The Bible of Cyril and Methodius (885)

The Bible of Cyril and Methodius is the first Slavonic Bible we know of. In A.D. 863, Rostislav, Prince of Great Moravia, sent a petition to Byzantium asking the emperor to send him some teachers of the Christian faith. The emperor responded by sending two brothers: Cyril and Methodius.

Their goal was to plant an independent church which could have its own liturgy. In order to have worship services in the Slavonic language, Cyril and Methodius first had to create a Slavonic alphabet; only after that could they translate liturgical books into Slavonic. The brothers started by translating the Book of Psalms, then the books of the New Testament. After Cyril’s death Methodius and his disciples continued the work, finishing the New Testament and almost the entire Old Testament.

Cyril and Methodius’ translations spread widely among the Slavonic tribes, including the Rus. So there were already churches, and people could read the Bible translated by the brothers/apostles, even before the mass “Baptism of the Rus”, which occurred in Kiev in 988 and marked the beginning of the Christianization of the state of Kievan Rus.

The Bible of Gennady (1499)

In the 15th century, people in Rus still didn’t have the entire Bible, although they used its separate books. The necessity of the full collection of the Bible’s books appeared as a result of an argument between Zachariah, a leader of one of the monasteries, and archbishop Gennady. Zachariah was criticizing the Church hierarchy and insisted on a biblical understanding of the pastorship, but in his arguments he was referring to biblical books unknown to Gennady.

Zachariah and his followers were executed in 1487-88. However Gennady decided to compile the whole Bible. For that purpose he went to Rome, where he received the canon (the authoritative list of the Bible’s books) accepted in the West. Some books of the Bible of Gennady were taken from the Bible translated by Cyril and Methodius; some, from Russian translations of 15th century; still others, from the Bulgarian translation of the Bible. And for the first time several books were translated from Latin. The Bible of Gennady is considered to be the first complete Slavonic Bible.

Maxim the Greek (Psalms with Commentaries) (1552)

Several centuries had passed, and a large quantity of mistakes appeared in handwritten books of the Bible due to the inattention of copiers and/or differences in dialect. This led, during the first half of the 16th century, to the first attempt to revise Church books. For that purpose Maxim the Greek, an educated young monk from one of the monasteries of Athon, was sent to Moscow. It took him a year and a half to translate the Psalms anew, adding commentaries on difficult passages to the translation. He also revised the Book of Acts and New Testament Epistles, making the translation more precise.

Unfortunately, this work of correcting the Bible wasn’t completed because of resistance from the official Church community.

First printed “Apostle” (1564) and Ivan Fyodorov’s Bible of Ostrog (1581)

After Ivan IV conquered the regions ruled by Astrakhan’s and Kazan’s khans, a great need for the Bible and new worship books appeared in the new lands. The tsar therefore ordered the building of a printing house, where Ivan Fyodorov and Pyotr Mstitslavets created the first printed book, “Apostle” (Acts and Epistles), which was published after a year of work (1564).

Later Ivan Fyodorov was deprived of tsar’s protection. He settled in Ostrog, where, under the protection of Constantine Ostrozhsky (Constantine of Ostrog), he prepared a new revised edition of the Bible of Gennady for printing. It was published in 1581.

First printed Moscow Bible (1663)

The reason for making this Bible was that Rus wanted to reunite with the Ukraine. By that time Ukrainian and Russian worship books had strong differences between each other because of lots of corrections. First the Russian Church wanted to bring Russian worship books into use in the Ukraine, but it was found out that Ukrainian Bible was closer to original Greek than the Russian one.

On September 30, 1648, tsar Aleksey Mikhailovitch ordered the sending of several educated monks to correct the Russian Bible according to the Greek texts. In 1651 a commission on correcting Bible books was organized. In 1663 in Moscow the first printed edition of the Church Slavonic Bible was published. Real corrections were few; for the most part, obsolete and obscure words were replaced.

Peter and Elizabeth’s Bible (1751)

On November 14, 1712 Peter the Great made an edict about revising and editing the Slavonic Bible. This made it necessary to report discrepancies between the Greek and Slavonic Bibles to high officials. But the clergy remembered that the last attempt of revising the Bible ended in the Schism of 1666, and didn’t want to take such great responsibility. The work on revising the Bible lasted 10 years, but it ceased after the emperor’s death. It was only in 1751 during the reign of Elizaveta Petrovna (Empress Elizabeth II) that a revised Bible was published. The text of that edition became the basis of nine other editions.

The New Testament of Russian Bible Society (1821)

The Russian Bible Society was established in 1814 by the edict of Tsar Alexander I, who himself was an active member of the Society. At first RBS was distributing Slavonic Bibles. In the 1816 the Society published its own edition of the Slavonic Bible and also the New Testament as a separate book.

At that time it was also decided to start translating the Bible into Russian. The translation was done from the original Greek. The New Testament in Contemporary Russian was published 1821, and after that the translation of the Old Testament was started. The first of published book was the Book of Psalms in Russian (1823). By 1825, the Pentateuch and the Book of Ruth were translated; however, Alexander I died that year, and work on the translation stopped until 1856.

Synodal Version of the Bible (1876)

In 1852 the Holy Synod made a decree about translating the Bible into Russian. The Synod also worked out the principles which had to be used in the process of translation:

• stay as close to the original text as possible, but use Russian forms which are clear to the people,
• keep the word order which is accepted in contemporary Russian language,
• use words and expressions of high style, and not used by common people.

Even before the translation of the New Testament was completed in 1860, it was decided to translate the Books of the Old Testament using the Hebrew text as a basis. The Four Gospels were published in 1860, followed two years later by the rest of the New Testament. Starting in 1861, the magazine “Christian Reading” started publishing the newly translated Old Testament Books. This version is still the main Russian Bible translation.

The edition of the Bible in the Post-revolutionary and Soviet period

In 1926 under the leadership of Ivan Prokhanov, the organizer of the Evangelical Christian Movement in Russia, the canonical Bible was published. It was the first Bible edition following the reform of the Russian language in 1918. After that the Bible in Soviet Union was published in limited quantity under a strict control of state officials. During the Soviet period, most Bibles were brought to the USSR illegally by Christians from abroad.

Source: Wycliffe International