Linguistic aspects of the book correction of the Psalter as a part of the Moscow Bible of 1663

Abstract

   The article discusses the principles and tendencies of language corrections, made by Nikon’s scribes under the leadership of Epiphany Slavinetsky in the Psalter during the preparation of the Moscow (“First Printed”) Bible of 1663 for publication. The scope of imperative corrections, fixed in the Psalter turned out to be wider than the scope of corrections in the New Testament books of the Moscow Bible. In addition to the grammatical positions that were subjected to the book correction in the Gospel texts, some other forms and constructions were recognized as “defects”, requiring correction in the Psalter: the form of the accusative case of plural demonstrative pronouns, the homonymous form of the genitive case of plural “ихъ”, the forms of the genitive case of plural masculine nouns with the inflection -ъ, the homonymous forms of the singular nominative case (such as “врагъ”), the simple preterite in the position of the second person singular, the single target infinitive, constructions with relative pronouns whose case agrees with the word being defined in the main clause. Among the corrections characteristic of the Psalter text, we can find various motivations: aspiration for unification limiting the free variability of the forms from the source text – the Ostrog Bible of 1581, overcoming of grammatical homonymy, reproduction of Greek linguistic models and adherence to traditions. But regardless of the influence exerted by one factor or another, corrections in all grammatical positions demonstrate adherence of the editors to the system of grammatical norms that was codified by Melety Smotritsky and corrected in the Moscow edition of his grammar.