The Old Russian Theta and a Novgorodian Talmud

The article deals with the problem of the origin of the special manner of pronunciation and corresponding spelling of the Cyrillic letter “fita” (Ѳ), going back to the Greek “theta” (Θ), as /ft/, which was previously known only in the Ruthenian book tradition, mostly Old Ukrainian, not older than the early 17th century. I propose a working hypothesis that the spellings ѳт / фт / тѳ / тф had a contaminated nature, which arose as a result of the adaptation of the Latin th, corresponding to “theta-fita,” by East Slavic scribes familiar with both Latin and Greek. It should be kept in mind that the confusion of “fita” and “fert” (Ф) and the pronunciation of both as /f/ was a specifically East Slavic feature, almost unknown to medieval South Slavic scribes, so the pronunciation of “fita” as /ft/ could appear only in Rus’. As the earliest bookish examples of spellings reflecting the pronunciation /ft/ are suggested the cases noted in the Edited Slavonic-Russian Pentateuch of the 15th century: Каафтъ (for Greek Καάθ and Latin Caath), Нафтанаилъ (Ναθαναήλ / Nathanahel), and Масурофтъ (Μασουρώθ / Moseroth). The Edited Pentateuch was one of the sources used in compiling the Gennadian Bible in the late 15th century, and among the new translations from Latin, prepared in the circle of Archbishop Gennadius of Novgorod, the transmission of the etymological Greek “theta” and the Latin th by the twofold spelling тѳ or ѳт (mostly with the superscript element) spread, and these ones could be read as /tf/ or /ft/.

Cyrillic script, Church Slavonic, history of orthography, Slavonic Biblical studies, Jewish-Slavonic relationship, Old Ruthenian culture