MATERIALS ON STRUCTURE OF QUAESTIONES AD THALASSIUM BY ST. MAXIMUS THE CONFESSOR AND ITS GELATI TRANSLATION (K-14) 1 2

Abstract

Quaestiones ad Thalassium ( Question to Thalassi ) is one of the most important works within the patristic legacy of St. Maximus the Confessor. The essay is of exegetical nature. In the essay, the Reverend clarifies some of the difficult passages of the Scripture. The paper is written in the form of questions and answers.  Reverend Thales, who sends questions to St. Maximus, is the one who initiates the selection of texts for interpretation. There are 65 questions in total. Quaestiones ad Thalassium was first translated by St. Euthymius the Athonite. The translation by Euthymius is incomplete. It reflects only twenty-six out of sixtyf ive questions and answers. A 12th-century codex containing the works of St. Maximus the Confessor is preserved at the Kutaisi State Historical Museum. It includes twenty-four works of the Holy Father, specifically, two exegetical works, the one titled with Pyrrhus, Disputation  ten dogmatic and polemical treatises, and eleven epistles. One of the two above-mentioned exegetical works is the text of the Georgian translation Quaestiones ad Thalassium. of The Gelati translation is complete. It contains sixtyf ive detailed questions and answers. The manuscript text is still unexamined and unpublished. The paper discusses the structure of the Quaestiones ad Thalassium , taking into account both the original text and its Gelati translation. The correlation between the questions has been determined, in particular, in terms of semantics or bibliology, irre spective of whether their sequence has any underlying regularity.

The study has found that the first thirty-five questions are not arranged by any legitimate principles, while questions 36-65 are based on the principle of bibliological sequence, in particular, the corresponding questions and answers are always from the same book of the Bible.