From the kinnor to the guitar: historical transformations of the biblical musical instruments in Lithuanian translations of the Bible since the 16th century
ENTranslations of the Bible serve as important written sources for the musical terminology of each country. However, the knowledge of biblical musical terminology is aggravated by the historical evolution of the very instruments - in order to render the biblical text eloquent and accessible to community, translators look for the equivalents of biblical musical instruments among the instruments common to that particular epoch and surroundings. In Lithuania, since the 16th century there have existed two rival traditions of translating the Bible - Catholic and Protestant (Lutheran and Reformed Evangelical, Baptist, Methodist). The problems that faced the translators are best illustrated by the manuscripts of Jonas Bretkūnas (1590) and Antanas Baranauskas (1902), which evidence the search for the most appropriate Lithuanian equivalents of biblical instruments. The paper deals with the specifics of names and types of biblical instruments in the Lithuanian translations of the Bible from German, Latin and Hebrew sources since the 16th century.
