Abstract
The article reviews recent Czech Bible translations, all published in 2009 (Czech Study Translation; Translation for the 21st Century and Jerusalem Bible), in the light of textual criticism of the Bible. A biblical sample for this study, which also includes comparison with the older Czech Ecumenical Translation of the Bible (1979) and modern Bible translations into some other languages (English, German and Slovak), is taken from the first fifteen chapters of the first book of Samuel.
The study demonstrates that markedly different approaches to the text of the Bible appear among the new Czech Bible translations, from the ones strictly adhering to the Masoretic text (thus Czech Study Translation) to those that include a number of ancient variants where the Masoretic reading appears to show traces of secondary development (thus Translation for the 21st Century and Jerusalem Bible). The investigation underlines that the results of modern text-critical studies will remain relevant for any future translations of revisions of current translations of the richly diverse biblical text in the books of Samuel.