Brest Bible

The Brest Bible was the first major Protestant Polish Bible to be translated from the original languages, and it remains a landmark in the history of vernacular Scripture in Poland. Published in 1563 at Brest-Litovsk under the patronage of Prince Mikołaj Radziwiłł, from which it also takes the name Radziwiłł Bible, it was a fresh translation encompassing the complete Protestant Bible, prepared from Hebrew and Greek. Its base text was drawn from the original-language texts together with the fruits of Reformation scholarship, and its guiding approach may be characterized as humanist Reformed. The work is noted for its literary quality and for its Reformed sponsorship, and it circulated among the Polish-speaking Reformed congregations of the sixteenth century, later giving way to the Gdańsk Bible as the standard Protestant version in Polish. It belongs to the wider European movement of Reformation-era translation from the original tongues.