New Works on the History of the Heresy of the Judaizers in the Light of the Textology of Old Russian Literature (Experience of Historiographical Reflection)

The effectiveness and indispensability of textual methods in the study of monuments of ancient Russian literature has been proven by several generations of researchers.Their theoretical justification is given in the classic work of academician D.S. Likhachev "Textology".In relation to the main sources about the heresy of the Judaizers, the methods of textual criticism were used by Ya.S. Lurie, but at the same time the results of his research were distorted by the ideology of militant atheism.In the works published by A.I. Alekseev 2008-2019 the results of the latest textual studies of these sources were presented.The article analyzes attempts to revise these results, undertaken in the works of M.V. Pechnikov and A.A. Manokhin.The author comes to the conclusion that ignoring the basic methods of textual research, coupled with tendentiousness and bias, lead critics to a lack of evidence.Their argumentation is not supported by the results of textual observations, contains irremovable contradictions in the presentation and, as a result, the presented conclusions are devoid of evidence.It is shown that the reason for the failure of researchers is the refusal to turn to the study of the handwritten tradition of the "Enlightener" (M.V. Pechnikov), and while A.A. Manokhin, who studied this tradition was let down by the use of "mechanistic textual criticism," which academician D.S. Likhachevwarned against.