Gothic Bible

The Gothic Bible is Bishop Wulfila's fourth century translation of the Christian Bible into the Gothic language, the earliest substantial translation of scripture into any Germanic tongue. Wulfila devised the Gothic alphabet for the purpose, adapting Greek uncial letters with some Latin and Runic additions, and rendered most of the Bible from Greek into Gothic; a later tradition holds that he omitted the Books of Kings for fear of encouraging the already warlike Goths further. Only fragments survive today, chiefly in the sixth century Codex Argenteus, a purple dyed manuscript written in silver and gold ink for the Ostrogothic court in Ravenna. It remains the primary surviving evidence for the Gothic language, and by extension for the reconstruction of the whole Germanic language family, since the rest of East Germanic is otherwise lost entirely.