Text-Critical Notes to Constantine of Preslav’s Didactic Gospel

Abstract

Constantine of Preslav’s Učitel’noe evangelie was written at the end of the ninth century but came down to us in only four full, much later, copies from the twelfth (the single East Slavonic manuscript [S]) to the fourteenth century (the other three South Slavonic manuscripts [G, H, W]). Copies are both scarce and distant in time and place as well as different in script from their lost (Glagolitic) protograph, with the result that scribal errors are inevitable, yet not always noted. The article proposes three methodological approaches to reconstruct some of the lexemes distorted by the manuscript tradition, even in passages without an attested Greek source text. The first approach relies on variant readings in situations that lack a Greek parallel. In cases that lack variant readings, the second method is applied, which considers references and allusions to Biblical or patristic texts to elucidate the meaning behind sometimes incomprehensible phrases. The third approach counts on the very meaning of the respective portion of text (i.e., the direct context of a word) and the rhetorical techniques used in it.