Protestants: Spreading the Word

If a spoken language can be reduced to type, the American Bible Society will do it. In association with other groups, the Society manages to publish Holy Writ in well over 600 tongues. By itself, it spreads the word in 299 languages and dialects. Its simple method is to devise, if need be, a phonetic version of spoken dialects, thus producing a useful tool for missionaries. For the Society’s single-minded function is to supply enough forms of the Bible to make that book comprehensible to any human being anywhere.

In the Congo, a missionary can hand out excerpts from the Gospels printed on glossy paper in the Tshibula dialect and illustrated with grainy photographs of local scenes. In Valladolid, an illiterate Spaniard can hear a dramatic reading of Mark 5:21-43 played on a record. On the island of Mindoro, a Filipino farmer can scan a Bible in Tagalog.

On the Finger-Fono. All this scriptural activity flows from a paneled, portrait-hung board room on Manhattan’s Park Avenue, headquarters of the Society. Founded in 1816, its first president was Elias Boudinot, a New Jersey Presbyterian who served as president of the Continental Congress. In 1819 it began supplying Bibles, New Testaments and extracts to overseas mission aries, and as of 1962 the grand total distributed had reached over 624 mil lion, in languages and dialects ranging from Apache to Zulu.

Since 1835 the Society has provided Scriptures for the blind in both the Braille and Moon systems, and since 1944 it has produced a 831-hour recorded version of the Bible. Its Finger-Fono system plays scriptural extracts on a lightweight plastic player whose turntable is spun by a finger-powered lever. But mostly the word is spread by the Society’s volunteer workers and colporteurs, hawkers of Holy Writ who carry Bibles, pamphlets and records by donkey and jeep, camel and subway in 123 different countries.

No Word for “Worthy.” Partly supported by 55 Protestant denominations, each with its own interpretation of Scripture, the Society must by its own constitution hew as closely as possible to the original meaning “without note or comment.” Inevitably, however, some of its translations have to ride roughshod. In the Maquiritare language of Venezuela, translators discovered, there is no word for “worthy.” So in translating Mark 1:7, they changed one passage to read: “After me comes one who is greater than I. I cannot remove his sandals because he is greater than I.” The Venezuelan tribesmen took the sentence literally, visualized Christ as a man of such giant stature that John could not remove his shoes.

Last week at the annual meeting of the Society advisory council in New York, the Society began gearing up for its biggest push. As a major member of the United Bible Societies, it is participating in a worldwide drive to treble the annual circulation of Bibles, Testaments and extracts during the next three years. Currently, about 50 million copies are distributed annually. Of the 150 million goal set for 1966, the American Bible Society will contribute 75 million—more than double the number it distributed last year.