Abstract:
The Biblical manuscript known as “Praxapostolos“ (Greek
Πραξαπόστολος) embraces the acts of the Apostles and Epistoles.
Their number and order varied in the collection prior to the development
of the canon of the New Testament (Metzger, Bruce M., 1987).
Finally, “Praxapostolos” united 22 books: acts of the Apostles, 7 Catholic
epistles and 14 epistles by St. Paul. These books must have been
translated into Georgian in the early period (IV-V centuries). Fragments
of St. Paul’s epistles found in the Khanmeti Palimpsests prove
that there were Georgian translations of other books of the “Praxapostolos”
as well. However, earlier manuscripts have not survived,
and the most ancient preserved ones are dated by the tenth century.
Although in the old Georgian literary tradition the Acts of the
Apostles and epistles are presented in one book, their critical texts
were published separately (Abuladze, I., 1950; Garitte, G., 1955; Lortkipanidze,
K., 1956; Dzotsenidze, K., Danelia, K, 1974). These publications
represent the data of 12 manuscripts of “Praxapostolos”, out of
which two belong to the Athonite collection – Ivir.georg.42 and Ivir.
georg.78 (the latter refers solely to St. Paul’s Epistles).
While working on the project financed by Shota Rustaveli National
science Foundation (FR-21-7518) aimed at the preparation for publication of the critical text of the Old Georgian translation of
the “Acts of Apostles”, we found approximately 10 additional manuscripts
of the above-mentioned text, including the codex from the
collection of Georgian manuscripts of the Holy Monastery of Iviron
– Ivir.georg.19. Until now, this manuscript has not been used for the
identification and publication of the texts. This codex, which, alongside
with the Acts of the Apostles, contains epistles, has been dated
by R. Blake by XIII-XVI centuries. According to R. Blake, it contains a
text edited by George the Hagiorite (Blake, R.,1932:117). A. Tsagareli
dates the manuscript by XIV-XVI centuries (Tsagareli A., 1886:201). The
publishers of the text, who had no access to the manuscript itself,
must have neglected the manuscript because it was dated by later
period. The recently published catalogue of Georgian manuscripts of
the Holy Monastery of Iviron dates the manuscipt by XIII-XIV centuries
(Gippert J., et al., 2022:202). However, observation of the architectonics
of the collection based on the digital copy of the manuscript
and analysis of the text of the “Acts of the Apostles” have made us
think that the manuscript is of Pre-Athonite (B) redaction. This once
again proves that “the text cannot be newer than the manuscript,
but there are frequent cases when the text is older than the manuscript“
(Likhachev, D., 1964:38).
