient documents to have been preserved solely in translation into Slavonic, says Kulik (Hebrew U. of Jerusalem), and its lost Hebrew, or perhaps Palestinian Aramaic, original may be the earliest mystical writing of Judeo-Christian tradition, and a missing link between early apocalyptic and

Retroverting Slavonic Pseudepigrapha: Toward the Original of the Apocalypse of Abraham (Text-Critical Studies)

Religion & Spirituality

Christian Books & Bibles

Society of Biblical Literature

This work is the first systematic attempt to apply retroversion to Slavonic pseudepigrapha. Slavonic literary tradition preserved translations of many important documents of ancient religious thought. The elaboration of principles and tools for the retroversion of these writings is critical for the proper understanding of the originals. This study contains a new translation of the Apocalypse of Abraham and is organized formally as a discussion of separate problematic segments of the text, classified according to the type of the retroverted phenomena. It will be of interest to those studying Jewish literature of the Second Temple period, early Christianity, history of religious thought, medieval Slavonic literature and linguistics, and ancient and medieval translation techniques.

Retroverting Slavonic Pseudepigrapha: Toward the Original of the Apocalypse of Abraham (Sbl - Text-Critical Studies Sbl - Text-Critical Studies)

Brill Academic Publishers

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Books by Kulik, Alexander