04 — The Russian Bible
The centerpiece of this collection. Across more than half a century — from his work as a young professor translating the Gospel of John for the Russian Bible Society around 1819, through the long freeze under Nicholas I, to the Synod’s decision to resume in 1858 — St. Philaret of Moscow was the prime mover of the project to render Holy Scripture from Church Slavonic into modern Russian. The complete Synodal Bible appeared in 1876, nine years after his death, and remains the standard Russian Bible to this day. These files trace both the bitter “Bible war” that twice nearly killed the project and the textual choices — above all Hebrew Masoretic versus Septuagint — over which it was fought.
Tradition: Russian Orthodox (Synodal period)
No single work shaped Russian Christianity in the nineteenth century more than the Synodal translation of the Bible, and no single churchman did more to produce it than Philaret (Drozdov) of Moscow. The story is not a smooth triumph but a contest waged across two reigns. Under Alexander I the newly founded Russian Bible Society carried the work to the brink of completion, only for the reaction at the end of his reign to suspend the Society, marginalize its patrons, and burn the printed sheets of the Russian Pentateuch. Under Nicholas I the project lay frozen for three decades, with Philaret himself at times under suspicion. Only with Alexander II did the climate change, and Philaret — old, but still the dominant hierarch of the Russian Church — steered the resumed work to the threshold of completion before he died in 1867.
The two files below divide the story at its natural hinge, the accession of Alexander II in 1855. The first treats the founding, the high tide, and the long defeat — the battle for the translation through the hostile reign of Nicholas I. The second treats the triumph — the resumption of 1858, the contested textual principle of translating the Old Testament from the Hebrew, and the completion of the 1876 Synodal Bible. Both present the opponents of vernacular Scripture not as villains but as a serious party with serious arguments — about the sacral authority of Church Slavonic, the danger of Protestant and sectarian readings, and the reverence of the Orthodox people for the text they had always heard.
Files in This Section
| File | Description |
|---|---|
| The Battle for the Synodal Translation | The Russian Bible Society (founded 1812/1813 on the British model under Alexander I; Prince A. N. Golitsyn its president); Philaret’s central role — the Gospel of John, oversight of the 1820/1821 Russian New Testament, the Psalter; the fall of Golitsyn (1824), the suspension of the Society (1826) under Nicholas I, and the burning of the Russian Pentateuch; the opposition of Metropolitan Seraphim (Glagolevsky), Archimandrite Photius (Spassky), and Admiral Shishkov; and Philaret’s decades-long persistence through the frozen reign of Nicholas I. |
| The 1876 Synodal Bible | The change of climate under Alexander II; the Synod’s 1858 resolution to resume, over the resistance of Metropolitan Filaret (Amfiteatrov) of Kiev; Philaret’s decisive role in his final years and his memorandum revived to defend it; the contested principle of translating the Old Testament from the Hebrew Masoretic text with reference to the Septuagint; the New Testament of 1860 and the complete Synodal Bible of 1876 — still the standard Russian Bible. |
See Also
- The Catechism Controversy — the same Slavonic-versus-Russian fight, fought over the Scripture quotations in Philaret’s Longer Catechism
- The Synodal Church of the Early Nineteenth Century — the church-state order within which the Bible Society rose and fell
- Church and Autocracy under Nicholas I — the reign in which the project lay frozen and Philaret himself was at times under suspicion
- The Enduring Synodal Bible — the monument completed after his death and read to this day
- Holy Scripture — the Orthodox doctrine of Scripture and the status of the Septuagint and Slavonic texts at stake in the Russian Bible question
- The Synodal Period — the post-Petrine church-state system that framed the controversy
- St. Theophan the Recluse — who, after Philaret’s death, reopened the Hebrew-versus-Septuagint question against the Synodal principle
- Sts. Cyril and Methodius — the ninth-century creators of the Slavonic Scripture whose authority the opponents invoked against a Russian translation
References
- Batalden, Stephen K. Russian Bible Wars: Modern Scriptural Translation and Cultural Authority. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. (The authoritative study of the Russian Bible question from the founding of the Russian Bible Society in 1812 to the Synodal translation of 1876 and beyond.)
- Florovsky, Georges. Ways of Russian Theology, Part One. Trans. Robert L. Nichols. Vol. 5 of the Collected Works. Belmont, MA: Nordland / Vaduz: Büchervertriebsanstalt, 1979. (The chapter “The Struggle for Theology” treats the Bible Society and Philaret’s part in the translation question.)
- Nichols, Robert L. “Metropolitan Filaret of Moscow and the Awakening of Orthodoxy.” In Russian Orthodoxy under the Old Regime, ed. Robert L. Nichols and Theofanis George Stavrou. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1978.