Sokhumi State University
Invited Professor
Source Studies
Doctor of History
Tbilisi, Georgia
medea.bendeliani1@gmail.com
The Biblical Origins of the Georgian Asomtavruli Alphabet and the Question of Its Establishment as a State Script in Iberia in The Knight in the Panther’s Skin and Exegetical Sources
Abstract
The Biblical Origins of the Georgian Asomtavruli Alphabet and the Question of Its Establishment as a State Script in Iberia in The Knight in the Panther’s Skin and Exegetical Sources (The Knight in the Panther’s Skin as a Hermeneutic Work and a Historical Source for the Study of the Asomtavruli Alphabet)
The aim of this study is to challenge the view, inappropriately established in Georgian historiography, concerning the origins of the Georgian Asomtavruli alphabet and its acquisition of the status of a state script—namely, the assertion that Leonti Mroveli’s work constitutes the “only evidence” preserved in Georgian written sources.
Our research has revealed numerous references related to the Asomtavruli alphabet through the study of Ioane Zosime’s Praise and Glorification of the Georgian Language and the explanatory dictionary of the Georgian language, compiled by Ioane Zosime himself with “four thousand maragi” in order to elucidate this religious codex. Further evidence emerges from the three redactions of the ancient Book of the Conversion of Kartli, renewed in the tenth century, as well as from the works of Leonti Mroveli and Shota Rustaveli, who drew upon the same codex and whose writings may be examined according to a “hermeneutic method.”
The works mentioned above are products of authors associated with the Shatberdi exegetical school, sharing a common intellectual tradition and conceptual framework. They constitute exegetical historical sources written through the philosophical and allegorical art of maragi-zrakhva. In this tradition, maragi-zrakhva signifies expressing a word in such a manner that its meaning is not immediately apparent, as though it were covered by a cloud and required interpretation on two or three levels.
These works, intended to be deciphered “a thousand years” after their composition in the tenth century, preserve within themselves scientifically structured knowledge concerning the sacred Biblical system of writing and the Asomtavruli alphabet. The latter is presented as having developed from this system through the conceptual unity of a “trinity of scripts” and a numerical structure based on the number seven. They also preserve the Biblical code of the “Robe of Christ.”
The Biblical writing system presupposes the composition of Holy Scripture on two levels: the Hebrew square script, together with its religious levels of meaning, and another writing tradition symbolically designated as “Elijah’s mantle.” The “trinity of scripts” refers to two foreign alphabetic groups—the Semitic (“Lazarus”) and Greek (“Mary”)—and the specifically Georgian alphabetic group (“Martha”).
In addition to palaeographic and linguocultural knowledge, this Biblical writing system is understood to contain significant information concerning alphabetic systems, extending symbolically from the “Ark of the Covenant” and the “burning bush” of Mount Sinai to the “burning bush” of Mtskheta.
Rustaveli refers to the sources in whose inner meaning he “found” this linguistic knowledge and “rendered it into verse”—that is, expressed it poetically through wisdom—as “sources narrated as a story until now.” According to this interpretation, the knowledge concealed in these sources was not adequately understood by the medieval reading public because of its intellectual unpreparedness. The poet’s words, “their unenlightened eyes longed for a new appearance,” are interpreted as suggesting that sources written through the art of maragi-zrakhva require a new mode of reading.
Thus, Georgian historiography contains numerous previously unidentified references concerning the origins of the Asomtavruli alphabet and its establishment as a state script. Their identification remains a task for future research and requires renewed processes of deconstruction and reconstruction of the relevant texts, followed by their scholarly presentation to the wider public.