This article deals with the history of translation of the Bible into Slavic languages, beginning in the second half of the 9th century. (See also list Bible translations by language, and specific language entries for major languages.)
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The oldest translation, commonly called the Old Church Slavonic, is closely connected with the activity of the two apostles to the Slavs, Cyril and Methodius, in Great Moravia, 864–865. The oldest manuscripts are written either in the so-called Cyrillic or the Glagolitic character. The former is the Greek majuscule writing of the 9th century with the addition of new characters for Slavic sounds which are not found in the Greek of that time; the latter was a style writing that was completely independent of any other writing system, which ceased to be used as late as the 20th century.
The oldest manuscripts are written in the Glagolitic, which is older than the Cyrillic. The oldest manuscripts extant belong to the 10th or 11th century, and the first complete collection of Biblical books in the Church Slavonic language originated in Russia in the last decade of the 15th century. It was completed in 1499 under the auspices of Archbishop Gennady of Novgorod (1484–1504), and the Old Testament was translated partly from the Vulgate, and partly from the Septuagint. The New Testament is based upon the old Church Slavonic translation. That Bible, called the Gennady Bible (Gennadievskaia Biblia) is now housed in the State History Museum on Red Square.
During the 16th century a greater interest in the Bible was awakened in South and West Russia, owing to the controversies between adherents of the Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholics and Greek-Catholics. In the second half of the 16th century the Gospels, Acts, and Epistles, and parts of the Psalter were often printed at Lviv and Vilnius, though the oldest edition of the Acts and Epistles was issued at Moscow in 1564.
In 1581 the first edition of the Church Slavonic Bible was published at Ostrog by Ivan Fyodorov, a number of Greek manuscripts, besides the Gennady's Bible, having been used for this edition.[1] But neither the Gennadius nor the Ostrog Bible was satisfactory, and in 1663 a second somewhat revised edition of the latter was published at Moscow.
In 1712, Tsar Peter the Great issued an ukaz ordering the printed Slavonic text to be carefully compared with the Greek of the Septuagint and to be made in every respect conformable to it. The revision was completed in 1724 and was ordered to be printed, but the death of Peter (1725) prevented the execution of the order. The manuscript of the Old Testament of this revision is in the synodal library at Moscow.
Under the Empress Elizabeth the work of revision was resumed by an ukaz issued in 1744, and in 1751 a revised "Elizabeth" Bible, as it is called, was published. Three other editions were published in 1756, 1757, and 1759, the second somewhat revised. All later reprints of the Russian Church Bible are based upon this second edition, which is the authorized version of the Russian Church.
An effort to produce a version in the vernacular was made by Francysk Skaryna (d. after 1535), a native of Polatsk in Belarus. He published at Prague, 1517–19, twenty-two Old Testament books in Old Belarusian language, in the preparation of which he was greatly influenced by the Bohemian Bible of 1506. Other efforts were made during the 16th and 17th centuries, but the Church Slavonic predominated in all these efforts.
For further reference go to http://www.pravapis.org/art_skaryna1.asp
Jan Huss' Bible was printed in 1488, the Bible of Kralice from 1579, the definitive edition in 1613. Among modern translations the Ecumenical Version of 1979 is commonly used. The newest translation in modern Czech was completed in 2009.
The Bulgarian Orthodox church continued to use the Old Church Slavonic until the 1940s. In 1835 the British and Foreign Bible Society contracted a Bulgarian monk, Neofit Rilski, who started on a new translation which, in later editions, remains the standard version today.
In the 16th century Slovene Prostestant Pastors Primož Trubar and Jurij Dalmatin translete the Bible. Dalmatin's work the full Old and New Testament.
István Küzmics and Miklós Küzmics in Prekmurian Slovene (Nouvi Zákon, Szvéti evangyeliomi) translete the Bible. Our works also unique in the European literature.
Early history of Macedonian translations are closely linked with translations into Bulgarian dialects from 1852. The whole Bible (including the Deuterocanonical books) translated in Macedonian by the Archbishop Gavril was printed in 1990.
Bible translations into Polish date to 13th century. First full translations were completed in the 16th century. Today the official and most popular Bible in Poland is the Millennium Bible (Biblia Tysiąclecia) first published in 1965.
The oldest Sorbian Bible version, that of the New Testament of 1547, is extant in a manuscript in the Royal Library at Berlin. The translator was Miklawusch Jakubica, who employed a now-extinct dialect of Lower Sorbian. In the 18th century Gottlieb Fabricius, a German, made a translation of the New Testament which was printed in 1709. In a revised form this version was published by the British and Foreign Bible Society in 1860.
The Old Testament, translated by J. G. Fritz, was printed at Cottbus in 1796. An edition of the entire Bible was published by the Prussian Bible Society in 1868. Michael Frentzel, Pastor in Postwitz (d. 1706), translated the New Testament into the Upper Sorbian, and his version was published by his son, Abraham Frentzel (Zittau, 1706). A complete edition of the Bible, the work of different scholars, was first published at Bautzen, 1728. A second revised edition was prepared by Johann Gottfried Kuhn and issued in 1742; a third improved edition prepared by Johann Jacob Petschke was published in 1797. Passing over other editions, it is worth while to note that the ninth edition of the complete Bible (Bautzen, 1881) was revised by H. Immisch and others and contains a history of the Upper Lusatian Wendish Bible translation. For the Roman Catholic Wends of Upper Lusatia G. Lusanski and M. Hornik translated the New Testament from the Vulgate, and published it at Bautzen, 1887–92; the Psalms were translated from the Hebrew by J. Laras (Bautzen, 1872).
The known history of the Bible translation into Ukrainian began in 16th century with Peresopnytsia Gospels, which included only four Gospels of the New Testament.