The modern language of the Bible

On June 1, the Bible was on sale, translated into modern Russian through the efforts of the Russian biblical society. The meaning of the event is difficult to overestimate, because the most famous book in the world, in addition to its direct religious purpose, is also an ancient monument of world culture. The translation, which has now been adopted in Russia as canonical, was carried out in the 60s and 70s of the XIX century.

The specialist in the field of the New Testament textology Abbot Innokenty Pavlov says that contemporaries called this edition "The Unloved Child of the Synodal Department", and quotes the statement of one of the enlightened church leaders of that time:

"The language of this synodal translation is heavy, outdated, artificially converged with Slavic, it lagged behind the general-sufficient language for a whole century. This is a completely unacceptable language in the literature of the Popushkinsky time, not brightened by the flight of inspiration, nor the artistry of the text. It is necessary to give a resettled, but artistic, creative translation, moreover, with constant care of its improvement."

However, there was no improvement, and here is one of the translators and editors of the new edition, the executive director of the Bible Society Anatoly Rudenko recalls his first acquaintance with the text of the Holy Scriptures:

- It was in 1977, I was a student of Moscow University. Then I had a period of God -seeking, and I began to read the Holy Scriptures in a synodal translation. One monk gave him to me. The person is quite competent, very motivated, I was very interested. And yet I literally widened through the New Testament. As I remember now, I stopped at the 8th chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, and my head was cracking! I just forgot what in what order is there, about what. And it took me about two years to overpower the entire New Testament. After the appearance of a synodal translation and up to the revolution (about 50 years passed), he was subjected to fierce criticism. The bishop of St. Theophanes, the priest, dreamed of that and wrote about this dream to burn him on Isaac's Square. And he called him not a synodal translation, but a synodal composition. And with its nationwide status, the synodal translation is actually obliged, oddly enough, the Soviet regime, which ceased all biblical research, all translations, and therefore this translation was left alone.

The main goal is to make the Holy Scripture accessible to the widest circle of modern readers, accurately conveying the content of the Holy Scriptures in an understandable language

But why was the modern Russian translation was undertaken by us? The main goal is to make the Holy Scripture accessible to the widest circle of modern readers, accurately conveying the content of the Holy Scriptures in an understandable language. And that’s why one of the principles of translation was the transfer of various genres and various language styles in the Holy Scriptures. After all, we are accustomed to the fact that the Bible is written in an even, archaized language, somewhat foggy, incomprehensible, everything is pious there, everything is smooth, there are no sharp corners, nothing scratches, somehow it envelops everything. The translators of synodal translation sought to ensure that this style for the whole Bible was one.

But in the original, it is not one! After all, each of the authors, the Prophet or the Apostle, were people of different eras, with different education, speaking different languages, with different temperament, with different life experience, and they wrote differently. Moreover, the Bible has various parts that are little interconnected. There are chronicles, just listing the genealogies, there is a presentation of some historical facts, there is poetry, there are criminal stories of murders, rape, there are love stories, there are travels, a shipwreck that the Apostle Paul fell into, is the most striking example. And all these parts are written in different style, different language.

The task of the translation was to reflect these different styles inherent in different authors, and different genres. For example, you cannot convey a poetic language, say, some bureaucratic writings. Here is a pedigree recording - how can it be conveyed poetically? No way. This is just a bureaucratic record, metric. Or, for example, the Bible has quite rude places. The apostle Pavel calls his opponents the dogs, and Jesus calls them vipers, snakes, the generation of echidna, this is a viper, a snake spawn. So this all had to be conveyed.

Another task, according to Anatoly Rudenko, was to clarify the so -called "dark places" in the Bible and correction of long -standing, stable translation errors.