The initiator of Esperanto, L. L. Zamenhof, translated the entire Hebrew Bible into Esperanto. His translation has been much admired by Esperantists and is widely held up as a model or exemplar for other Esperanto authors and translators. Other translators have also edited and published Esperanto versions of the New Testament and Apocrypha.
A committee led by British clergy and scholars (J.C. Rust, B.J. Beveridge and C.G. Wilkinson) was formed to translate the New Testament and to review L. L. Zamenhof's translation of the Hebrew Bible for eventual publication by the British and Foreign Bible Society. The New Testament was completed in 1910 and published in 1912. The translation of the New Testament is influenced by the English King James Bible, so it closely follows the Textus Receptus rather than the more modern accepted text based on the most ancient Greek manuscripts.[ citation needed ]
Zamenhof translated the entire Masoretic Bible (known to Christians as the Old Testament) into Esperanto, completing the work in March 1915. However, Zamenhof was prevented from sending the completed manuscript to the Bible committee in Great Britain, informing the committee's president, Esperantist Rev. John Cyprian Rust, of the major obstacle which had arisen. Writing in French, which was permitted by postal censorship rules, Zamenhof wrote: "Unfortunately I cannot at the present time send you the translation, because our postal service does not forward anything which is written in Esperanto; therefore, I must wait until the end of the war." Only after the First World War — and two years after the death of Zamenhof — did the translation arrive in Britain.
According to Arieh ben Guni, in preparing his Esperanto version, Zamenhof appears to have relied primarily on the 1783 German Pentateuch translation and commentary by Moses Mendelssohn, ספר נתיבות השלום והוא חבור כולל חמשה חומשי תורה עם תרגום אשכנזי ובאור (Sefer Netivot ha-shalom - ṿe-hu ḥibur kolel ḥamishah ḥumshe torah ʻim targum askhenazi u-veʼur — in which the German was written in Hebrew characters; and the Russian Synodal Bible (Синодальный перевод) [1] — a work characterized by considerable archaic vocabulary and the use of grammar which is essentially that of Old Church Slavonic.
From 1919 until 1926 the Bible committee read through and corrected the text, harmonizing the language of the New Testament to the Old (according to a Protestant Christian point of view), then typesetting and proofreading. Two Quakers, the sisters Priscilla Hannah Peckover (1833–1931) and Algerina Peckover (1841–1927) supported the project financially. A translation of the entire Christian canon as recognized by Protestants, often referred to in Esperanto as the Londona Biblio, was published in 1926. Within five years more than 5,000 copies of the Esperanto Bible had sold.
Translation | Genesis (Genezo) 1:1–3 | John (Johano) 3:16 |
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British and Foreign Bible Society | En la komenco kreis Dio la ĉielon kaj la teron. Kaj la tero estis senforma kaj dezerta, kaj mallumo estis super la abismo; kaj la spirito de Dio ŝvebis super la akvo. Kaj Dio diris: Estu lumo; kaj fariĝis lumo. | Ĉar Dio tiel amis la mondon, ke Li donis Sian solenaskitan Filon, por ke ĉiu, kiu fidas al li, ne pereu, sed havu eternan vivon. |
An Esperanto organization devoted to Biblical and Oriental studies, the Internacia Asocio de Bibliistoj kaj Orientalistoj, beginning in the 1960s, attempted to organize the translation of a new, ecumenical Esperanto Bible version, but the project eventually lapsed, with only Gerrit Berveling's translation of Numbers (Nombroj, 1999) published. However, Dr. Berveling, a Dutch Free Church theologian and classical linguist, has translated most of a new version of the New Testament, eschewing the syntactically overliteral tendencies of the British and Foreign Bible Society version, which is perhaps most akin to the English Revised Version of 1881.
The Brazilian publisher Fonto has issued Berveling's gospel translations according to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John in four slim volumes as La bona mesaĝo de Jesuo ("The good message of Jesus", 1992); the fourth volume includes a concordance to the four gospels. The first volume of his projected New Testament appeared as Leteroj de Paŭlo kaj lia skolo ("Letters of Paul and his school", 2004), which contained the entire Pauline canon. Subsequent books, under the common title Flanke je Jesuo ("By the side of Jesus") were published by Berveling's own Dutch publishing house VoKo in 2010.
By 2001 Berveling had also translated to Esperanto and published three volumes of the Deuterocanonical books (La duakanonaj libroj). Texts from the first two volumes, as used in the Orthodox, Roman Catholic and Lutheran churches, were incorporated into an edition of the Esperanto Bible published two years later. These were printed as a separate section between the Old and New Testaments, as is frequently done in Protestant or secular editions of the Bible that contain what Protestants refer to as "the Apocrypha". In the Kava-Pech edition (see below) the Deuterocanonical books are dispersed through the Old Testament in the locations typical of Roman Catholic editions of the Bible, but the portions (whether whole books like Judit (Judith) or La Saĝeco de Salomono (Wisdom of Solomon) or portions included in the Septuagint and Vulgate but not in the Protestant Canon, in Ester (Esther) and Daniel (Daniel)) that are not in the Protestant canon are italicized, facilitating their identification as deuterocanonical/apocryphal without interrupting the flow of the text.
In 2006 the ecumenical commission of the International Union of Catholic Esperantists (IKUE) and the International Christian Esperantist League (KELI) edited a completely new arrangement of the Bible based on the Latin Vulgate edition, which was published by Kava-Pech in the Czech Republic and now forms a volume in the World Esperanto Association's Serio Oriento-Okcidento ("East-West Series"), a series of some 50 works published in uniform editions, initially as a contribution to UNESCO's Major Project on Mutual Appreciation of Eastern and Western Cultural Values.
A monograph by Douglas B. Gregor, La Esperanta traduko de la Malnova Testamento, [2] compares Zamenhof's translation in some detail with a wide variety of major versions in other languages.
In that monograph Gregor compares a selection of 518 difficult texts in what he calls a "ten-Bible concordance." Gregor was apparently familiar with Hebrew, Greek, Latin, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, Polish, Russian and even Welsh. [1] After completing his investigation and analysis, Gregor characterized Zamenhof's Esperanto translation as being consistently clear and accurate, managing to be simultaneously "both conservative and original," and writes that it "deserves a high place among the great Bibles of the world." [1]
Arieh ben Guni, writing in La nica literatura revuo, deprecates himself as nur humila spicovendisto ("only a humble spice vendor") and commends Gregor's remarkable polyglot abilities. He finds fault with Gregor's approach, however, declaring that when comparing Zamenhof's Esperanto translation with French, German or Russian translations Gregor had failed to differentiate between those based on the Hebrew Targum, the Greek Septuagint or the Latin Vulgate and the more literal translations which, though somewhat lacking in style, made use of comparative philology to supply conjectural modifications for doubtful words. [1]
The deuterocanonical books, meaning "Of, pertaining to, or constituting a second canon," collectively known as the Deuterocanon (DC), are certain books and passages considered to be canonical books of the Old Testament by the Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Oriental Orthodox Church but which modern Rabbinic Judaism and Protestants regard as Apocrypha.
Esperanto is the world's most widely spoken constructed international auxiliary language. Created by L. L. Zamenhof in 1887, it is intended to be a universal second language for international communication, or "the international language". Zamenhof first described the language in Dr. Esperanto's International Language, which he published under the pseudonym Doktoro Esperanto. Early adopters of the language liked the name Esperanto and soon used it to describe his language. The word esperanto translates into English as "one who hopes".
L. L. Zamenhof was the creator of Esperanto, the most widely used constructed international auxiliary language.
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 Israelites. The second division of Christian Bibles is the New Testament, written in Koine Greek.
The Bible has been translated into many languages from the biblical languages of Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. As of September 2023 all of the Bible has been translated into 736 languages, the New Testament has been translated into an additional 1,658 languages, and smaller portions of the Bible have been translated into 1,264 other languages according to Wycliffe Global Alliance. Thus, at least some portions of the Bible have been translated into 3,658 languages.
Gerrit Berveling is a Dutch Esperanto author.
The Christian Community Bible (CCB) is a translation of the Christian Bible in the English language originally produced in the Philippines.
The additions of Daniel are three chapters not found in the Hebrew/Aramaic text of Daniel. The text of these chapters is found in the Septuagint, the earliest extant Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible from the original Hebrew.
The biblical apocrypha denotes the collection of apocryphal ancient books thought to have been written some time between 200 BC and 100 AD.
Several Spanish translations of the Bible have been made since approximately 700 years ago.
Nikolai Vladimirovich Nekrasov was a Soviet Esperanto writer, translator, and critic.
The Old Testament is the first section of the two-part Christian biblical canon; the second section is the New Testament. The Old Testament includes the books of the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) or protocanon, and in various Christian denominations also includes deuterocanonical books. Orthodox Christians, Catholics and Protestants use different canons, which differ with respect to the texts that are included in the Old Testament.
The term Catholic Bible can be understood in two ways. More generally, it can refer to a Christian Bible that includes the whole 73-book canon recognized by the Catholic Church, including some of the deuterocanonical books of the Old Testament which are in the Greek Septuagint collection, but which are not present in the Hebrew Masoretic Text collection. More specifically, the term can refer to a version or translation of the Bible which is published with the Catholic Church's approval, in accordance with Catholic canon law.
Bible translations into French date back to the Medieval era. After a number of French Bible translations in the Middle Ages, the first printed translation of the Bible into French was the work of the French theologian Jacques Lefèvre d'Étaples in 1530 in Antwerp. This was substantially revised and improved in 1535 by Pierre Robert Olivétan. This Bible, in turn, became the basis of the first French Catholic Bible, published at Leuven in 1550, the work of Nicholas de Leuze and François de Larben. Finally, the Bible de Port-Royal, prepared by Antoine Lemaistre and his brother Louis Isaac Lemaistre, finished in 1695, achieved broad acceptance among both Catholics and Protestants. Jean-Frédéric Ostervald's version (1744) also enjoyed widespread popularity.
Although the biblical themes have been an essential formative substance of the Portuguese culture, composition in that language of a complete translation of the Bible is quite late when compared with other European languages. The beginnings of the written transmission of the sacred text in Portuguese, parallel to its traditional liturgical use in Latin, are related to the progressive social acceptance of the vernacular as a language of culture in the low-medieval period. And even though the official language of the Portuguese monarchy dates back to the end of the thirteenth century, during the reign of D. Dinis, the writer Carolina Michaëlis de Vasconcelos (1851–1925), for example, was able to state categorically that, in the medieval period, "Portuguese literature, in matters of biblical translations, is a poverty Desperate" – a judgment that remains valid, experts say.
A biblical canon is a set of texts which a particular Jewish or Christian religious community regards as part of the Bible.
A Protestant Bible is a Christian Bible whose translation or revision was produced by Protestant Christians. Typically translated into a vernacular language, such Bibles comprise 39 books of the Old Testament and 27 books of the New Testament, for a total of 66 books. Some Protestants use Bibles which also include 14 additional books in a section known as the Apocrypha bringing the total to 80 books. This is in contrast with the 73 books of the Catholic Bible, which includes seven deuterocanonical books as a part of the Old Testament. The division between protocanonical and deuterocanonical books is not accepted by all Protestants who simply view books as being canonical or not and therefore classify books found in the Deuterocanon, along with other books, as part of the Apocrypha. Sometimes the term "Protestant Bible" is simply used as a shorthand for a bible which contains only the 66 books of the Old and New Testaments.
The International League of Christian Esperantists is the association of Protestant Esperantists. It was founded in 1911, during the Universal Congress of Esperanto in Antwerp. Its members from very diverse backgrounds, mostly protestant churches. KELI publishes a bimonthly magazine, Dia Regno, which started to appear regularly in 1908, when the German Paul Hübner was sure that five people would subscribe. Now the magazine serves as a tool among members in 48 countries from diverse faiths including Quakers, Lutherans, Calvinists, Anglicans, Adventists and people following Eastern Orthodoxy.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to Esperanto: