Götze Bible

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Götze Bible

Pastor Goetze

The standard Bible in Russian was in bold type.
Maybe the authors wanted to emphasize everything at once or it just happened that way.
In any case the Bible was not typographically correct.
Pastor Goetze decided to remedy this situation and typed the Bible so well that this edition was preferred even in spite of the presence of outdated letters.

Pastor Bernard Goetze

. He was a missionary in Russia for about 10 years. Date birth: April 6, 1888
Date death: January 7, 1962.
place of birth:Pabianice, Poland

Goetze Bible
In 1923 Russia printed a canonical Bible that Bernard Götze, pastor of evangelicals in Poland, took as its basis.
Here is what Götze himself writes in his memoirs:

"I was most convinced that the Lord had entrusted me with the task of publishing the Russian Bible in a new processing, printed in a clear and easy-to-read font.
. And least of all I could have imagined myself capable of handling such a huge and important work.
A few of my colleagues and I worked on the preparation of this edition, without telling anyone about our work.
It was only when the manuscript was ready to go to press that we came out in the open.
This was not a new translation of the Bible. We only changed a few outdated expressions.
We divided individual chapters by subtitles according to the editions of the Bible in other languages and added many references to parallel passages.
Particularly important verses were printed in bold type.
In addition the Bible was equipped with explanatory notes and colored geographic maps.
In the course of this work we took advice from our Russian friends, missionaries, preachers, priests and Bible School students...
We have kept the old spelling, with the exception of the letter "l", which reduces the volume of the book approximately by 70 pages.

The New Russian Bible was published two months before WWII.
In a very short time at the outbreak of the war, 4,000 copies were sold out. The remaining 6,000 copies were destroyed by the Gestapo. I have preserved documents testifying to this
".

Christians of many countries, especially Holland and Switzerland, took a great part in financing this costly publication.
Prince Oscar Bernadotte, the Swedish king's brother, was also among those who helped.

Today editions of the Götze Bible can be found in leather bindings with gilt-edged pages and large margins for notes.