Bible translations into Macedonian

From Textus Receptus

The history of Bible translations into Macedonian is connected in its early years with the history of Bible translations into Bulgarian. In 1852, in Salonica, the cleric Pavel Bozhigrobski printed a bilingual manuscript. It contains a Greek evangeliarium and its translation to Solun-Voden dialect from today Slavic dialects of Greece, both written in Greek letters. The texts represent the vernacular, not church language.

This translation is the oldest known text of greater scope, that directly reflects the living dialects of Aegean Macedonia of that period. Bulgarian academician Jordan Ivanov, who found the title page of the gospel in 1907, described it as written in Bulgarian dialect.^[1] On the title page is written "Typed in Bulgarian language"^[2] even the author himself was known later as Bulgarian Exarchate's worker.^[3]

The label "Bulgarian language" for various Macedonian dialects can be seen from early vernacular texts such as the four-language dictionary of Daniel Mоscopolites, the early works of Kiril Peichinovich and Yoakim Karchovski and such vernacular gospels written in the Greek alphabet. These written works influenced by or completely written in the local Slavic vernacular were registered in Macedonia in the 18th and beginning of the 19th century and their authors referred to their language as Bulgarian.^[4] It is also considered by researchers from the University of Helsinki to be the oldest known Gospel translation in what would later be known as Macedonian language.

Until the winter of 2003-04 it was believed that both the manuscript and the printed text were destroyed. Only the front page was preserved and published in the book Bulgarian antiquities in Macedonia, Jordan Ivanov, 1931, p. 182., among others. Then a group of researchers from the University of Helsinki found the original manuscript of the translation of the Alexandrian Patriarch, under the reference: Bibl.Patr.Alex. 268. Another example is the Kulakian gospel from 1863, which represents translation from Greek evangeliarium to Solun-Voden dialect and was written by hand with Greek letters from Еvstati Kipriadi in the town of Chalastra. On the title page is also inscription "Written in Bulgarian language".^[5][6]