"evropuli qartia saqarTvelo "European Charter for Regional or ...

adequately evaluated both by Church and society 405
; logical conclusions
have been offered:
This represents an imperial plan that incorporates declaration of
Georgian idioms – varieties (dialects) of the Georgian language as independent
unwritten languages; this aims at linguistic-ethnic as well as religious
tensions.
In order to address the problems the Holy Synod of Georgian Orthodox
Church has adopted a special decision (Minute of Holy Synod
Session; Patriarchy's Journal, №45, December 29, 2005, January 4,
406 2006) :
"…the Holy Synod discussed the issue of translating the Bible into
Svan and Megrelian. They stated that today some powers want to fulfill
the treacherous idea that the Russian empire artificially inspired at
the end of 19th century…
According to the ruling of the Holy Synod, offering special new
translations of the Bible "suggests that Megrelians and Svans have been
deprived of Christianity and that they are uneducated. Translating the
Bible for these people in the 21st century aims to separate the nation
and to destroy the country's territorial integrity".
Metropolitan Anania Japaridze’s discussion is of particular interest:
in the era of Holy Apostles the Holy Scriptures were not translated
into Corinthian, Doric or Ionian despite the fact that was a well developed
literature created in these Greek dialects... In that epoch, i would
say, by the will of the Holy Spirit, the Bible was translated into the
guages and the attempt of translating the Bible into these dialects has been evaluated as
“an attack against Georgian consciousness” in the scientific literature (R. Gujejiani,
From the History of Mentality of the Georgian Mountain Dwellers, Tbilisi, 2008, pp.
191-197).
405 On the common Georgian national position of the Samegrelo population see: T.
Gvantseladze, M. Nachqebia, M. Tabidze, Spontaneous Plebiscites on Sociolinguistic
Issues in the 2 nd half of the 19 th century and the 1 st half of the 20 th centurt, Caucasiological
Collection, Tbilisi, 2007.
406 First of all, for the foreign reader we would emphasize: during 15 centuries the major
part of the Georgian cultural heritage originated from the the Georgian Church. The
church has always been priory for culture and a shelter for foreign or Georgian refugees.
In addition, jurisdiction of the Georgian Apostolic Church always covered the entire
territory of Georgia. That is why today the Georgia church is the only reliable institution
for all political groups or minorities in Georgia. Due to the above reasond the Church
enjoys such high raiting among the Georgian citizens.
327