Dostoevsky and World Culture Dostoevsky and World Culture 2619-0311 2712-8512 IWL RAS https://doi.org/10.22455/2619-0311-2025-4-350-374 Research Article Articles Which Editions of the New Testament Did Dostoevsky Read and Quote? Editorial and Textual Issues in Research on the Presence of the New Testament in Dostoevsky’s Life and Work Borisova Valentina V. fedor@dostmirkult.ru 25 12 2025 1 4 350 374 Dostoevsky New Testament as book and text translations quotations Copyright © 2026, IWL RAS 2026 The article explores the significance of the New Testament as both book and text in Dostoevsky’s life and work and addresses the question of which editions of the New Testament the writer read and quoted. The article examines the history and functioning of the New Testament in Church Slavonic, Russian (in two translations: the 1823 translation and the Synodal translation of 1863), and French in the context of Dostoevsky’s biography and work. The article introduces new details related to the activities of Friedrich Joseph Haass and Natalia Dmitrievna Fonvizina, who were involved in the distribution of the first Russian translation of the New Testament among convicts. The article also examines the issue of quotations from the New Testament in Dostoevsky’s works. Through a comparative analysis of these quotations from a textual and interpretive perspective, the article refines the established scholarly view of Dostoevsky’s preference for his “convict’s gospel,” and provides commentary on his references to the 1863 Synodal edition of the New Testament, comments on Dostoevsky’s use of the 1863 Synodal edition of the New Testament, particularly in the novel The Devils. In addition to the contamination of translations of the New Testament in Russian, the article highlights the systematic variability of quotations in the epigraph and the text of the novel, which is influenced by the author’s strategy. In the epigraph, Dostoevsky uses the 1823 edition of the New Testament, while in the text of the novel, he chooses the 1863 edition, which is influenced by the historical context of the novel and the corresponding context of the protagonist’s perception. In conclusion, the article argues that Dostoevsky’s New Testament intertext—uniting all translated versions—is inevitable, as is the diverse representation of different Bible translations, retellings, adaptations, and their mutual influence and contamination.