Literary Estonian was born during the two post-Reformation centuries in the process of translating catechisms, pericopes (i.e., sections of the New Testament required for the divine services of the liturgical year), hymns and, most importantly, the Bible. It was purposefully created for written ecclesiastical translation. Some elements of standard ecclesiastical Estonian – the principal terms and formulae of Christian discourse – had probably already taken shape in the Middle Ages in the process of oral communication. However, literary mediaeval Estonian as a written variety did not exist (see also Toropainen in this volume). The first literary standards for written texts in Estonian were created by Lutheran pastors, and, in a relatively short post-Reformation period, a considerable number of written translations were produced. As a result, in the period between the publication of the first book including an Estonian text in 1525, which is not extant but is supposed to have been a Lutheran mass book (Kivimäe 2000), and the publication of the first full Estonian Bible in 1739, linguistic standards for literary Estonian suitable for Bible translation were established.