The Importance of Studying The Biblical Toponyms To Review The Historical Knowledge And Ideas Of Georgians

Abstract

Georgians acquired knowledge about different regions through the Holy Scriptures. The Old Testament contains the names of toponyms of various regions. From the Hebrew text, these toponyms firstly transferred to the Greek Bible and, after that, spread to other translations made from the Greek version of the Holy Bible, including the Georgian translation. Our aim is to demonstrate the importance of the study of biblical toponyms to get  to know the historical knowledge of Georgians.

Geographical names have appeared in the Georgian versions of the Old Testament under the influence of the Greek (and  in the case of Ezra’s books from Armenian translations of the Bible). The translators and reviewers, on one hand, had information about biblical nations and, therefore, they knew the names of the toponyms, or, on another, they knew about names from the Bible.

The toponyms transferred into Georgian translation of the Bible are studied based on different methods by means of a comparative approach. The history of each text of the Bible is taken into account. Translated texts in Georgian were also changed by scribes. The relevant textual forms of toponyms (with ethnonyms) were compared by us with the approach of the  translation technique and copying experience. We should pay attention to the fact that the proper names could be changed during the copying process.

In such cases, when a translator didn’t know toponym or no match existed in his own language, the translated forms are close to the original text, they were obliged to transfer to the language of the translation.

Thus, the study of biblical toponyms allows us to determine whether the Georgians acquired geographical information about different regions of Asia and Africa with or without translation of the Bible.