"Goths" as linguistic and cultural concept in "codex argentus"

The article aims at researching the Gothic translation of the Sacred Scriptures, known as “Codex Argenteus” or the Silver Book. Bishop Ulfila is credited with its translation. The nature of the text and limitations of the analysis imposed by the sacred character of the material are reflected on all linguistic levels. However, despite the fact that the Gothic translation of the New Testament is parallel in respect of the word order and syntax patterns, very few lexical borrowings from Greek or Hebrew occur on the lexical level. Basing on previous research of Gothic correspondences to Greek, which have demonstrated that the Gothic text is in alignment with the autochtonous motifs, this work attempts to describe key elements of Gothic Christianity. This work focuses on the adjective gōþs and views it as the main means of expressing positive assessment in the Silver Book. Most frequent Gothic correspondences to Greek καλός is gōþs, however it is also used to translate ἀγαΘός, χρηστός and some complex words with εὖ-root, other variants of translation still occurring. The adjective gōþs has a clear etymology with reconstructed Proto-Germanic *goda- “suitable” and Indo-European *ghedh-, ghodh- “to join, to make a bond”, other Germanic cognates suggest correlation of gōþs with indications of kinship. This allows to view gōþs both as “suitable, fitting, joined, made bond with” and as “bonding, belonging to the same kin, bloodrelated”. Given that, gōþs might as well reflect ancient conceptual views of the world and convey the dichotomy “good - bad” in “my kin - their kin” or “familiar - unknown” perspective, in contrast to Greek means of expressing positive assessment where the inner forms of the words also refer to the concepts of “outward beauty”and “kindness”. The results of context analysis leads to conclusion that gōþs also leans toward the concept of “usefulness, utility”.