Gospel.com Blog

One of the goals of contemporary Christianity is to translate the Bible into every possible language. It’s a desire that flows from the Great Commission in which Jesus tells us to go make disciples of all nations. We see Bible translation as a way to ensure that everyone has access to becoming one of Christ’s disciples.

Yesterday, I ran across a fascinating article yesterday that Lausanne Pulse published a few years ago about the history of Bible translation. In the article they mention that the Bible spent the first 1500 years of Christianity in only 35 languages. It wasn’t until the Reformation that Christians started focusing on Bible translation. Yet despite that renewed focus, it took the organization of the Bible Societies in the 1800s for Christians for it to really take off.

The following is a conglomeration of two charts from the Lausanne Pulse article, Bible Translation in a New Millennium:

I don’t have much commentary on this other than to say that it’s just amazing to see how we’ve doubled the number of languages the Bible can be read in in the past seventy years! Yet, even though we’ve made such great progress in the past few hundred years, there are still about 4,000 languages to go.

I’ve been using my navy blue, leather-bound Bible for years. Flipping through it shows the marks of my relationship with it: the frayed bookmark, the pocket I added to the back and the scuffed cover that make it mine.

If you were to browse through Matthew, you would see where as a senior in high school I underlined my way valiantly through the wisdom of Jesus’ words. You can achieve a similar look to your copy of Matthew by taking a black pen willy-nilly to the bottom of every fifth verse.

Thing was, at that time, I could have cared less about the translation. I was full of the vitality that comes along with a renewed interest in one’s faith. You could have given me the Precious Moments Bible, and I would have loved it.

Which raises an interesting question to me now: What would I be doing if I didn’t speak English?

Well, your options become severely limited, or you don’t have any options to begin with. If one speaks English they have a myriad of choices to read the Holy Bible (most of which you can find on a little site we call BibleGateway.com).

If you’ve ever wondered if a country does have the Bible, let me point you towards WorldMap.org. They’re a ministry that publishes evangelistic statistics, including whether or not the country has the Bible in their language.

Take Angola for example. There’s still a large chunk of that country that needs a translation of the Bible, which was news to me.

There are a few ministries in the Gospel.com community that are devoted to the gargantuan task of Bible translations like IBS and the Lutheran Bible Translators (check out their list of translations).

If you’re interested at all in this part of spreading the Word of God, you might want to check them out so you can know how better to pray for them and support them. You can also read some of their efforts in other langauges via the BibleGateway.