Heltai Gáspár’s method of quoting the Bible in his life’s work

Abstract

The main issue of the study is the method Heltai Gáspár used when quoted from the Bible in his works. The underlying viewpoint came from the study of the works of Péter Pázmány, as the researchers formulated, Pázmány developed a conscious method for quoting. To explore whether Heltai applied any conscious editing method in this regard, and if he did, what principles can be observed, the analysis of Heltai’s works was at the center of the investigation.
During my research, I examined the biblical quotations found in Heltai’s texts along four questions. I sought to answer how the quotations in his works related to Heltai’s partial translations of the Bible. Furthermore, the study also focused on whether the same quotation appeared in the same or different form when it occurred multiple times. The comparative and text-analytical studies have shown that a clear distinction can be drawn in the method of citation between Heltai’s early and late works. While in his early works, Heltai mostly quotes the text of the Bible in literal forms
(especially the books of the Old Testament), in his later works we primarily encounter revisions and paratexts. There  can be two reasons for this. The first is that while most of the Old Testament translation was available to Heltai at the time he wrote down his early works, the New Testament was not. The other reason can be seen in the fact that in the second half of his career, Heltai shifted from publishing doctrinal works to presenting stories providing moral examples. While in the case of the former, avoiding the teleological errors required accurate quotations, in the case of the latter forms, embedding the quotations in the text became more important.