Most modern knowledge of the Gothic language is derived from the remains of the Gothic translation of the Bible by Bishop Ulfilas in the 4th century CE. The Goths originated in southern Scandinavia but migrated to eastern Europe and then to southern and southwestern Europe in the second half of the 2nd century CE. The Goths split into two factions, the Visigoths and the Ostrogoths, before establishing separate kingdoms. Many mysteries surround the Gothic translation of the Bible, as the language died out around the 6th and 7th centuries. Styberg Library is excited to showcase an 1891 facsimile of the Gothic Bible from the extraordinary Keen Bible Collection. On display in the Reference Room from November 2023 to February 2024.
Gothic Literature | Balg
The First Germanic Bible translated from Greek and Latin by Gothic Bishop Wulfila (or Ulfilas) in the Fourth Century and other remains of the Gothic Language.
Edited, with an introduction, syntax, and glossary by G.H. Balg, Ph.D.
Electrotyped and printed by the Germania Pub. Co., Milwaukee, WI. 1891
Courtesy of the Keen Bible Collection at Styberg Library
The Gothic language, an extinct East Germanic language spoken by the Goths, is especially important for the study of the history of the Germanic language family because its records antedate those of the other Germanic languages by about four centuries. Gothic occurred in two dialects: Ostrogothic (in eastern Europe and later in Italy) and Visigothic (in east central Europe and later in Gaul and Spain).
The entire Gothic corpus contains a little over 70,000 words preserved in some 15 documents. The Gothic alphabet contained 27 symbols, two of which functioned only as numbers, while the remaining 25 were used as both numbers and letters. The alphabet was derived primarily from Greek and some Latin. The creation of the Gothic alphabet meant that for the first time in the Germanic world, writing could be used for the propagation of ideas.
“Gothic language,” Encyclopedia Britannica. East Germanic languages | History, Characteristics & Dialects | Britannica.
The Goths originated in Scandinavia on an island called Scandza but migrated to eastern Europe and then to southern and southwestern Europe in the second half of the 2nd century CE. They crossed in three ships under their King Berig to the southern shore of the Baltic Sea, where they settled before migrating further southward from the Vistula region. They split into two factions, with those living between the Danube and the Dniester rivers becoming known as Visigoths, and those in what is now Ukraine as Ostrogoths.
D. Gary Miller. “The Goths and Gothic,” The Oxford Gothic Grammar First Edition. Oxford University Press, 2019.
Ulfilas lived circa 311 to 383 CE and was consecrated as Christian bishop of the Visigoths for Gothia in eastern Dacia. Although his life cannot be reconstructed with certainty, fragments have come from 4th- and 5th-century ecclesiastical historians. He reputedly preached for forty years in Greek, Latin, and Gothic. Some historians report that Ulfilas in about 375 helped the persecuted Christian Goths to cross the Danube into Roman territory.
The surviving manuscripts of Ulfilas’s Gothic translation are copies probably made in northern Italy during the period of Ostrogothic rule (493–554). Ulfilas is credited with the invention of the Gothic alphabet from Greek and Latin symbols, and coined a Germanic Christian terminology with his translation, some of which is still in use. Before 381 he translated parts of the Bible from Greek to Gothic. Much of his Gothic translations of the Gospels and Pauline Letters survive, along with fragments of his Book of Nehemiah.
D. Gary Miller. “The Goths and Gothic,” The Oxford Gothic Grammar First Edition. Oxford University Press, 2019.