Ostrog Bible

The Ostrog Bible (Ukrainian: Острозька Біблія, romanized: Ostroz’ka Bibliia; Russian: Острожская Библия, romanized: Ostrozhskaya Bibliya) was the first complete printed edition of the Bible in Church Slavonic,[1] published in Ostrog (now Ostroh, Ukraine) in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth by the printer Ivan Fyodorov in 1581 with the assistance of Konstantin Ostrogski.

[2] The Ostrog Bible was translated not from the (Hebrew) Masoretic text, but from the (Greek) Septuagint.

The Ostrog Bible is a monumental publication of 1,256 pages, lavishly decorated with headpieces and initials, which were prepared especially for it.

The Bodleian Library at Oxford University has a copy, and others were owned by King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden and Cardinal Barberini, among many others.

[1] The significance of the Ostrog Bible was enormous for Orthodox education, which had to resist strong Catholic pressure in Ukraine and Belarus.