Biblia polska

Since the adoption of Christianity in Poland, the Bible has actively shaped the culture and religiousness of the Polish people. Translations of the Bible into the Polish language, as was the case with translations into national languages in other countries, counted among the most important areas of writing. Appearing as early as the Middle Ages, they mainly covered the Book of Psalms (St. Florian's Psalter, the Pulawy Psalter, and the Cracow Psalter). The first translations of the entire Holy Bible into Polish were the Catholic Leopolita Bible and the Protestant Brest Bible. The Wujek Bible, published in Cracow in 1599, exerted the broadest and most powerful influence, defining the Polish culture and biblical language, and was effectively superseded with the publication of the Millennium Bible (1965). For the Protestants, the Brest Bible was replaced by the Gdansk Bible, which remained in use until as late as 1975, when the Warsaw Bible appeared. Today, the Millennium Bible plays the role of the Polish Bible, although it profoundly lacks the authority and impact of the Wujek Bible. For its influence to become comparable to that of the Wujek Bible, it would have to become a reference translation, and the five consecutive editions have hardly reinforced its position.