The New Testament, translated by Ioan Bălan

The New Testament, translated by Ioan Bălan (anastatic edition)

Any anastatic edition of a seminal work is, more than just a literary or commemorative event, a spiritual revival—a return to the forefront of cultural and collective memory of an enduring value. When the book embodies spiritual values shared by nearly all of humanity and by an entire nation or faith community such as the Catholic Church, the anastatic edition rises like a monument, celebrating not only the wisdom of the past world and its sages, but the spiritual present of those who love and fervently seek the truth and, potentially, the ineffable future—for many generations—of the deepest thoughts and the loftiest deeds of which man is capable. One such landmark is the translation of the New Testament of Our Lord Jesus Christ into a language accessible to all, by the Blessed Martyr and Bishop of Lugoj, Dr. Ioan Bălan (1880–1959).

First published in 1925 by Tipografia și Librăria Românească S.A., Oradea-Mare, with the blessing of the Romanian United Bishop of Oradea, another Blessed Martyr, Valeriu Traian Frențiu, while he was a metropolitan canon and rector of the Theological Academy in Blaj, the translation has since seen two further editions: the first, 13 years after the initial publication, in 1938, with a Foreword by the Metropolitan Archbishop of Alba Iulia and Făgăraș, Dr. Alexandru Nicolescu (Blaj, November 22, 1937), was a faithful reproduction of the 1925 edition; the second, published 70 years later, in 1995, at the request of His Eminence Cardinal Alexandru Todea, edited and proofread by Fr. Ioan Vasile Botiza, professor of biblical theology at the “St. John the Evangelist” Theological Institute in Cluj, and with the blessing of the Bishop of Oradea, Vasile Hossu, benefited from general improvements to the text of the translation and an update of the extensive explanatory notes and language. 

The translation did not go unnoticed internationally; indeed, in issue 145 of the 1927 volume of the journal of Byzantine studies Échos d’Orient, the renowned Orientalist and Assumptionist Sévérien Salaville published a bibliographical note (pp. 127–128) in which he praised the work and, in particular, the rich and competent exegetical notes, and offered suggestions for improving textual accuracy in accordance with the Greek text for future editions. 

However, due to the historical circumstances resulting from the arrest of the Greek Catholic bishops in 1948 and the persecution of the United Church through its outlawing by the communist regime, Bălan’s translation did not rise to prominence in Romanian culture or within the Church itself, for obvious reasons. This is reason enough to publish an anastatic edition of the translation, but there are many others—both historical and commemorative, as well as spiritual and cultural-scientific—without excluding those of a practical nature. Here are a few of them:

•    This year marks the 100th anniversary of the first publication of the translation and the 145th anniversary of Bishop Bălan’s birth. In the meantime, by God’s grace and through the vicissitudes of history, the Bishop of Lugoj is honored with the title of Blessed Martyr in the calendar of the Romanian Church United with Rome, Greek Catholic. It is a privilege to touch the relics or a garment sanctified by the martyr’s blood, but it is also an immense blessing to leaf through the pages washed by the sweat of his labor.

•    The translation is in beautiful, flowing Romanian, with gentle neologisms appropriate for a biblical text, and with the scent of an old church from archaisms suited only to a Gospel book. The exceptionally rich exegetical and explanatory notes are largely valid from a biblical perspective even today, and the critical apparatus facilitates access to the nuances sought and to niche theological-biblical details. It is both an intelligible and accessible text for the reader without theological training and a good foundation for more in-depth biblical studies.

•    The work of Blessed Ioan Bălan of Lugoj is not confined to the individual sphere of an exceptional theological tradition, but is deeply rooted in the broader tradition of Romanian ecclesiastical literature and in the intellectual tradition of the Blaj Church: it draws upon the New Testament text from Samuil Micu’s Blaj Bible (1795), incorporating extensive work to correct and align it with the Greek text, and to make it accessible to readers through the use of contemporary Romanian, not to mention the abundance of explanations and the rich critical apparatus. For this reason, the translation may become, after further refinement, the representative version in Romanian culture and the canonical text of the New Testament for the Romanian Church United with Rome, Greek Catholic, and, why not, the good news from the sacred pages of its Gospels.

‒ Fr. Gabriel Marian Marincaș