About our project

The Global Bible project (GloBil) aims to critically investigate British and German contributions to the creation of a global bible, that is the attempt to translate Christian scripture into all the languages of the world. By early in the twentieth century, some portion of the bible had been translated into approximately 1,000 languages, including many with no previous written form.

GloBil seeks to unlock the archives of German and British bible societies, uncovering the history of the global bible movement and its discovery of global languages. To provide focus and direction, GloBil will explore bible translation in three geographically diverse regions, namely the Arctic, Oceania and Australia, and West Africa. These regions are significant because they illustrate the different frontiers into which British and German colonisers were moving and the range of encounters with unique and distinctive languages and peoples. GloBil seeks to delineate the global bible movement in these three regions, uncovering the contribution of Indigenous translators and evangelists, and the significant contribution of British and German bible societies.

Expected outputs of the project include:

  1. A Global Bible Data Base and Map. We will digitalize and transform data on approximately 1,000 bible translations collected in the ‘Book of a Thousand Tongues’ to an interactive on-line open-access tool
  2. GloBil conference focusing on the networks supporting and facilitating global bible translations
  3. The GloBil Exhibition hosted by the Bible Museum Münster

GloBil is a collaborative project between Professor Hilary Carey (Bristol) and PD Dr. Felicity Jensz (Münster).

This project is funded by the fourth round of the UK-German Funding Initiative in the Humanities. In Britain this project is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) from February 2023 to January 2026.

Our project partners include: