GOTICA, VERSIONE DELLA BIBBIA. — The Visigoths (v. GOTI), during their numerous raids in Roman territory, also took Catholic priests prisoner, from whom they learned about Christianity. Already in the third century many Visigoths were Christians, and a Gothic metropolitan subscribed to the decrees of the Council of Nicaea (A.D. 325).
During one of their raids in Asia Minor, the Visigoths also took Cappadocian women prisoner; from one of them, who was married to a Goth, descended the famous bishop Ulfila, translator of the Bible into the Gothic language. Ulfila, probably born into the Catholic religion, but consecrated bishop in 341 by Eusebius of Nicomedia, became an Arian under his influence and worked for the conversion of his people to Christianity in its Arian form. He soon realized that a translation of the Bible into the Gothic language was necessary and, for this purpose, invented the Gothic alphabet, whose letters are reproduced in vol. I of the London Polyglot (1657), Prolegomena II, p. 13, n. 11.
Ulfila translated the entire New Testament, except the Epistle to the Hebrews. Whether he also translated the Old Testament remains uncertain. For of the latter there exists only Neh. 5–7, and it is not certain that these fragments were translated by Ulfila, or that one can infer from them the existence of a translation of the entire Old Testament.
The translation of the New Testament is made
from the Greek text, skilfully, clearly, and with great fidelity, except for the passage Phil. 2:6, which is translated in an Arian sense. The Greek original is especially discernible in the compound forms of proper names. Several terms of pagan origin were 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 preserved today: 1) in the Codex argentens of the University Library of Uppsala, which is of Italian origin (fifth or sixth century) and originally contained the four Gospels in the following order: Matthew, John, Luke, Mark; of the 300 leaves, only 187 now remain. In the margin there are glosses in a later hand, containing variant readings in the Gothic language (Codex Argentens Upsaliensis iuxu senatus Universitatis Upsaliensis phototypice editus, Uppsala [1927], with an extensive critical introduction by A. Grape and O. V. Friesen and an appendix by H. Andersson). 2) In the Codex Carolinus of Wolfenbüttel there are fragments of the Epistle to the Romans. 3) In 1817 Angelo Mai found five palimpsests in the Ambrosian Library: Codex Ambros. A contains fragments of the Letters of St Paul, to which four leaves found in 1866 by Reifferscheidt at Turin are to be added (Codex Taurinensis); Codex Ambros. B contains the Second Epistle to the Corinthians and fragments of other letters; Codex Ambros. C contains fragments of Mt. 25–27, and Codex Ambros. D fragments of Neh. 5–7. 4) In a Vienna codex (Salzburg-„Wiener Alkalinhandschrift”) there are very few fragments of a Gothic translation, and in a parchment leaf of the University Library of Giessen, fragments of Lc. 23–24 in Gothic and Latin.