Recherche – Detailansicht
Ausgabe: | Dezember/2021 |
Spalte: | 1177-1179 |
Kategorie: | Bibelwissenschaft |
Autor/Hrsg.: | Böttrich, Christfried, Fahl, Dieter, u. Sabine Fahl[Hgg.] |
Titel/Untertitel: | Von der Historienbibel zur Weltchronik. Studien zur Paleja-Literatur. |
Verlag: | Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt 2020. 408 S. = Greifswalder Theologische Forschungen, 31. Geb. EUR 98,00. ISBN 9783374066070. |
Rezensent: | Marcello Garzaniti |
This book is the outcome of an international conference, held in Germany (Greifswald, 2017), dealing with a text that is fundamental for knowledge of the »rewriting« of the Bible (Historienbibel) in Eastern Europe, the so-called Palaea. This text, known in the East Slavic area in two main forms, has been published again only in recent years and has become the subject of further studies. The various contributions in this volume analyse the Palaea, not only in the context of the writing production of the Slavic world, but also placing it within the more complex tradition of medieval narrative texts illustrating the biblical story and in relation to the rabbinic exegetical tradition, as Ch. Böttrich masterfully illustrates in the first contribution. Here I shall attempt to trace the main issues addressed by the different articles, although it should be borne in mind that my own interests deal mainly with the Slavic world.
It is particularly important to emphasise that the two forms in which the Paleja is presented differ in their origins. The first, the Palaea historica (Istoričeskaja Paleja, PH), is a translation of a Greek original, conceived between the 8th and 9th centuries and translated several times into Slavonic between the 11th and 15th centuries. Recently M. Skowronek edited the second Slavonic translation (2016). The other form, the Palaea interpretata (Tolkovaja Paleja, TP), was produced in the Slavic world: some believe in the East Slavic area during the 13th century, as proposed by E. G. Vodolazkin (2011), others in the 10th century, in the early Bulgarian empire, as proposed by T. Slavova in her extensive study (2002). Rightly, therefore, the volume takes into consideration the original Greek of PH and its manuscript tradition (W. Adler), a new edition of which is awaited, and offers some considerations of a philological-linguistic nature (J. Niehoff-Panagiotidis). Of particular interest is the study devoted to the images of the story of Adam in an Armenian church of the 10th–11th century, a period very close to the creation of PH, which are relat-ed to a pseudo-epigraphic homily on Genesis attributed to Epiphanius of Salamis (I. Dorfmann-Lazarev). Of course, the relations of PH with the Jewish apocrypha are crucial in this context, as E. Grypeou’s study of the death of Cain and the generation after the flood illus-trates. A case study is the adaptation and reception in the Christian context of the apocryphal Vita Adae et Evae (J. Dochhorn).
The presentation of the Chronicle of Pseudo-Eustatius, which P. Odorico has recently reconstructed (2014), and the illustration of the animal world in the same chronicle (C. Macé), belong to the field of Byzantine studies. This chronicle, however, is important for the study of the Palaea, since fragments of it are present in a par-ticular form of the TP in the East Slavic area: the so-called Short chronographic Paleja. This form of the Palaea extends the narrative to the entire first Christian millennium, marking the transition from the »rewriting« of the Bible to the universal chronicle (Weltchronik). In his detailed contribution, D. Fahl studies the parallel passages in chapter 19 of this Palaea with the Chronicle of Pseudo-Eustatius. The date proposed for the Short chronographic Paleja, the 1440s, refers to the time when interest in the Old Testament and biblical stories was renewed in the Eastern Slavic world, usually accompanied by a polemical attitude towards Judaism due to fears of the influence to which the West had already opened its doors. The late composition of this Palaea, according to T. Vilkul, is confirmed by the form of the passage narrating the invitation of the Varangians to Rus’ in the 9th century.
In the first contribution, Ch. Böttrich considers the different forms of biblical histories in the East and West that have common traditional sources and models, primarily the Antiquitates iudaicae of Josephus Flavius and the works of Sextus Julius Africanus and Eusebius of Caesarea, considered the founder of ecclesiastical his-tory. These attempts at synthesis and harmonisation between Judaic culture and the classical tradition have even older roots, as is shown by the study presented by M. Rösel on the chronological system adopted in the fifth and eleventh chapters of Genesis in the Greek tradition in the Masoretic and Samaritan texts. Already in the Jewish Alexandrian milieu, an attempt was made to chronologically harmonise the events concerning the development of humanity from Adam to the second temple in Jerusalem. The role of Alexandria in this sphere should therefore not be disregarded, also be-cause PH is attributed to Athanasius of Alexandria. Attention to chronological aspects that serve to underline the providential dimension of history is evident in both the Western Latin and Byzantine Greek traditions. It also appears prominently in the earliest Slavic testimonies, as evidenced by the Life of Constantine Cyril, composed at the end of the 9th century, where in his discussions during his missions in the East the protagonist addresses genealogical and chronological issues (chapters IX and X).
The first contribution also recalls the »rewriting of the Bible« in Western culture, considering the scholastic tradition witnessed by the work of Petrus Comestor, up to the Biblia pauperum and the threshold of the Reformation era. M. Meiser deals with the very successful Scholastica Historia, studying the presence of the Jewish tradition. In this context, it is pertinent to recall that interest in biblical stories in the medieval Slavic world manifested itself at the end of the 14th century in Prague, in an environment where Czechs, Germans and Jews coexisted. On the initiative of Emperor Charles IV, the Emmaus Monastery was founded by monks from Croatia who introduced the use of Glagolitic. Here, the first Slavic version of the Scholastica Historia was produced, in Old Czech but written in Glagolitic (L. Pacnerová, Staročeský Hlaholský Comestor, Praha 2002), and at the same time the Old Czech version of the Bible was initiated. We know that the Old Czech Bible played an important role from the kingdom of Poland to the Eastern Slavic world. It is again interesting to recall that in Novgorod – where the Short chronographic Paleja probably originated, at the end of the 15th century – in a context where the influence of Jewish culture was manifest, the first ecclesiastical Church Slavonic Bible was prod-uced in the circle of Archbishop Gennady (1499), and important Latin texts were translated into Church Slavonic. These included chapter 39 of the fifth book of the Etymologiae of Isidore of Seville, a chronology spanning from the creation of the world to the sixth century AD. (Sobolevsky, Perevodnaya literatura Moskovskoy Rusi XIV–XVIII vekov. Bibliograficheskie materialy. St Petersburg 1903, P.228–230) Perhaps consideration of these realities could lead to a better understanding of the relationships between the different traditions of biblical »rewritings«, rather than considering them as completely unrelated and therefore comparable only by analogy.
In this sense, the reflections on the different forms of biblical narration in the Slavic area are particularly valuable. Certain fundamental aspects are further explored in the individual studies devoted to particular aspects: the presence of the apocryphal Jacob’s Ladder in the TP, in its different forms (S. Fahl); the presence of the Testaments of the twelve patriarchs in the Eastern Slavic chronographs, in which the hypothesis of a protochronograph is advanced (T. V. Anisimova); and the late Serbian manuscript tradition of the TP (A. Novalija). The final study by members of the Institute of Russian Literature, E. G. Vodolazkin and T. V. Rudi, is devoted to the manuscript tradition of the Short chronographic Paleja, referring to more detailed studies published in the Institute’s journal. Their fruitful collaboration with Böttrich, D. Fahl and S. Fahl re-sulted in the recent edition of the Short chronografic Paleja, accompanied by a German translation and valuable commentaries and indexes (2019). A topic of a more general character is the theme of apocalyptic narrative present in the Palaea, from the Apocalypse of Abraham to the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, especially in relation to the otherworldly journey that opens much broader themes related to the extensive apocalyptic literature of the Byzantine and Slavic world (J. Petkov).
The variegated transmission of themes and subjects of different origins present in the Greek and Slavic Palaea, and even the perception of incompleteness, highlight the freedom with which these texts were elaborated and re-elaborated and even integrated with liturgical texts, demonstrating a completely different attitude to that of the transmission of the sacred text, which instead had to be handed down as accurately as possible without additions or changes. From this point of view, it might be useful to consider the concept of »open tradition« that has been elaborated by Slavic philology (Riccardo Picchio) in recent decades regarding certain Eastern Slavic texts.
We are sincerely grateful for the general reflections and the presentation of interesting case studies, evidence of valuable international collaborations which, by pointing us to new avenues of research, show how much still needs to be done to find our bearings in this mare magnum of »rewritings« of the Bible.