Abstract
This book, by the foremost scholar of the history of Bible work in Russia, tells the fascinating story of the first translations into vernacular Russian made from the beginning of the nineteenth century onwards. The reference to “cultural authority” in the book’s subtitle is important, as Batalden places his account firmly within the context of the debates about tradition and modernity which raged in Russia at the time (the “interpretive framework” for the study is well summarized on pp. 7–11 of the Introduction).
The book begins with an account of the Russian Bible Society. The Society was founded at the end of 1812 through the initiative of the British and Foreign Bible Society and under the tsar’s direct patronage, against the background of Pietist movements which reached up to the imperial court, the influence of Freemasonry, and a renewal of the system of religious education (all summarized on p. 40). It closed down in April 1826 in an atmosphere of conservative retrenchment. In this short period, however, the Society produced the first Russian translations of the New Testament and parts of the Old Testament, and established a state-of-the-art printing operation in St. Petersburg which produced and circulated more than 100,000 copies of Scripture each year (the details are given on pp. 53 and 72). These technological achievements, ironically, contributed to the Society’s downfall by arousing the suspicion of conservative circles, especially as these publications were being made outside the normal structures of censorship and control (pp. 86–88).
Following the closure of the Russian Bible Society, the BFBS was in fact able to continue distribution activities (in part openly and in part clandestinely), and there were also attempts to pursue Bible translation activity, most notably the controversial work of Gerasim Pavskii, which brought him into direct conflict with the church authorities (96–111), and the quieter approach of St. Makarii Glukharev (112–22), both of whom wanted to bring to completion the Old Testament translation begun by the RBS. Officially sanctioned translation activity began again in the late 1850s as part of what Batalden calls “Russian religious culture’s fledgling engagement with modernity” (126) and led eventually to the publication of the first officially sanctioned complete Bible in Russian in 1876 (ch. 4 is devoted to the history of this publication, which has become known as the Synodal Bible).
The progress of translation work, however, was anything but smooth. Not only was the Holy Synod itself divided over the validity in principle of vernacular Russian translation, but there were arguments over language (liturgical use versus private reading), text (Septuagint versus Masoretic text as the basis for OT translation), and politics (relations between Moscow and the Ecumenical Patriarchate, which was opposed to Bible translation in Modern Greek). Added to this was the continued work on Russian OT translation by the BFBS, who even hired one of the key members of the Synodal translation team, the eminent Hebraist Daniil Khvolson (142–43), to work on their own translation, a project planned and executed in explicit opposition to the official Synodal translation because BFBS chose to use the Masoretic text rather than the Septuagint as base text and to avoid deuterocanonical books and readings. Khvolson even proposed to the Synod a third project, an adaption of the Synodal Old Testament for the use of Jewish readers (167–68).
The story of Jewish Bible translation in Russian, testifying to the high level of Hebrew scholarship in the country and to the practical engagement of these scholars with spurious “blood libel” accusations, is told in ch. 5. There follows a short chapter on distribution and colportage (focusing on accusations of sectarian proselytism which have continued well into the modern period), and a concluding “Afterword” on twentieth-century developments, which deals in detail with the émigré NT translation project carried out under the leadership of Bishop Kassian (Bezobrazov). The volume concludes with a very full (though doubtless still incomplete) “Annotated bibliography of the Russian Bible, 1794–1991” (208–354, with 350 entries), an invaluable resource for anyone with a serious interest in the subject and a treasure trove of fascinating details about individual publications. On p. 324, for example, we learn that Eugene Nida was involved in the creation of a set of section headings for a revised reprint of the Synodal Bible prepared by the American Bible Society in 1947.
Readers of TBT will be interested, in particular, in matters relating specifically to Bible translation—and they will find much fascinating material for reflection. Many of the questions discussed and debated by translators in nineteenth-century Russia have a very contemporary ring, not least the controversy over the textual base for translation of the Old Testament and the place of the deuterocanonical books. Issues of project management, together with personal and organizational rivalries, also feel very up to date (Daniil Khvolson is certainly not the last translator to play different Bible agencies off against each other!). The publication of rival editions of the Russian Bible (BFBS in 1875, Holy Synod in 1876) will find resonances with other situations, as will the (probably rather exasperated) decision of the BFBS to publish two pilot editions of the Kassian translation of the Gospel of Matthew in 1953 because of a dispute in the editorial committee over the use of upper-case initial letters for pronominal references to the Virgin Mary (201, 328).
There is little fault to find with this excellent book, and such criticisms as may be made largely concern matters of detail. It would perhaps have been good to see more cross-referencing between the main text of the monograph and the annotations to individual bibliography entries (Konstantin Pobedonostsev’s 1906 revision of the Synodal New Testament, for example, is mentioned very briefly on p. 193, but dealt with in detail on pp. 294–97). One might wonder why the translation work of Mikhail Guliaev (referred to on p. 145 n. 33) gets only a brief and incomplete mention in the annotated bibliography (bottom of p. 251); and it would have been interesting to learn more about the Septuagint translations of P. A. Iungerov (158, 282–83). The discussion of twentieth-century Russian Bible translation in the Afterword is far from complete (the claim on p. 207 that the 2011 BSR Bible is “the first complete biblical text since the synodal translation of the 1870s” is incorrect); the annotated bibliography gives a more rounded picture (though not by any means up to date since the most recent entry is for 1991). The book is produced to a very high standard (Patterson for Paterson, p. 75 line 9 from the bottom, is a rare typo). All in all the author achieves his aim admirably, providing a rich and fascinating picture of the process of translation of the Bible into Russian in all the intricacies of its religious and cultural context, and introducing us to a cast of memorable characters and a range of issues which will resonate far beyond the borders of Russia. This book will be indispensable to specialists in the field, but can be read with profit by anyone with an interest in the complexities of Bible translation.