Archivum Lithuanicum

In the first half of the nineteenth century, the Lithuanian Catholic community still used the Gospels (in the narrow sense) or pericops translated in the seventeenth century. The book Ewangelie Polskie y litewskie by Jonas Jaknavičius, which was first published in 1647, remained popular until the middle of the nineteenth century, it had ten or eleven editions during the period of 1803–1859. The aim of the article is to discuss the relation between the New Testament, published by the Bishop Juozapas Arnulfas Giedraitis in Vilnius in 1816, and the above-mentioned editions of the Gospels, to detect whether the Gospels were based on Giedraitis’s New Testament. The edition of the Gospels printed in 1819 differed slightly from the previous edition of 1805. It was prepared on the basis of previous Gospel editions, but not on the New Testament. This was revealed by identic errors, same text lines missed. Some missed text lines in the edition of 1819 or later editions were rebuilt according to previous Gospel editions, but not according to the New Testament. Until 1856, the Gospels were reprinted without major changes without taking into account the New Testament of 1816. Bibliographers assigned the edition of the Gospels of 1858 to Jaknavičius’s works, but it is not, however, to be regarded as a new edition of Jaknavičius’s Gospels. The features of vocabulary, syntax, morphology, phonetics, and orthography show that the edition of 1858 was based not on the earlier Gospels, but on the New Testament of 1816. The unknown compiler of the Gospels of 1858 used some of the previous editions as well: retained their structure; at the beginning of the gospel fragments inserted some initial words that coincided with previous editions, used words from previous editions. Since the Gospels in 1805–1856 were published without major changes, substantial similarity of the Gospels of 1858 to any of previous editions was not detected. In the edition of the Gospels of 1858, there are some features of the Samogitian (Lowland Lithuanian) dialect. For example, although the entire book is dominated by forms with Highlander <e> [ė], <uo> [uo], forms with Samogitian <ie> [ie], <ou> [ọu] also occur. Thus, the compiler of the Gospels of 1858 must have been a Samogitian, probably from the western part of North Samogitians. It is likely that the intention to prepare a new edition of Gospels, based on the New Testament of 1816, did arise in the milieu of Bishop Motiejus Valančius.