BIBLE TRANSLATIONS

And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all notions; and then shall the end come.

—Matt. 24:14

420 Statistics On Bible Translation

At least one book of the Bible has been translated into 1,431 languages, making it available to 97% of the world’s population. The complete Bible has been translated into more than 240 languages and the complete New Testament into more than 320 languages. But these 560 languages represent only 10% of the 5,687 different languages in the world. And 3% of the world still is unable to read any part of the Bible in their language or dialect.

According to the Wycliffe Bible Translators, translations are in progress in an additional 783 languages. 568 other languages are large enough to have a “definite need” for Bible translation but are without translators.

421 New Languages Down The Centuries

From A. D. 100 to A. D. 1450 33 languages received Scriptures, a rough average of a new language every 40 years. By 1880, 71 languages had some printed portion (including some but not all of the above 33), an average of a new language every 9 (or less) years; 1801 to 1830 86 more, or 3 new languages per year; 1831 to 1937 851 more, or 8 per year.

Between 1937 and 1955 the average dropped to 4.6 new translations per year, but in the 24-month period 1956–57, 35 more languages received something for the very first time, an average of a new language every 3 weeks!

422 UN Reports Bible Most Translated

The Bible has recovered its position as the world’s most translated work, well ahead of the works of Marx, Engels, and Lenin, according to United Nations data published recently. There were 109 new translations of the Bible, sixty-two of Marx, fifty- nine of Engels, and fifty-seven of Lenin in 1972, the latest year for which figures are available.

—Selected

423 The Missionary Who Never Got Sick

There are still 2,000 dialects spoken by native peoples in all parts of the world that do not have written language. Today we could use at least 7,000 more persons to work on the languages that still remain. The greatest missionary is one that never gets sick, never needs a furlough, is never considered a foreigner, lives constantly with the people, and is the means of making other missionaries unnecessary—the Bible in the language of the people!”

—Cameron Townsend

424 Computers in Translation Work

Wycliffe Bible Translators are using computers. They claim that these machines reduce the time required to produce a New Testament in some previously unwritten language by one-half. The computers vastly simplify the work of constructing an unwritten language on paper and preparing manuscripts for the printer. Editing is done automatically.

In the past, a New Testament has taken from two to five years to be printed, because of the large number of changes required at the proofreading stage. With computerized typesetting equipment, however, an entire New Testament can be set in fourteen days without a single printer’s error.

—Gospel Herald

425 Story Of King James I

He was a habitual drunkard and rumored to be addicted to other vices which could not be mentioned in public. As King of England he married off his children like pawns to suit his foreign policy. He drained the royal treasury to meet the cost of his extravagancies in wine and women.

Unkingly in almost every respect, he was described thus by J. R. Green: “His big head, his slobbering tongue, his quilted clothes, his rickety legs, his goggle eyes, stood out as a grotesque contrast with all that men recalled of Henry and Elizabeth in his gabble, his want of personal dignity, his coarse buffoonery, his drunkenness, his pedantry, his contemptible cowardice.”

Yet God in overruling providence used this man to assemble scholars and push through the Authorized Translation of the Bible in 1611—the most influential Bible of all times. His name: King James I.

—Selected

426 The Guttenberg Bible

It is a beautiful fact that the first book in the world printed with movable types was the Bible. About 180 copies were printed by Johannes Gutenberg, inventor of the printing press. It took three years to do it, from 1453 to 1456. The Gutenberg Bibles were copied from a manuscript of the Vulgate translation and was printed in Latin.

Only about 50 copies have been located, many of them in poor condition. One copy, printed on vellum and said to be one of the three perfect copies made, is owned by the Library of Congress and obtained for $400,000.

For anyone interested, a well-preserved two-volume set of the Gutenburg edition is on sale in New York City for $3.2 million.

427 First Bible Printed In America

The first Bibles printed in America were not printed in English but in the language of the Algonquin Indian tribe according to an editorial in the Lebanon, Oregon, Express.

The editorial stated that in 1663 John Eliot, the pastor of a church in Roxbury, Massachusetts, paid out of his own pocket to have 1,500 Bibles published. Using an Indian he had rescued from the cruelty of a farmer, Eliot taught him to speak, read, and then write English. In return, the Indian, named by Eliot, Job Neustan, taught Eliot the language and customs of the Algonquins. Together, Eliot and Neustan completed the Bible in four years.

—Pastor’s Manual

428 Big Year For The Bible

Publishers’ reports reveal that sales of Bible translations continued at a high level throughout 1976. The Good News Bible (American Bible Society) was published on the first day of December, and a million copies of it were sold in that month alone. And additional 313,000 were sold in January.

The 1976 sales figure for The Living Bible (Tyndale), in its various editions including The Way, was 2.25 million; for The Jerusalem Bible (Doubleday), about 380,000; and for the New American Standard Bible (several publishers), 130,000.

Figures for the King James, Revised Standard, New American, and New English (all with multiple publishers) were not readily available, but all and especially the first two had continuing large sales.

Prominent annotated editions also did well: the New Scofield Reference Edition (Oxford), based on the King James, 100,000; the Harper Study Bible (Zondervan), based on the Revised Standard, 55,000.

—Christianity Today

429 “Living Bible” Best-Seller

The Living Bible, a paraphrase by Kenneth Taylor of Tyndale House, topped the nation’s non-fiction best-seller list for 1972. The book, being distributed by both Doubleday and Tyndale House, has sold more than 750,000 copies under Doubleday and has over five million copies sold under Tyndale. Additionally, Tyndale has over ten million copies in print, including paperback editions.

430 “Good News Bible” Best-Seller

The Good News Bible, a new translation in everyday modern English which uses the metric system for all its measurements, may be the fastest-selling book in history. Its publishers said that the work sold 680,000 copies within a month of publication. “This is thought to surpass the sales of any secular book,” the statement said.