Georgian Translations of John of Sinai’s “Climax”: Linguistic Particularities (Graecisms)

The Ladder of Divine Ascent by John Climacus is among the Greek Patristic works which were translated multiple times into Georgian and significantly influenced medieval Georgian artistic and philosophical thought. Between the 8th-9th and the 17th centuries, a total of six Georgian versions of this work were composed. The Ladder was translated into Georgian three times: first, a translation made from Arabic at the monastery of St Sabas in the Holy Land in the 8th-9th century; a second translation made in the last quarter of the 10th century by St Euthymius the Athonite, and a third translation was made by St Peter of Gelati. In addition, there are three verse renderings of the Ladder. The first one is attributed to Ioane Petritsi and is based on Euthymius’ translation, while the second and third are in-verse interpretations of Peter of Gelati’s translation. The author of the third poetic version is catholicos Anton I. This paper will present the critical editions of the two Georgian translations of the Ladder by Euthymius and Peter and will analyze the peculiarities of the translational methods employed by the two translators by comparing their versions to the Greek original. It will be shown that a large part of the lexis in the Gelati version of the Ladder consists of graecisms and loan translation compounds. The two prose versions of the Ladder thus contain rich material for studying the lexis of medieval literary Georgian (such as synonyms), but they also contain curious materials with regard to the development of the Georgian literary language.