One of the first concealed texts reconstructed is an unnamed text Zaliznyak called
Instruction on Forgiveness of Sins. Its introduction is written in
first person by somebody who identifies himself as "Alexander, the
Areopagite of
Thracia, of
Laodicean origins (birth)". The text contains a highly
unorthodox prayer, reading "we pray to thee father Alexander, forgive us our sins by your will and give us salvation and the food of paradise, amen". In it, the author assumes powers usually reserved to God alone. The prayer is followed by prophecies by the author, who then calls for people to "leave your villages and homes" and to walk the Earth, spreading his message. Alexander then says "whoever listens to me, listens to
Peter". This is followed by a highly original call along the lines of "leave your villages and homes", with dozens of phrases starting with "leave your" and listing several things, all starting with the
Slavic prefix : , , , , , , , , , and so on (respectively: 'troubles', 'strifes', 'positions', 'moving around', 'sailing', 'flying', 'sizes', 'disagreements'). This unique sequence led Zaliznyak to believe that it was originally composed in Old Church Slavonic, as it was hard for him to imagine that translation from a foreign language would follow such a neat Slavic pattern. A subsequent text contains the following passage: "The world is a town in which live the Armenians and the Africans and the Thracians and the Italians and the Spanish and the Greeks". Zaliznyak believed that an earlier allusion to Alexander, the Areopagite of
Thracia is connected to listing Thracians early in the list. Another text that Zaliznyak called "Spiritual Instruction from the Father and the Mother to the Son" contains the following note: "" ('In 6507 [i.e. 999 CE] I, monk Isaakiy, was posted as a priest in
Suzdal, at the church of St. Alexander the Armenian...'). The year 6507 reappears several times in the
margins, and is the only number identified in the text. It continues onto an increasingly gloomier analysis of the state of the world, showing that the writer identifies with people excluded from the
mainstream church for believing unorthodox teachings. Zaliznyak postulated that the writer was the
monk Isaakiy, who followed the previously-unknown
schismatic teaching of the self-proclaimed prophet Alexander, an
Armenian by birth, and that Alexander was based in Thracia, and Isaakiy was sent to spread Alexander's word in Suzdal. The "church of St. Alexander", according to Zaliznyak, does not mean a physical church building, but rather a church in the sense of teachings or
doctrine. As there were no
monasteries anywhere in the Rus' state at the time the texts were written, Zaliznyak believed that Isaakiy was educated and became a monk elsewhere. He was likely a witness to the
Christianization of the Rus' in 988, and operated in a still largely
pagan Rus' of the early 11th century. The concealed texts contain a
conversion prayer, which in the first person (
I and
we) denies
idolatry and accepts Christianity, so it is likely Isaakiy converted pagan
Slavs. The teachings of Alexander the Armenian were likely an early form of
Bogomilism. The
Nikonian Chronicle mentions a schismatic monk Andreyan jailed for disagreeing with the official church in 1004, during the time frame the codex was written. According to church historian
Evgeny Golubinsky, Andreyan was a Bogomil, so the Novgorod Codex being found in the vicinity of a courthouse in the early 11th century leads to some theories. Finally, the texts feature common allusions to the city of
Laodicea, without any direct references to events there. Zaliznyak believed that
Laodicea was a
secret word among the Bogomils, identifying their teachings to each other without making them apparent to outsiders. In this context, the title of a schismatic work written 500 years later by
Fyodor Kuritsyn,
The Message of Laodicea, takes on a new light. ==List of texts==