The heritage of the Bible in the Russian language: research areas and current issues

The study presents an overview of the research of Russian and foreign Russianists devoted to the reflection of the biblical heritage in the Russian language, which is considered as a component of the spiritual code of culture and part of the language system. The relevance of the study is due to the lack of review and analytical works in this area of Russian studies. The aim of the study is to determine the historical background, main directions, and current issues of studying the heritage of the Bible in the Russian language. The material for the study includes more than 6800 scientific works of various genres devoted to the heritage of the Bible in the Russian language written since the first quarter of the 19th century. The research methods are heuristic, descriptive, generalization, comparison, analysis, and synthesis. The study showed that the study of the biblical heritage in the Russian language began in the late 19th century; after a long break, it intensified in the 1990s, became systematic in the first decade of the 21st century, and has currently differentiated into areas with different levels of theoretical and methodological validity, effectiveness and prospects. The most significant areas are translation, historical and etymological, phraseological, lexicographic, comparative, linguisticcultural, and theolinguistic studies. In all these areas, a set of theoretical provisions and methodological guidelines has already been formed; leading scientists and scientific centers has been determined. St. Petersburg Slavic (phraseological) school stands out because the works of its representatives and followers in Russia and abroad have significantly influenced the abovementioned areas of studying the heritage of the Bible in the Russian language. The most important tasks in studying the biblical heritage in the Russian language today are establishing the proportion of biblical meanings and values in the spiritual code of culture, developing a theolinguistic theory of reflecting biblical content in the semantic space of the Russian language, identifying typological and contrastive features of biblical expressions in the Russian language in relation to other Slavic and non-Slavic languages, and creating educational, translation and comparative dictionaries of biblical expressions. The prospects for the research are seen in analysis of the theory and methodology of each of the identified areas of studying the heritage of the Bible in the Russian language.