Month: June 2025

Felicity Jensz has published an open-access article in the Journal of Commonwealth and Imperial History on bible translation in late-nineteenth century German East Africa. The archival work of this paper was undertaken in the Unitätsarchiv in Herrnhut, Germany, as well as the Archives of the British & Foreign Bible Society at Cambridge University Library, a GloBil project partner.

This article examines the context and process of bible translations from German East Africa at the tail end of German colonial rule in the early twentieth century. It is informed by an attention to global and transnational entanglements that are evident within the process of bible translations and publications. Translation is always a process of negotiation and compromise, and through examining the processes behind the translation and publication of the Bible into Kinyiha and Kinyamwezi a number of imperial as well as religious tensions become evident. The publication of the Kinyamwezi translation was undertaken quickly in order fend off Catholic and Islam threats to the Protestant efforts of conversion. As with the Kinyamwezi translation, the Kinyiha translation contributed to the field of colonial linguists, which itself underscored broader German colonial governments imperial agendas.

The named translator of the Nyiha New Testament (as it was called), was a Moravian missionary by the name of Traugott Bachmann. The article demonstrates that through focusing on the historical setting of, and contributors to, colonial bible translations new insights into the political, cultural, religious, and economic tensions across imperial borders are gained. Although seldom mentioned in official reports, indigenous translators, women and even children, were of immense importance to the ‘reduction’ and ‘conquering’ of ‘unmastered languages’ beyond the work of colonial and missionary linguists, and thereby also contributed to the imperial reach of European empires. In this article through extensive archival research a number of indigenous translators were able to be identified and named. This article contributes to the broader aims of the GloBil project to decolonise the archives of missionary and bible societies and to highlight the contributes of local people to the broader colonial project of bible translations.

Link to open access journal: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03086534.2025.2508271#abstract

It was the privilege of members of the Global Bible project team to travel to São Paulo for the Yale-Edinburgh conference on the theme for 2025, ‘Christianity, Democracy, and Nationalism.’ Approximately 100 delegates from all over the world met to discuss this challenging topic over three days, from 28 – 30 May 2025.

We thank our hosts at the Universidade Mackenzie, São Paulo, and the conference team of Pedro Feitoza, Sérgio Santos, Ronaldo Cavalcante, Suzana Coutinho, Adriano Godoy, Erika Helgen, and Helen Teixeira, for their hospitality and excellent organisation.

The journey from Bristol and Muenster to São Paulo was a big undertaking, but we were committed to participating in the first meeting of the Yale-Edinburgh conference in the global south. WIth its remarkable traffic, diverse population of Afro-Brazilian, Japanese and Portuguese heritage, this was the right place to be discussing the impact of colonalism on the Bible translation movement.

For our session, Hilary Carey discussed the progress of the project, and in particular the argument of Adrian Hastings that the creation of a national literature, especially a Bible in the mother tongue of a particular people, was a critical step in the creation of a national consciousness. She discussed this in relation to the case studies from Greenland, Ghana and Australia. While each translation project was a unique intellectual achievement, there was a wide variety of outcomes for the elevation of these Bibles to national significance.

Felicity Jensz’s paper, entitled ‘German Colonialism, the Global Bible and National Identity in the Age of Empire’, focused on micro studies from the German colonial world including the translations in Ewe in Togo, and work on the Duke of York Bible translations. She demonstrated that through a triangulation of sources we have been able to uncover the names and contributions of various local translators in the project of creating a global bible, thus contributing to the decolonisation of knowledge.

Benjamin Weber spoke on the Digital Humanities aspect of our project.  He described the process of compiling a project data base from multiple sources to enable a large-view analysis of the spread of the bible translations over the nineteenth century and presented this digital tool.

Having completed our own contribution in the first session, this left us free to enjoy other contributions throughout the conference. Sessions were in both Portuguese and English, with Portugues sessions skillfully translated for the less linguistically adept. In this way we learnt about Christian nationalism in Lain America, and the unique identities created by religious minorities in regions as diverse as Hungary, Malta, and Ghana. Eric Miller introduced me to Milton Nascimento, the wildly popular singer songwriter and voice of Brazil. For the final session, Emma Wild-Wood had the unenviable task of summing up the main themes, and bidding us gather and return for the next Yale-Edinburgh meeting.

In between sessions, we continued to discuss the future of our own project, possible grant developments that can build on what we have done so far, and – with Ben Weber’s help – thinking about developing the Global Bible missionary map using AI to allow plain language queries of our data. We also visited the extraordinary Afro-Brazilian Museum which helped us gained further insight into this exciting city and its colonial heritage.