Etymological classification of religiously marked proverbs

The article provides an etymological classification of religiously marked proverbs in the English and Russian languages. Under religiously marked proverbs, the proverbs etymologically originated from the Bible and proverbs, containing a religiously marked component (God, devil, sin) are understood. The results of analysis allowed us to work out the etymological classification of religiously marked proverbs that can be divided into 4 etymological groups: 1) citations from Bible; 2) transformed biblical proverbs; 3) postbiblical proverbs; 4) religiously marked proverbs, reflecting religious views and evaluations of a particular nation. Religiously marked proverbs are characterized by a high tendency to folklorization and lexical, grammatical and structural transformations that conditions the difficulties in identification of their etymology.