Károli Biblia

The Károli Biblia, published in 1590, is the first complete translation of the Scriptures into the Hungarian language. It was translated by Károli Gáspár (c. 1529-1591), Reformed pastor and superintendent of the Hungarian Reformed Church, with the collaboration of other Protestant scholars. The first edition was printed in Vizsoly, for which reason it is also known as the Vizsoly Bible.

The translation methodology followed the principles of the Reformation: direct translation from the Hebrew and Greek texts, with consultation of the Vulgate, the Septuagint, and the European Protestant translations of the time, especially Luther's Bible and the Vulgate. Károli sought an elevated yet accessible literary Hungarian capable of serving both preaching and private reading. The result was a text that became a benchmark of cultivated Hungarian prose and profoundly influenced the later development of the written language.

For Hungarian Protestant culture, the Károli Biblia occupies a position equivalent to that of the King James Version among Anglophones or Luther's Bible among Germans. It was the Bible of the Hungarian Reformed Church for more than four centuries, survived the Counter-Reformation, Austrian domination, and the communist period, and remains in active use among Reformed, Baptists, Pentecostals, and other Hungarian Protestants. Its language has shaped hymns, literature, oratory, and national cultural identity.

The work is in the public domain worldwide due to its age. Several linguistic revisions have been published over the centuries — notably the 1908 edition — preserving the base text while updating orthography and vocabulary. The original text and its classical revisions remain freely available.