The Unity of the Brethren Completes the Kralice Bible

Between 1577 and 1593, scholars of the Unity of the Brethren completed the Bible of Kralice, the first Czech translation of the whole Bible from its original Hebrew and Greek text, printed in the Unity's own printshop at Kralice in southern Moravia, more than a century after the Unity itself formed in Bohemia in 1457, already recorded here. Jan Blahoslav, bishop of the Unity from 1557 until his death in 1571, had already translated the New Testament from Greek in 1564; work on the Old Testament began in 1577, and five volumes were published between 1579 and 1588 before Blahoslav's New Testament translation completed the six volume first edition in 1593. Zacharias Solin oversaw the printing, and Jan von Zerotin, the local lord at Kralice, financed the project; the finished volumes carried historical introductions and extensive interpretive notes in the margins, meant to serve Brethren pastors and congregations as a theological library in print. A single volume edition without the notes followed in 1596, and the revised third edition of 1613 became the standard Czech Bible text for centuries, shaping the Czech language much as Martin Luther's translation shaped German, more than a quarter century before the Battle of White Mountain drove the Brethren underground in 1620, already recorded here.