THE “SERMON ON CHRIST AND ADAM” IN THE MANUSCRIPT TRADITION OF THE SERMON “ON LAW AND GRACE”

The “Sermon on Christ and Adam” is a short anonymous text, which is one of two interpolations of the 3rd redaction of the Hilarion’s sermon “On Law and Grace”. It contains exegetical explanations on the topic of divine predestination and the inner connection of the destinies of Adam and Christ. This text, together with the adjacent Hilarion’s treatise on Law and Grace, was extracted from one of its complete copies at a very early stage of manuscript history of the “On Law and Grace” and in this form acquired the status of an autonomous work entitled “Sermon on Christ and Adam”. This is evidenced by recently obtained data on fi ve codices of this excerpt, which are part of the Western Russian interpretative and teaching compilation found in various miscellanies. The value of the copies of the “Sermon on Christ and Adam” for the reconstruction of the manuscript tradition of Hilarion’s sermon “On Law and Grace” is determined by the fact that they were copied separately from the complete copies of “On Law and Grace” and therefore preserved a number of ancient readings of the Hilarion’s original text. The fact these readings have not reached us or have been distorted in the complete codices of the 3rd version of the “On Law and Grace” indicates the antiquity of the excerpt. Its appearance should be attributed therefore to the earliest stage of the existence of the 3rd redaction. And since the entire manuscript tradition of the “Sermon on Christ and Adam” is represented exclusively by Western Russian codices, it can be assumed that the 3rd redaction of the “On Law and Grace” was created on the territory of Western Russian principalities.