La Sankta Biblio (Esperanto)

The La Sankta Biblio, published in its complete form in 1926, is the official translation of the Scriptures into Esperanto, the planned language created by L.L. Zamenhof in 1887. Notably, Zamenhof himself, a Polish ophthalmologist of Jewish origin, translated the Old Testament directly from Hebrew, a work he considered one of the most important cultural endeavors of his life and of the nascent Esperantist movement.

The translation methodology combined Zamenhof's work on the Old Testament — completed before his death in 1917 — with the translation of the New Testament by a British committee of Protestant scholars working from the Greek. After a careful process of revision and stylistic harmonization conducted by the British and Foreign Bible Society and the National Bible Society of Scotland, the complete Esperanto Bible was published in London in 1926. The Esperanto employed is elegant, faithful to the spirit of Zamenhof's language, and has become a model of the sacred literary style of the Esperantist community.

For the Esperantist movement, La Sankta Biblio was a cultural achievement and a demonstration of the planned language's capacity to serve texts of profound literary, theological, and poetic complexity. It is widely used at international Christian Esperantist gatherings, in religious communities that have adopted the language, and as a comparative study resource. Its influence on religious vocabulary in Esperanto is definitive and enduring.

The text is in the public domain worldwide, consistent with the open and universalist ideal of the Esperantist movement itself. It may be freely reproduced, distributed, translated into other languages, and used in any context, remaining easily accessible on digital platforms and in printed editions.