Two Letters That Hid the Truth: How Translation Changed History

While problems of interpretation could be resolved relatively simply — people would agree on terms, align on the meaning of words, and begin to understand each other — the difficulties of translation proved far more profound. Beyond conveying the meaning of a literary work, thought, aphorism, prophecy, or prayer, it became critically important to reproduce the very sound of sacred phrases, their phonetics. And doing this was extremely difficult, especially with the tools available thousands of years ago. Moreover, the phonetic capabilities of different languages do not coincide, and therefore produce distortions that lead to quite surprising, if not anecdotal, situations.

Today, there exists one book translated into all languages of the world — the Bible.

It was over its correct translation that many minds of antiquity struggled.

Two Paths of Transliteration

The first translation of the Bible was made from Aramaic into Greek — far from the simplest language. All subsequent translations into other languages were made from Greek, which is precisely why their correctness and accuracy vary greatly. Primarily because two variants of reading were used to render Greek words with Latin letters: Erasmian and Reuchlinian.

They are named after two of the greatest figures of the Renaissance, philologists and writers: Erasmus of Rotterdam and Johannes Reuchlin, who developed two different methods of transliterating Greek words using the Latin alphabet.

The differences between these variants concern the method of rendering certain letters, rough breathing, and diphthongs.

Key Differences

The sound of the following letters is rendered differently in Erasmian / Reuchlinian reading:

• β — beta / vita
• η — eta / ita
• θ — theta / fita
• υ — upsilon / ipsilon

Accordingly, these letters are transliterated as:

• β — b / v
• η — e / i
• θ — th / f
• υ — u / i

Therefore, words are rendered differently:

• βάρβαρος (barbarian, foreigner, non-Greek) — in Erasmian reading barbaros, in Reuchlinian varvaros
• θέατρο (theater) — in Erasmian reading theatron, in Reuchlinian featron
• βιβλιοθήκη (library) — in Erasmian reading bibliotheke, in Reuchlinian vivliofiki

In Erasmian reading, rough breathing is rendered as H, in Reuchlinian it is not rendered at all.

Thus, Ὅμηρος (Homer) according to Reuchlinian reading becomes Omir, while according to Erasmian — Homer.

Geography of Distribution

The variant of transliteration proposed by Erasmus of Rotterdam spread throughout the West — in those countries where Latin was the language of science and religion. This method of rendering Greek words is used in Western and Central European countries to this day.

The area of distribution of the second variant — Reuchlin’s transliteration — is Muscovy-Russia.

It was precisely Reuchlin’s model that was initially used in creating the Russian language, as it was embedded in Bulgarian, the so-called Church Slavonic language. However, after the reforms of Peter I, who made Ukrainian the Russian language, Reuchlin’s system fell out of use. Now in modern Russian, as in other Slavic languages, Erasmian reading of Greek letters is applied.

Traces of the Old System

Nevertheless, despite Peter’s reforms, traces of Reuchlin’s orthographic system have been preserved in the spelling and pronunciation of such words as:

• Fita — and not Theta or Teta
• AlfaVit — and not AlfaBet
• Vavilon — and not Babilon
• Fedor — and not Theodor
• Varvara — and not Barbara
• Vasiliy — and not Basileus
• Venedikt — and not Benedict
• Vlas — and not Blaise
• Vizantiya — and not Byzantium

Stubbornness Against Progress

Three hundred years have passed since Peter’s reforms, but Russians stubbornly refuse to change anything, unwilling to abandon their native, as it turned out, erroneous variant of translating Greek.

The reason? Banal stubbornness. Unwillingness to progress, unwillingness to change.

Russians today stubbornly prove to the whole world, and even to the Greeks themselves, that the Russian reading of Greek words is closer to the original than the Greek! Justifying this by claiming that the Greeks themselves no longer remember how they spoke in ancient times.

Two letters — B and V. And how much they allowed to be hidden, how much to conceal from our inquisitive gaze. They allowed the creation of one of the greatest deceptions in human history, concealing the truth for many centuries. A terrible truth that I will tell you about in my next investigation.

Oleh Cheslavskyi — independent historian and analyst specializing in deconstructing imperial narratives.

Originally published at spilno.org