How to Read the Word for Lazarus Resurrection? On the Question of Old Russian Myth-Making and Religious Imagination in the Slavic Medieval Apocrypha World

Abstract

The article sets the task of investigating, using the example of the apocryphal Word for Lazarus Resurrection, some of the features of old Russian myth-making and the manifestation of religious imagination reflected in the Slavic medieval apocrypha. For this, the concept of “divine sight” is introduced, which goes back to the principle of the image described by P. Florensky and called ‘the eyes of God’. In addition, the proposed article suggests that Old Russian Word for Lazarus Resurrection has a connection with ancient literature. The article is divided into three parts. To substantiate the proposed assumptions, the first part of the article is devoted to an overview of the history of the study of this apocryphal work before A.S. Nikolaev (a researcher of our time), who emphasizes the connection between the Word for Lazarus Resurrection with the Indo-European root. To substantiate the application of the “divine sight” technique in the analysis of a literary work, in the second part of the article, we will consider the cultural soil of the ancient Christian apocrypha. Further, on the basis of the first two parts in the third part, using the concept of “divine sight,” we will analyze the drama of the Word for Lazarus Resurrection.