Jurij Japelj

Engraved portrait of Jurij Japelj

Jurij Japelj, also known in German as Georg Japel, (11 April 1744 – 11 October 1807) was a Slovene Jesuit priest, translator, and philologist. He was part of the Zois circle, a group of Carniolan scholars and intellectuals that were instrumental in the spread of Enlightenment ideas in the Slovene Lands. His translations of the Bible, based on the 16th-century translation of the Lutheran author Jurij Dalmatin, set the basis for the development of modern standard Slovene.