How Did a Saiga Appear in the Church Slavonic Bible?

Affiliation:
Moscow State Pedagogical University
Institute for Slavic Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences
St. Tikhon’s Orthodox University
Russian State Library
Address: Russian Federation, Moscow

Journal name

Russkaya Rech’

Edition

Issue 3

Pages

50-59

Abstract

The essay deals with the case of the Turkic loanword saygak ‘Saiga tatarica’ emergence in the list of clean ungulates in Deuteronomy 14:5 of the Edited Slavonic-Russian Pentateuch from the 15th century. This word was used instead of the erroneous translation vel'bud ʻa camelʼ from Greek “camelopard,” i.e., giraffe, which corresponds to Hebrew zemer ʻan antelope or rock goat.ʼ This editing originates from the Judeo-Turkic Pentateuch Targum which actually existed in that time in the East European Slavonic-Turkic contact zone. In the Turkic Targum, Deuteronomy remained only in the late Karaim versions, while the editing was made in the second half of the 15th century, apparently in the Ruthenian lands of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. In these lands, the Russian bookmen could come into contact with the bearers of Jewish culture who were Turkic-speaking at that. From the Edited Pentateuch, based on the Old Church Slavonic translation from the early 10th century, the new word saygak – alongside the other corrections in the list of clean ungulates – fell into the succeeding versions of the Church Slavonic Bible including the Elizabeth Bible, 1751. Even more surprising is that the proper Slavic names of animals fell into the Turkic-Karaim translation of the Pentateuch contained in the Halych manuscript from 1720.

Keywords

Bible, Church Slavonic, animals names, Karaim, Edited Pentateuch

Received

25.06.2019

Publication date

25.06.2019

Number of characters

18007

Cite

GOST	Grishchenko A. How Did a Saiga Appear in the Church Slavonic Bible? // Russkaya Rech’ – 2019. – Issue 3 C. 50-59 [Electronic resource]. URL: http://ras.jes.su/rusrech/s013161170005212-2-1-en (circulation date: 26.04.2024). DOI: 10.31857/S013161170005212-2
MLA	Grishchenko, Alexander "How Did a Saiga Appear in the Church Slavonic Bible?." Russkaya Rech’ 3 (2019):50-59. DOI: 10.31857/S013161170005212-2
APA	Grishchenko A. (2019). How Did a Saiga Appear in the Church Slavonic Bible?. Russkaya Rech’ (3), pp.50-59 DOI: 10.31857/S013161170005212-2

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