Apocrypha “The passion of Jesus Christ”: genesis, composition, language features

The article deals with the issues of genesis, content, and peculiarities of existence in the Russian manuscript tradition of the passionary compiled work “The Passion of Jesus Christ” devoted to the description of the last days of the Saviour’s life on Earth. The author characterizes some structural peculiarities of the work. The first feature is the presence of thirty two chapters in the full version; at this, more than half of them originate from apocryphal legends, in particular from the so called “Gospel of Nikodim” dating back to the 2 nd century AD. The second feature consists in a wide variation of repertory of the initial and finishing chapters within the work’s numerous lists while the pivot (the events described in chapters 26-27 of the “Gospel of Mathew”) remains stable. The authors also introduce and describe a new manuscript of the 17 th century preserved in Mordovia museum of local history. The main part of this manuscript is represented by the Apocrypha “The Passion of Jesus Christ”. The authors of the present article highlight the highest artistic value and historical importance of the manuscript containing ninety magnificent illustrations and including thirty one miniatures accompanying the whole passionary cycle. The analyses of graphic and orthographical features of the manuscript showed a tendency to breaking the norms while choosing one of the members of the doublet pair. The lexical system of Apocrypha consists of five main theme groups, including the lexemes connected with the concepts “man”, “religion”, “material culture”, “time”, “natural world” as well as with the inner world of a man, his appearance, and social status. The language of the work consists mainly of the low norms of the 17 th-century Old Church Slavonic language with some dialectic features (okanye - using “o”, chokanye - using “ch”).