C. The Slavonic Version.* — i. Origin. — Our information as to the origin of the Slavonic Version is fairly definite, and generally trustworthy, at any rate in its main points. The two men wlio.se names are connected with the beginnings of a Slavonic Version are Cyril and Methodius. They were sons of a Greek nobleman of Thessalonica, round which place there were a number of Slavonic settlers. The elder, Methodius, died in 885 ; the year of his birth is unknown, 'fhe younger, Con- stantine, was bom in 827, took the name of Cyril when he became a monk, and died at Rome in 809. It is probable that from childhood they were acquainted with the Slavonic of their native district of Tlies.salonica, and tradition ascribes to Cyril the invention of the characters which from him are called Cyrillic, assigninjr as the date of this the year 8.55. The object of Cyril was to give the Bulgarian Slavs such parts of the Bible as were used in Church services in their own language. A little later the two brothers were summoned to Moravia, and to the period following on this, i.e. after the year 864, the beginnings of the Version are by many assigned. But Lcskien and Polevoi t urge, and with reason, tli.it the work probably began earlier, and was spread over a longer time.
In one of the legendary lives of Cyril J we are told that he began hia translation with St. John's Gospel, and soon completed a translation of the ' whole ecclesiastical cycle,' i.e. he translated first those parts of the Bible which were used for the Church services, both of the OT and NT. It is stated also in the life of Methodius th.at a trans- l.ation of these selected parts preceded the trans- lation of the whole ; and John, ex.irch of Buh.'aria, who is almost a contemporary, makes a similar assertion that Cyril first translated a 'selection,' and that Methodius and his brother translated ' the whole 60 book.s.' This translation may well have been completed before the death of Methodius, who survived liis brother some time, though not, we may hope, in the sliort time of six months, as one authority states.
A much disputed question connected with the ori^'in of the Version concerns the dialect into which the translation was ni.-ide, and nanus eminent in Slavonic studies may be quoted as dis- agreeing. Thus Schiifarik, Leskien, and others say that the original Version was most closely allied to Old Bulgarian, while Kojiitar, Miklosich, and Jagic connect it with Old Slovenish. It is possible that the various families of Slavonic had not, at the date of which we are speaking, begun to show the marks of difl'erence found in later documentary evidence.
Another interesting literary discussion gathers round the alphabets which are met with in the early MSS. These are of two kinds. The one is known as the Cyrillic, and consisted of 38 letters, derived mainly from Greek, but also, in part, from Hebrew and other languages, and in part invented to express the peculiar na.sal sounds found in Slavonic. The other alphabet is known as Glago- litic, and this is probably the older.
* For ft fuller account of the origin and later history of the Slavonic Version, and it« relation to modem Kus^ian, the writer must refer to an article of his on ' the Kvit-Hian Hiblo ' in the Church Quarteri;/ Jteview for Oct. Ib9.'>. Little new work hos been done in Russia or elsewhere on this subject since that daU'.
t IlUtortf of Ruettian Literature, p. 7.
i .See Oinr-el, (ienclnclJe dsr Siaurtiapogtei, Ct/nll und ilethod., for detail! aa to the dooumeuta in re(;ard to' Uyril aad Halhodiua.
864 VEESI0:NS, GEORGIAN, ETC.
VERSIONS, GREEK
ii The MSS.— A few of the MSS are ascribed to 8is early a date as the 10th or 11th cuit. liy Jagic and other scliolars, but these contain only the Gospels, either as complete texts or as lection- aries. 1 he oldest MS of the complete Bible is tiiat called after Gennadius, archbishop of Novgorod, and dated 1499.* As will be seen later, this con- tains a composite text, of very varying value and importance. The comparative absence of e;uly MSS is explained by the widespread devastalion caused by the Mongol invasions of the 13th and 14tli cents. The records of the period before these invasions tell us of schools in which the Bible was studied, of copies of MSS of the Bible made by monks and professional scribes, of catena; on the Psalms, the Prophets, the Gospels, and some of the Epistles.t and every page of the chronicles and other writings shows us how inwoven the Bible was into the texture of the language, and what a part it played in Russia, as elsewhere, in fixing the literary style. We find actual quota- tions of many of the UT books, e.g. of the Book of Proverbs, in the Chronicle of Nestor, which dates from the 11th cent.
The oldest MSS of any part of the OT are those of the Psalter, some of which go back to the 11th or 12th cent. Many of the books of the OT have been made the subject of monographs, in which details are given. Besides the editions of the P.salter by Sreznefski and Amphilochius may be mentioned studies in the text of Joshua, the Books of Kings, several of the Minor Prophets, and Isaiah.