LECTURES ON GOSPEL HISTORY BY ARCHPRIEST ALEXANDER VASILIEVICH GORSKY: CHANGES MADE IN THE FIRST PART OF THE COURSE: BEFORE JESUS CHRIST WENT OUT INTO PUBLIC MINISTRY

Karelina Lyubov Alfredovna

St.Tikhon Orthodox University, Moscow, Russia

Email: Karelina.lyub@yandex.ru

Issue: № 3 (31), 2025

Pages: 11

Annotation

This year marks the 150th anniversary of the death of a prominent native of Kostroma, Archpriest Alexander Vasilievich Gorsky - a professor at the Moscow Theological Academy, Doctor of Theology. From 1833 to 1862 he was the head of the chair of church history, and then, after his appointment as rector, he moved to the chair of dogmatic theology. Despite the high appreciation of Gorsky's role in national academic education and research, his legacy remains understudied. The history of the Evangelical and Apostolic times occupies a special place among his works. Lecture notes on this subject were published for the first time by his pupil Sergei Konstantinovich Smirnov in 1883, according to the author's notes relating to the beginning of his teaching career. However, the manuscripts department of the Russian State Library has later versions of his readings of the Gospel story, but in recordings by other persons. An analysis of A. V. Gorsky's introductory lectures on church history has shown that his conception of this discipline, of which Gospel history is a part, changes in the early 40s. A comparison of the late manuscript lectures on Gospel history with the published version was undertaken, and the changes identified were correlated with the peculiarities of the church-historical concept of the 40s. The proposed publication presents the results of the research conducted, revealing the significant changes made by the author in the published first part of the Gospel History, based on archival materials dating back to 1846.

Keywords

Gospel story, theology of history, messianic prophecies