The Elizabeth Bible () is the authorized version of the

Bible The Bible is a collection of religious texts that are central to Christianity and Judaism, and esteemed in other Abrahamic religions such as Islam. The Bible is an anthology (a compilation of texts of a variety of forms) originally writt ...

used by the

Russian Orthodox Church The Russian Orthodox Church (ROC; ;), also officially known as the Moscow Patriarchate (), is an autocephaly, autocephalous Eastern Orthodox Church, Eastern Orthodox Christian church. It has 194 dioceses inside Russia. The Primate (bishop), p ...

. The Elizabeth Bible was the third complete printed edition of the Bible in

Church Slavonic Church Slavonic is the conservative Slavic liturgical language used by the Eastern Orthodox Church in Belarus, Bulgaria, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Poland, Russia, Ukraine, Serbia, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, Slovenia and Croatia. The ...

, published in

Russia Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the list of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the world, and extends across Time in Russia, eleven time zones, sharing Borders ...

in 1751 under and with the assistance of the

Elizabeth of Russia Elizabeth or Elizaveta Petrovna (; ) was Empress of Russia from 1741 until her death in 1762. She remains one of the most popular List of Russian rulers, Russian monarchs because of her decision not to execute a single person during her reign, ...

, the previous ones being the Ostrog Bible of 1581 and the of 1663.

History

In 1712,

Peter I of Russia Peter I (, ; – ), better known as Peter the Great, was the Tsar of all Russia from 1682 and the first Emperor of all Russia from 1721 until his death in 1725. He reigned jointly with his half-brother Ivan V until 1696. From this year, ...

issued an ''

ukaz In Imperial Russia, a ukase () or ukaz ( ) was a proclamation of the tsar, government, or a religious leadership (e.g., Patriarch of Moscow and all Rus' or the Most Holy Synod) that had the force of law. " Edict" and "decree" are adequate transla ...

'' ordering the printed Church Slavonic text to be carefully compared with the Greek of the

Septuagint The Septuagint ( ), sometimes referred to as the Greek Old Testament or The Translation of the Seventy (), and abbreviated as LXX, is the earliest extant Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible from the original Biblical Hebrew. The full Greek ...

and to be made in every respect conformable to it. The revision was completed in 1724 and was ordered to be printed, but the death of Peter in 1725 prevented the execution of the order. The manuscript of the

Old Testament The Old Testament (OT) is the first division of the Christian biblical canon, which is based primarily upon the 24 books of the Hebrew Bible, or Tanakh, a collection of ancient religious Hebrew and occasionally Aramaic writings by the Isr ...

of this revision is in the synodal library at Moscow. Under

, the work of revision was resumed by an ''ukaz'' issued in 1744, and in 1751, the revised Elizabeth Bible, as it is called, was published. Three other editions were published in 1756, 1757, and 1759, the second being somewhat of a revision.И. Е. Евсеев
''Очерки по истории славянского перевода Библии''
Petersburg 2009.

Sources used

The primary sources for the Elizabeth Bible include the Ostrog Bible of 1581 and the Moscow Bible of 1663. The translation of the Old Testament (excluding Latin Esdras) was mainly based on a manuscript of the

Codex Alexandrinus The Codex Alexandrinus (London, British Library, Royal MS 1. D. V-VIII) is a manuscript of the Greek Bible,The Greek Bible in this context refers to the Bible used by Greek-speaking Christians who lived in Egypt and elsewhere during the early ...

() from Brian Walton's London Polyglot (1657). Third Esdras was translated from the

Vulgate The Vulgate () is a late-4th-century Bible translations into Latin, Latin translation of the Bible. It is largely the work of Saint Jerome who, in 382, had been commissioned by Pope Damasus I to revise the Gospels used by the Diocese of ...

. Also, translators used the

Codex Vaticanus The Codex Vaticanus ( The Vatican, Bibl. Vat., Vat. gr. 1209), is a manuscript of the Greek Bible, containing the majority of the Old Testament and the majority of the New Testament. It is designated by siglum B or 03 in the Gregory-Aland numb ...

(), the Editio Complutensis (1514–1517), the Editio Aldina (1518), and the Editio Sixtina (1587) in their work (see Septuagint#Printed editions).Библия. IV. Переводы
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Reprints

All later reprints of the Russian Church Bible are based upon this second edition (1756), which, with minor corrections, is the current authorized version of the Russian Church.Д. Г. Добыкин, ''Лекции по введению в Священное Писание Ветхого Завета'', St.Petersburg, Санкт-Петербургская православная духовная академия, 2012, p. 70.

References

External links

Bible in Church Slavonic text of the Elizabeth Bible
(PDF texts in Church Slavonic; webpage in Russian)
Ostrog Bible
(Church Slavonic text with parallel text in Ukrainian; PDF-version of R. Turkonyak's edition) * Bible in Church Slavonic language - Sinodal redactio
(Wikisource)(PDF)

(iPhone)(Android)
{{Authority control 1751 non-fiction books 1751 in the Russian Empire 18th-century Christian texts Early printed Bibles Bible translations into Church Slavonic Government reform of Peter the Great Elizabeth of Russia

History

Sources used

Reprints

See also

References

External links