Russian Bible History

Church Slavonic Bible

Cyril and Methodius

988 - Rus' adopted Christianity, that is, the translation of Cyril and Methodius already existed, but Orthodoxy did not yet exist. So Rus' adopted Christianity, not Orthodoxy. Pravda accepted the Eastern version.

1054 - The Great Schism of the Church

1492 (a copy from 1499 has reached us) - Gennadievskaya Bible - the 1st Bible in Church Slavonic (almost complete).
Except for 3 Maccabees, which is not included in the main canon of the Bible.
Archbishop Gennady (Novgorodsky) collected all the translations that were possible.
Monk Benjamin translated the missing books from the Vulgate (more than 10).
Total books 49 OT + 27 NT.

1581 - Ostrog Bible - the 1st printed Bible in Church Slavonic language.
1st complete edition of the Bible in Church Slavonic/
The translation was initiated by Prince Konstantin Ostrozhsky, published by the first printer Ivan Fedorov.
The Gennadievskaya Bible was taken as a basis, which was corrected according to the text of the Septuagint.
The books translated from the Vulgate were re-translated from the Septuagint.

1663 - Moscow Bible - reprint of the Ostrozh Bible, the text of the Psalter was corrected.

1751 - Elizabeth Bible - revised Ostrozh Bible, work began by decree of Peter I.
The text became more homogeneous, became as close as possible to the text of the Septuagint, and not to the Septuagint and Vulgate, as the Ostrozhskaya Bible.
1756 - revised 2nd edition, used today as the main text for worship in the Orthodox Church.

At the end of the 19th - beginning of the 20th centuries, work was underway to create a critical edition of the Church Slavonic Bible.
A titanic work was carried out, but due to the revolution it was never completed.

In fact, a translation was never made from scratch, the basis was always the previous translation, which was cleaned up, corrected.
And there is no other way to do it, because the Church Slavonic language is dead, like Latin or ancient Greek, for example.