Academic Book Publishing,Tbilisi 2022, 54 p. 

ISBN: 978-9941-9761-7-9

Translated by Marjory Wardrop

editor Maya Gambashidze

On the cover the Icon of St. Nino by Michael Ambokadze

Studia Biblica et Ecclesiastica essays chiefly in Biblical and Patristic Criticism by the Members of the University of Oxford, Vol. V. Part I. Life of St. Nino by Marjory Wardrop and J.O. Wardrop, Oxford at the Clarendon Press. 1900

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PREFACE

The text used for this translation is Sakartvelos Samotkhe (edited by Gohron (Mikhail) Sabinin, S, Pbg., 1882), the standard collection of Lives of Georgian Saints. Sabinin’s text has the merit of giving a connected narrative, but its slipshod style and lack of punctuation frequently render it obscure and misleading. The New Variant. The best text, as far as it goes, is that printed in Akhali Varianti Tsm. Ninos Tzkhovrebisa, second part of Kart’hlis Moktsevisa (edited by E. T’haqaishvili, Tiflis, 1891). Wherever this differs materially from Sabinin’s text its words (marked A. V.) are inserted in the notes.

The existing MS. of this New Variant forms a part of the ‘Shatherdi Collection,’ a book of miscellaneous parchments which formerly belonged to the monastery of Shatberdi, on Chorokhi Pass, in the district of Clarjet’hi, and appears to have been written in the ninth or tenth century. With it are bound up three Historical Chronicles and the short MS. called Moktzevai Kart’hlisai, all of which are now published. The most notable peculiarity of A.V. is that the narrators speak in the first person; there seems little doubt of its being the oldest existing MS, and it is evidently a copy of a very much older (perhaps contemporary) original. Unfortunately it is incomplete. The order of the incidents differs from that in other versions, and some things are omitted altogether.

Other versions. Among other MSS. may be mentioned: I. A copy of the Lives of the Georgian Saints, written by the Catholicos Arsen in the tenth century (preserved in the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences). Arsen tells us he used oral as well as written material; 2. The Shio Mghvime monastery’s MS., written in 1733; 3. The Nat’hlismtzemeli (Baptist) monastery’s MS., 1713. These two last named are evidently taken from the same source, but the one is not copied from the other; 4. Queen Mariam’s MS. (written 1636—1646) of Kart’hlis Tzkhovreba (the Georgian Chronicle), which was not among those edited by Vakhtang' VI; 5. Kart’hlis Tzkhovreba, the great Georgian Chronicle, edited by King Vakhtang VI (early eighteenth century), but collected long before his time. The text and French translation published by M. F. Brosset, St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences.