Folia Theologica 9. (1998)

György Benyik: Hungarian Bible Translation

HUNGARIAN BIBLE TRANSLATIONS

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lemic held at Nagyvárad in 1569 he participated as the deputy of Anti- Trinitarian Ferenc Dávid. He was not only a successful writer and translator, but one third of the printed literature in 16th century Hungary came out*of his printing house (more than 200 books mostly written in Hungarian). Because he used Hungarian spelling consistently, his books excercised greater influence on the development of the Hungarian language, than writers of grammar books. His own works were published in Latin, German and Hungarian. Besides writing books on historical subjects and a cathechismus, he translated and published the Bible35 in parts. The Five Books of Moses were published first in 1551 at Kolozsvár. He translated these together with Gergely Vízaknai, István Ozorai and his brother-in-law, István Gyulai. The Book of Joshua and the Historical Books was published in 1565 and The Rest of Historical Books in 1552, both in Kolozsvár. Although many scholars say that the New Testament translation was Heltai’s own work,36 most probably it was made with the help of three other translators: Lukács Egri, István Gyulai and Lajos Szegedi.37 With this version Heltai wanted to protest against Sylvester’s translation, and because he did not know Hungarian properly, he asked György Hoffgreff to check his own translation. It is here where, the standardization of Hungarian spelling had its beginning. However valuable this work was, it excercised little influence, most probably because during the course of translation Heltai changed his religious affiliation three times. For basic source material he did not use either the Vulgate, or Luther’s version or Erasmus’ Revised Bible. An Old Testament was translated from Hebrew, but it is hard to decide whose work the final version was. According to István Nemeskürthy it was translated by István Gyulai. Heltai organised a workshop for translators and when problematic passages arose they checked their sources and compared them. In the Preface he states the followings: ,,we worked on the Hebrew Bible while we had a common Latin Bible in front of our eyes and other Latin Bibles and also Bibles in other languages. ” Heltai received negative criticism, not so much for his work, but for his frequent changes of creed.

35 BALLAGI, Mór. Tanulmányok a Bibliafordítások körül. Budapest, 1864.

36 HELTAI, Gáspár. Újtestamentum. Kolozsvár, 1561.

37 He was the first to criticise the Sylvester New Testament Version in 1547. TÓCSÁNYI, Zoltán. Heltai Gáspár Új testamentum-fordításáról. MKSz, 1917.