„უცხოს“ ჰიპოდიგმური გააზრებისათვის ქართულ ჰაგიოგრაფიასა და ჰიმნოგრაფიაში
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2025
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ივანე ჯავახიშვილის სახელობის თბილისის სახელმწიფო უნივერსიტეტის გამომცემლობა
Abstract
“Stranger” acquires a hypodigmatic meaning after the biblical creation process, when the first created Adam and Eve, as a result of the Fall, left the paradise that God had given them as their abode. They became alienated from the paradise world, leaving paradise for a foreign world, which was expressed in the paradigmatic lexical unit “stranger”. The concept is often used in theological literature, especially in ascetic-mystical, exegetical, hagiographic, hymnog-raphic, and homiletic works, in several contexts: 1. To denote ascension to the heavenly realm, 2. To denote leaving the homeland, and 3. To denote going to another world.
The essential meaning of alienation is explained in the Old and New Testaments, in Christian theological literature. Following the evangelical-apostolic teaching, the saints are presented as “strangers” in a multifaceted sense, because, first of all, they are different, in a foreign/other country; i.e., the spirituality of the saint is embodied in the “stranger.” St. Gregory of Nyssa explained the theoretical-theological basis for understanding the “stranger.” From his point of view, the Saviour became a stranger to humanity, which allows the latter to see all the worldly delights around him with the purified eyes of the soul, because “strangership,” in a mystical sense, is devotion to the angelic nature and liberation from carnal desires and worries about them. In the words of St. Gregory of Nyssa, the foreign, the alien-made is “something that has been made into something higher.” Alienation is directly related to the saints, who are alien because they, having emerged from themselves, having been taken from the beginning, having been made alien, must appear before the Most High. Alienation is being different; this “other” indicates a difference from the predecessor. In the faces of the saints we are reminded of a spiritual existence, an orientation towards spirituality; they are not motivated by material things. According to all of this, the earthly life, merit, and martyrdom of the saints are understood in the light of the perception of time and space on the basis of their “foreignness.” In Greek hagiography, the departure of the saints to another world is marked by the word “ξένος”, which, like the Georgian “foreigner”, has a different semantic understanding.
From a lexical point of view, Sulkhan-Saba Orbeliani’s definition of “stranger” in the dictionary, which is understood as “other”, is important. In hagiography and hymnography, “stranger” means being different from others, which is of great importance in representing the nature of a saint. “Stranger” has a temporal and spatial value, because the “strangership” of a saint follows his departure to another world, which separates him from the time spent in his homeland. Accordingly, the strangeness of the saints is to be explained on the basis of a deep mystical understanding. In presenting the virtues of the saint, hagiographers and hymnographers placed special emphasis on renunciation from the world, on strangeness as a departure from the homeland, that is, on being different, on the desire to leave one’s native environment and go out into the outside world, which is based on the Old Testament and evangelical-apostolic teaching; St. Gregory of Nyssa considered “foreign” as one of the main pillars of the saint’s acquisition of divine citizenship.
“Foreign” is confirmed in Georgian hagiography and hymnography, specifically in all the texts of “The Conversion of Kartli”, in which St. Nino is perceived as foreign; in Iakob of Tsurtavi’s “The Martyrdom of St. Shushanik”, in which the synonym for foreign – “other” is used to denote spatial and essential difference; in “The Martyrdom of St. Eustathius of Mtskheta”, in which the biblical patriarch Abraham, who sought the Promised Land, is considered as “other”; in “The Martyrdom of St. Abo” by Iovane Sabanisdze, in which St. Abo’s “foreignness” has a symbolic meaning of faith, geographical space and sacred time; In hagiographic works about the Assyrian fathers and martyred children, mainly, the geographical space, and therefore the hagiographic spatiotemporal mission, is assigned to it; in “the Martyrdom St. Constanti Kakhi”, in “St. Gobron’s Martyrdom” by Stephane Mtbevari, in all editions of “St. Hilarion the Georgian’s Life”, in “St. Serapion Zarzmeli’s Life”, “stranger” is connected with the spatiotemporal movements of the main characters; in “St. Gregory Khantseli’s Life” by Giorgi Merchule it is found with various meanings: it heralds novelty in the activities of the characters, it is a herald of the spatiotemporal movement of the characters, it is emphasizes the social class of the character; in In the “Life of St. Jovane and Euthime” by Giorgi Mtatsmindeli, in the “Life of St. George Mtatsmindeli” of Giorgi Mtsire, it acquires an ethnic, religious, and temporal symbolic meaning; in the hymns about St. Nino, St. Abo, St. Shio Mgvimeli, St. Hilarion Georgian, St. Jovane and Euthime, St. Giorgi Mtatsmindeli and St. Iodasaph, there is one temporal dimension and the saints are already represented as settled in the heaven. In each of the above-mentioned texts, the saint departs from his/her native environment; passes into another spatial world, which becomes the initial stage of a new life. “Stranger” presents the time and space of each saint, which requires an understanding of the chronotopic essence; it is a paradigm with several meanings and is used in hagiography and hymnography with various missions. These are religious, ethnic, social class, and temporal-spatial. Based on the understanding of the “stranger” and its analysis, it becomes clear that each saint appears before the reader/listener as someone who has emerged from his own and has been taken for granted, who must be presented to society transformed into a stranger, and ultimately presented to the Supreme. “Stranger” from a temporal-spatial point of view indicates the mundane and supramundane existence of a person, a hagiographic and hymnographic character, and the perception of the world in a unified system by hagiographers and hymnographers, because being foreign is an indication of the existence of a dual world.
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https://geohistory.humanities.tsu.ge/ge/procedings/83-shromebi/180-shromebi-21.html
ივანე ჯავახიშვილის სახელობის თბილისის სახელმწიფო უნივერსიტეტის ჰუმანიტარულ მეცნიერებათა ფაკულტეტის საქართველოს ისტორიის ინსტიტუტის შრომები შესულია ERIH PLUS-ში (The European Reference Index for the Humanities and the Social Sciences).
This journal was approved on 23.10.2024 according to ERIH PLUS criteria for inclusion.
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ივანე ჯავახიშვილის სახელობის თბილისის სახელმწიფო უნივერსიტეტის საქართველოს ისტორიის ინსტიტუტის შრომები, XXI, თბილისი, 2025, გვ. 171-203 / Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University Institute of Georgian History Proceedings, XXI, Tbilisi, 2025, p. 171-203