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Abstract:

he paper gives an overview of the history of Paraphrase in Late Antiquity, considers its different types (school grammatic Paraphrase: the tutorial Paraphrase composed by the teacher, literary Paraphrase in verse or in prose and so on). The literary Paraphrase is based on the principle of competitiveness. For this reason, Paraphrases of classical works of the ancient literature are considerably rare. The same principle of competitiveness gave rise to numerous Biblical Paraphrases, both that of New and Old Testament, especially popular in the Latin World, but existing in the Greek World as well. Nevertheless, the embellishment of the text that seemed lacking of literariness is not the only task of Biblical Paraphrases. Each Paraphrase to one degree or another represents a new interpretation of the text. The Centos existing both in Latin and Greek worlds are close to the Paraphrases. In comparison with common Paraphrases a more significant role plays intertextuality involving not only Biblical text but the Classical texts, whence the verbal material is taken, as well. Paraphrases and Centos are genres undeservedly underestimated. They are of interest as a special way of conveying to the reader the content of authoritative texts.