Bogoslovska smotra, Vol. 95 No. 2, 2025.
Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.53745/bs.95.2.8
Language Varieties and Croatian Biblical Texts
Zrinka Jelaska
; Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia
Abstract
The paper analyses the relationship between the idiomatic varieties of language and Croatian biblical texts in order to demonstrate their scope. It provides a concise overview of the diversity of Croatian idioms (lects) used to compose Croatian biblical texts. Starting from a literal written translation of the original, the varieties spread in various directions, extending even to the texts that relate to the Bible through the general meaning and merely few words. They contain dynamic translations, retellings, rephrasing or belong to media such as films, songs, poems, and pictures. The paper discusses these various types of texts determined by time, space, society, style, situation, means and value that give its recipients a sense of the Bible. An analysis of different Croatian texts bearing the title of the Bible or its parts highlights the word choices in some of them that give rise to diverse interpretations of the same passages from the original. (Luke 1:2 6–38, Luke 1: 39–45).
Keywords
Croatian language; Bible; Croatian translations of the Bible; biblical texts; linguistic varieties
Hrčak ID:
335022
URI
Publication date:
5.9.2025.
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