The Udi Gospels. Annotated text, etymological index, lemmatized concordance.

More than hundred years ago [108 years ago, to be exact], the Udi pope Semjon Bezhanov (assisted by his brother Mikhail Bezhanov) undertook theSisyphean task to translate the most relevant parts of the New Testament, namely the four Gospels, into Udi.. Udi represents a both typologically and genetically speaking highly divergent autochthonous Southeast Caucasian (Lezgian) language that is characterized by e.g. massive split structures in its (in parts ergative) relational behavior (S-splits, A-splits, O-split), an 'accusative' personal agreement pattern which is co-paradigmatized with focal strategies, floating agreement clitics, complexe verbal incorporation mechanisms, clausal subordination that goes along with integrating techniques such as converbs and participle Till 1989, Udi has been sppoken in three villages [Nidzh and Vartashen] in Northern Azerbaidzhan and (since 1922) in Oktomberi (Eastern Georgia) [by roughly 5000 people]. It is not known why the translators produced the Udi Gospels - we can only speculate that their major objectives were to have at hands a version of the Gospels that Semjon Bezhanov could use during his religious services. The Udi people [Armenian and Georgian Christians by religion] were by that times (in parts) familiar with some kind of local Armenian, but this rudimentary knowledge did not allow the use of the Armenian version of the Gospels in religious ceremonies etc. [the same holds for any Georgian version]. Additionally, the Bezhanovs were perhaps motivated by [by that time] current ethnocentric, not to say nationalistic intellectual paradigms. The long-standing quarrels with the surrounding Islamic cultural traditions and Islamic rulership obviously helped to develop some kind of Udi 'national consciousness' which again was 'supported' by both the Czarist administration and the religious centers in Tbilisi and Erevan.