Bible translations (Italian)
From Textus Receptus
The first printed translation of the Bible into Italian was the Malermi Bible in 1471. Since this year many other translation followed.
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Ancient translations
The first printed translation of the Bible into Italian was the Malermi Bible in 1471 from the Latin version Vulgate. Other ancient Catholic translations in Italian were made by the Domenican Fra Zaccaria of Florence in 1542 (only the New Testament) and by Santi Marmochino in 1543 (complete Bible).[1]
Protestant translations were made by Antonio Brucioli in 1530, by Massimo Teofilo in 1552 and by Giovanni Diodati in 1607 who translated the Bible from Latin and Jewish documents; Diodati's version is the reference version for the Italian Protestantism. This edition was revised in 1641, 1712, 1744, 1819, and 1821. A revised edition in current Italian, named Nuova Diodati, was published in 1991.
The most used Catholic Bible translation in Italian before the 1971 CEI edition was the one of Archbishop Antonio Martini. It was published between 1769-1771 (New Testament) and 1776-1781 (Old Testament), and it was formally approved by the papacy. It consists of parallel columns of Latin Vulgate and Italian with long and detailed notes based mainly on the Church Fathers writings. The translation is based on the Vulgate checked with the original Greek and Hebrew texts (Martini was helped for the Old Testament by a rabbi). It includes for each book also a list of the main textual variants. With the 1870 edition, the notes were substituted with shorter ones.[]
In 1858-60 the Jewish Samuel David Luzzatto translated part of the Old Testament in Italian.
20th-century translations
The main translations of the 20th-century are:
- la Riveduta of 1924 by the Waldesan Giovanni Luzzi, based on the Westcott-Hort text, revised in 1994 with the title Nuova riveduta;
- La Bibbia of Eusebio Tintori, 1931;
- La Sacra Bibbia edited by Giuseppe Ricciotti, 1955;
- La Sacra Bibbia edited by Pontifical Biblical Institute, 9 volumes, 1958;
- La Bibbia, Edizione Paoline, [[1958 AD|1958] (1968);
- La Bibbia of Jesuit Alberto Vaccari, 1958;
- La Bibbia edited by Fulvio Nardoni, 1960;
- Collana La Sacra Bibbia, Marietti 1947-1960, edited by Salvatore Garofalo, in many volumes;
- Traduzione del Nuovo Mondo delle Sacre Scritture edited by the Jehovah's Witnesses and based mainly on the English New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures, 1967 and revised in 1981;
- La Bibbia Concordata, 1968 Mondadori, an Interfaith edition edited by a group of Catholic, Jewish, Protestant and Orthodox scholars.
- La Sacra Bibbia edited by Enrico Galbiati, Angelo Penna and Piero Rossano. Utet 1963, 1964, 1973.
- Bibbia TILC, an Interconfessional edition edited by Catholic and Protestant scholars in 1985;
- Nuovissima versione edited by Edizione Paoline in 1987;
The Bible of CEI (Conferenza Episcopale Italiana) is the official version of the Italian Catholic Church. It was first printed in 1971 (editio princeps) as the work of only three translators in order to keep the text more consistent, and revised in 1974 (editio minor). A totally new version has been published in 2008, after a revision of both the Testaments started in 1997, considering newly discovered documents for the New Testament.
Comparison
| Translation | John (Giovanni) 3:16 |
|---|---|
| Diodati (1607) | Percioché Iddio ha tanto amato il mondo, che ha dato il suo unigenito Figliuolo, accioché chiunque crede in lui, non perisca, ma habbia vita eterna. |
| Martini (1771) | Imperocché Dio ha talmente amato il mondo, che ha dato il Figliuolo suo unigenito, affinché chiunque in lui crede, non perisca; ma abbia la vita eterna |
| CEI (2008) | Dio infatti ha tanto amato il mondo da dare il Figlio unigenito, perché chiunque crede in lui non vada perduto, ma abbia la vita eterna |
