Gennady's Bible (Russian: Геннадиевская Библия) is the first full manuscript translation of the Bible into Church Slavonic, completed in 1499.[1]
Gennady (r. 1484–1504), the archbishop of Novgorod the Great and Pskov, set the task to collect all Biblical translations, partly in response to the emergence of a religious sect known in Russia as the Judaizers that confronted the Russian Orthodox Church.[2][3] Before him, there were only separate and incomplete Slavonic translations of various books and chapters. Gennady's Bible included a number of books wholly or partially translated from the Latin Vulgate. The collection marked the "first serious victory of Western scholasticism on Russian soil".[4]
Gennady and his assistants used the Pentateuch, Judges, Joshua, Ruth, Kings, Job, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, the Gospels, Acts, Epistles, Revelation, Psalms and others. He translated missing books with the help of the monk Veniamin from the Vulgate, including the Nehemiah, Ezra, Tobit, Judith, Esther, Jeremiah, Wisdom, 1 Maccabees, 2 Maccabees, 1 Esdras, 2 Esdras and others.
Gennady's Bible was also the main source of the Ostrog Bible. Russian tsar Ivan IV requested copies from Ivan Fyodorov.
- ^ Kulik, Alexander; MacRobert, Catherine Mary; Nikolova, Svetlina; Taube, Moshe; Vakareliyska, Cynthia M. (19 January 2016). The Bible in Slavic Tradition. Brill. p. 248. ISBN 978-90-04-31367-5.
- ^ Pentiuc, Eugen J. (2022). The Oxford Handbook of the Bible in Orthodox Christianity. Oxford University Press. p. 39. ISBN 978-0-19-094865-8.
- ^ Terras, Victor (1 January 1985). Handbook of Russian Literature. Yale University Press. p. 320. ISBN 978-0-300-04868-1.
- ^ Treadgold, Donald W. (24 May 1973). The West in Russia and China: Religious and Secular Thought in Modern Times. CUP Archive. ISBN 978-0-521-08552-6.