Abstract:
This article presents a comparison of the two Church Slavonic versions of the
Acts of the Apostles with commentaries (on Acts 13:4–28:10), that is, the so-called
middle Bulgarian translation (made in the 14th century probably in Tarnovo) and the translation made by Maximus the Greek in the initial period of his translation
activity in Russia (in 1519 or 1520). Two lexical regionalisms were found in his
translation: zakladniki ‘hostages’ and poslaniya berestenye ‘birchbark letters.’ Their
usage relates to the activities of Maximus’ Russian helpers, especially the work
by Vlas Ignatov. The corresponding fragment is correlated with the explanatory
version of the Book of Isaiah, which emerged in Preslav. A comparison of this text
by Maximus the Greek with the explanatory translation of the Book of Isaiah shows
that Maximus did not utilize the old (Preslav) version. Therefore, this fragment
is new in relation to previous Slavic traditions of translation. The analysis of the
final part of the text leads to the conclusion that the translation of the Acts with
commentaries has been revised according to the Greek original from the thirteenth
chapter to the end.
