On the place and time of issueing the first Slavic translation of the life of Saint Athanasius of Athos

The article is devoted to revealing lexical features of the Slavonic translation of the ‘Life of Saint Athanasius of Athos'. The lexical analysis of the Slavonic text is carried out according to the manuscript, which is included into the “Collection of Lives and Words” of the 14th century, which is kept in the National Library of Saints Cyril and Methodius, Soa (Bulgaria); it is the oldest and closest to the archetype of the translation of the ‘Life of Saint Athanasius of Athos'. The Slavonic text is compared with the Greek original. The nature of transmission of some lexemes in the translated Slavonic Life, the basic principles of transference of complex Greek words, peculiarities in changes of some root morphemes, some grecisms, and also some lexemes that are not conrmed in historical dictionaries make it possible to state with condence that the rst Slavonic translation of the Life of Saint Athanasius of Athos was carried out in the 13th century in one of the scriptoria of Athos by the Bulgarian monk by birth. It is shown that the revealed lexical features bring together the Life of Saint Athanasius of Athos with other Middle Bulgarian texts of the 13th - beginning of the 14th centuries: the Norovs Book of Psalms, to a lesser extent - with the Cyprian and Euthymian translations. All founded cases of substitution of Greek lexemes by Slavic equivalents, which at the same time are characteristic and for the Chudov's edition of the New Testament, we regard as a sign of the closeness of the text under study to Athos new translations and editions of the 13th century.