Bible Translations into Ruthenian/Ukrainian and their Communicative Goals

Programme

The proposed workshop, Bible Translations into Ruthenian/Ukrainian and their Communicative Goals, concentrates on the reception of the translations of Holy Writ in the Ruthenian (Ukrainian) lands from the 10th century onward, as well as biblical utterances in different lingual and communicative contexts (e.g. biblical quotations in sermons, liturgy, or theological writings). A variety of biblical texts, including vernacular translations, are analysed from the point of view of their intertextuality, typology, and language. A particular emphasis is placed on the historical dimensions of the Church Slavonic language and vernacular Ukrainian as practiced in Kyivan Rus’, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, as well as Habsburg- and Russia-ruled parts of Ukraine. The workshop is also aimed at finding a new way to judge the ‘catholic’, ‘protestant’, and ‘orthodox’ influences on the Ruthenian/Ukrainian Bible translation through Czech, Polish, and (Great) Russian translations. Major features of the Ukrainian recension are discussed in the context of essential distinctions of the other redactions of Church Slavonic, as well as in contrast to the vernacular features discerned in the Ukrainian “biblical style”.

Keywords:

Chairs

Andriy Danylenko

Pace University

Serhii Holovashchenko

National University of Kyiv Mohyla Academy

 Thomas Daiber

Justus Liebig-University

Sofia 2024 Call for Papers

The proposed workshop, Bible Translations into Ruthenian/Ukrainian and their Communicative Goals, will host two sessions with invited papers and one session with offered papers, in Sofia 2024:

The first session of invited papers will focus on the comparison of different printed text types which include translations from the Bible to a significant extent. The comparison will concentrate on linguistic (and orthographic) features of the translations, recension of possible source texts for the respective translations, and classifying text types according to their communicative goal.

The second session of invited papers will be dealing with linguistic, paleographic, and orthographic features of medieval Ruthenian (Ukrainian) manuscripts and early printed books of Holy Scriptures, as well as biblical texts written in standard vernacular extant from the times of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and later. Papers on the history and features of the Ukrainian recension of Church Slavonic are particularly welcome. A special emphasis is placed in topics dealing with the Biblical translations in Ruthenia and Ukraine. 

Other contributions exploring the Bible taken in its interdisciplinary dimensions are particularly welcome.