MINSK, 20 December (BelTA) - The presentation of the first official Roman Catholic edition of the New Testament in the Belarusian language was held at the National Library of Belarus on 19 December, BelTA has learned.
Taking part in the event was Archbishop Metropolitan of Minsk and Mogilev Tadeusz Kondrusiewicz. He noted that it took 15 years to do the translation. Taking into account the fact that the Belarusian church language is in the stage of development and needs improvement, the translators needed to take a creative approach to the work in the first place.
According to Tadeusz Kondrusiewicz, as every language continues developing, the presented translation of the New Testament in Belarusian will be neither the first nor the last one. There are about 30 translations of the Holy Scripture in Belarusian that were done by Catholic and Orthodox believers, Protestants, religious and secular figures.
According to the Metropolitan, on 15 November the National Library played host to the presentation of the New Testament translated by Orthodox theologians from Classical Greek into modern Belarusian. “Today we need to think about translating the Old Testament so that our people could have the whole Holy Scripture in the native language,” he said.
According to the archbishop, it is time to think about an inter-Christian translation of the Bible as has been done in many countries. The celebration of 500 years of the Belarusian book printing can be considered a perfect period to do it, as the personality of Francysk Skaryna has always been viewed as a unifying power.
The translation of the biblical texts began in 2002 by the Section of the translation of liturgical texts and official documents of the Church of God's Worship Commission and Discipline of the Sacraments at the Catholic Bishops' Conference in Belarus. The section set a goal of creating an accurate translation of the contents of the biblical books in modern and communicative Belarusian, sticking to the accepted theological terminology. The translation was done from the newest critical publications of the New Testament - Novum Testamentum Graece (1993 and 2012), which serve Greek texts according to the oldest and best manuscripts.
The Roman Catholic New Testament in Belarusian has a supplement with geographical maps of the then-world, a biblical dictionary, and a chronological table of events related to the common history of mankind.
Speaking at the event was Doctor of Biblical Sciences Marina Pashuk. The event also featured the presentation of awards to those who worked on the translation.
The presentation was organized by the Catholic Bishops' Conference in Belarus and the National Library.
Photo by Oksana Manchuk
