The construction ‘byti with the present participle’: the Old Russian usage and the biblical tradition

The paper is dedicated to the construction made up of the auxiliary verb byti in the past, present or future tense and the present participle (usually an active one). The most frequent are constructions with the auxiliary in form of the imperfect or the imperfective aorist (bjaše/bĕ xodja). In the East Slavic writing the construction in question is found only in “bookish” texts — both translated and original. However, while in translated texts (according to many scholars, including the author of this article) it calques similar Greek forms, the principles of its use in original written monuments remain unclear. The article offers a detailed analysis of the semantics and employment of the construction in the two most important Old Russian texts — the Russian Primary Chronicle and the Life of St Theodosius of the Caves. It is shown as well that the use of the construction at issue in these texts was to a considerable extent patterned after the biblical texts. Importantly, while the Russian Primary Chronicle mostly imitates in this respect the Old Testament, the Life of St Theodosius of the Caves is much closer to the Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles. Since the functions of the participial construction in the Old Testament considerably differs from those in the New Testament, the respective differences are found in the Old Russian texts.