20 euros 2017 Lithuania – Francysk Skaryna’s Ruthenian Bible (without box)

Description

The year 2017 marks an important celebration for Lithuania and its neighbouring countries, namely, Belarus, the Czech Republic, Poland, Russia and Ukraine – the 500th anniversary of Francysk Skaryna’s Ruthenian Bible printed in Prague. The publication brought Skaryna eternal fame as the first Eastern Slav publisher, translator, educator and humanist, earning his homeland – the Grand Duchy of Lithuania – a place among the then rather small group of European countries that had a printed Bible.

Skaryna’s Ruthenian Bible is a remarkable book of special importance. Since ancient times the Holy Bible, the fundamental text of the Christian culture, had been translated into the spoken languages of many European nations. In the 4th c., it was translated into the Gothic language by Bishop Wulfila. In the 9th c., Saints Cyril and Methodius translated the Bible into the Slavonic language. In the middle of the 11th c., the Genesis and Exodus books were translated into Old English; in 1382 the Bible in its entirety was translated into Middle English by John Wycli e. The Holy Bible was translated into the Castillian (Spanish) and French languages in the 13th c. In the 14th c., it was translated into Czech,
Dutch and Norwegian (part of the Old Testament), in the 15th c. – into Danish and Polish. In 1471, a Camaldolese monk Niccolo Malermi translated the Bible into the Italian language. In this collection of translations, Skaryna’s Ruthenian Bible takes a highly respectable place. It is one of the first Holy Bible texts rendered in local rather than
the original biblical (Hebrew, Ancient Greek and Latin) languages. After its emergence and, in a way, due to its emergence, three other translations were soon prepared in Lithuania and Prussia: two Polish translations (one of which was printed in Brest-Litovsk in 1563, another – in Nesvizh in 1572) and one Lithuanian translation (prepared by Jonas Bretkūnas in 1579– 1590, although unprinted).