Relationship of Cyrillic and Glagolitic scripts

Possible meanings range from simple marks used as an aid in counting, to adaptations of Turkic (as in Proto-Bulgar epigraphy) and Germanic (such as of the Gothic alphabet created by Wulfila) runes.

When Hrabar writes that the first letter of the alphabet compiled by St. Cyrill, Ⰰ (азъ), was "God's gift" to the Slavs and therefore was markèdly different from pagan Greek α (alpha).

[13] Bulgarian scholar Emil Georgiev [bg] is the most vocal supporter of the theory of the development of Cyrillic from a Slavic Greek-based writing alphabet; however, no examples of such a script have been preserved.

For this reason, scholars generally reject the connection of "росьскꙑми" in Vita Constantini with Eastern Slavs, although some Russian nationalists do maintain that St. Cyril found an Old East Slavic text and encountered a man who spoke that language.

[16] Birnbaum (1999) argues it is highly unlikely St. Cyril would have been as concerned as Chapter XIV of Vita Constantini records about the need to develop a writing systems for the Slavs of Moravia had he earlier encountered a Slavic script in Crimea.

Given the likely presence of Aramaic-speaking merchants and Syrian Christian refugees in Crimea, especially the port city of Cherson, at the time, this Syriac hypothesis remains the dominant belief.

Given that the earliest attestation for Viti Constantini is from the 15th Century, it cannot be assumed, according to Goldblatt, that they all reflect one uniform and complete text tradition, supposedly written in Moravia before 882.

With the loss of Constantinople to Muslim Ottoman Turks in 1453, there was a desire to see the transfer of religious and cultural power from the Greek Orthodox-influenced Byzantine and the Slavic Balkans to Muscovy.

[20] An alternate theory by the Greek Slavist Tachiaos (1993–1994) emphasizes the lack of textual support for the Syriac hypothesis; no existing version of the Vita Constantini actually includes the allegedly correct reading of сорьскꙑми.

To accept the Syriac theory, Tachiaos argues, one must assume that the sour- to rous- (sur- to rus-) metathesis must have occurred very early to have been repeated in all extant manuscripts.

Instead, Tachiaos claims that the Old Church Slavonic verbs обрѣт' and сказати were used with the specialized meaning of "to receive" and "to interpret, teach, preach," and the text refers to Slavic translations prepared ahead of St. Cyril's mission to Crimea.

Religious rites in the region were conducted in Byzantine Greek and Gothic, depending on the locality, but it is possible Rus' settlers also founded their own churches using their language for liturgical ceremonies.