The Slavonic Solunskaja Legenda (“The Legend of Thessalonica”) and Its Syriac Original

Abstract

The Slavonic eschatological apocryphon Solunskaja Legenda (“The Legend of Thessalonica”) is a direct translation from Syriac. The archetype of the extant recensions is datable to 893–972. It was created, in the First Bulgarian Empire, on the base of an earlier Slavonic text that did not mention the Bulgarians. The Sitz im Leben of the original Syriac recension and its Slavonic translation is a Syrian monothelete colony in North Macedonia (then, a part of Byzantium) between 752/754 and 839/842. The legend echoed events related to a successful Syriac monothelete mission to a slavinia (Slavic enclave headed by an autonomous prince) in the region of Thessalonica in the 670s or 680s. The legend describes the creation of the first Slavonic alphabet, and it uses specific terminology for writing tools. In its Slavonic translation, this terminology was transliterated instead of being translated. It can be assumed that the translator wanted to introduce new terms into the Slavonic language in this way.