Judeo-Greek legacy in medieval Rus'

The article examines the "Byzantine theory" of the origin of East European Jewry against textual evidence on Judeo-Greek cultural activity in Kievan Rus'. Since some Judeo-Greek texts have been preserved in East Slavic translations, it may be assumed that in Medieval Rus' contact with the Jews - the local representatives of Byzantine culture - and access to their book collections was at a certain stage more readily available than was contact with distant Constantinople. This assumption enables us to raise the question of the existence of a "Jewish channel" in the cultural interference within the framework of the Byzantine Kulturbereich, and specifically of Byzantine influence in Rus' in the earliest stage of its cultural development.