The 330th anniversary of the printing of the Bible in the Romanian language was celebrated by a communications session staged by the National Library in partnership with the Institute of History of the Academy of Sciences of Moldova.
Contacted by IPN, National Library director Elena Pintilei said the publication of the Bible in Romanian contributed to maintaining and continuously developing the correct Romanian language. The Bible in the 1580s was in the Slavic language, while the other Bibles that were printed later were based on a Romanian Bible of 1688, which was a reproduction of the issue of 1580.
“These books were kept with great care by the scholars of that time. The fact that the services were held in the Romanian language was a factor that united the Romanian people, especially in the Bessarabian area,” stated Elena Pintilei.
In connection with the anniversary, the National Library mounted an exhibition of bibles at the Book Museum. Among the exhibits is the Bible of 1580 in the old Slavic language whose copies remained few in number in the world. There was also displayed the reproduced Bible of 1688 in Romanian that became part of the National Library’s collection owing to a donation, the original being kept in Bucharest, and the original of the Bible of 1819 in Romanian, which was printed in St. Petersburg during the time of Metropolitan Bishop Gavriil Bănulescu-Bodoni.
