Kirikukeele toimetamispõhimõtetest enne täispiibli ilmumist
On the Editorial Principles of Estonian Church Books before the Publication of the Full Bible

Summary/Abstract: During the 1720s–1730s all books in the Estonian language were issued by the same group of Pietist pastors. In the forewords to those (ecclesiastical) books they declared their linguistic ideals to be the authenticity of the vernacular used, normativity and clarity. The present article examines how they followed those principles when thoroughly revising the first New Testament in North Estonian (1715) for its second edition (1729), which later appeared with only minor alterations in the first full Bible (1739). A study of the lexical changes made shows that the later edition of the NT (1739) indeed corresponds to those ideals more than the first (1715). For example, the editors have 1) substituted some German loans by Estonian words (the vernacular principle), 2) been more consistent in translating Greek terms (the normativity principle), and 3) replaced some simple verbs with more transparent phrasal verbs (the clarity principle). In the instances the principles contradicted, no overall preference of one ideal over another could be revealed.

• Details
• Contents