Comparative Study of the Peculiarities in the Old Bulgarian Translation of John Chrysostom’s In Quatriduanum Lazarum II after the Copies in the Codex Suprasliensis and in MS No 24 from the National Museum of History in Sofia

Abstract

The article examines the differences in two copies of the Old Bulgarian translation of In quatriduanum Lazarum II by John Chrysostom on textological, grammatical and lexical levels. And although Codex Suprasliensis and NIM24 are three centuries apart, it turns out that the late Serbian copy has preserved archaic elements of the original translation, some of which are missing in Codex Suprasliensis. The lengthy transmission of the text is the reason for the partial changes in NIM24 at the level of text, morphosyntax and vocabulary, but the language of the translation can be traced back to the same archetype as the language of the translation in Codex Suprasliensis. The results of the study demonstrate that when attributing a translation, it is necessary to attract late copies as well, because they always bear traces of the initial translation. In this way, the linguistic evidence providing information on the prototranslation is complemented.