Nehalevsky Gospel

Nehalevsky Gospel (Негалевського євангеліє; Nehalevskoho yevanheliie). A 16th-century literary monument, preserved at one time at Saint Michael's Golden-Domed Monastery in Kyiv. It is a translation of the four Gospels into vernacular Ukrainian made by Valentyn Nehalevsky in 1581 in Khoroshiv, near Ostroh, on the basis of Marcin Czechowicz’s Polish translation of the New Testament (1577). The language is almost free of Church Slavonicisms (see Church Slavonic), and its syntax and lexicon are strongly influenced by Polish. In places the Polish version has been transcribed in the Cyrillic alphabet. The gospel’s language was analyzed by Oleksander Nazarevsky (Kievskie universitetskie izvestiia, 1911, nos 8, 11–12), Oleksa Nazariiv (Zapysky Naukovoho tovarystva im. Shevchenka, vol 110 [1912]), and Ivan Ohiienko (1922).

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 3 (1993).]