The Alphabet of Creation: Traces of Jubilees Cosmogony in Slavonic Tradition *

Abstract

So far the reception history of Jubilees within the intellectual environment of the Byzantine Commonwealth, from the perspective of the last lingua sacra of Europe, Old Church Slavonic, has been overlooked. One of the goals of this article is to present hitherto neglected evidence concerning the attestations of the Jubilees cosmogonic template in medieval Slavonic tradition, thus aiming at introducing new material into the study of the transmission and domestication of Jewish parabiblical writings in their successive Christian environments. Intentionally excluded from the scope of the current investigation are literary sources attested in languages other than Church Slavonic (since they are analyzed by others). The focal point of the analysis in the present work is thus Slavonic material, as represented by translations (from Greek) of some parabiblical writings (e.g. fragments from Epiphanius of Salamis' treatise On Measures and Weights) and related historiographical compositions (e.g. the Chronicles of John Malalas and George Hamartolos); also included is complementary data from The Palaea compendia. Of particular importance for this discussion are narratives concerned with the origins of the Universe and Mankind; each of these is treated as a surviving piece of evidence concerning Judaeo-Christian encounters in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages.