The Bible of the Slavs

In the beginning the Bible of Slavs, probably, appeared in Greek and Latin versions, as it was known that some tribes, especially west Slavic tribes, were converted into Christianity before Cyril and Methodius. Probably, Frizingensk fragments were dated from the pre-Cyrillic time, though the majority of the scientists who are experts in the Slavic field dated them as tenth century. The unclear message of the so-called Pannonski legend relates that Cyril got the Gospel and Psalms in the city of Kherson in the Russian language and found a person speaking that language. Cyril spoke with him and made an alphabet of vowels and consonants. Cyril prayed to God and soon he could read and talk. What was the language of that Gospel and Psalms: Varyag, Gottic or Slavic – it is impossible to decide. It is definitely known that St. Apostles Cyril and Methodius were the first to translate the Bible into Slavic language. Discussing the history of that translation we meet difficult questions at every step, which are impossible to solve for sure. It is especially impossible to determine clearly, what caused the early Slavic translation of the Holy Scriptures, what was the dialect of the first Slavic translation, and what amount of work specifically can be traced to Slavic teachers? There is no extant source to offer information on the first question.

Probably, there were two reasons: on the Slavic side – Slavs were between two hostile civilizations – East and West – and were the first who came to a tribal self-awareness; on the Greek side – a Greek emperor, who wanted a chance to attract Slavs by sending them teachers who spoke their native language or very close to their dialect. What exactly dominated the language of the Holy books translated by the brothers? Was it a dialect of Macedonia, Bulgaria, or Pannonia? Each theory has had its adherents and opponents. The majority of Russian philologists spoke out for Bulgaria; Shafarik was with them till 40’s; Kopitar defended pannonism. That meant that the dialect of St. Cyril and St. Methodius had nothing in common with Morav dialect, but was an old Khorutan dialect. Mikloshich supported the Pannon theory but was slightly different from Kopitar; on the basis of many German words or those taken from Latin through German in the books translated by the brothers he claimed that St. Cyril and St. Methodius translated nothing in the south, but in Pannonia. This philological proof is contradicted by the historical evidence from Zhytiye (Lives), where Konstantin Philosopher, after talking with the emperor, “went to pray to God; soon the Lord answered his prayer, and Konstantin started to write the Gospel: in the beginning was the Word…” It is true that Nestor wrote differently, that “those who came (to Moravia) started to write the alphabet of Slavs,” but this source is late and might not be reliable. In his work “Ueber den Ursprung und die Heimat des Glagolitsimus” (1858), Shafarik suggested that probably Apostles brought only an alphabet to Pannonia and some examples of translation. The original work was done in Pannonia and Moravia; but this did not solve the question of the first language of translation. Yaghich supposed in his lectures for Petersburg University that St. Cyril and St. Methodius came to Pannonia with a lot of translations in Macedonian dialect; being in the country where Christianity was a rather famous teaching, they made some concessions in favor of Latin and German terms already existing in these countries. This question is still obscure.

Science has not finally solved the question of the alphabet of the first translation of the Bible: “glagolitsa” or “cyrillitsa.” But whatever it was, we know that Slavs had almost the whole Bible translated at the epoch of St. Teachers. In the Zhytiye by St. Methodius we read the following words: “… cannot understand this part.” At that time Methodius was 79 years old. On the other side, John, Bulgarian exarchos, ascribed the translation of sixty books to Methodius and his brother, which according to our calculation meant that he did not translate only some parts of the Old Testament, so-called deuterocanonic books, such as I and II Maccabees, Sirach, Esther, Judith and Tobit. In addition, it is now possible to determine correctly the chronological order of translated parts of the Bible: the Gospel, the Apostle (Acts), the Psalms; then canonical books of the Old Testament, deuterocanonical books, and the Apocalypse, so that in the eighth century the whole Bible was translated into the Church Slavonic language. However, at that time there was no manuscript of the whole Holy Scriptures, but some separate parts of it composed separate codexes in the Slavic literature. Eventually, the Church Slavonic translation of the Bible was used in all of the Orthodox Slavic countries. That is why all lists were divided into three main groups: Bulgarian, Serbian and Russian versions; the Church Slavonic Glagolic Bible of Catholic Slavs was used only in Croatia and for a short time in Czech, in Sazavski and Emmausski monasteries. This explained why the translation of the Bible in the native language of Orthodox Slavs came rather late: people who understood the Church Slavonic dialect did not need to hurry with the translation into their own language.

The translation of the Holy books into modern Russian language was initiated by the Russian Bible Society in the very beginning of the nineteenth century. However, in the early 60’s there came out a new version of the New Testament; it was soon followed by the newly translated Old Testament which became available in 1875.

Today there are several modern translations of the New Testament newly translated from original Greek manuscripts. Also, more new translations of both Testaments are underway.