The forerunners of the Hungarian Bible translation

Bible portions in Hungarian in the Middle Ages
Though the Hungarians met Christian tradesmen and missionaries when wandering in the 5th century, the use of Scripture and the translation of it to be used in services only started during the reign of St. Stephen 1st. The common people were expected "to sit quietly and listen attentively to the lessons read from the Bible" and we assume that these readings were in Hungarian, otherwise the unlearned would not have understood and their listening would have been pointless.
The Esztergom Synod in 1114 makes mention of the fact that " in every large congregation the Gospel, letters and Christian doctrines are explained to the people on Sundays". The famous evidence of such remains of old Hungarian translations of some portions of Scripture are the Funeral Oration (12th c.) and the Old Hungarian Lament of Mary (13th c.)

The Hussite Bible and its influence
After a humble beginning, the next time when there was a greater interest in the Bible to be available in the native tongue was created by the pre-Reformation movements, marked by the name of John Huss in the beginning of the 15th century. In 1436 two brothers, Thomas and Bálint started to translate books of the Bible that were of greater interest to them, and completed their work in 1439 in Moldva, where they were safe from Papal Inquisition.

Jordányszky Codex
The Codex is to be found in the library of Esztergom Basilica. It was written 75 years later than the Hussite translation of the Bible by a Roman Catholic scholar whose name remains unknown. It contains all the books of the New Testament Scripture except the Epistles of the apostle Paul, and its Old Testament has the first seven books of the canon (with the Book of Judges included). The translator wrote that, "one needed to have these for the salvation of the soul". Reformation teaching rapidly swept through the country changing the attitude of the Hungarians to the Bible, thus to the whole question of the translation of the whole Bible. Among other attempts the Érdi Codex (1526) was written to prepare the Hungarian Catholic to fight back the "apostate teaching" of the Reformation.

Bible translations of the Reformation Era

Benedek Komjáthy translated the epistles of St. Paul (1533).
Gábor Pesti translated the New Testament (1536) by which, in fact, he only meant the four gospels.
Both translators were heavily influenced by humanistic ideas best represented by Erasmus. Komjáthy gives Erasmus's commentary in Hungarian alongside its translation of the Pauline epistles.

John Sylsester could call his translation the fist full Hungarian New Testament (1534).
Gáspár Heltai the unresting pastor who first became a Lutheran minister then a Reformed pastor, but later decided to be a Unitarian, called together a group of scholars and learned men and together they carefully examined the existing translations and produced an almost complete translation of the New Testament in Hungarian (1551-1556). Though born with German as his mother tongue, Heltai wrote Hungarian with such eloquence and clarity that his spelling remained authoritative for many years to come in Protestant Bible translations.
Péter Méliusz Juhász the giant figure of the Protestant Reformation in Hungary was an excellent theologian, keen apologete, determined bishop and organising person in the church. At the same time he was a fruitful writer and more than forty of his works had been published among which there was one remarkable: the first full translation of the New Testament in Hungarian in 1567.

The Protestant New Translation

Sándor Czeglédi was engaged in translating the Bible into Hungarian during the Second World War. In 1947 the British and Foreign Bible Society was already thinking about a new revision of the Károli Bible. It seemed plausible to use as one of the starting points the recently completed work of the Ceglédy-translation alongside the Károli Bible. The radical changes in the political situation made the functioning of a British missionary society impossible in Hungary. Thus the right and obligation of the edition and distribution of the Hungarian Bible had to be overtaken by the greatest Protestant church in the country, the Reformed Church in Hungary. The task was performed in an ecumenical spirit. In 1949, at the initiative of the Reformed Church, the Hungarian Bible Council was founded with the participation of six Protestant churches and the Hungarian Orthodox Church. The Hungarian Bible Council also dealt with the question of a new revision of the Károli-text, but finally it decided to make an entirely new translation of the Hebrew and Greek originals and to continue publishing the unchanged edition of the Károli Bible too. The new Hungarian Bible translation was published, after a work of 20 years, by the Christmas of 1975, then, as the result of a work of some eight years, the revision of this new translation could also be printed. This was published in 1990 to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the Vizsoly Bible, and it was presented to the public at an ecumenical festivity in Debrecen on 31st October 1990.

Special Bible editions

Study Bible
Printed in 1996, the Hungarian Bible Society produced a Bible with notes adopting the popular and reliable comments of the German Stuttgarter Erklärungsbibel based on the text of the New Protestant Translation.

Illustrated Bible
The Hungarian Bible Council (as formerly called) published an illustrated New testament with many colourful illustrations and it has seen many reprints. The same was re-published in 2000 in the care of the successor Bible Society with a completely new set of illustrations and a short summary of practical comments.

Commentaries - Lexicons - Maps and Atlases
There are many types of commentaries that are available from the Bible Society.
The John Calvin Publishing House printed a two-volume Lexicon in 1995 and also in 2000 called "Bibliai Keresztyén Lexikon" (ed. Dr. Tibor Bartha) which provides an immense help for the learner.
A Bible Atlas edited by Dr. Kálmán Tóth and Dr. Klára Semsey also included sections of historical introduction and was published in 1984. Many good Maps and Atlases are available now which are often translations of the English or German publications.

Bible in non-print form


The whole new Testament, the Psalms and the books of the prophets are all available in audio. The Bible text can now also be purchased on a CD-ROM or read on the internet.

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The publishing of the KÁROLI BIBLE in the 19th-20th c.

It is without doubt that since the Vizsoly Bible (Károli translation) has come out the sacrificial work of many people continually made it possible for the Hungarians to read the Word of God in their mother tongue in an up to date language. Then for 150 years the British and Foreign Bible Society continued to carry this responsibility. Between 1832 and 1940 BFBS published and distributed 1 627172 copies of the Károli Bible. After World War II in the midst of many difficulties and following the expulsion of the BFBS, the Protestant churches in Hungary could gradually take on the work of translation, publication and distribution of the Hungarian Bible together with that of the careful maintaining of its text. Between 1949 and 2006 1 502 000 copies of the Károli Bible were published and distributed by the Hungarian Bible Council (since 1992 known as the Hungarian Bible Society) Today we can say that the Bible Society with its 12 member churches without outside aid, from her own resources but not without God's abundant grace is able to carry on this ministry. Since 1975 we were able to publish and distribute 523 000 copies of the Protestant New Translation Bible.