Presentation of the first edition of the Georgian translation of the Bible was held
A presentation of the Bible (Old Testament) published by the Korneli Kekelidze Georgian National Centre of Manuscripts was held at the Patriarchate of Georgia. The first edition of the Georgian translations of the Bible (Old Testament) was printed with the support of the Ministry of Education and Science of Georgia and the President's Reserve Fund of Georgia.
The first complete edition of critically established texts includes the complete material of the "Old Testament" books preserved in Georgian manuscripts of the V-XVIII centuries and represents the result of nearly 60 years of work by the employees of the National Centre of Manuscripts.
Georgian figures began working on the existence of the complete text of the Bible as early as the XVIII century: in 1709, in Tbilisi, at the printing house of Vakhtang VI, the texts of the Psalms and the New Testament were printed, and in 1710-1711 the books of the Prophets, which were based solely on the manuscript of the Gelati Bible (A 1108). The remaining parts of the Bible remained unpublished due to the grave political situation created in the country. The most complete collection of the Bible in printed form is the so-called Bakar Bible printed in Moscow in 1743 at the expense of King Bakar.
In the 1960s of the XX century, a group of researchers from the Institute of Manuscripts, led by Ilia Abuladze, prepared the complete critical text of the Bible for publication, which takes into account the data of all existing manuscripts preserved both in Georgia and abroad (Mount Sinai, Jerusalem, Athos, etc.). This group described all manuscripts and fragments containing biblical books (a total of 32 units: 20 manuscripts and the rest fragments). This work required the labor of several generations. In the 1980s and early 1990s of the XX century, part of the Old Testament texts was published in separate sections, but the publication of the complete, unified text was not achieved. This year, as a result of many years of tireless labor, the critical text of the Bible has been printed, which is a most significant event for the country. The total volume of the text is 2,890 pages.
