Barlaam and Ioasaph
Greek novel from Byzantine times; there is uncertainty regarding date and author--The story of I.(Ioasaph_), an Indian prince, is told; his father, king Abenner, an enemy of Christianity, was worried because of prophecies that his son would take on the new religion and ordered him to live, locked away in a magnificent palace, without learning about human suffering. Despite surveillance, the monk B(Barlaam ). succeeds in approaching I. and initiating him into the Christian teachings. When Abenner learns about the conversion of his son, he tries in vain to dissuade him; the wise men, whom he calls together in defence of the pagan religion, finally go over to Christianity as well. The king then decides to entrust his son with half of his kingdom and I. proves himself to be a just ruler, who distributes his personal wealth among the poor. Abenner also finally converts to Christianity and withdraws to a life of atonement. At the death of his father, I. leaves the throne in the hands of a trusted friend and carries out an old vow: he goes into the desert to fast, pray and live in great poverty as a hermit. He finally finds the beloved B. again. When they both have died within a few years of each other, their bodies are transferred to rich tombs and laid out for worship by the Christians.
The novel of B. and I. is a Christianized treatment of the Buddha story. The destiny of the young prince corresponds to it in its main features and also many of the moral fables, which have been incorporated in the novel, are common to Christian and Buddhist traditions. The name I. lets itself be traced back via the Arabic Budasaf or Iodasaf to the Indian Bodhisattva.
The question as to when and how the Greek version of the story of B. and I. has been developed, is a hotly discussed problem (to such an extent, that the research has concentrated far more on the discussion of its origin, rather than on the study of the novel itself); it was thought that the material was imparted via a lost Syrian translation or an Arabic treatment, which served a Georgian version as model, from which the Greek version was derived. This question is closely connected to the question of date and author. In the lemmata of the Greek MSS, the novel is almost unanimously allocated to a monk by the name of Johannes of St. Sabas (a monastery to the south-east of Jerusalem, which according to tradition, was founded in 483 by St. Sabas in which MSS were being produced until the 11th/12th cents.). The scholars favour two hypotheses in particular, which could both also be based on the lemmata of some MSS: the allocation to John of Damascus, from which a dating of the novel in the first half of the 8th cent. AD resulted, and the allocation to Euthymius Ibericus (died 1028), who is supposed to have translated the Greek text from a Georgian version, through which the dating was shifted to the 10th cent.
Recent research into the problem has shown that the tradition does not give defining evidence for either hypothesis, but that various internal and external criteria point to the text having been written c. 800 in Palestine, probably in the monastery of St. Sabas. The connection to the Arabic and Syrian culture on the one hand as well as to the Caucasian on the other hand, the apologetic slant (in the novel of B and I. e.g. the apology of Aelius Aristides, the orator from the 2nd cent. AD, is put into the mouth of one of the characters of the novel), and the topos of the persecution of the Christians and the conversion to Christianity allow themselves to be brought well into line with the context of the Palestine of those times and the hagiographical literature produced there.
More than 140 MSS and numerous translations document the reception of the novel in the Middle Ages: the Western tradition depends mainly on the three Latin translations, from which further translations into the vernacular are derived, although also into Russian, Serbian, Arabic and from Arabic into Ethiopian are known. I. was included among the saints of the Greek calendar; B. and Abenner also in the Russian one.
The novel of B. and I. is a Christianized treatment of the Buddha story. The destiny of the young prince corresponds to it in its main features and also many of the moral fables, which have been incorporated in the novel, are common to Christian and Buddhist traditions. The name I. lets itself be traced back via the Arabic Budasaf or Iodasaf to the Indian Bodhisattva.
The question as to when and how the Greek version of the story of B. and I. has been developed, is a hotly discussed problem (to such an extent, that the research has concentrated far more on the discussion of its origin, rather than on the study of the novel itself); it was thought that the material was imparted via a lost Syrian translation or an Arabic treatment, which served a Georgian version as model, from which the Greek version was derived. This question is closely connected to the question of date and author. In the lemmata of the Greek MSS, the novel is almost unanimously allocated to a monk by the name of Johannes of St. Sabas (a monastery to the south-east of Jerusalem, which according to tradition, was founded in 483 by St. Sabas in which MSS were being produced until the 11th/12th cents.). The scholars favour two hypotheses in particular, which could both also be based on the lemmata of some MSS: the allocation to John of Damascus, from which a dating of the novel in the first half of the 8th cent. AD resulted, and the allocation to Euthymius Ibericus (died 1028), who is supposed to have translated the Greek text from a Georgian version, through which the dating was shifted to the 10th cent.
Recent research into the problem has shown that the tradition does not give defining evidence for either hypothesis, but that various internal and external criteria point to the text having been written c. 800 in Palestine, probably in the monastery of St. Sabas. The connection to the Arabic and Syrian culture on the one hand as well as to the Caucasian on the other hand, the apologetic slant (in the novel of B and I. e.g. the apology of Aelius Aristides, the orator from the 2nd cent. AD, is put into the mouth of one of the characters of the novel), and the topos of the persecution of the Christians and the conversion to Christianity allow themselves to be brought well into line with the context of the Palestine of those times and the hagiographical literature produced there.
More than 140 MSS and numerous translations document the reception of the novel in the Middle Ages: the Western tradition depends mainly on the three Latin translations, from which further translations into the vernacular are derived, although also into Russian, Serbian, Arabic and from Arabic into Ethiopian are known. I. was included among the saints of the Greek calendar; B. and Abenner also in the Russian one.
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