DOI: 10.55804/jtsuSPEKALI-17-21

[1]English quotations are cited from the King James Version.

[2]His descendants are considered to be Ishmaelites (Arabs).

[3]However, in ancient Greek, the h sound was heard in anlaut during a strong aspiration (spiritus asper) and was marked by a special sign.

[4]We used the electronic version of the Armenian Bible based on the  edition of 1895: https://arak29.org/bible/book/tGen_1.htm

[5]See also [Danelia, 1983:128]

[6]This was also the name of Tobit’s wife (The book of Tobit).

[7]It is known that in the manuscripts of the Gelati Bible (A 1108 (XII century) and Q 1152 (XII-XIII centuries)) the first two books of the Pentateuch – Genesis and Exodus are missing. B. Gigineishvili, based on proper argumentation, maintains that A 179 and the Gelati Bible are the MSS of one version, and it is possible to consider “the first two books of the Pentateuch contained in the A 179 manuscript as the part of the Gelati Bible that was not preserved by the Gelati MSS" [Gigineishvili, 1989:15].

[8]It is known that since the Slavic people became Christians late and they had to start translating Biblical books from Greek around the 9th century, Greek words were rendered in this language according to the new pronunciation: Basil – Василий, Amen – Аминь, Michael – Михаил, etc. [Shanidze, 1964:42].

[9]As an exception, Abraam is attested four times (three times in Genesis  and once in IV Kings), and Abram is attested twice (in these cases, the context demanded his original name). Once we came across a wrong spelling - Ahraham [Lev. 26: 42 BKS].

[10]As the initial part of the Oshki Bible is missing, it shows the forms we are interested in from 12:11.

[11]Isaiah is preserved in the Oshki and Jerusalem (J, XI c.) Bibles. Both of them reveal the form Sarra.

[12]It is not excluded that the tendency revealed in the Oshki Bible regarding the assumption that two forms of this anthroponym are not formally distinguished (in a certain section of  Genesis after 17:15), can be explained by the influence of Armenian because the opposition between Սարա – Սառա which is based on the alternation of soft and hard r (equivalent to the Greek geminate rho) might have been rendered into Georgian only through one form – Sara. Interestingly,  while rendering Sarah's new name, Armenian, like Georgian, deviates from Syriac and Hebrew and does not use the h-consonant form (Sarah), while in the case of Abraham, it also prefers the h-consonant forms. Therefore, in our opinion, if we consider the issue of transliteration-transcription of both anthroponyms into Georgian in a complex way while discussing the influence of the Eastern literary-textual tradition on the Oshki Bible in this regard, we should, first of all, consider the Armenian influence.

Conventional Signs

A   H 1207 (XVIII ს.)

B   A 455 (The Bakar Bible, printed version, 1743)

C   A 179 (1669)

D   H 885 (XVII c.)

E   A 243 (1672)

F   A 646 (XVI c.)

G   The Gelati Catena Bible, preserved in Korneli Kekelidze Georgian National Centre of Manuscripts. It has come down to us in two manuscripts: A 1108 is presented with the autograph MS and Q 1152 – with its copy.

Gb   A 1108 (XII c.)

Ga   Q 1152 (XII-XIII cc.)

H   Kut. #671 (XI c.)

I   A 570 (XV c.)

J   Jer. Geo. 7/11 (The Jerusalem Bible, XI c.)

K   Kut. #28 (1681)

O   Ivir. Geo. #1 (The Oshki Bible)

S   A 51 ( The Mtskheta Manuscript/Bible, i.e. the Saba Bible, preserved in Korneli Kekelidze Georgian National Centre of Manuscripts, XVII-XVIII centuries)