Roman Jakobson devoted many of his writings to the translation of Biblical texts by Cyril and Methodius in the 9th century, which had a huge impact throughout the Slavic world long before comparable attempts were made in the Renaissance in the wake of the Reformation (Luther’s Bible, the Authorized Version, etc.). These papers, collected in the sixth volume of his Selected Writings, remain little-known except by Slavicists, yet they are of paramount importance not only for Slavic studies, linguistics and Translation Studies but also for other social sciences. Apart from being a major literary work in its own right, the translation of the Bible by Cyril and Method cannot be reduced to its religious dimension–it unified the Slavic world around a language fashioned after the Greek of the Septuagint and can only be fully understood in the light of its other historical, political and cultural implications.