Tsyrelchuk K. A.

Post-Sanctus anaphora of St. Basil the Great (hermeneutic analysis of Russian text). Pp. 109–117.

UDC 821.161

DOI 10.37724/RSU.2023.81.4.011

 

Abstract. Since the second half of the 19th century, there have been ongoing discussions of the linguistic aspect of worship in the Russian Church services, and the difficulty of understanding of Old Church Slavonic. Since early 20th century, attempts have been made to translate liturgical texts into modern Russian. Currently, there exists a whole corpus of such texts, the analysis of which is necessary from the point of view of both theology and philology. This determines the relevance of the present study.

The purpose of this article is to conduct a hermeneutic analysis of the Russian text of a passage from
the Post-Sanctus Anaphora of St. Basil the Great — the Eucharistic prayer that is central to the Sacrament of
the Eucharist. This analysis allows us to evaluate translators’ solutions and determine the correct ones. The transformations undertaken by the authors become significant when we review the corpus of liturgical texts in Russian. Thus, they affect nearly all levels of language, from morphemic to syntactic. At the same time, we observe hybrid transformations that relate to different subsystems. Such changes often distort the meaning of the original text, which is unacceptable when working with theological content.

Consistent application of methods of hermeneutical analysis of liturgical texts in Russian will allow us to apply the approach to other orders of Divine Service and their translation to various languages.

 

Keywords: anaphora, St. Basil the Great, hermeneutic analysis, theolinguistic transformations, historical lexicology, Orthodox worship, the Church Slavonic language.

 

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