GOTHIC, VERSION OF THE BIBLE. - The Visigoths (v. GOTI) in their many raids on Roman territory also took Catholic priests prisoner, from whom they came to know Christianity. By the 3rd century many Visigoths were already Christians, and a Gothic metropolitan subscribed the decrees of the Council of Nicaea (a. 325).
In one of their raids in Asia Minor the Visigoths also took Cappadocian women prisoner, and from one of them, married to a Goth, descends the famous bishop Ulfilas, translator of the Bible into the Gothic language. Ulfilas, b. probably in the Catholic religion, but, consecrated bishop in 341 by Eusebius of Nicomedia, under his influence became an Arian and worked for the conversion of his people to Christianity under the form of Arianism. He soon realized that a translation of the Bible into the Gothic language was necessary, and for this purpose he invented the Gothic alphabet, whose letters are reproduced in vol. I of the London Polyglot (1657), Prolegomena II, p. 13, n. 11.
Ulfilas translated the entire New Testament, except the Epistle to the Hebrews. Whether he also translated the Old Testament is still uncertain. For of the latter only Neh. 5-7 survives, and it is not certain that these fragments were translated by Ulfilas, and that from them one can conclude to a translation of the entire Old Testament.
The translation of the New Testament is made from the Greek text, skillfully, clearly and very faithfully, except the passage Phil. 2, 6, translated in an Arian sense. The Greek original is discernible especially in the compound forms of proper names. Several terms of pagan origin are transferred to the new Christian ideas, while other specifically religious terms were retained in Greek form, e.g., aggilus, aiklesjo, aipiscaupus, etc.
The Gothic translation is today preserved: 1) in the Codex argenteus of the University Library of Uppsala, which is of Italic origin (5th or 6th century), and originally contained the 4 Gospels in the following order: Matthew, John, Luke, Mark; of the 300 leaves only 187 remain today. In the margin are found glosses in a later hand, containing variant readings in the Gothic language (Codex Argenteus Upsaliensis iussu senatus Universitatis Upsaliensis phototypice editus, Uppsala [1927], with an ample critical introduction by A. Grape and O. v. Friesen and an appendix by H. Andersson). 2) In the Codex Carolinus of Wolfenbüttel are fragments of the Epistle to the Romans. 3) In 1817 Angelo Mai found in the Ambrosian Library 5 palimpsests: the Codex Ambros. A contains fragments of the Letters of St. Paul, to which are to be added 4 leaves found in 1866 by Reifferscheidt at Turin (Codex Taurinensis); the Codex Ambros. B contains the II Epistle to the Corinthians and fragments of other letters; the Codex Ambros. C fragments of Mt. 25-27, and the Codex Ambros. D fragments of Neh. 5-7. 4) In a codex of Vienna (Salzburg-"Wiener Alkalinhandschrift") are found very few fragments of a Gothic translation, and in a parchment leaf of the University Library of Giessen fragments of Lk. 23-24 in the Gothic and Latin languages.
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