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THEOLOGY IN KIEV AN RUS 279ity with the world versus distance from the world); 38 second, many featuresare typical of Kievan theology, but none are exclusive to it.A. EschatologyThe first "red thread" that I discern is the basic attitude toward eschatologythat permeates many of the texts. Here I am referring not so much to thecountless, almost standardized warnings about the Last Judgment that wereto help monks and the laity free themselves from sin and vice, 39 or interpretpagan attacks as harbingers of that judgment. Rather, I am looking at thelarger eschatological framework. The Tale of Bygone Years, consciouslyorganized as a chronicle of the world, already tended to calculate the end ofhistory because it took over from the Byzantine chronicles the figure ofA.M. 7000 as the age of the world. A few years after the final editing of theNestor Chronicle, Deacon Kirik of Novgorod (A.D. 1136) provided anexplicit justification for this figure by combining the week of Creation (orthe period of time in Paradise) with the length of a completed day (Ps. 89:4;2 Pet. 3: 8). In his Uchenie (imzhe vedati cheloveku chisla vsekh let), he didnot neglect to mention that in setting the current year at A.M. 6644 (i.e., thedate of the world's age then, with the birth of Christ being in 5500), exactly356 years remained until the end of the world. 40 This method of calculatingthe world's age found its way into homiletics through the work of Avraamiiof Smolensk, who, influenced by the Zhitie of Basileios Neos (VasiliiNovyi; Basil the Younger), turned his attention primarily to the subject ofthe Last Judgment. 41 In his writings the coming of eternity is not simply afact or a warning, but it is depicted vividly in all its awesome terror(mytar'stva), with the aim of making Christians change their lives. Alsosignificant is Nestor's statement in the Chtenie about Boris and Gleb, that aslong as the "Rus' land" was in the thrall of pagan idolatry, the parable ofthe workers in the vineyard (Matt. 20:1-16), where it is said that the lastshall be summoned at the eleventh hour, was applicable to it. 42 In patristic38Cf. N. K. Nikol'skii, O drevnerusskom khristianstve, in Russkaia mysl, 34 (1913): 6, 123;M. D. Priselkov, "Bor'ba dvukh mirovozrenii," in Rossiia i zapad, vol. 1, ed. A. J. Zaozerskii(Petrograd, 1923)), pp. 36-56 (also see Ocherki po tserkovno-politicheskoi istorii KievskoiRusiX-XIl w. [St. Petersburg, 1913; rpt., The Hague, 1966], pp. 238-84).39Whole slova deal with this topic, as, for instance, the anonymous "Pouchenie o spaseniidushi" (A. Popov, Pervoe pribavlenie k opisaniiu rukopisei i katalogu knig tserkovnoi pechatibiblioteki A. I. Khludova [Moscow, 1875]: 45-52) or the likewise anonymous "Slovo o bogatemi o Lazare" (Ponomarev, Pamiatniki, pp. 276-82).40On editions and bibliography, see Podskalsky, Christentum, pp. 23If.41See Podskalsky, Christentum, pp. 101 - 103 (see also pp. 50, 140f., 239).42See Podskalsky, Christentum, p. 113; also D. Freydank, "Die altrussische Hagiographie inihren europaischen Zusammenhangen. Die Berichte Liber Boris und Gleb als hagiographischeTexte," Zeitschriftfur Slawistik 28 (1983): 83.