Bible translations into Czech

The Czech literature of the Middle Ages is very rich in translations of Biblical books, made from the Vulgate.

It is certain that Jan Hus had the Bible in Bohemian before him as a whole and he and his successors undertook a revision of the text according to the Vulgate.

Altogether different was the translation made by Jan Blahoslav from the original Greek (1564, 1568).

This excellent translation was issued in smaller size in 1596, and again in folio in 1613 (reprinted at Halle in 1722, 1745, 1766; Pressburg, 1787; Berlin, 1807).

After some fruitless beginnings the work was entrusted to certain Jesuits, who took the Venice edition of 1506 as the basis, but relied greatly, especially for the Old Testament, on the Brethren's Bible.

Between 1677 and 1715 the so-called St. Wenceslaus Bible was published at the expense of a society founded in honor of the saint.

Many other translations followed this Bible of Dresden, and from the linguistic point of view they can be divided in four different redactions.

[2] Historian Viktor Kubík has analyzed the illumination of the Bible Padeřova in a recent work of his.

The first translation from the original languages into Czech was the Bible of Kralice, first published in years 1579–1593.