The Place of Notions ‘Fault’ and ‘Sin’ in the Worldview of the Ancient Slavs (The Experience of Historical-Cultural Reconstruction of Ideas Based on the Linguistic Data)

Abstract

The article covers the perception peculiarities of the categories of «guilt» and «sin» in the context of the Slavs’ worldview in the pre-Christian era. Linguistic reconstruction, the use of dialectal data, and religious studies analysis of similar concepts allow to conclude that the initial use of the lexeme «guilt» most likely had a legal interpretation and was associated with the restoring of order and compensation for the damage caused. The article identifies an archaic connection between the category of «sin» as a moral mistake and the idea of «curvature» and «blunder», which reveals itself when comparing data from the Slavic and Baltic languages, as well as in the typological analysis of similar models of meaning transfer in several ancient languages. The author points out the presence of an archaic perception of these two, most important for the religious outlook, categories, including in modern folklife. In addition, the article claims that thanks to the translator’s and, more broadly, creative «engineer’s» linguistic activity of the holy Equal-to-the-Apostles brothers Cyril and Methodius, the concepts of «sin» and «guilt», traditional for the Slavic language, received a deeper understanding and were saturated with religious content. This fact serves as one of the examples that demonstrates the specifics of Russian Orthodox religiosity.