Myths of the unity of language and linguistic identity: Early Christianity and the "Russian world"

In the article, the concept of "language" is viewed as an instrument of shaping identity. The author argues that the concept of "language" is not effective enough for he modeling the process of natural speaking (writing), and cannot play the dominating role in the forming the identity, which is understood as a unity recognized by a certain community. The frame idea, capable to grasp tendencies of reconsideration of "language" in descriptive schemes, is the communication and the personal communicative act (action). For the verbal facts (natural speaking/writing), these concepts set the unique system in which verbal data can be correctly interpreted and described. Towards the identity the reconsideration of the concept of "language" (recognition of its mnemotekhnical, utilitarian, but not ontologic value), leads to devaluation of a language factor. Interpretation of the Hellenistic Judaic and early Christian writings (first of all, Greek bible texts of the Septuaginta and the NT), was until recently the sphere of exclusive competence of "language" approach. Identity of authors and translators, for the lack of other exact data, was defined on the basis of their language (translation or literary) activity. As a result, authors and translators are recognized as semiliterate, poorly educated people from the East writing in the language which they did not know. To understand the status of these texts and authors' and translators' language identity better, the article offers an analogy to modern Russian-speaking space. Like modern Church Slavonic texts, created in traditional forms, the Septuaginta and NT texts were addressed to traditional Jewish (Judeo-Christian) community and were perceived as epic, archaizing, traditional, sublime, isolated from other modern linguistic practices. Both this status of these texts, and the corresponding identity of their authors become possible in the communicative interpretation of the natural verbal facts.