THE SPIRITUAL VERSE "LAMENT OF JOSEPH THE BEAUTIFUL" AND ITS SYRIAN LITERARY SOURCE

The paper provides a comparative analysis of the spiritual verse “Lament of Joseph the Beautiful” and Ephrem the Syrian’s sermon about the Old Testament righteous Joseph. The author uses comparative method to conduct research. The article’s novelty is in discovering the literary source for Old Rus spiritual verse, which is the translated text of Ephrem the Syrian’s sermon. A favorite writer of Rusiches, Ephrem the Syrian was so popular in medieval Rus, that his works are considered to have entered oral performance by folk singers, possibly pilgrims, and influenced creation of the folk verse about Joseph. The most tragic and lyrical fragment of the sermon is Joseph’s mourning over his mother’s grave, when he, already a captive, is being taken to Egypt to be sold. Ephrem the Syrian liked to create various kinds of literary laments, there are several dozens of them in his oeuvre, and probably this particular feature of his style appealed to our ancestors, since lamentation is a component of many folklore works of Slavs, hymnographic texts and sermons. A lament as something that moves and personally impresses (compare with Yaroslavna’s one) is often a central point in our ancient work. Conclusion: the intention of Ephrem the Syrian’s homilies and sermons is not in didactics, but in creating a prayerful mood, involving a reader in one’s prayer, utmost emotion and praise. This was the source of the Slavs’ “kinship” feeling when they accepted Ephrem the Syrian. Creation of a folklore work based on an early medieval sermon is a unique moment of Old Rus folk oeuvre. It is known that Words of Ephrem the Syrian are addressed not to anyone, but to virgin, young, pure maidens who respond so well to a lyrical component of homilies and sermons, and that our ancestors also most often choose exactly the Syrian preacher among the Church Fathers to translate, transcribe and learn by heart, delving into his mood so much that one of the sermons becomes a folklore work