Thus, in 1716, Peter commanded his royal court to have a Bible printed in Amsterdam, at his own expense. Each page was to contain a column of Russian text and a column of Dutch text. Just one year later, in 1717, the Christian Greek Scriptures, or “New Testament,” portion was ready.

By 1721 the Dutch section of a four-volume translation of the Hebrew Scriptures had also been printed. One column was left blank, to be filled in later with the Russian text. Peter turned the Bibles over to the “Holy Synod” of the Russian Orthodox Church—the supreme religious authority of the church—to finalize the printing and to manage distribution. However, the synod did not follow through.

Less than four years later, Peter was dead. What happened to his Bibles? The empty columns meant for the Russian text were never filled in. The Bibles were stacked in large piles in a basement, where they rotted—not a single undamaged copy could later be found! The synod’s decision was to “sell all that remained to the merchants.”

Translating Efforts Begin

In 1812, John Paterson, a member of the British and Foreign Bible Society, came to Russia. Paterson aroused the interest of the St. Petersburg intelligentsia in forming a Bible society. On December 6, 1812—the same year that the Russian army repelled the invading troops of Napoléon I—Czar Alexander I approved the charter for a Russian Bible society. In 1815 the czar commanded the chairman of the society, Prince Aleksandr Golitsyn, to suggest to the governing synod that “the Russians too should have the opportunity of reading the Word of God in their own Russian mother tongue.”

Commendably, approval was given to translate the Hebrew Scriptures into Russian directly from the original Hebrew. The ancient Greek Septuagint had been the basis for translations of the Hebrew Scriptures into Slavonic. Those who were to translate the Bible into Russian were told that the main principles of the translation were to be accuracy, clarity, and purity. What happened to these early efforts to provide the Bible in the Russian language?

A Deathblow to Bible Translation?

Conservative elements in both the church and the government soon became wary of foreign religious and political influence. Some church leaders further claimed that Slavonic—the language of liturgy—expressed the Bible’s message better than did Russian.

The Russian Bible Society was thus dissolved in 1826. Several thousand copies of translations produced by the Bible society were burned. As a result, the Bible took a backseat to ritual and tradition. Following the pattern set by the Roman Catholic Church, the synod ruled in 1836: “It is permissible for any devout layman to hear the Scriptures, but it is not permissible for anyone to read some parts of the Scriptures, especially the Old Testament, without guidance.” Bible translation had seemingly been dealt a deathblow.

The Work of Pavsky

In the meantime, Gerasim Pavsky, a professor of Hebrew, undertook the task of translating the Hebrew Scriptures into Russian. In 1821 he finished a translation of Psalms. The czar quickly approved it, and by January 1822 the book of Psalms had been released to the public. It met with immediate acceptance and had to be reprinted 12 times—totaling 100,000 copies!

Pavsky’s scholarly efforts won him the respect of many language scholars and theologians. He is described as a straightforward and honest man who stood above the intrigues that surrounded him. In spite of church opposition to the Russian Bible Society and the fact that some felt it represented foreign interests, Professor Pavsky continued to translate Bible verses into Russian at his lectures. His admiring students hand-copied his renderings and, in time, were able to compile his work. In 1839 they emboldened themselves to publish 150 copies at the academy press—without the permission of the censors.

Pavsky’s translation made a striking impression on readers, and the demand for it kept growing. But in 1841 an anonymous complaint was made to the synod regarding the “danger” of this translation, claiming that it strayed from Orthodox dogma. Two years later the synod issued a decree: “Confiscate all existing handwritten and lithographed copies of G. Pavsky’s translation of the Old Testament and destroy them.”

Makarios had already translated the Bible books of Isaiah and Job. However, the synod refused to grant him permission to translate the Hebrew Scriptures into Russian. In fact, Makarios was told to rid himself of the very thought of translating the Hebrew Scriptures into the Russian language. The synod issued a ruling, dated April 11, 1841, ordering Makarios “to serve a three-to-six-week penance at the home of a bishop in Tomsk so as to clean his conscience through prayer and genuflections.”

Makarios’ Bold Stand

From December 1841 through January 1842, Makarios fulfilled his penance. But once that was satisfied, he immediately began translating the rest of the Hebrew Scriptures. He had obtained a copy of Pavsky’s translation of the Hebrew Scriptures and used it to check his own renderings. Like Pavsky, he refused to obscure the divine name. In fact, the name Jehovah occurs more than 3,500 times in the Makarios translation!

Makarios sent copies of his work to sympathetic friends. Though a few handwritten copies went into circulation, the church continued to block the publishing of his work. Makarios made plans to promote his Bible abroad. On the eve of his departure, he fell ill and then died shortly thereafter, in the year 1847. His Bible translation was never published in his lifetime.

Eventually, the political and religious winds shifted. A new liberalism swept through the land, and in 1856 the synod once again approved the translation of the Bible into Russian. In this improved climate, the Makarios Bible was published in installments in the Orthodox Review between 1860 and 1867, under the title An Experiment of Translation Into the Russian Language.

Archbishop Filaret of Chernigov, a scholar of Russian religious literature, gave this appraisal of the Makarios Bible: “His translation is faithful to the Hebrew text, and the language of the translation is pure and befits the subject.”

However, the Makarios Bible was never released to the general public. In fact, it was all but forgotten. In 1876 the entire Bible, including both the Hebrew and the Greek Scriptures, was finally translated into Russian with the approval of the synod. This complete Bible is often called the synodal translation. Ironically, the Makarios translation, along with Pavsky’s, served as a primary source for this “official” Russian Orthodox Church translation. But the divine name was used in only a few of the places where it occurs in the Hebrew language.

After noting that it was not until some “120 years ago” that the Bible first appeared in the Russian language, this paper lamented: “For many years the church was opposed to the translation of holy books into an easy-to-read language. Having rejected several translations, the church finally agreed with one of them in 1876, and it came to be known as the synodal translation. However, it was not allowed into the churches. There, to this day, the only Bible that is recognized is in Slavonic.”