Article

Name: The Biblical plot about the sorcerer Valaam in the Old Russian “Word about the Star of Irania”

Authors: Anton N. Kovalenko

State Public Scientific & Technological Library of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences Novosibirsk, Russian Federation

In the section Study of literature

Abstract: The story about the prophecy of the sorcerer Valaam is an essential plot component of the “Word about the Star of Irania,” an ancient Russian homily dedicated to Christmas events. The source study of the text under consideration was performed by comparing it with various texts of the Old Russian tradition treating the history of Valaam from the perspectives of the Christmas narrative (with the Menaion services of the Christmas cycle, the Explanatory Palea, the Historical Palea). The analysis revealed the story about Valaam in the “Word about the Star of Irania” to be connected with the Explanatory Palea. However, its author uses several unique readings from the Historical Palea: Balaam’s service to Baal, the desire to curse, and the Persian recording of Balaam’s prophecy, possibly related to Jewish exegetical comments on the Pentateuch of Moses. Another source of the “Word about the Star of Irania” proves to be the word of “Adoration of the Magi” from the Prologue, the second (Large) edition. It is confirmed by the unity of the components in the narrative plan and the paraphrastic processing of separate fragments from the prologue text by the author of “Word about the Star of Irania.” The context of the handwritten collections where the “Word about the Star of Irania” exists and its literary connections indicate that Kirill Turovsky, or the scribes of his school, were involved in its creation. The Word about the Star of Irania” genre specificity “allows us to define the literary monument as a homily.

Keywords: Word about the Star of Irania, story of Balaam, literary sources, contextual links, genre specificity

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