How to publish Old Czech Bible?

Mgr. Andrea Svobodová, Ph.D. (Oddělení vývoje jazyka (Department of Language Development), Ústav pro jazyk český AV ČR, v. v. i. (Czech Language Institute, Czech Academy of Sciences)

Translations of the Bible – at least some of its parts – belong to the earliest Old Czech texts at all, the Psalter and the Gospel lections were translated from the very beginning of the 14th century. The complete Bible was translated into Czech for the first time in the 1350s, and by 1500 there were a total of 4 versions of the translation, the so-called redactions, and several solitary versions. Until today about a hundred of manuscripts and an equal number of manuscript fragments, and several printed editions have been survived. And the large number of preserved sources raises the question of how to make them most effectively accessible, since translations of the biblical text provide rich material for linguistic research. Publishing complete redactions (either in book form or electronically) seems to be the least effective, as it is a long-distance run. Therefore, grant projects focusing on a particular biblical book or group of books provide a solution, and the ideal approach seems to be the creation of digital editions (transcripts) based on the selected sources and their progressive publication in a database that also allows their comparison.

The paper will introduce such a database: Diabible (https://diabible.ujc.cas.cz), which is being created since 2018 in the Department of Language Development of the Czech Language Institute and which so far contains the Gospels of Matthew and of Mark and the Song of Songs. By the end of the year the transcripts of the Psalter will be available, which are the by-product of the project supported by the Czech Science Foundation The First Printed Old Czech Psalter (a philological analysis and critical edition). I will therefore also touch upon the issue of the pros/cons of the traditional and modern approach to the editing of Old Czech biblical texts.