Hungarian Church Press, 1951 (3. évfolyam, 10. szám)

1951-06-01 / 10. szám

* Hungarian Church Press

.n.

' *S' ■

PREFACE TO THE GENESIS EDITION OP THE NEW HUNGARIAN

BIBLE REVISION

The first fruit of revise the text of the werk of the Hungarian translation of the Bible is leaving press, in these days: i»e, a new text of the Book of Genesis,, In the following,we reprint the Preface of this recent publication: written by Rev»DrgL,M1.Pdko^dys,ProfOof Debrecen Theol„Academy

This booklet containing the Genesis is the first instalment of the work of Bible revision that has been undertaken by the Hungarian Evangelical Christians, Both the churches that gave commission tc this work and the scholars engaged in the work of revision rogar : their work and its fruit as the sign of God's merciful providence Who, after the well-deserved judgment on Kis church, has opened new ways and opportunities; Who, in a world of terrxfic tensions, and in a land that is engaged in building up socialism,has so wonderfully cared for the 'renewal of the Hungarian apparel of His eternal Word as it was never yet the experience of the believers in the entire history of Hungarian Evangelical Christendom,, Since a detailed English account of this work of revision was already published /The New Revision of the Hungarian Bible in the Bulletin of the United Bible Societies, No* 6, 1951, Second Quarter, ppallcby Piof. D„L=M0 Pákozdy/, this short Preface may well confine itself to the most important aspects of the work of revision.

This work is the second thoi’oughgoing revision of the Hungarian people’s Bible, the 1590 translation of Caspar Karolj, the so-called "Vizsoly Bible”, named after the village where RarőYí lived as pastor of the local parish and Senior of a presbytery. No previous or later translations - full or partial - have ever challenged the unique position of the Károli Translation,This is the Bible of the Hungarian people in the same sense as Luther’s translation has been pile Bible of the German people« Like Luther’s work, the Hungarian translation has also exerted a considerable influence on the development of Hungarian literature, yet Károli5a translation has the advantage of presenting no serious difficulties of understanding to the modern reader. Many of the "quiet in the land" are still reading the unrevised edition, that is, an edition published prior to the first and thorough revision in 1908,

Yet this revised version of 1908 had already so many alterations in it that some scholars were of the opinion that the reverential under-title "Translated into the Hungarian Language by Caspar Károli Revised Edition, Compared with the Original Text" wa3 no longer justified, This revision, in the first place, could net successfully tackle the problem posed by obsolete renderings, so that it had,even at the time of its publication, a disturbing effect on modern readers.,

As to the application of Biblical scholarship, there was an unevenness in the various books of the Bible« It took but a few years that responsible church leaders began to realize it3 deficiencies« The British and Foreign Bible Society which, through its Budapest Agency, sinoe the middle of the 19th century, in this period of inner weakness of Hungarian Protestantism, had owned the copyright of the Hungarian Bfble and cared, by great sacrifices, for its spreading, made plans, after World War I, in the beginning of the thirties, to set anew the Hungarian ^ible, since the plates of the most used edition had been worn out. To improve on the text, the Bible Society used the opportunity to initiate a new i-evision, by giving commission to two outstanding scholars, Pastor Alexander Czeglédy of Cegléd, former Professor of Theology, and the Lutheran Bishop Dr«Alexander