In Russia, the court banned the modern translation of the Bible

Late in the evening of August 17, 2017, the Vyborg City Court announced its decision: to recognize as extremist material the translation of the Bible into modern Russian, which was seized at customs from Jehovah's Witnesses. The entire detained consignment must be confiscated for destruction. This decision has not entered into force and will be appealed to the Leningrad Regional Court.

Russia was the first European country to officially ban the translation of the Bible. The historic decision was made by Judge Dmitry Grishin at the request of the prosecutor's office. During the hours-long hearings , Grishin was given an exhaustive opportunity to make sure that the subject of the trial was the Bible, a book that, according to the law, cannot be recognized as extremist material. During the meetings, dozens of fragments were read out from it, whole stacks of different editions of the Bible were presented, comparisons and comparisons of texts were carried out. Dozens of texts from the Bible were read directly by Judge Grishin. The most authoritative experts in the field of linguistics and religious studies were invited to the court from Moscow, who answered all the questions of the parties and the court. Prosecutors who pushed for the Bible to be banned were unable to identify a single Bible quote that they believed could be considered extremism. Nevertheless, to everyone's surprise, the court decided to recognize the Bible as extremist material.

This lawsuit is based on the expert opinion of Natalia Kryukova, who, without citing a single quote from the text of the Bible, nevertheless comes to the conclusion that this book is extremist material. The logic of this expert opinion is that this Bible is extremist material because it is used by Jehovah's Witnesses. The court ignored other scientific opinions, examinations and reviews available in the case, which convincingly prove that Kryukova's conclusion is unscientific and contradictory and that the Bible that became the subject of the lawsuit is in fact the Bible. It is noteworthy that the teacher-mathematician Natalia Kryukova does not have an education that gives her the right to conduct this study.

Judge Dmitry Grishin holds a Ph.D. in Law. When the lawyers showed him that the Bible translation was included in the Catalog of Bible Translations published by the Library of Congress, Grishin told the parties that he had spent many days doing his research at the Library of Congress. Nevertheless, on August 17, 2017, Grishin issued a decision to ban the Bible - a decision that is contrary to science, law and common sense!