The publication focuses on the metrical memra of East Syriac author Yōḥannān bar Penkāyē, preserved in the only surviving source — the manuscript Brit. Lib. or. 9385. The preface analyzes the structure and poetic form of the work, identifies a number of non-trivial personalities. Complete Russian translation of the memra is accompanied by Syriac text that reproduces the original vocalization and accentuation.

This publication is the first translation from Ancient Greek into Russian of the first two Homilies on Psalm 36 by Origen. In the introduction, the author briefly explains which place the Psalter occupied in the history of the early Church, and also provides some information regarding the context in which the homilies were preached. The article also deals with the issues of authenticity, dating, historical and liturgical contexts, genre and audience. The translation is supplemented by a commentary and a translation of the apparatus. This publication will be followed by a translation of the next two homilies on Psalm 36.

This paper discusses the treatise 322 of St. Photius’ «Amphilochia» dedicated to some medical questions and raises the question of its possible sources and the medical library available to the patriarch in Constantinople. In its composition there can be discerned four fragments of different topics borrowed from the Late Ancient medical literature. The texts used by Photius in this treatise as his sources, are mostly those of his «Bibliotheca». The methods he applied to combine different texts together, give sufficient evidence that Photius not only was very well acquainted with Ancient medical tradition, but also considered his sources critically, making attempts to summarize different opinions. Russian translation of this treatise is attached.

This paper is the second part of my study on the usage of the topic of the penetration of fire into iron to describe uniting man with God in the East Christian theological literature from Origen to Gregory Palamas. I show how the Stoic natural-philosophical paradigm of total blending, manifested in the example of the penetration of fire into iron, was borrowed by the Byzantine theologian — Maximus The Confessor, John of Damascus, Simeon the New Theologian, Gregory Palamas — when they were talking about deification, to illustrate the penetration of the divine into the created world and the union of the created with the divine, such that the created does not dissolve in the divine, but remains in its nature, imbued with the properties of the deity. The texts I have discussed testify that this line developed from the more «naive» and ontologizing discourse of Ps.-Macarius to the discourse where the unity is spoken of as a phenomenon revealed for intellectual abilities, which suggests an indication of unity in a certain respect and preserves from interpreting this unity as a merger of unified natures. For the latter, one can distinguish the strategy of cognition / recognition, which Maximus the Confessor, Symeon the New Theologian, and Gregory Palamas adhered to. According to this strategy, we can discern the nature of fire revealed in iron through the properties displayed by incandescent iron, and, in the same way, we can conclude that a human being is god (of small letter) insofar as he manifests himself as God, that is, manifests the divine features.

In this article, the authors take into account the history of Hagiopolite liturgy, with its common rites and Triduum texts, and study how the complex of topoi in the hymns for holy women was developed. They propose a model that helps to describe the poetics of Byzantine hymnography in parallel with the history of liturgy and the formation of the corpus, exploring the sources of basic metaphors and their usage in early liturgical texts. Originally, in the Hagiopolite tradition, holy women were venerated according to common rites for martyrs, monastic saints and women. Later, in the 7^th–9^th centuries, individual propers for selected women appeared. Their topoi can be divided into three topical blocks: «marriage» (source: the common rite for holy women), «competition» / «war» (source: the common rite for martyrs and monastic saints), and «passion» (source: the common rite for martyrs and Triduum texts). For the first time we publish in Russian translation the common rite for holy women from the lectionary NLR. Gr. 44 (9^th c.), and common hymns from the collection Sinait. gr. ΜΓ / ΝΕ 24 (8^th–9^th c.) and the tropologion Sinait. gr. ΜΓ / ΝΕ 56+5 (8^th–9^th c.). Most of the topoi discussed in the article have become common patterns for the development of the language of later hymnographical propers for holy women in the Hagiopolite and Constantinopolitan traditions.

The present publication summarizes the results of previous research on the corpus of manuscripts containing the «Life of Lālibalā». According to the hypothesis of the author, the content of manuscripts, labelled as the «Gadla Lālibalā / Life of Lālibalā» is in fact a collection of textual units, composed within the territory of contemporary Ethiopia and Eritrea in the local literary language, geez. The exact date of composition remains unknown. According to the limited data one can state that by the XIV/XVth century manuscripts containing the «Life of Lālibalā» constitute an integral part of such monastic libraries as Dabra Ṣǝyon Abuna ʾAbrǝham, and Kǝbrān on the lake of Ṭānā, geographically remote from each other. The text attests quotations from the Bible and allusions to the apocryphal texts. The textual units are either of narrative or of praising character. The article presents an overview of the corpus of manuscripts, discusses the method of defining a textual unit, as well as the content of thus defined textual units.

The final part of the review represents the last numbers of the bulletin (or journal, since 2011) of the International Organization for Septuagint and Cognate Studies, which are open to access on the Internet by now. During the period under review the periodical was being continued to combine the functions of a forum for discussing the leading problems in Septuagint studies by specialists from around the world and a platform for the debut of young researchers. To a large extent, the result of half a century of cooperation between scientists within the framework of IOSCS was a series of translations and commentaries to the Septuagint, united by a common framework of scientific discussion. At the same time, theological issues were pushed into the background, which can be explained by the leading interests of the age. Although researchers have not approached the integral theory of the Septuagint, the status of this source (with all the reservations about the lability of its borders) as an independent, ancient and authentic witness of the biblical tradition has become quite certain.

In the frame of the present overview scientific works, connected to the Coptic studies, of Boris A. Turaev (1868–1920) are represented. The historian, еgyptologist and coptologist, Boris A. Turaev examined the history of the Copts and the Coptic Church mainly on the base of the literary sources. His scientific activity fell on the period of large-scale collecting of archeological monuments of the Orient and their accumulation in the funds of Museums and libraries all over the World. This provided the fertile ground for research in the field of the humanitarian science. As a result about half a hundred of works connected to a series of different coptological questions was published. The author dedicates his attention to the history and development of Coptic language (its different dialects) and literature, the history of the Coptic Church and its formation, a series of social and cultural aspects connected to one of the most ancient Christian cultures. The author deals with the period from the times of the Pharaohs up to the Muslim domination in Egypt etc. An overview of these works is structured in chronological order of their publication.