This year Ukraine marks the 425th anniversary of the Ostroh Bible. This event is significant not only for Ukraine but the entire Slavic world, as this was the publication of the first complete text of the Scriptures in Church Slavonic. Nor was its publication in Ostroh coincidental.
The spread of biblical texts, primarily the New Testament, in the Ukrainian lands was connected to the spread of Christianity, which emerged in the Greek cities of the Prychornomoria, the Northern Black Sea Region (North Pontic area) in the 3rd and 4th centuries A.D. It was also adopted by the Goths, who were living in what is now Ukraine. Books and some biblical texts were translated into Gothic. It is possible that the written culture of the North Pontic cities and the rise of literacy among the neighboring heathen tribes, particularly the Goths, spurred its emergence among the Slavic ethnoses. The Bulgarian researcher Ye. Georgiev assumed that Slavs were already using oral and written Greek in the 6th and 7th centuries and that this served as the basis for the so-called proto-Cyrillic alphabet.
This assumption is confirmed by an account in The Life of St. Cyril, which states that when this Slavic missionary and enlightener was in Chersonesos (Korsun) sometime in 860, he discovered a Gospel written in Ruthenian letters. It should be remembered that Chersonesos was not only the see of one of the largest North Pontic eparchies but also the main Christian center in the region. The city had commercial ties with various territories of today’s Ukraine. Therefore, the first Slavonic (Ruthenian) translations of books from the New Testament are a likely possibility.
The rise of an entire body of New Testament texts in this language is associated with the activities of Cyril and Methodius and their pupils (860s-880s). The Life of Methodius mentions translations of books that were completed in this period: the Psalter, the Gospels and Acts of the Apostles and Epistles, and selected divine services.
The Gospels, the Apostles, and the Psalter were most often used in divine services, so these texts were most widespread in the Orthodox Slavic world, including the Ukrainian lands. The Gospel of Ostromyriv (1056-1057), the Trier Psalter (1078-1087, the Gospel of Rheims, the Gospel of Archangel, the Rheims Gospel, and the Chudnovsky Psalter, dating to the second half of the 11th c., are considered the oldest relics of Kyivan Rus’ written culture.
As for Old Testament books, they were seldom used except for the Psalter. No translations were made. Only individual fragments were used in books of worship, specifically in the Peremiinyk, which contained selected texts from the Old Testament and partly from the New. Remarkably, the Peremiinyk was used until the 16th century, when translations of the Old Testament appeared in Ukraine.
There are grounds to assume that there was no complete translation of the Holy Bible in the Orthodox Slavic world until the end of the 15th and the early 16th century In fact, there was no particular need for one, inasmuch as medieval Christianity (both Orthodox and Catholic) paid most attention not to religious education but to worship. Therefore, the books that were translated were first and foremost books that were used in divine services. These were mostly New Testament texts that formed the Christian symbolic world. As for books of the Old Testament, they primarily related to the Judaic symbolic world. Since Judaism was a rival of Christianity, ignoring Old Testament texts was quite understandable. Interestingly, the Slovo pro zakon i blahodat (Word about Law and Grace) had an anti-Judaic orientation, pitting the New Testament against the Old Testament.
A Church Slavonic version of the Tolkova Paleia collection of Old Testament texts, complete with anti-Judaic commentaries, appeared in Kyivan Rus’ at the turn of the 13 th century.
Translations of texts from the Old Testament appeared in conjunction with the struggle against Judaism. Thus, a Judaizer movement arose and spread over part of the Eastern Slavic territories in the 15th century, based in Kyiv and Novgorod. Unfortunately, lack of contemporary sources has prevented scholars from constructing a complete picture of this movement.
However, it is safe to assume that the Judaizers were Christians who took an interest in Judaism. They turned in particular to Old Testament texts. For this purpose a number of biblical books were translated into Church Slavonic and were influenced by the Ukrainian linguistic environment. Judging by their format, these books could have been used by adherents of Judaism. These include the Psalter, which resembles the Judaic prayer book Mahzor, the Book of Daniel, the Kings, Esther, the Pentateuch, Minor Prophets, Job, Ruth, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, Proverbs, etc. These translations were included in a number of collections, the best known of which is the Vilnius Collection dating to the late 15th and early 16th century.
The opponents of the Judaizers, Orthodox traditionalists, accordingly also had to turn to Old Testament texts. Hence the appearance in print of the Gennadii Bible, the first more or less complete collection of biblical books in Church Slavonic.
This Bible was compiled by a Novgorod scribe under the guidance of Archbishop Gennadii. The latter was an outspoken opponent of the Judaizers, as evidenced by his epistles. Under his supervision, a collection of biblical texts was created for the struggle against the heretics. Its final redaction is dated to 1499. The compilers of the Bible borrowed texts from the Latin Vulgate from which translations of a number of texts were made: Tobias, Judith, Maccabees, and others.
Almost simultaneously with Gennadii, a Belarusian printer by the name of Francisak (Francis) Skaryna made an attempt to compile and print biblical books, mostly of the Old Testament. Born in the Belarusian city of Polatsk, Skaryna’s activities, unlike those of Archbishop Gennadii, were rather “heretical,” in any case remote from Orthodox traditionalism. There is information about Skaryna’s contacts with Jews, who may have stimulated his interest in Old Testament texts.
Czech translations of biblical texts that existed not only in manuscript form but also started appearing in print in the late 15th century served as a model and guideline for Skaryna. Here it should be noted that at this time the Czech language and culture were the most advanced ones among the languages and cultures of the Slavic peoples. In Poland, for example, knowledge of Czech was the hallmark of a good education. Under the influence of the Hussite movement, the Czechs had a century-old tradition of translating biblical texts into their native language.
Skaryna began publishing books in Prague, the Czech capital. It was here that he printed his first book, the Psalter, in 1517. This choice was hardly coincidental. The Psalter was among the most widespread books in Ukraine and Belarus. Psalms were not only recited in church, but also sung. The Psalter also served as a textbook. In an introduction to his Bible Skaryna recommends the Psalter for those who study Rus’ [Ruthenian] grammar.
However, the book was published in Church Slavonic, although there were marginal notes explaining some words in the Ruthenian vernacular. A considerable part of his explanations had equivalents in Czech religious literature.
Later, Skaryna published Ruthenian translations of biblical books. His translations of Job, Proverbs, and The Wisdom of Ben Sira were published in Prague in 1517; followed by Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, Wisdom of Solomon, four books of the Kings, the Book of Joshua in 1518 ; and Judith, the Pentateuch, Ruth, the Book of Daniel, Esther, Lamentations, and Judges in 1519. The books were published under the general heading The Ruthenian Bible, Compiled by Dr. Francisak Skaryna from the Glorious City of Polatsk, Dedicated to the Lord and Meant to Teach the People Good Things. Skaryna’s books were printed in Prague when translations were ready and not in accordance with the biblical canon. Nor did they embrace all the books of the Old Testament. Thus, the books of the Maccabees and Chronicles were never published. True, Skaryna wrote in an introduction to the Holy Bible that these books should be read while studying divine history. In other words, it is possible that these books were prepared for publication but for some reason never appeared in print.
In the early 1520s Skaryna found himself in Vilnius, where he continued publishing books at the home “of the virtuous citizen Yakub Babych,” the burgomaster of Vilnius. He started with the Little Travelers’ Book that was probably printed in the second half of 1522. It included the Psalter, Breviary, seventeen canticles and canons, a six-day missal, a church calendar, and the Paschal cycle. In March 1525, Skaryna’s book The Acts and Epistles of the Apostles, Entitled “The Apostle” appeared in print. Like his Prague publications, his Vilnius publications contained numerous forewords and afterwords. The Apostle alone had 22 forewords and 17 afterwords.
Skaryna’s editions in Vilnius were in Church Slavonic. It may be assumed that in Vilnius he could not permit himself the same things he had in freethinking Prague with its strong Renaissance and reformist influences. Orthodox traditionalists maintained strong positions in the capital of the Grand Lithuanian Duchy, and they took a dim view of books translated into the vernacular.
However, this was not the only reason. In publishing Prague’s Psalter and Vilnius’s Little Travelers’ Book and the Apostle, Skaryna could have used existing Church Slavonic translations. But he probably had no such possibility where Old Testament books were concerned, so he had to use what Czech and Latin versions were available.
After acquiring an education in the West and having lived for a long time in a Latin cultural environment, Skaryna was estranged from the Orthodox Slavic tradition. Another possibility is that he did not have a good command of Church Slavonic, which, as a man of the world, he did not consider a must for biblical translations. Judging by his forewords and afterwords, Skaryna was oriented on religious enlightenment, which was germane to religious reformers; he tried to make biblical books comprehensible to relatively broad strata of the population. It is also believed that he had contacts with reformers, particularly Martin Luther. There is documented evidence that in March 1530 the first Slavic printer visited Konigsberg and the residence of the Prussian Duke Albrecht, who was an energetic exponent of the Lutheran Reformation.
The above-listed factors — exposure to a Latin cultural environment, a degree of isolation from the Orthodox Slavic tradition, Reformation sympathies, and the existing Czech tradition of biblical translations using the vernacular — led Skaryna to translate Old Testament books into Ruthenian, the language that was close to the Belarusian and Ukrainian vernaculars of the time. Scholars have correctly pointed out that the Belarusian linguistic environment had an influence on Skaryna’s publications. However, these books also related to Ukraine. A considerable number of manuscripts used by the first Belarusian printer originated on Ukrainian territories.
One of the earliest manuscripts used in Skaryna’s publications is the 1543 Psalter, recopied by a certain Parten, who lived in the Kobryn-Pinsk starosta district. The so-called Yaroslav compilation of Skaryna’s publications dates to 1568, including the books of Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Wisdom of Solomon. In the introduction Skaryna’s name is replaced by Vasyl Zhuhaiev, a scribe from the town of Yaroslav in Galicia (Halychyna) who, like Skaryna, refers to himself as a Doctor of Medical Sciences and even as the translator of these books. Other compilations of Skaryna publications originating from Galicia are known, including the one from Pidmonastyr, Bobrets county, a copy of the Pentateuch in A. Petrushevych’s collection, and copies of the Apostle from the library of the Peremyshl Uniate Chapter.
In a number of cases Ukrainian manuscripts of Skaryna publications are combined with other biblical texts; this may have to do with the lost part of Skaryna’s unabridged translation of the Holy Bible (e.g., the manuscript by Luka of Ternopil, the mutually complementary copies by Dmytro of Zinkiv, and a copy attributed to the Rev. Ioann (Ivan) of Manachyn.
The table of contents of the Ternopil copy of the Bible contains all the books of the Old and New Testaments. The Pentateuch ends with Skaryna’s note: “By the grace and will of God and the painstaking effort of an ordinary man by the name of Luka from the inglorious city of Ternopil.” As for the orthography and text, M. Vozniak notes that the Ternopil copy resembles the biblical books copied by Dmytro of Zinkiv and Rev. Ivan from the “inglorious city of Manachyn.”
Dmytro’s Zinkiv copy contains the Pentateuch, the Book of Joshua, Judges, Ruth, four books of the Kings, two books of the Chronicles, and the beginning of Manasseh’s prayer. The Manachyn manuscript supplements the one from Zinkiv. It contains a continuation of Manasseh’s prayer and the rest of the Old Testament books, except the Psalter and the end of the Maccabees. Both these copies, which were artificially separated, supplement each other and comprise a relatively complete body of all books of the Old Testament.
It is interesting to trace the time and geographic origin of this compilation (henceforward: the Zinkiv-Manachyn copy). Its books contain various references dating to 1573-1577. At the end of the Pentateuch it is written that it was copied by “Dmytro, a scribe from Zinkiv” in 1575. A note to the Book of Ezekiel reads, “Thus ends the Book of the Lord’s prophet Ezekiel, with the help and by the will of God and painstaking effort of the God-fearing priest Ioann, shepherd of a flock of Christ’s sheep in the inglorious town of Manachyn, in realizing the Word of God in the year one thousand five hundred and seventy-seven.”
From these notes it follows that some part of the books contained in this copy, at least the Pentateuch, was copied by the scribe Dmytro from Zinkiv. Vozniak assumed that the place name referred to Zinkiv, a small town in Letychiv county in Podillia. He must have proceeded from the assumption that books had to be copied in a city, or at least in a small town. True, the scribe does not call the place where he did the copying a city. Also, there were cases in the 16th century when books were copied in the countryside.
I believe that the scribe Dmytro may have made the copy in Zinky (or Zenky), a village not far from the small town of Surozh. That region had relatively advanced cultural traditions. Vasyl Surazky, one of the noted polemicists of the cultural community of Ostroh, was also born there. Kyrylo Stavrovetsky-Tranquillon printed The Teacher’s Gospels in 1619, in Rakhmaniv, a village not far from Zinky. The Gospels were translated into the Ukrainian vernacular in 1581 in Khoroshiv, another village not far from Zinky, which was midway between such cultural centers of Volyn as Ostroh and Kremenets. The village was owned by the Ostrozky princely family. It was relatively large and divided in two parts. Peasants and craftsmen (potters) lived here. All this provides grounds to assume that the Zinkiv-Manachyn copy of the Old Testament — or at least part of the books — could have been made in this village.
As for the “priest Ioann” mentioned in this copy, I have tried to show in this article that he did not necessarily copy books. Copies were made on his instructions. In other words, Ioann could have supplied funds for this task and supervised the process, and this did not necessarily take place in Manachyn.
In general, I am inclined to believe that the Zinkiv-Manachyn manuscript could have originated from Prince Ostozky’s estate in Volyn. The family property included Ternopil and Yaroslav, where such copies were also made. We can state that in the mid-1570s, when work on the Ostroh Bible was underway in Ukraine, practically all books of the Old Testament had been translated into Ruthenian or Church Slavonic. The important fact is that these copies were found on the Ostrozky estates and should be regarded as predecessors of the Ostroh Bible.
