Bible The Bible (from Koine Greek , , 'the books') is a collection of religious texts or scriptures that are held to be sacred in Christianity, Judaism, Samaritanism, and many other religions. The Bible is an anthologya compilation of texts ...

translations into Croatian started to appear in fragments in the 14th century. Efforts to make a complete translation started in the 16th century. The first published complete translations were made in the 19th century.

14th to 18th century

The oldest known lectionary is a fragment from 14th-century

Korčula Korčula (, it, Curzola) is a Croatian island in the Adriatic Sea. It has an area of , is long and on average wide, and lies just off the Dalmatian coast. Its 15,522 inhabitants (2011) make it the second most populous Adriatic island after ...

written in

Latin script The Latin script, also known as Roman script, is an alphabetic writing system based on the letters of the classical Latin alphabet, derived from a form of the Greek alphabet which was in use in the ancient Greek city of Cumae, in southern I ...

. Small parts of the Bible translated to the

Ikavian Shtokavian or Štokavian (; sh-Latn, štokavski / sh-Cyrl, italics=no, штокавски, ) is the prestige dialect of the pluricentric Serbo-Croatian language and the basis of its Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian and Montenegrin standards. ...

Shtokavian dialect, in

Bosnian Cyrillic Bosnian Cyrillic, widely known as Bosančica is a variant of the Cyrillic alphabet that originated in medieval Bosnia. The term was coined at the end of the 19th century by Ćiro Truhelka. It was widely used in modern-day Bosnia and Herzegovin ...

alphabet, appeared in the 1404 Hval Manuscript. One Bernardin of

Split Split(s) or The Split may refer to: Places * Split, Croatia, the largest coastal city in Croatia * Split Island, Canada, an island in the Hudson Bay * Split Island, Falkland Islands * Split Island, Fiji, better known as Hạfliua Arts, entertai ...

printed the first Croatian lectionary in

Venice Venice ( ; it, Venezia ; vec, Venesia or ) is a city in northeastern Italy and the capital of the Veneto region. It is built on a group of 118 small islands that are separated by canals and linked by over 400 bridges. The isla ...

in 1495. A team of

Protestant Protestantism is a branch of Christianity that follows the theological tenets of the Protestant Reformation, a movement that began seeking to reform the Catholic Church from within in the 16th century against what its followers perceived to b ...

Croats The Croats (; hr, Hrvati ) are a South Slavic ethnic group who share a common Croatian ancestry, culture, history and language. They are also a recognized minority in a number of neighboring countries, namely Austria, the Czech Republic, ...

conducted the first efforts to prepare a Bible translated into Croatian, when a New Testament translated by

Antun Dalmatin Antun Aleksandrović Dalmatin ( lat, Antonius Dalmata ab Alexandro) was 16th century translator and publisher of Protestant liturgical books. Name and early life Antun's surname is an exonym which means "of Dalmatia". Dalmatin was probably from ...

and

Stipan Konzul Stipan/Stjepan Konzul Istranin, or Stephanus Consul (1521 — after 1568) was a 16th century Protestant reformator who authored and translated religious books to Čakavian dialect. Istranin was the most important Croatian language Protestant write ...

was printed at

Tübingen Tübingen (, , Swabian: ''Dibenga'') is a traditional university city in central Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It is situated south of the state capital, Stuttgart, and developed on both sides of the Neckar and Ammer rivers. about one in three ...

Glagolitic The Glagolitic script (, , ''glagolitsa'') is the oldest known Slavic alphabet. It is generally agreed to have been created in the 9th century by Saint Cyril, a monk from Thessalonica. He and his brother Saint Methodius were sent by the Byzan ...

in 1561/62 and in Cyrillic in 1563, and the Old Testament

Books of the Prophets Nevi'im (; he, נְבִיאִים ''Nəvīʾīm'', Tiberian: ''Năḇīʾīm,'' "Prophets", literally "spokespersons") is the second major division of the Hebrew Bible (the ''Tanakh''), lying between the Torah (instruction) and Ketuvim (wri ...

in Glagolitic and Latin in 1564. Jesuit

Bartol Kašić Bartol Kašić ( la, Bartholomaeus Cassius, it, Bartolomeo Cassio; August 15, 1575 – December 28, 1650) was a Jesuit clergyman and grammarian during the Counter-Reformation, who wrote the first Illyrian grammar and translated the Bible and t ...

translated the complete Bible 1622-1638, but his translation remained, due to political reasons, unpublished until 1999. In the 17th century, efforts were made to produce a translation for the Catholic Croats and Serbians in the so-called Illyrian dialect, but nothing was printed until the 19th century when a Bible in Latin letters together with the parallel text of the

Vulgate The Vulgate (; also called (Bible in common tongue), ) is a late-4th-century Latin translation of the Bible. The Vulgate is largely the work of Jerome who, in 382, had been commissioned by Pope Damasus I to revise the Gospels u ...

was translated into ''the Illyric language, Bosnian dialect'' by

Matija Petar Katančić Matija Petar Katančić ( la, Mathias Petrus Katancsich; 1750–1825) was a Croatian writer, professor of aesthetics and archaeology, lexicographer, and numismatist. Biography As a bootmaker's son from Valpovo, he received his initial education ...

. It was published at

Budapest Budapest (, ; ) is the capital and most populous city of Hungary. It is the ninth-largest city in the European Union by population within city limits and the second-largest city on the Danube river; the city has an estimated population ...

(6 parts, 1831) and closely follows the Vulgate."Sveto pismo Starog' zakona : Sixta V. p. naredbom prividjeno i Klementa VIII. pape vlastjom izdano / Sada u jezik slavno-illyricski izgovora bosanskog' prinesheno", by

Volumes 1 and 2Volumes 1 through 4
at the Library of the

Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts The Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts ( la, Academia Scientiarum et Artium Croatica, hr, Hrvatska akademija znanosti i umjetnosti, abbrev. HAZU) is the national academy of Croatia. HAZU was founded under patronage of the Croatian bishop J ...

19th century

In the 19th century the Bishop of Zagreb

Maksimilijan Vrhovac Maksimilijan Vrhovac (23 November 1752 in Karlovac – 16 December 1827 in Zagreb) was the bishop of Zagreb. He was one of the ideological architects of the Croatian national revival, and is notable for founding the Maksimir Park in 1787, one of ...

proposed the translation of the Bible in

Kajkavian Kajkavian (Kajkavian noun: ''kajkavščina''; Shtokavian adjective: ''kajkavski'' , noun: ''kajkavica'' or ''kajkavština'' ) is a South Slavic regiolect or language spoken primarily by Croats in much of Central Croatia, Gorski Kotar and no ...

. The following are translations: Ivan Rupert Gusić translated the Gospels, Acts of Apostles, Epistles to the Romans and Corinthians, and the Apocalypse; Ivan Birling translated the

Epistle to the Philippians The Epistle to the Philippians is a Pauline epistle of the New Testament of the Christian Bible. The epistle is attributed to Paul the Apostle and Timothy is named with him as co-author or co-sender. The letter is addressed to the Christia ...

; Stjepan Korolija worked the entire New Testament (the manuscripts today in the Metropolitanska knjižnica Zagreb); Antun Vranić's worked the

Psalms The Book of Psalms ( or ; he, תְּהִלִּים, , lit. "praises"), also known as the Psalms, or the Psalter, is the first book of the ("Writings"), the third section of the Tanakh, and a book of the Old Testament. The title is derived ...

and Lamentations of Jeremiah; Ivan Nepomuk Labaš translated the book of Job. Ignac Kristijanović tried to continue the translation of Kajkavian Bible. His works: the Gospels, Act of Apostles, Epistles to the Romans and Corinthians, the Psalms, Ruth's Book, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Job's Book, Jonah's Book, Tobit's Book, Judith's Book, Sirach, Book of Wisdom, Epistles of Peter, Epistles of John and Epistles of Jude.

20th century to present

In 1968 a Zagreb publishing company Stvarnost issued a Croatian translation of the entire Bible (editors B. Duda i Jure Kaštelan). The same translation in its third and subsequent editions has been issued by Kršćanska sadašnjost since 1972. Croatian actor Vid Balog translated the entire New Testament into the Kajkavian dialect of Croatian. Martin Meršić and Ivan Jakšić translated the entire Bible into the

Burgenland Croatian Burgenland Croatian (; german: Burgenländisch-Kroatisch, Burgenlandkroatisch, burgenlandkroatische Sprache, burgenländisch-kroatischen Sprache, hu, gradiscsei horvát nyelv) is a regional variety of the Chakavian dialect of Croatian spoken ...

. Jehovah's Witnesses have translated their

New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures The New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures (NWT) is a translation of the Bible published by the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society; it is used and distributed by Jehovah's Witnesses. The New Testament portion was released first, in 1950, ...

into Croatian.

Tomislav Dretar Tomislav Dretar (born 2 March 1945) is a Croatian, Bosnian, French and Belgian poet, writer, critic, and translator, as well as an academic, journalist, editor, political leader and president of Bihać's HVO. He is also known by the French ali ...

have translated 1998 year into the Croatin language translation of the Bible.

References

Bibliography

* * {{refend Croatian Christianity in Croatia Croatian language

14th to 18th century

19th century

20th century to present

See also

References

Bibliography