RUSSIAN BIBLE

RUSSIAN BIBLE. In Russia in the 19th c. theologians and members of the newly formed Russian Bible Society, such as Alexander Golitsyn (q.v.), were particularly interested in the Hebrew Scriptures (q.v.). Eminent scholars produced personal translations: Makarii Glukharev (1792–1847), a seminary professor and Siberian missionary, translated Job (1837) and Isaiah (1839) from Hebrew into Russian; Archpriest Gerasim Pavskii (1787–1863), a professor and Hebraist in St. Petersburg translated the entire Old Testament, which his students secretly circulated until all copies were confiscated in 1842. These translations from Hebrew into Russian, instead of Church Slavic as in the Gennadievskii and Ostrog Bibles (qq.v.), drew mixed reactions from the hierarchy and from society at large for about fifty years, until the last quarter of the century. Glukharev’s and Pavskii’s translations were eventually published in the mid-1860s, but the Hebrew versus Septuagint (q.v.) debate continued-to an impasse for some who would allow only one tradition (e.g., P. I. Gorskii-Platonov accepted only the Hebrew, F. Govorov only the Septuagint). Most scholars and churchmen in Russia in the last decades of the 19th c. recognized the complex relationship between the Hebrew and Greek texts. They knew that the Church Slavic Bible does not correspond exactly to the Septuagint, and they researched the relationship between the Hebrew and Greek in critical literature on a book-by-book basis.

The great Bible translation project of 19th-c. Russia can be credited to only one individual, Metropolitan Philaret (Drozdov) of Moscow. In the early phase of the project (1816–25) before Philaret was metropolitan, he set forth guidelines for translation that were to be used in the second half of the century. Translation was from the Masoretic Hebrew as the basic text, then from Greek when it was the original language, giving both preference over Church Slavic. Literary form was analyzed and maintained: “The spirit of a passage must be painstakingly observed, so that conversation will be rendered in a colloquial style, narration in a narrative style, and so forth.” Philaret ranked translational priorities as accuracy first, clarity second, and literary purity third. He gave stylistic directions; for example, “Holy Scripture derives its majesty from the power, not the glitter, of its words.” (Both quotes are from Georges Florovsky, The Ways of Russian Theology, Part I, p. 190, without further reference.)

Philaret’s guidelines for translation raised difficult, legitimate questions that Russian society in the 1820s could not handle without public discussion-which occurred only later in the century. For example, for those troubled by the divergence of the Russian translation from the Church Slavic, especially with regard to preference given the Hebrew, explanation had to be made that would satisfy those unfamiliar with ancient languages. Again, the Hebrew and Greek texts enjoy a complex relationship that needs to be understood on a case-by-case basis. This translation was finally published in segments: the Gospels in 1819, the entire New Testament in 1820, the Psalter in 1822, and the rest of the Old Testament in 1825. With the printing complete, the new tsar not only suppressed the new translation, but completely destroyed it.

In 1856 Philaret personally urged the Holy Synod to undertake a new translation that would provide “the Orthodox people with the means to read Holy Scripture for instruction in the home and with the easiest possible comprehension” (Florovsky, The Ways of Russian Theology, Part II, p. 123). This project began as a repetition of the 1820s debacle. Although Philaret’s purpose appears commendable, his efforts were opposed by some backward-looking colleagues, notably Metropolitan Philaret (Amfiteatrov) of Kiev and the new ober-procurator of the Ministry of Religious Affairs, Count A. P. Tolstoi. Since the project had been successfully opposed in 1824 and 1842, when it was proposed again in 1856, many of the 1820s reasons against it were repeated: mistrust of the Hebrew Bible, translations from the Hebrew by Pavskii and Makarii caused controversy, the Greek Church did not allow vernacular Greek, Russian was accused of being less expressive than Slavic, other liturgical books had not been translated, and only Church Slavic translations were used liturgically (which remained the case throughout the Soviet Period). To the credit of scholarship and Philaret, the Bible project was completed, now under the Holy Synod and the metropolitan’s watchful eye. The Gospel Book was published in 1860, the complete New Testament in 1862, fascicles of the Old Testament in 1868, and the complete edition in 1875. All subsequent synodal editions, revised and republished until the decade before the Russian Revolution, depended on this one; revisions were handled by the technique of citing the correction in the footnote and moving it into the text in the subsequent printing. When the Moscow Patriarchate published a half million Bibles in 1988 to commemorate the millennium of Christianity in Rus’, it republished the last prerevolutionary revision of Philaret’s Bible.