THE PHILOLOGICAL PROJECTS OF DR. KELLERMAN

Abstract

The correspondence of the Tuscan court from 1685 contains a discussion of the idea of compiling a dictionary and a grammar book of the Russian language. The person who suggested the idea was the first Russian Doctor of Medicine and Theology, Heinrich Kellerman. A year later, he offered the Moscow authorities to translate the Bible from Hebrew. Apparently, he was later engaged in correcting the text of the Holy Scriptures, since a false rumor that arose in Europe stated that Kellerman had published a certain eight-language polyglot in Moscow in 1712. That year Peter I issued a decree that established a commission that was tasked with the correction of the Church Slavonic translation of the Bible based on the Greek text of the Septuagint. This decision placed the work in the hands of the Old Russian conservative party. The decree was possibly a reaction to the translation activities of the Moscow physician Heinrich Kellerman.