Nino Doborjginidze: Old Georgian Psalter Catenae

The article deals with two versions of the old Georgian Psalter Catenae: a. Interpretation of the Psalms (თარგმანებაჲ ფსალმუნთაჲ), which was written in 1080 by a Georgian translator, philologist and exegete Ephrem Mcire. The work contains 1-75 Psalms. The earliest manuscript is dated to 1091 and contains a detailed introduction (წინაბჭე - prooímion), which is a medieval Georgian projection of biblical philology and follows the scheme of Ammonios. In this introduction, Ephrem Mcire presents bibliographic information about the original work and its Georgian translation, the place and time of translation, the purpose and usefulness o f the book, a table of contents, a glossary, a brief review about the authors and their practices – in short, all elements of Georgian colophons have their respective functions and were dealt with in the introduction of a text since the Alexandrian period (cf. o™ skopòv, tò cræsimon, tò gnæsion, h™ táxiv tñv anagnåsewv, h™ ai¬tía tñv e¬pigrafñv, h™ ei¬v tà kefálaia diaíresiv kaì u™pò poîon méro¬v a¬nágetai tò paròn súggrama). b. The short version Psalter Catenae from the 12th century (ფსალმუნთა გამოკრებული თარგმანება) compiled by an unknown Georgian author through the selection of various Greek and Georgian sources. In comments the Georgian author speaks about his work – how he selected the commentary from various sources, what difficulties he faced in translating specific textual passages, what the peculiarities of Georgian and Greek languages are and why one should not change even a single word in the translation of biblical books.