Viacheslav Lytvynenko: Preparing a Critical Edition of the Old Slavonic Text of Athanasius’ Orationes Contra Arianos

When preparing a critical Greek text of Athanasius’ Orationes  Contra Arianos(published by Walter de Gruyter in 2000) the editors lamented: “Eine Burücksichtigung dieser C [die altslawische Übersetzung] nahe stehenden Version für die Textkonstitution war leider nicht möglich”. In contrast to the attention patristic scholars have given to the Coptic, Armenian, and Syriac translations of Athanasius’ texts, there has been scarcely any effort for reconstructing the Old Slavonic texts. This communication will seek to share a brief outline of the project intended to fill in the gap and create a critical edition of the Old Slavonic text of the Contra Arianos. More specifically, I will first present two earlier attempts of creating such an edition (in 1954 and 2007) and discuss their contribution and weaknesses. I will then give a brief description of the Old Slavonic manuscripts (the number of copies, dates, condition, and location) and explain the specificity of my work and its challenge (the diversity of the ancient scripts, the absence of punctuation and proper distinction between the words, etc.). Finally, I will explain the guiding principles on which I reconstruct the Old Slavonic text with its variants and provide the translation into English.