On the History of the Vocabulary of the Thematic Group «Christian Virtues and Sins»: Based on the Translated Church Slavonic Hymnography

This study examines the formation and further evolution of the Church Slavonic and Russian vocabulary describing Christian virtues and sins. Our research was conducted on the available Church Slavonic translations of four Byzantine hymns (the Akathistos Hymn, the Great Canon of Repentance by St. Andrew of Crete, the Alphabetical Stichera from the Great Canon service, and the Great and Holy Friday Antiphons) found in Southern and Eastern Slavonic manuscripts of the 11th‑16th century, as well as Russian editions dating back to the 17th – early 20th century. The textological study revealed five main stages in the evolution of these texts caused by systematic corrections in accordance with the Greek text. Based on these results, the linguistic textological method was applied in order to reveal the main differences between said stages in regard to conveying terms relevant to Christian virtues and sins. We examined a total of 110 Greek words and idiomatic expressions in this thematic field and classified them following the method suggested by E. M. Vereshchagin who focused on ways of terms creation. There were revealed main ways these terms were formed in the target language and the general tendencies in their translation during different stages in the history of Church Slavonic. The results of our research showcased the leading role of transposition in the formation of the terms, the negligible amount of lexical loans, as well as the growing role of calquing in the history of Church Slavonic. We also showed the ways in which the Church Slavonic and Russian languages adopted new linguistic and cultural realities and reinterpreted the system of Greek ethical terms, which helps us understand the mechanisms of intercultural transfer, as well as the linguistic factors that contribute to the identification of Russian culture in the general Orthodox context