Lausanne World Pulse – Themed Articles – Bible Translation in History and into the Future

By Phil Noss
September 2009

According to linguistic count, there are 6,909 living languages in the world today (Ethnologue 16th ed.). Of these, 2,496 have at least a portion of translated scripture, but the remaining 4,413 have no Bible translation at all.

Although scripture translation has been underway for over two millennia, the speakers of more than half the world’s languages still have no translated scripture. At the same time linguists estimate that approximately ninety-four to ninety-five percent of the world’s population has access to the Bible in a language they are able to speak or understand. However, that language may be a language of conquerors or enemies that they do not wish to use, and they do not have access to God’s word in their mother tongue or in their “heart language.”

Up Until Now…
Putting these linguistic facts in perspective, missiologist Andrew Walls observes that the Christian message is a translated message and the Christian Church is a translated Church. Before Christ was born, the words of the Hebrew Scriptures were translated into Greek (the international language of the day) in Alexandria in Egypt, one of the great cultural and economic centers of the time. It was this translation—the Septuagint—that became the first Bible of the Christian Church. The New Testament authors recorded the story of Jesus’ message of good news, not in the Aramaic language that Jesus and his disciples and followers spoke in their daily lives, but in the widely-spoken Koiné Greek of the eastern Mediterranean world.

It was not until the sixteenth century that Bible translation became an integral feature of the life and growth of the Western Church.

Implicit in the Great Commission is the need for translation: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them … and teaching them…” (Matthew 28:19-20). The story of Pentecost is a story of cross-language communication through the miracle of speaking in tongues (Acts 2:5-13). The early Christian Church spread out from Jerusalem, Judea, and Samaria to the ends of the earth (Acts 1:8).

In the east, the Bible was translated in the first centuries into Syriac, Persian, Gothic, Armenian, Georgian, and in the seventh century parts of it were translated even into Chinese. To the south, it was translated into Coptic dialects, into Nubian, and into Ge’ez. To the west, in North Africa and in southern Europe, it was translated into dialects of Old Latin. Over time, Latin, the language of the Roman Empire, of pax romana, replaced Greek as the language of international communication, and the Latin Bible known as the Vulgate became the Bible of the Church in Europe for a thousand years. It was not until the Protestant Reformation in the sixteenth century that Bible translation became an integral feature of the life and growth of the Western Church.

The Reformation Period was followed by the Missionary Era of Bible translation during the colonial era of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Missionary efforts in Bible translation were facilitated by the translation, publishing, and distribution expertise of the Bible Society enterprise, beginning with the founding of the British and Foreign Bible Society in 1804. In the mid-twentieth century, a number of professional Bible translation agencies were founded, foremost being Wycliffe Bible Translators.

The translation of the Bible cannot be separated from the growth of the Christian Church worldwide. Just as the early Church grew across Asia and North Africa and into Europe in the first centuries, so the Church has grown throughout Africa, Oceania, and the New World alongside Bible translation. Wherever the Christian Church has gone, it has been accompanied by translation of the Word of God, whether in the international languages of the time, or in the mother tongues of the new Christian communities.