Editing in a Sixteenth-Century Serbian Manuscript (HM.SMS. 280) A Lexical Analysis with Comparison to the Russian Original

This study encompasses an analysis of the language found in the first Serbian copy of The History of the Jewish War (HM.SMS.280) compared to its Russian original (HM.SMS.281). This research follows the clues in the colophon written by the Serbian scribe, the hieromonk Grigorije Vasilije, in which he states that the Serbian people could not understand the Russian words of the original manuscript. For this reason, Grigorije Vasilije states, he had to "translate" the unknown words into Serbian.;Since the Serbian manuscript consists of a large number of folia, 255 of them, a sampling approach was used, whereby eight folia from six sections were extracted and analyzed. The results of the findings identify a number of lexical variations which were distinctive in Serbian and the Russian recensions at the end of the sixteenth century. Some of the lexemes found in the Serbian manuscript are attested for the first time, and as such they make an addition to our knowledge of medieval Serbian lexicography.;The findings of this research show that many of the hard-to-understand words were very specific technical terms from military vocabulary---not words that a monk (or most laymen) could be expected to know. These lexemes pertain to siege warfare, military installations, court expressions, social interactions, and non-Orthodox ecclesiastical concepts. The collected data, consisting of the samples from the Russian and Serbian manuscripts, indicates that almost 80% of the lexemes which appeared be foreign or ambiguous to the Serbian scribes are either not listed in the Serbian dictionaries that were consulted, or else were not attested in the meaning found in the Russian original. The remaining 20% of the lexemes appear to be due to synonymy, avoidance of figurative language, concrete vs. specific terminology, censorship, and scribal errors. Some of them could only be explained by extra-linguistic factors, specifically by the scribes' attitude toward certain religious issues and views, particular to a strict Orthodox monk and ascetic.;In addition to reconstructing the biography of the main Serbian scribe, the hieromonk Grigorije Vasilije, this study provides evidence that was a second Serbian scribe, who worked on one segment of the Serbian manuscript. Although the identity of this scribe could not be ascertained for certain at this time, this study provides the material and suggests a possible answer. Based on the style and hand-writing, which closely resembles the writing found in the segment of the Serbian manuscript written by the second Serbian scribe, this study indicates a possibility that this person could be one of the scribes who was involved in copying in the Karyea cell of Hilandar Monastery close to the time the copy of The History of the Jewish War was created.