Св. Алексей, человек Божий, и пророк Елисей, человек Божий: как безымянный сирийский святой «римского» происхождения получил греческое имя

It is a well known fact that for several centuries the Syrian cult of St. Alexius of Rome († ca 411) remained anonymous, and for the first time his name was attested in a Greek liturgical hymn composed by Joseph the Hymnographer († 886). The reason why he was given this name remains obscure. The author argues that this was due to the transformation of the originally Syrian cult into a new (Byzantine) linguistic and cultural environment and the process went through two subsequent stages. First, since in Byzantium, unlike Syria, anonymous cults were not usual, an attempt was made to deduce his name from the Bible, where the same expression Man of God (iš elohim in Hebrew) is regularly used for prophets: not only anonymous, but also Moses, Samuel, Shemaiah, Elijah, and Elisha. Most frequently this epithet is applied to the prophet Elisha, hence this name must have been initially chosen by Byzantine bookmen to be given to the anonymous Syrian saint. Second, since the name Elisha, although well known in Byzantium, remained basically alien to the Greek speaking public and used to be perceived as exclusively Hebrew (not merely in origin, but also functionally), it was spontaneously Hellenized by its substitution with the Greek name ’Αλέξιος which sounded quite similarly to ’Ελι(σ) σαĩος (Elisha) as the originally Syrian cult spread more widely in a Greek speaking milieu. This kind of substitution of personal names based on their phonetic similarity is by no means unparalleled and can be typologically verified. Somewhere outside Byzantium, the same Syrian cult was onomastically adapted using the same algorithm as in the first Byzantine stage. However, from the same list of the Hebrew prophets another name was chosen, and the same anonymous Syrian saint was called Moses (attested in Arabic and Georgian sources). This time his name was chosen not because of the frequency with which a Hebrew prophet was characterized as a Man of God in the Bible (as in the case of Elisha), but taking into consideration the significance of personality among the same five Hebrew prophets.