The Caucasian Crossroads: How Early Georgian Translators Adapted Greek Terms for "Holiness"

When Georgian-speaking Christians began translating Scripture, liturgy, and patristic writing, they inherited no single Greek word that could simply be carried across as “holiness.” Greek Christian texts drew upon a crowded semantic field: hagios named what belonged to God and, substantivally, the saints; hagiasmos referred to sanctification or consecrated life; hosios suggested piety or conduct fitting before God; hieros marked sacred persons, objects, and institutions; and katharos spoke of purity. Old Georgian translators answered this plurality chiefly through a native lexical family centred on ts’mida (წმიდა, later commonly წმინდა), together with related forms for holiness, purification, and sanctification. Their work was not mechanical substitution. It was theological judgment exercised across biblical recensions, liturgical practice, monastic reading, and changing standards of fidelity to Greek. This article traces that process from the earliest Georgian biblical tradition through the manuscript culture represented by the Adishi Gospels and into the Athonite and Black Mountain translation movements. It argues that Georgian translation preserved Greek distinctions unevenly while also gathering holiness, purity, saintliness, and consecration into a recognisably Georgian Christian vocabulary. The result was neither a copy of Greek nor a free invention. It was an ecclesial language formed at a Caucasian crossroads.